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Good, semi-good, & bad dino sources.
Topic Started: Feb 7 2013, 02:59 AM (4,360 Views)
JD-man
Autotrophic Organism
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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), respectively, when parts of said books become outdated.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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Godzillasaurus
Reptile King
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I LOVE the "Walking With Dinosaurs" series. I own every DVD except for "Walking With Beasts" (which includes animals that lived after the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event). I know that liopleurodon was insanely over-sized, but it is still a lovable dinosaur source.
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Teratophoneus
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This is a bad source and obsolete. States still skull Giganotosaurus 1 .95 meters, C. saharicus was smaller than C. iguidensis, and says that Giganotosaurus was shorter than "Sue" and lighter than an average Tyrannosaurus, while states that Carcharodontosaurus was larger than Giganotosaurus. It is not true, maybe it was longer, but not bigger.

http://deadtimes.wikia.com/wiki/Prehistoric_Wiki
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Shaochilong
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Gryposaurus notabilis
May 29 2013, 02:40 AM
This is a bad source and obsolete. States still skull Giganotosaurus 1 .95 meters, C. saharicus was smaller than C. iguidensis, and says that Giganotosaurus was shorter than "Sue" and lighter than an average Tyrannosaurus, while states that Carcharodontosaurus was larger than Giganotosaurus. It is not true, maybe it was longer, but not bigger.

http://deadtimes.wikia.com/wiki/Prehistoric_Wiki
The Carcharodontosaurus neotype (SGM-Din 1) is larger than Giganotosaurus. MUCPv-95 is estimated at 13 to 13.2 m long; SGM-Din-1 is estimated at ~13.5 m.
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Teratophoneus
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Lord of the Allosaurs
May 29 2013, 03:01 AM
Gryposaurus notabilis
May 29 2013, 02:40 AM
This is a bad source and obsolete. States still skull Giganotosaurus 1 .95 meters, C. saharicus was smaller than C. iguidensis, and says that Giganotosaurus was shorter than "Sue" and lighter than an average Tyrannosaurus, while states that Carcharodontosaurus was larger than Giganotosaurus. It is not true, maybe it was longer, but not bigger.

http://deadtimes.wikia.com/wiki/Prehistoric_Wiki
The Carcharodontosaurus neotype (SGM-Din 1) is larger than Giganotosaurus. MUCPv-95 is estimated at 13 to 13.2 m long; SGM-Din-1 is estimated at ~13.5 m.


Dipense really Theropod from which you use as a base, if you use Giganotosaurus, would end up smaller than Giganotosaurus. No one can say who was bigger, since they are both incomplete skeletons. As far as I'm concerned, they're both about the same size.
Edited by Teratophoneus, May 29 2013, 03:29 AM.
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Jinfengopteryx
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Aspiring paleontologist, science enthusiast and armchair speculative fiction/evolution writer
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Lord of the Allosaurs
May 29 2013, 03:01 AM
Gryposaurus notabilis
May 29 2013, 02:40 AM
This is a bad source and obsolete. States still skull Giganotosaurus 1 .95 meters, C. saharicus was smaller than C. iguidensis, and says that Giganotosaurus was shorter than "Sue" and lighter than an average Tyrannosaurus, while states that Carcharodontosaurus was larger than Giganotosaurus. It is not true, maybe it was longer, but not bigger.

http://deadtimes.wikia.com/wiki/Prehistoric_Wiki
The Carcharodontosaurus neotype (SGM-Din 1) is larger than Giganotosaurus. MUCPv-95 is estimated at 13 to 13.2 m long; SGM-Din-1 is estimated at ~13.5 m.
Grypo realized that. Read his last sentence (although I think the assumption of Giganotosaurus being significantly bulkier is still a bit too baseless).
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Teratophoneus
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Herbivore
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Jinfengopteryx
May 29 2013, 03:29 AM
Lord of the Allosaurs
May 29 2013, 03:01 AM
Gryposaurus notabilis
May 29 2013, 02:40 AM
This is a bad source and obsolete. States still skull Giganotosaurus 1 .95 meters, C. saharicus was smaller than C. iguidensis, and says that Giganotosaurus was shorter than "Sue" and lighter than an average Tyrannosaurus, while states that Carcharodontosaurus was larger than Giganotosaurus. It is not true, maybe it was longer, but not bigger.

http://deadtimes.wikia.com/wiki/Prehistoric_Wiki
The Carcharodontosaurus neotype (SGM-Din 1) is larger than Giganotosaurus. MUCPv-95 is estimated at 13 to 13.2 m long; SGM-Din-1 is estimated at ~13.5 m.
Grypo realized that. Read his last sentence (although I think the assumption of Giganotosaurus being significantly bulkier is still a bit too baseless).


