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Good, semi-good, & bad dino sources.
Topic Started: Feb 7 2013, 02:59 AM (4,361 Views)
JD-man
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I originally posted the following in my DA journal ( http://jd-man.deviantart.com/journal/SD-Good-semi-good-and-bad-dino-sources-351589315 ). I encourage you to make your own list of good, semi-good, & bad dino sources. It doesn't have to be the same format or include the same sources.

Quote:
 
Hi everybody,

This post was inspired by Holtz's "A Dinosaur Lover's Bookshelf" article ( http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/book-reviews/16928013/dinosaur-lovers-bookshelf ). It's nothing formal, just a list of what I (as a non-expert dino fan) think are especially notable dino sources (for better or worse) & why. Even still, I hope that at least some of you will get something out of it. 2 more things of note: 1) Just in case you were wondering, the sources aren't listed in any particular order; 2) If you don't know what I mean by "casual readers"/"the enthusiast"/"the specialist", see Miller's "Paleo Reading List" ( http://whenpigsfly-returns.blogspot.com/2008/04/paleo-reading-list.html ).

Cheers,
Herman Diaz

Good

Holtz's "Dinosaurs: The Most Complete, Up-to-Date Encyclopedia for Dinosaur Lovers of All Ages" ( http://www.amazon.com/Dinosaurs-Complete-Up---Date-Encyclopedia/dp/0375824197/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1358374973&sr=1-1 ) & Gardom/Milner's "The Natural History Museum Book of Dinosaurs" ( http://www.amazon.com/Natural-History-Museum-Book-Dinosaurs/dp/184442183X/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1358375235&sr=1-4 ) are the best encyclopedic & non-encyclopedic dino books, respectively, for casual readers. Taylor's review of the former ( http://www.miketaylor.org.uk/dino/books/index.html#hr2007 ) & The Book Depository's description of the latter ( http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Natural-History-Museum-Dinosaurs-Tim-Gardom/9781844421831?b=-3&t=-20#Fulldescription-20 ) sum up most of the reasons why, but not the most important reason: Holtz & the NHM keeps updates on "Supplementary Information for Holtz's Dinosaurs" ( http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/dinoappendix/ ) & "The Dino Directory" ( http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/life/dinosaurs-other-extinct-creatures/dino-directory/index.html ), respectively, when parts of said books become outdated.

Hone ("Dr David W. E. Hone": https://sites.google.com/site/davidhonesresearchprofile/ ) reminds me of a young Holtz in both research ( https://sites.google.com/site/davidhonesresearchprofile/home/research-profile ) & outreach ( https://sites.google.com/site/davidhonesresearchprofile/home/outreach-science-communication ). I hope he writes dino books like Holtz too, someday. Until then, see his technical papers (for free) under "Publications & Abstracts" & his blogs ("Lost Worlds"/"Archosaur Musings" for casual readers/the enthusiast, respectively) under "Outreach & Science Communication".

You could say Conway et al. ( http://www.amazon.com/All-Yesterdays-Speculative-Dinosaurs-Prehistoric/dp/1291177124/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1358837969&sr=1-1 ) are the A-Team of dinos: Naish does the science ( http://darrennaish.wordpress.com/ ); Conway does the art ( http://johnconway.co/ ); Kosemen drives the van. ;)

Semi-good

Cau ("AndreaCau": http://andreacau.deviantart.com/ ) is a consistently good source of phylogenetic info. However, he's also a hit-&-miss source of other biological info.*

Celeskey's "Coelophysis - New Mexico's State Fossil" ( http://nmstatefossil.org/ ) is basically Colbert's "The Little Dinosaurs of Ghost Ranch" ( http://www.amazon.com/Little-Dinosaurs-Ghost-Ranch/dp/0231082363/ref=la_B001HCW24C_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1358836411&sr=1-4 ) in website form, the former being for casual readers & the latter for the enthusiast. I have mixed feelings about single species accounts. Martin's "The Blue Tit" review ( http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00222938800770211 ) sums up why. In any case, it's the ultimate source of Coelophysis info.

