• stebo02@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    Actually this is how we’ve been reconstructing dinosaurs. They’re probably all very wrong.

    • Smokeydope@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I dont care how scientifically accurate Dino’s with bird feathers are, they will never be as cool as the Jurassic park dino of my childhood

      • HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        IIRC the current theory is that many (likely most) had feathers but few of the large ones had actual wings beyond just a row of longer feathers on the forearms. The bodily structures that allow flight are absent on the vast majority of dinosaurs so it’s thought they mostly used their arm feathers as rudders for better control when running (which the ostrich and other large flightless birds still use). However, it is thought that some smaller species likely did have wings which they used to glide much like a flying squirrel. Eventually they evolved larger chest muscles and a keel for attaching said large muscles, and at that point you could reasonably just call them birds, which are to this day a subset of dinosaurs.

          • HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            But even with more modern methods like cladistics and genetic analysis, birds are still found to be directly descended from contemporary dinosaurs.

              • HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                That’s not “science,” that’s just an arbitrary convention that can help simplify communication of complex toppics. The genetic data that the convention is derived from is the science, in the form of a lineage of genetic relations between organisms and nothing else, because biology has exactly zero built-in categories or labels, and those are all human-made.

                • DroneRights [it/its]@lemm.ee
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                  1 year ago

                  Exactly, it’s not science. And it’s not helpful either. It doesn’t simplify communication. The representative conventions of taxonomy are not derived from evidence, they’re derived from the irrelevant feelings of taxonomists hundreds of years ago who didn’t understand how the world works. It’s pseudoscience. Pointless tradition masquerading as a legitimate exploratory endeavour.

      • Salvo@aussie.zone
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        1 year ago

        Spoken like someone who thinks Pluto should still be considered a Planet.

        But you are right, Jurassic Park would be a completely different movie if Genaro was eaten my something that looked like an oversized quail.

      • Salvo@aussie.zone
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        1 year ago

        Just purchased. Now it will languish in my iBooks library with other illustrated books until some time in the distant future…