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PSA


believe victims

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If your story about the genus Brontosaurus being revived is accompanied by a tail-dragging, swamp-dwelling, camarasaur-headed, wrinkly elephantine monstrosity then I hate you.

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Hey, I think it's really cool that you care so much about paleontology and the study of dinosaurs, and I certainly think that many times dinosaurs are very much misrepresented in the media. But the passive aggressive way you write these entries has, at least personally, felt like an attack on me and others that still enjoy Jurassic Park and other media interpretations of dinosaurs, regardless of their scientific accuracy. While I think misinterpretation can certainly be annoying, especially for experts in a particular field, I actually found the Jurassic Park series very enjoyable. I can understand your irritation, however. Could I recommend that you make your entries more informative rather than satirical? From my observation, you seem really knowledgeable about dinosaurs, and I'd like to learn more about how they are misrepresented in the media. Maybe in this case give a bit of information comparing the scientific qualities of genus Brontosaurus versus the way the media misrepresents it?

 

-Rez

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I was actually entirely serious about what I was saying, and actually did want to learn about genus Brontosaurus, but okay...

 

-Rez

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Well, I mean, I acknowledge that I can be sarcastic regarding inaccurate media portrayals of dinosaurs. I mean, I think I'm justified in it to an extent; the public view of palaeontology is fraught with misconceptions and misinformation, so to not care about it feels like a white flag, surrender to an uneducated public. I complain about a lack of accuracy because if I don't, it will keep happening, and people will keep thinking of dinosaurs the wrong way. It's like evolution or homosexuality in that fashion; the more misinformation spreads, the more people think they know about something when they don't.

 

Of course, this has nothing to do with pop culture portrayals of dinosaurs because this is talking about news stories. You know, stories which in theory are the facts. If they show an outdated picture of Brontosaurus, people who don't know better (i.e. just about anyone excited for the return of the genus) will accept it as fact. Considering these are people who are likely to consider any science that changed after they stopped being children as fungible and ignorable, this represents a serious problem.

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It's not her duty to teach you about Brontosaurus' in the middle of what is clearly a personal vent post.

 

Well, in my eyes, it's either her being sarcastic and me still being confused about how dinosaurs are misrepresented in the media, or her being informative so I can learn something and better understand the misrepresentation of dinosaurs. I'm really only interested in learning, as I admit I'm not exactly knowledgeable on the subject.

 

Well, I mean, I acknowledge that I can be sarcastic regarding inaccurate media portrayals of dinosaurs. I mean, I think I'm justified in it to an extent; the public view of palaeontology is fraught with misconceptions and misinformation, so to not care about it feels like a white flag, surrender to an uneducated public. I complain about a lack of accuracy because if I don't, it will keep happening, and people will keep thinking of dinosaurs the wrong way. It's like evolution or homosexuality in that fashion; the more misinformation spreads, the more people think they know about something when they don't.

 

Of course, this has nothing to do with pop culture portrayals of dinosaurs because this is talking about news stories. You know, stories which in theory are the facts. If they show an outdated picture of Brontosaurus, people who don't know better (i.e. just about anyone excited for the return of the genus) will accept it as fact. Considering these are people who are likely to consider any science that changed after they stopped being children as fungible and ignorable, this represents a serious problem.

 

I'm not asking you not to be sarcastic. It is justified, in a way, because of the misinformation and misconceptions that are so common in the media. Like I said, I understand why you would be irritated. I'm just asking that you be informative, so I can learn the truth about dinosaurs and be able to discern truth from misconception.

 

-Rez

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Okay, this wasn't intended to be an educational entry so much as me complaining about frickin' Charles Knight paintings being used in theoretically scientific articles but here's the deal with Brontosaurus.
 
So, back in the late 1800s there was this huge feud between two rival palaeontologists, Cope and Marsh. Basically, it was sort of a competition to discover and name the most dinosaurs. This was a dreadful, chaotic time, which lead to all sorts of terrible things, but the most relevant to this issue is that there were a lot of names assigned everywhere based on fragmentary remains, basically the equivalent to taking a quick glance at a toe bone and saying "That is definitely a human toe". This resulted in a lot of dinosaurs that were basically the same dinosaur.
 