GSPaul ("The Official Website of Gregory S. Paul - Paleoartist, Author and Scientist": http://gspauldino.com/ ) is a mixed bag. Naish's "The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs" review ( http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/2012/02/21/greg-pauls-dinosaurs-a-field-guide/ ) sums up what I mean. In any case, see his technical papers (for free) & books under "CURRICULUM VITAE" for interesting yet controversial dino art/science.**

Bad

Hunter ("Cladistic Existentialism") is a BANDit (BAND = Birds Are Not Dinosaurs) & his website is basically a list of anti-cladistic writings (1 of which I reviewed: http://blogevolved.blogspot.com/2013/03/my-1st-pair-of-reviews.html ). His website's header ( http://ncsce.org/images/format/header.jpg ) sums up said writings in 2 major ways: 1) The depiction of non-avian dinos as Jurassic Park knock-offs (which is probably part of the reason why BANDits are compared to creationists: http://dinoharpist.blogspot.com/2012/11/creation-crackhouse-in-kentucky-is.html ); 2) The statement about "determining the number of birds' fingers" (which, as indicated by the Naish quote, is blatantly hypocritical & misleading).

Peters ("Reptile Evolution") is a GSPaul wannabe & his website is basically a list of reasons why (according to him) he's great & everyone else is an idiot. Naish's "Reptile Evolution" review ( http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/2012/07/03/world-must-ignore-reptileevolution-com/ ) sums up what I mean.

There are 3 main reasons why Dr. Pterosaur/Doug Dobney ("Pterosaurs to Modern Birds") & Gwawinapterus/Johnfaa ("Gwawinapterus") are bad sources of dino (or any other) info: 1) Unlike all of the aforementioned sources, they're both non-experts; 2) They're both infamous for their stupid behavior on the internet, the former being a troll ( http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2011/09/new-moderation-policy-doug-dobney-is.html ) & the latter a cyberbully ( http://amanda2324.deviantart.com/journal/Banned-peeps-298034166 ); 3) They're both terrible at sourcing their work, never doing so unless it proves their point (They'll ignore any source that contradicts them).

*According to Cau (See the 4th & 6th paragraph down: http://theropoda.blogspot.com/2010/04/billy-e-il-clonesauro-guida_06.html ), "no Mesozoic dinosaur, crocodile and no any modern bird baseline (like ostriches or Galliformes) has offspring inept" (See "Opposed hypotheses" under "Testing ideas and community analysis": http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/science/eggshell/eggshell_case1.php ) & "the fact that the children had early leads us to think that the animal did not need particular parental care and that was autonomous in search of food" (See "Precocial" & "Semi-precocial": http://www.stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/text/essays/Precocial_and_Altricial.html ).

**"Predatory Dinosaurs of the World: A Complete Illustrated Guide" ( http://www.amazon.com/Predatory-Dinosaurs-World-Complete-Illustrated/dp/0671687336/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_2 )/"The Scientific American Book of Dinosaurs" ( http://www.amazon.com/Scientific-American-Dinosaurs-Byron-Preiss/dp/B005SNHXQ8/ref=sr_1_21?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1359347478&sr=1-21 )/"Dinosaurs of the Air: The Evolution and Loss of Flight in Dinosaurs and Birds" ( http://www.amazon.com/Dinosaurs-Air-Evolution-Flight-Birds/dp/0801867630/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_3 )/"The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs" ( http://www.amazon.com/Princeton-Field-Guide-Dinosaurs-Guides/dp/069113720X/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1 ) for the enthusiast/casual readers/the specialist/the enthusiast, respectively.

Quoting Naish (See "All the fuss over those weird little hands": http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2009/06/19/limusaurus-is-awesome/ ): "As you'll surely know, embryologists have often (though not always) argued that birds exhibit BDR, such that their tridactyl hands represent digits II, III and IV rather than the I, II and III thought universal among coelurosaurian theropods. Those who contend that birds cannot be theropods have latched on to this as an integral bit of their case: Alan Feduccia in particular has repeatedly said that bird hands and theropod hands are fundamentally different, and that this degree of difference bars theropods from avian ancestry (Burke & Feduccia 1997, Feduccia 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003, Feduccia & Nowicki 2002) [developing ostrich hands from Feduccia & Nowicki (2002) shown below]. Yeah, as if one feature - no matter how profound or major - can somehow outweigh tens of others: what excellent science. The hypothesis (note: hypothesis) that bird hands represent digits II-IV rests mostly on the fact that the primary axis of condensation (the first digit precursor to appear in the embryonic hand) corresponds to digit IV: because bird embryos grow two fingers medial to this axis, these two must be digits III and II (incidentally, this is contested by some embryologists and is not universally accepted. To keep things as simple as possible, we'll ignore that for now).