Yeah, but longer does not mean bigger. MUPCv-95 was 13.5 meters or so, SMG din-1 was 13.7 meters. There is not much difference.
Edited by Teratophoneus, May 29 2013, 03:35 AM.
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Jaws
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SpinoInWonderland
Feb 8 2013, 12:02 AM
Examples:

Good: Most scientific papers
Semi-good: Factual documentaries(like Planet Dinosaur)
Bad: Dinosaur George and Jurassic Fight Club
Worst: Monsters Resurrected
I have fixed your post btw how do you make your text blue
Edited by Jaws, Nov 3 2015, 03:21 PM.
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stargatedalek
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Unicellular Organism
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Documentaries are always a bad source, documentaries exist to make science interesting and to develop interest, not strictly as a teaching tool. A documentary takes years to make, and in a constantly changing field like paleontology it will be outdated before it ever airs. For example in Walking With Monsters Mesothelae was depicted as a spider because when production began that was the conservative reasoning, rather than remove it from the production BBC chose to keep it in when it was proven to be a sea scorpion part way into production. Whether this was due to money or time restraints or the far less respectable "we can't have giant bugs without a spider" I don't know.

Planet Dinosaur is actually a very bad source given it made a great many factual errors, especially a lot of feather related ones. Whether they did this out of research negligence, animation cost, or fear that proper feathering would deter JP fanboys, I don't know.
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Jinfengopteryx
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Aspiring paleontologist, science enthusiast and armchair speculative fiction/evolution writer
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Jaws
Nov 3 2015, 03:19 PM
how do you make your text blue
Put your text between [ color=#80a0ff ] and[ /color], but without the spaces I added for not making the "and" blue. You can find that code when clicking on "Color" beyond your post and selecting "Light Blue".
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Jaws
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Jinfengopteryx
Nov 4 2015, 02:43 AM
Jaws
Nov 3 2015, 03:19 PM
how do you make your text blue
Put your text between [ color=80a0ff and[ /color], but without the spaces I added for not making the "and" blue. You can find that code when clicking on "Color" beyond your post and selecting "Light Blue".
oh thanks jinfeng @stargattedalek i know but MR is really bad btw i am using red
Edited by Jaws, Nov 4 2015, 05:08 AM.
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Jaws
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JD-man
Feb 12 2013, 01:47 PM
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.
POS=piece of s***

5 words needed
Edited by Jaws, Nov 15 2015, 12:43 PM.
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Creeper
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Carboniferous Arthropod

stargatedalek
Nov 4 2015, 02:34 AM
Documentaries are always a bad source, documentaries exist to make science interesting and to develop interest, not strictly as a teaching tool. A documentary takes years to make, and in a constantly changing field like paleontology it will be outdated before it ever airs. For example in Walking With Monsters Mesothelae was depicted as a spider because when production began that was the conservative reasoning, rather than remove it from the production BBC chose to keep it in when it was proven to be a sea scorpion part way into production. Whether this was due to money or time restraints or the far less respectable "we can't have giant bugs without a spider" I don't know.

Planet Dinosaur is actually a very bad source given it made a great many factual errors, especially a lot of feather related ones. Whether they did this out of research negligence, animation cost, or fear that proper feathering would deter JP fanboys, I don't know.
Mesothelae are spiders, primitive and superficially similar to mygalomorphs they are certainly not eurypterid. One family, the Liphistids are still roaming the earth today, living very similar lives to trapdoor spiders. I believe you are mistaking mesothelae for megarachne, first described as a giant mygalomorph in 1980 and documented as the largest spider that ever lived in the record books until 2005 when a more complete specimen proved the species to be an eurypterid. Walking with Monsters went ahead with the megarachne model, as production was too far along, but changed the species to an unidentified species of giant mesothelae, however no species of mesothelae is known to have reach such a massive size.
Edited by Creeper, Nov 15 2015, 02:43 PM.
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Thalassophoneus
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Good: Official papers or interviews (and generally sources coming straight from paleontologists), museums, Wikipedia (it doesn't miss important stuff and it is up to date), Prehistoric Wildlife, the Forum might also count
Semi-Good: Wikidino (it might miss important stuff and should probably be questioned), books, Bizarre Dinosaurs (I think it is one of the most accurate documentaries)
Bad: Walking with... (I really don't think it should be trusted a lot)
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