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Good, semi-good, & bad dino sources.
Topic Started: Feb 7 2013, 02:59 AM (4,362 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), respectively, when parts of said books become outdated.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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But sometimes these guys can be quite rigorous, I've edited the Giganotosaurus article and they have controlled it and a lot was removed, for example the Paratypes the theropod database listed, some stuff was kept after we have discussed it.
And usually there aren't that many mis-quotations from what I see.
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theropod
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well, they usually care aout the wrong edits instead of reverting and improving where they are needed. I'm not saying there are no good articles, but what is actually written there is often pure BS, despite the effords to control what is written.
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Jinfengopteryx
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What do you mean with wrong edits?
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JD-man
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MantisShrimp
Feb 7 2013, 06:45 PM
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.
I'm sorry that you were offended by what I said. I was only referring to what you said in the 1 debate/discussion we had (hence why I said "assuming you're referring to what I think you're referring to" in my previous post). However, I can't apologize for what I said b/c, as I've already shown ( http://carnivoraforum.com/topic/9808221/1/#new ), all you've done is make unsupported claims about Thulborn 2013 that are obviously false to anyone who's actually read said paper (E.g. Myself). I may have been wrong about you only reading the abstract & assuming the worst (Certain DML members did that), but it looks like you may have only read Thulborn 2011 & based what you said about Thulborn 2013 on that (which is wrong b/c, as I've already shown, they're 2 very different papers). That's all I'm gonna say about that in this thread.

BTW, it's worth mentioning that, as I've already shown, other relevant experts (E.g. Poropat) have criticized the Romilio & Salisbury papers for similar reasons as Thulborn.
Edited by JD-man, Feb 8 2013, 03:31 PM.
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theropod
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Jinfengopteryx
Feb 8 2013, 05:51 AM
What do you mean with wrong edits?
They like to revert edits that are actually OK while they do not care about the ones they should really revert
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Jinfengopteryx
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Like the Liopleurodon article you've set into the QS?
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theropod
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Nobody cared about it, even tough it was a piece of crap (that's nicely expressed), however several people had more than enough time to "correct" articles. I should probably note that one of these people was involved in writing the liopleurodon article...
The hierarchical conditions there are not making it a better enzyclopedia, despite what they claim. But I must say that seems to be worse in german wikipedia than in english one.
Edited by theropod, Feb 9 2013, 05:11 AM.
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Jinfengopteryx
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And I was actually rather reffering to the english one, because I suggest 95% of the posters here don't know the german one (what is not in any way bad, because the english one is in almost any aspect better). I'm probably going to make an account there, to save it. Let's see...
Would the english one earn to be in semi-good (Or at least the excellent articles)?
Edited by Jinfengopteryx, Feb 9 2013, 05:14 AM.
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Jinfengopteryx
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For the very bad section:
http://www.dinochecker.com/
Just look at that:
http://www.dinochecker.com/roar-factor.php
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theropod
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The excellent articles certainly deserve to be in the semi-good category, no matter which wikipedia it is, still, there are severe problems with the scientific accuracy of most pages there.
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Ausar
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Bad: dinosaurs.about.com. Carcharodontosaurus 3 tons? Really?
Edited by Ausar, Feb 10 2013, 09:24 AM.
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theropod
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To be fair, Mortimer also states that in an old DML post (11,1m, 2,9t for the neotype), stating the Neotype wasn't much larger than the holotype. That these size estimates are pretty laughable is now clear, but back then it might not have been that obvious, and then other people read the post in question (and the longest theropod is...) and presumed it still ahd credential.
illiteratedino too has used that estimate in his videos. I presume many people rush to use the lowest possible estimates for this animal no matter how unlikely. Funny enough, the same blog post too has a really low figure for sue (11,6m if I remember right), but no-one seems to use that one.

Actually it seems like even the 12m estimate has little that it bases on, even tough it is widespread.
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7Alx
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Feb 10 2013, 09:23 AM
Bad: dinosaurs.about.com. Carcharodontosaurus 3 tons? Really?
This site is POS

Their predator or scavenger debate is really retarted.

http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/dinosaurcontroversies/a/trexhunter.htm
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JD-man
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7Alx
Feb 10 2013, 09:16 PM
Asaurus
Feb 10 2013, 09:23 AM
Bad: dinosaurs.about.com. Carcharodontosaurus 3 tons? Really?
This site is POS

Their predator or scavenger debate is really retarted.

http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/dinosaurcontroversies/a/trexhunter.htm
1stly, what's POS stand for? Just curious.

2ndly, I recommend "T. rex: The killer question" ( http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/life/dinosaurs-other-extinct-creatures/trex-quiz/ ). It's the best way of dealing w/the "obligate scavenging" hypothesis for T.rex b/c it lets the evidence speak for itself.
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Carcharadon
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Good: theropod database

Semigood: paleocritti

Bad: dinosaurs.about.com
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