I am a butt sometimes...

 I was a total jerk today.  There is a paleontology reporting youtube channel that I actually like a lot.  But I went off on the episode because of certain things said, and they were NOT the fault of the reporter, he was simply going of published papers.

But the part that bugs me is this new trend using statistical analysis to place finds into various clades.  Yes, cladistics.  The trend is to identify measurement points on fossil bones, compile them into this massive database, and run a program to try and sort out how these bones might be related to some other bones.  It really CAN'T take into account the sparse number of fossils, the massive amounts of time, and the chance that over 10s of millions of years animals can "evolve" to be so similar that even their skeletons are nearly identical.

Anyway, google BEN G THOMAS and go to his site and watch his videos, they are good.  Not quite as good as Raptor Chatter's but... better than most.

Dinosaurs are fun.  They were amazing creatures.  It is fun to imagine how they might have behaved.  But we can never actually KNOW things about them, because all we ever get are minute snapshots of a moment in time over 100s of millions of years.  We find a clutch of eggs and assume "oh the parents must have cared for the babies" or "younger predators were faster and more agile than adults so they MUST have hunted in packs, the juveniles driving prey right into the mouths of the adults!"  BZZZZZZT!  Dinosaurs MIGHT have packed around but it was highly unlikely to be a complex behavior like group hunting.  As proof scientists will haul out a fossil site where 20 of the same species died.  Turns out it could have been a million other things other than cooperative packing... it could have been desperation for water, or prey, or even a natural trap of some sort.  We simply can't know these things.

That's why it is FUN to imagine, but don't let imagination drive science.  That came off wrong.  You can use imagination to drive your interest in science, but don't use it to verify facts.

September 2023- Paleontology Review

This gentlemen deserves more attention...  if you read MY blog, please go view his YouTube channel.

Back to Linux and a book review...

My journey has once again led back to linux.  I just cannot seem to escape it.  And that is fine.  Back on Solus and feeling calm about it.

Now onto my semi-review of an interesting book.

First, if you have read any of my blog (and let's face it, very few people have) you know I am a "conservative Christian" type of person, for the most part.  I have very strong feelings about some things, and not so strong feelings about others.  For example I am strongly opposed to the very idea of abortion.  I am also a software engineer, a father, a husband and love anything sci-fi and steam punk.

I may also seem to have an aversion toward science based on some of my other posts, but that is not the case at all.  I have an aversion to what I consider to be BAD science.  Science is somewhat in my blood as both of my parents were biologists, I am drawn to archeology, paleontology, linguistics, etc.  So it was no shock when my son bought me a new book for Father's day!

My son knows my love for all things ancient, including ancient life.  I have been CRAZY about ancient life since before I was in kindergarten.  With that thought in mind he bought me a book written by paleontologist Steve Brusatte entitled "The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs; A New History of a Lost World."

I was thrilled and set right out to read it!  Unfortunately my thrill ebbed and waned rather quickly as I read.  Don't get me wrong, I think the book is good, and it deserves to be read, especially if you are fan boy of paleontology like myself, but I have problems with it.  One of the problems I have is that while the book seems to claim it is novel and a slight rewrite of what we previously understood about early dinosaur development (at least in the early chapters) it really did not tell me anything I did not already know.  Furthermore, the author took some pot-shots at other paleontologists that were not only unnecessary, but not 100% accurate.

Disclaimer, when I was a kid, Ostrom was "the" paleontologist...  so that gives you an idea of my age.  Bakker was his young upstart who took something more than hinted at by Ostrom and ran with it.  I have no particular fondness of all the ideas Bakker has written about, but I do appreciate his enthusiasm (just as I appreciate Brusatte's obvious and unbridled enthusiasm) for his field.  That being said, at one point Brusatte makes the claim (somewhere around page 70-78 in the hard cover of his book) that Bakker "preached" about dinosaurs like they were the destined inheritors of the Earth when they appeared in the Triassic.  He went on to say he "felt uneasy" with Bakker's statements and ideas and was not surprised that he came off so "preachy" because he was also a part-time minister of some Christian faith.

He then went on to claim that Brusatte and his colleagues would go on to perform analysis that showed that dinosaurs were not dominant in the Triassic at all... but that IS NOT NEW.  WE ALREADY KNEW THAT decades ago.  It reminds me of the new Computer Scientists of this age taking hold of something Software Engineers did in the 70's or 80's, putting a name to it, and claiming it as their own idea; selling books, trademarking words, etc.  Kind of makes me feel a little queasy.

I have read Bakker's works, I have read works he collaborated on and advised on.  NEVER did Bakker intimate that dinosaurs of the Triassic were the obvious world conquerors to be.  What Bakker DID espouse was that dinosaurs must have had some inherent advantage over the other reptiles of the Triassic that allowed them to survive and thrive when disaster struck in the late Triassic.  That, by the way is CLASSIC Darwinism (which I do not necessarily hold to).  Makes sense yes?  Dinosaurs must have survived because during their Triassic development, they evolved some advantage.

For Brusatte to say that Bakker was "preachy" about dinosaurs being a God-send to the animal kingdom (my words) is over the top.  Bakker was passionate about dinosaurs and had many theories of WHY they had advantages over other land reptiles, amphibians and mammals of the Triassic that included growth rates, air sacs, warm-bloodedness, etc.  One thing I do not remember Bakker ever doing was putting down the work of other paleontologists because he was "uneasy" with their ideas.  No, if he thought they were wrong he simply set out to prove it and provide data that would support his claims.  Nor did he ever claim HIS ideas were out-of-the-blue new!  He clearly stated his work was not only based on Ostrom, but also on some of the old-time paleontologists who had the common sense to see that if an animal LOOKS active and dynamic, it probably was.

Anyway, I should stop here.  I have more to read and I plan on finishing the book over tomorrow, after we go see Jurassic World...