Despite what Feduccia and his `birds are not dinosaurs' colleagues state, the morphological evidence showing that birds really are theropod dinosaurs is overwhelmingly good, so if birds and other theropods really do have different digit patterns in the hand, something unusual must have occurred during evolution. One idea is that a frame shift occurred: that is, that the condensation axes that originally produced topographical digits II-IV became modified during later development, such that the digits that grew in these places came to resemble topographical digits I-III instead of II-IV (Wagner & Gauthier 1999). If the frame shift hypothesis is valid, then - somewhere in theropod evolution - the `true' digit I was lost, and `true' digit II became digit I. However, evidence from Hox genes indicates that the condensation axis for embryonic digit I receives a Hox signal normally associated with.... topographical digit I, thereby showing that the bird `thumb' really IS the thumb (Vargas & Fallon 2005, Vargas et al. 2008)."
Edited by JD-man, Mar 31 2013, 12:12 PM.
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Jinfengopteryx
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So, the size estimates in "Predatory Dinosaurs of the World" shouldn't be used anymore?

About my list, don't really have one yet, but according to MantisShrimp, Thulborn had some not very good papers, so I will maybe put him into my bad or semi-good zone.
Edited by Jinfengopteryx, Feb 7 2013, 07:11 AM.
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JD-man
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Jinfengopteryx
Feb 7 2013, 07:06 AM
So, the size estimates in "Predatory Dinosaurs of the World" shouldn't be used anymore?


I'm not sure how to answer your question. If I had to choose, I'd use the size estimates in "The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs". Why do you ask?

Jinfengopteryx
Feb 7 2013, 07:06 AM
About my list, don't really have one yet, but according to MantisShrimp, Thulborn had some not very good papers, so I will maybe put him into my bad or semi-good zone.


Assuming you're referring to what I think you're referring to ( http://carnivoraforum.com/topic/9808221/1/#new ), I wouldn't take MantisShrimp too seriously. As you can see, he seemingly didn't even read the paper in question. He seemingly only read the abstract & assumed the worst.
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blaze
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I suppose because you've put it in your bad list, but that is because of the extreme lumping and unneeded name changes of clades by Paul rather than his reconstructions, right?
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JD-man
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blaze
Feb 7 2013, 03:33 PM
I suppose because you've put it in your bad list, but that is because of the extreme lumping and unneeded name changes of clades by Paul rather than his reconstructions, right?
What do you mean? GSPaul is listed under "Semi-good".
Edited by JD-man, Feb 8 2013, 12:49 AM.
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blaze
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God, I didn't saw that it was also under the "clarifications" part (the explanations for * and **) haha, I wonder if Jinfengopteryx made the same mistake.

Edit: also, it is indeed in the semi-good and under the "clarifications", below the bad too, only saw it below bad at first.
Edited by blaze, Feb 7 2013, 11:27 PM.
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Jinfengopteryx
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Yes, I did.
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Fist of the North Shrimp
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JD-man
Feb 7 2013, 03:22 PM
Jinfengopteryx
Feb 7 2013, 07:06 AM
So, the size estimates in "Predatory Dinosaurs of the World" shouldn't be used anymore?


I'm not sure how to answer your question. If I had to choose, I'd use the size estimates in "The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs". Why do you ask?

Jinfengopteryx
Feb 7 2013, 07:06 AM
About my list, don't really have one yet, but according to MantisShrimp, Thulborn had some not very good papers, so I will maybe put him into my bad or semi-good zone.


Assuming you're referring to what I think you're referring to ( http://carnivoraforum.com/topic/9808221/1/#new ), I wouldn't take MantisShrimp too seriously. As you can see, he seemingly didn't even read the paper in question. He seemingly only read the abstract & assumed the worst.
Ok, new bad source, JD-man, because he did not even understand my argument lol ;)
I am not the only one who is critcal of Thulborns new paper, he may have a point but some things that he writes are simply not true. If his paper would hve been purely technical without missinformation then I would not have a problem with it.
I admire his earlier work, but lately it has become overly defensive and sometimes not so well researched, like his paper about Bückeburgichnus.