Later, in the aftermath of the Bone Wars, a lot of the claimed genera were re-evaluated to assess their validity. One of these was Brontosaurus excelsus, which, at the time, was deemed too similar to its close relative, Apatosaurus ajax, to merit its own genus. Since Apatosaurus was discovered first, its genus name took superiority, and the species was instead deemed Apatosaurus excelsus. Additionally, the type specimen was given the skull of Camarasaurus, a much boxier skull than the Diplodocus-like skull the creature is currently believed to have had. Because it was the late 1800s, all kinds of old erroneous thoughts played into its depictions, such as the idea it lived in water, dragged its tail, was slow, sluggish, coldblooded, etc.
 
Unfortunately for palaeontologists, both the name and the errors persisted in the public mind after being dismissed in the field, with swamp-dwelling boxy-skulled brontosaurs adorning many a children's dinosaur book. This, like the pathetic clinging to featherless theropods, was a sign of resistance to change.
 
The context for this entry is that, just today, a peer-reviewed paper was published that sought to reeevaluate the taxonomic classifications of Diplodocidae, the clade containing Diplodocus, Apatosaurus, and similar species. They formulated an objective way of determining the differences between specimens, and used that data to inform their decisions of what qualified as separate species, separate genera, etc. In addition to erecting a new genus, Galeamopus, the authors came to the conclusion that there were, in fact, enough differences between the other Apatosaurus species and A. excelsus, and determined that it merited reviving the genus of Brontosaurus to contain it and a couple Apatosaurus species that were closer to Brontosaurus than Apatosaurus.
 
This is all well and good. Genera and species are purely human classifications, after all, and they have shown their work and given solid reasoning behind their decision. I have no quarrels with the paper or its authors. However, in its wake, the uneducated public heard one thing: "Brontosaurus is real." Rather than seeing this, their immediate response was to uphold this. This response, this outcry of "Finally, Brontosaurus is back!" has awakened a form of fundamentalism, where the same people who whine about the reclassification of Pluto can "take Brontosaurus back" from the eeeeeeeeeevil scientists who dared ever "take it away" from them. It's a form of rebellion against progress, an idea that any discovery that changes what we knew when we were young is fungible, ignorable, and irrelevant. It's the reason why dinosaur movies have yet to catch up to the present, why people whine about feathered T. rex pictures even though there is more evidence for it than against, and why having a rational discussion of science with the average person is almost guaranteed to be insufferable.
 
tl;dr the name Brontosaurus was once wrong, now it's proposed to have been the correct name all along, and now people think that means enormous swamp-dwelling lazy lizards were real.
 

In other news, therapods in Jurassic World still lacking feathers.

 

Yeah, but I'm pretty sure if I complain about that one more time people on this site are going to make an appeal to ban the subject of dinosaurs from ever being discussed.

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Man, talking about dinosaurs on the blogs of a message board for a renewed children's toy line is serious business.

That's because it fringes on other subjects we're not allowed to discuss. 

 

Although, technically, it shouldn't - the matters of paleontology should be matters of science (what does this dino really look like?) rather than other things. 

 

It also has the problem of mass ignorance of the facts, which never really makes things light and funny. 

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Man, talking about dinosaurs on the blogs of a message board for a renewed children's toy line is serious business.

 

That's because it fringes on other subjects we're not allowed to discuss.

Public ignorance of science is hardly something that we're not allowed to discuss. And the discussion here is solely about that and dinosaurs, so I don't see the relevance of that comment.

 

~B~

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Although, technically, it shouldn't - the matters of paleontology should be matters of science (what does this dino really look like?) rather than other things. 

 

 

I mean, I don't see where I strayed from science any time in my comments? I have a very scientific view of dinosaurs, I assure you. I am very concerned with what dinosaurs looked like; why else would I be so adamant about the feathers?

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Although, technically, it shouldn't - the matters of paleontology should be matters of science (what does this dino really look like?) rather than other things. 

 

I mean, I don't see where I strayed from science any time in my comments? I have a very scientific view of dinosaurs, I assure you. I am very concerned with what dinosaurs looked like; why else would I be so adamant about the feathers?

That wasn't what I was addressing; merely the tone of the debate. Sometimes people choose to interpret one thing as another. 

