Dinosaurs from chickens??

I named my dung beetle "Spendi".

I rather like you, spendius. But, I have to agree with Mr Wolf. Your presence as well as gunga's, in a science forum, is just not natural. However, I know as well as anybody it's a free forum and you have the right to post. Plus you guys do provide some comic relief. So, pretend I said nothing.

As comic relief is the most valuable commodity on this whole earth, as Rabelais taught, and all his heroic followers have done and still do wherever the last pockets cling tenaciously on, I presume Ed thinks that my absence from these Science threads would be a negative.

Thank you Ed. That is a compliment I value. I only rate compliments grudgingly expressed through gritted teeth.

I hate "WELCOME" mats. What a bunch of idiots they must be to welcome me into their presence.

If I was the captain of a victorious cricket team and the losing captain came up to me offering his wanking hand and saying "well done" I would keep my hands in my pocket and reply that it was a piece of piss and nothing in the least special about it.

Duh. This is precisely what you'd expect if the T-rex was, you know, what I just called it: a closely-related but separate lineage. Think of New World monkeys. Are you going to be surprised if you find identical proteins?

edit: I'm talking about comparing people to New World monkeys. I kinda left that out the first time .



No, it wasn't. People talk like that so that "average", generally non-sciency people have a simple idea to relate to, just so they can get across the idea that avians are the descendants of dinosaurs. In many ways I disapprove of such generalizations, because those same people who aren't interested enough in science to go out and study (but watch TV, read random articles, etc) seem like the most likely, to me, to miss the implicit fact of the overgeneralization and oversimplification.

<pedantic>Proper term = genera
</pedantic>

I usually avoid such silly corrections, since I tend not to care, but sometimes others will freak out a bit. If you want to sound fancy, use "genera" .



Pterodactyls aren't dinosaurs

Aw, spendius, I'm just yanking your frog's tail. You know these threads would not be as interesting without you and your ilk to stand in as foils. I learn more when they respond to you, because they have to get on an elemental level to to explain what it is they mean. The fact you throw out variations of the same objections again and again, means that they come in with varied responses; therefore, filling out the information as it goes.

Being genera specific is always desirable in academic circles. However, even the pros are quite comfortable calling pterosaurs "Flying dinosaurs". They occupy the same superorder(Archosauria) of Diapsids, and they differ from the dino orders by significant morph differences. However they are in the 5 orders of archosaurs that include dinosaurs and lived at approximately the same time but different environments than the "thunder lizards". More importantly, the pterosaurs (both "ancient wing" and "modern wing" types) occupy the stratigraphic record that assures their use as an environmental " index fossil" of the peri-rifting areas of PAngea.

Technically, they are neither saurischians nor ornithiscians, but they arepetrosaurians and are classically grouped with the dinos because to break up the suborders for complete correctness, wed have to exclude other suborders as "not being dinosaurs " either. For detailed discussions and morphological cladistic presentations, Id suggest looking at the old Colbert volume of "Evolution of the VErtebrates", still in use, significantly updated since its first edition in 1955


SCuse me Shira but Ive been using genii as my own little affectation for years now, and I dont believe Ive ever heard your admonition before.

HAdda look this one up in the farmerman archives. The US Postal Department issued a bulletin on the "lap" about misnaming Apatosaurus as a Brontosaur in the USPS's "Dinosaur Stamp" series.


As S J Gould learned when he wrote his half serious complaint to the USPS, you dont mess with the Post Office when one wants a name changed for accuracy. The Post office stated that, in its own defense. APATOSAURUS really means "deceptive lizard" which has no meaning in general context , whereas the old term "BRONTOSAURUS, meant "Thunder Lizard", now that was a name. So including the pterosaurs and the mososaurs in with dinosaurs was a classification error that would lead kids to seek out the real answers on their own.

See how a govt agency can settle everything by merely printing some stamps?

Ed wrote-



Shucks!! And here's me thinking you were a serious intellectual all this time. I've just kicked a discarded tin-can over a hedge. I didn't think you had an ironic bone in your body. I sincerely apologise for having misjudged you so comprehensively.

What makes you think I've not been yanking your tail for a lot longer than you've been yanking mine and thus have precedence in the hiearchy of tail yanking.



Yes--I did know that.

What elemental level tutu explain what they mean have you in mind? Just saying it doesn't mean anything. What information have they filled out for you? I bet I could set an exam on this thread and you would score a Z. Maybe a Y if I put a couple of easies in to save your face.

Q1--When was the first occasion an anti-IDer admonished a fellow anti-IDer?

There are other readers besides yourself Ed. Whether they learn the same things you do from the thread is an unknown.

Take fm's most recent post which you can find by just looking upwards a little.

Now-what does--"Being genera specific is always desirable in academic circles" mean when scrutinised.

It conveys the info that fm is familiar with "academic circles". I would question that. It also conveys the info that fm thinks that "academic circles" are superior to non-academic circles because otherwise he wouldn't mention this matter. Logically then fm is a superior person to, say, Fernando Torres, who scored the winning goal in the 2008 Euro final which resulted in a good deal of celebration around here and who is not a member of any academic circles I know of. I deduce from all this that fm does seem intent on presenting himself in the best possible light, as Kenny Everett used to say. In his own eyes I mean. Possibly in your's too.

In academic circles I think being genera specific is mandatory rather than merely desirable in which case "always" is a wasted word and we (gulp) all know what Bob Dylan said about wasted words.

I can't see how the rest of fm's post has any meaning to anyone unprepared to spend a day in a good reference library and anyone who did so would probably find it riddled with errors and crude solecisms. But I can't vouch for that and I'm not going to spend my time checking it all out. I hope it isn't proposed to teach such gibberish in Louisiana evolution classes should they ever come to pass.

I will say, off the top of my head, that if even the pros are quite comfortable calling pterosaurs "Flying dinosaurs" I'm not all that amazed. In fact I'm not even mildly surprised.

The whole post reminds me of ladies fashions where delicate operations with scissors and fine threads are mounted in order to cover up what is, from a scientific point of view, a crude, animalistic structure designed by either a meaningless and thus unintelligent process or the other Thing to guarantee the reproductive future of the species.

fm strutted on the catwalk I mean. Which is a particularly silly thing to do without tits and a wiggling backside.

There were some other threads somewhat related to this topic.

Well, that's good . I always figure others are more national socialist in the grammar than I am.

Ive also coined "Shrapnel from the CAmbrian Explosion" to describe scolithus infestations in the Tremadocian :wink:

It's an odd phrase fm as shrapnel is generally thought to be inorganic and short-lived whilst the C.E was an organic event of such long standing duration that it is still with us after 500 million years. Even "explosion" is far fetched.

I suppose it suggests a military bearing and is thus coveting admiration in a society which admire military values. As when a soccer player "pulls the trigger" as the commentators often say. One in particular.

Sports commentaries are full of violent images. Bully-off for example.

Crap metaphors are a sure sign of a slipshod compositional style which assumes the reader is a complete idiot.

Are you, by any chance, A Vulcan?

LOOOOOOOOL

Because we know that you could never have a crap metaphor, no. You're spendius, b****!

Perhaps you should go visit your bar buddies so you can have a genuflection circle jerk rather than trolling science threads.

Not bereft of ideas again are you S?

You should contact Central Control and ask them to put up a "sticks-out-tongue" emoter. Think of the energy it would save you.

I had a chicken peck open a vein on the back of my upper calf a week ago... I'm a "Chickensaurus Rex" true believer now... I'm first-aid trained or it'd have been 911 and the Emergency Room for me.

jeez. This thread hs been all over the barnyard in the last 8 years