Oh, and yes, I read the paper, did you? In good faith I assumed that it only sounded harsh because Thulborn was passionate about this subject, but when I read the paper and found false allegations in it, and later, when I read Thulborns own message on the DML, I started to reject his harsh critique. He is right that the paper probably is somewhat incomplete, but it only is part of a larger project.


I also hope that you apologize for your allegations towards my reasearch ethics and methodology. You seemingly have not idea about them, and I regard such wild speculations as an insult.
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Jinfengopteryx
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BTW JD-man, I was rather reffering to his post in the therad about "Das Monster von Minden".
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SpinoInWonderland
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Examples:

Good: Most scientific papers
Semi-good: Factual documentaries(like Planet Dinosaur)
Bad: Dinosaur George and Jurassic Fight Club
Worst: Clash of the Dinosaurs
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MysteryMeat
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Good: peer-reviewed, published scientific papers. Paleontologists' blogs like SV-POW (Mike Taylor, Matt Wedel), Archosaur Musings (Dave Hone), Tetrapod Zoology (Darron Naish). There are many more. I also consider theropod database to be a good source, since Mortimer seems to get his references from mostly scientific papers. Books written by paleontologists.

Semi-good: Wikipedia, Dinodata, GSP, blog posts from dinosaur enthusiast like Jaime Headden, Zach Armstrong, or Nima Sasani, mainly because there are not degreed paleontologists.

Bad: Mocumentaries, random outdated websites. Most internet forums.

I don't really consider Dino George to be a source. He mostly express his own opinions in his Q&A session. It's like the O'Reilly Factor, but not as bad.
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Jinfengopteryx
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I'll make my list (these are of course just examples).
Good: The phylogeny of Tetanurae (Dinosauria: Theropoda) (2012), svpow, http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/
Semi-Good: The Theropod Database, Wikipedia, Holtz Genus list (not bad, but no sources cited and some lengths are outdated)
Bad: reptileevolution, some of Thulborn's papers, Alan Feduccia (pretty much all these guys who try to seperate birds from dinosaurs, with rather poor argumentation)
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theropod
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^I think you might be generalizing a bit too much. I would usually consider the theropod database and holtz genus list a far better source than wikipedia, and do you really mean the thulborn I know (the one who published abouzt the broome trackmaker)? If yes, what can a real scientist possibly publish that is comparable to people who want to seperate birds from dinosaurs or the sad guy running reptileevolution?

My list
Good: peer reviewed papers (but never blindly believe anything please!) and scientific books, scientific blogs (SVPOW, Archosaur Musings...) and websites (eg. theropod database) or other things such as lectures, direct statements of scientists (eg. askabiologist, dml, but one always has to differentiate between facts and opinions)

semi-good: sites of dinosaur enthusiasts and palaeoartists like Palaeocritti, DinoData or PalaeoKing, good wikipedia articles (rare enough), some youtube videos, good popular books

bad: most of wikipedia, documentaries, sites of wannabe scientists (eg. reptileevolution/pterosaurheresis), most youtube videos, newspapers, guessed statements that are taken litterally, popular scientific books, ordinary people's websites
Edited by theropod, Feb 8 2013, 05:28 AM.
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Jinfengopteryx
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theropod
Feb 8 2013, 05:24 AM
and do you really mean the thulborn I know (the one who published abouzt the broome trackmaker)?
No, I rather ment what he published about Bückenburgichnus.
I only have the abstract, but MantisShrimp said it was quite bad resarched and he didn't write very good papers in the last time.
About Wikipedia, I ment good articles and no stubs or something like that.
Edited by Jinfengopteryx, Feb 8 2013, 05:29 AM.
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theropod
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I have written some wikipedia articles in my life, and be ensured, most articles that are not classified as stubs are nto reliable either. mostly, they are extremely one sided, if they actually present scientific information. Some can be good of course, but often articles by a certain author simply are not classified as stub because he/she has a good reputation.
often the ones who do the quality control there simply don't have a clue about the topic themselves, so it is not checked whether an article reflects the topic properly but rather whether it has some sources in its references section and whether it is long enough.
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