I saw it on Pharyngula and it is really hilarious check for yourself

Thought to link again to this post after seeing a discussion on digits on When Pigs Fly Return. From my modest research it seems that the digits of the dinos and the birds are not compared one on one but there were changes is the way they evolved in the embryo state.

After reading an interesting discussion of the book of Isabelle Ducan, Pre-Adamite Man, Or, The Story of Our Old Planet and Its Inhabitants on Laelaps I decided to comment on the entire effort to bridge all major perspectives of reality.

I have some psychological perspective to offer on the way we as human being incorporate new information into thought patterns and belief systems.

The main claim that I’m making here is that it is more important for many people to maintain an old belief system than to move completely into a new and better one. The desire to hold both ends meaning acknowledging new information while still clinging to the old thought patterns and beliefs creates all sorts of combinations.

I’m not sure they lack value as they can offer new directions for research I’m certain that their motivation has nothing to do with the desire to find the truth. Usually the motivation behinds many of the attempts to explain scientific findings in a way that is compatible with other world views is simply an attempt to avoid “jumping’ from one paradigm to another.

The thing is at least in my humble opinion is that it is impossible to reach a certain destination without being willing to leave the previous station. We want to eat the cake and keep it at the same time it has nothing to do with rationality it is a symptom of the fear of not being supported by a belief system that can put anything and everything in an order that we like.

courtesy of Dano

I’ve mastered in Philosophy not even in science philosophy but I had my share of courses and reading on the subject.

I look at paleontology and all the theories in the natural sciences from outside, but still there are things that my philosophical perspective enables me to see rather clearly.

Theories in science are reductionist, they take all that we know in their field of study and try to find rules that can explain everything in a satisfactory manner.

Sure there are usually few rules, the theories are receptive to actual findings and they are constantly evolving but still. Reality is explained as rational most of the time.

This is not the case in field of modern physics that seem to wonder in the land of casualness at least to a degree.

I’ve read Manabu post about his thesis and it sounded really interesting the attempt to really see structure in the bite force of Dino, birds and cats and the evolution from one to the other. It is such a huge period to investigate change over but observing things over long period of times is usually a great way to observe changes.

The thing that I want to add is that it is a mistake to ignore the diversity of species that have existed and are still existing by explaining them all as a rational process of change and evolution.

Sure once a specie is there he would do his best to evolve so he would be the best specie he could be but the coexistence and branching to so many different forms of life deserve a wider explanation. Diversity is by itself a mechanism of nature and it has a value in making sure that at all situation there would be at least some species that survives.

It is the logic of the bigger “specie” that creates the smaller ones and each of them operates then by the same mechanism.

I’m not the one that found them, I have no idea what they are but when Ricky sent me an email that he found 20 to 30 large fossil rocks of an animal and that it appears to be a hip joint and other parts of the legs, I decided to post one photo here maybe someone would have any idea what it might be.

If you can help Ricky recognizing what it might be and what can he do with them you can email me and I’ll connect you with him.

As for another finding that might have revolutionary implications on the primate time line - I’ve read on Afarenesis that new fossil primate discovered in India. The fossils are actually three molar teeth and they are dated to 54.5 million years ago.

I’ll update if there would be further details.

Courtesy of unforth.

From Palaeblog

With long limbs and a soft body, the duck-billed hadrosaur had few defenses against predators such as tyrannosaurs. But new research on the bones of this plant-eating dinosaur suggests that it had at least one advantage: It grew to adulthood much faster than its predators, giving it superiority in size.

Growing fast and reaching sexual maturity at a very young age means that the defense by numbers were not invented by modern animals.

Each creature is most vulnerable when it is a young cub if the growth process is so fast then the window of opportunity for attacks is smaller. In fact dinosaurs or no dinosaurs it seems that all the modern world of the wide acts still exactly the same way.