 

Even if they don't, their negative (or in the case of Brontosaurus, positive) emotions cloud their interpretations of the facts. 

 

This causes negative reactions among those who wish to defend the facts. 

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Heh. The moment I saw the news on this I knew to look to see if you had a rant put up yet. I am not disappointed. But seriously, even if the reinstatement of Brontosaurus is backed up by sound evidence, I can't in my mind separate that from the fact that there were so many people eager to do so even before the evidence existed for little reason other than sentimentality and that this may have more to do with that than anything else.

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Man, talking about dinosaurs on the blogs of a message board for a renewed children's toy line is serious business.

Preach

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I frankly don't understand what the big deal is here. On one side it appears we have some people who get upset when the media misinterprets how dinosaurs look/walk/act, and on the other side it looks like there are some people who would like explanations on the subject. I'm by no means an expert on dinosaurs, but I will admit I do get a tiny bit annoyed when people say T-Rex when they've clearly posted a picture of an Allosaurus. So if it's alright with everybody, I'd like to voice my opinion.

 

Dinosaurs are a thing of the past. Nobody has ever seen them move, walk, or act. Most of what we have to create an image of a dinosaur are a multitude of educated guesses. I'm not saying that what's been published isn't true, dinosaurs may have used their tails for balance, but on the other hand they might not have. Some therapods had feathers, some might not have or at the very least didn't. So to say that the media is misinterpreting dinosaurs is a somewhat unfair statement in my opinion. I believe that another reason that therapods in general haven't been portrayed with feathers frequently in massive film productions like Jurassic World is that they're made to look like what much of the target audience was raised thinking what the dinosaurs looked like, so if an audience is presented with a familiar look, more people are likely to buy merchandise and movie tickets.

Another thing that I remind myself is that dinosaurs aren't as big of a thing as they were from the 90s to 2004-ish because people stopped making big cinema movies. Sure there were all of the fact-based shows and movies that were out there like Prehistoric Planet or Walking With Dinosaurs, but who wants to spend 45 minutes-2 hours of their time watching what's made to be an educational film when they aren't all that interested in dinosaurs that much? So the people who just watch the fun movies don't really care if T-Rex had feathers or not, they just want to see it eat some helpless human sitting on a toilet.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE dinosaurs. They were what shaped most of my early childhood, and part of what introduced me to LEGO (and later BIONICLE). I remember watching the Jurassic Park movies with my dad when I was 6, I remember how much I enjoyed the Land Before Time series. While my other friends were watching Transformers shows, I was watching stuff like Prehistoric Planet. I still go through the old recordings of those shows, and I've found out that I've forgotten a lot of the stuff I knew when I was 9.

As a kid, I was brought up thinking that dinosaurs had the draggy-tails, that feathers were only on birds, that Pteranadons were the same type of animal at Tyrannosaurus Rex, and that dinosaurs were all reptilian in nature. Being a Christian, I was used to seeing the old-world representations of dinosaurs. But as I got older and developed a greater interest in these magnificent creatures of the past, I did a whole lot of research and educating, trying to learn as much as I could. I learned at a very young age that different people teach and believe different things. I've since moved on from being obsessed with dinosaurs to the point of craziness, but they still hold a special place in my heart and memories.

I hope I didn't upset anybody by writing this (if I did, I truly am sorry), I just wanted to share my opinion on the subject.

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I believe that another reason that therapods in general haven't been portrayed with feathers frequently in massive film productions like Jurassic World is that they're made to look like what much of the target audience was raised thinking what the dinosaurs looked like, so if an audience is presented with a familiar look, more people are likely to buy merchandise and movie tickets.

 

Ignoring the fact that this entry was about science articles instead of Jurassic World, I'd just like to point out this is exactly what I hate. I hate how much the people who make science fiction movies hate putting actual science in them.

 

(I also despise the idea that, because we'll never know what dinosaurs looked like for certain, we shouldn't strive to abide by the facts we DO know; if anything, i'd say that makes it more important in actually managing to represent the animal.)

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I blame Barney and outdated resources for the improper portrayal of dinosaurs, and the other reptiles of the time. (I'm pretty mad about how they made the Moasaur nearly twice its normal size.)

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