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Post by creature386 on Jun 11, 2015 19:18:04 GMT 5
Indeed. T. rex can neither properly open nor shut its mouth!
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Deathadder
Junior Member
aspiring paleontologist. theropod enthusiast.
Posts: 240
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Post by Deathadder on Jun 11, 2015 19:26:50 GMT 5
Can't believe he actually believes that.
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Post by dinosauria101 on Mar 8, 2019 21:34:12 GMT 5
Similar to what Dakotaraptor said, the fake news about Triceratops and Torosaurus being the same, but Torosaurus being the adult. How can it be the adult if it's smaller than the Triceratops? Also, Triceratops size charts like this Are just crazy. Average 7 meter Triceratops? More like 9-10. Now THIS is more like it!
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Post by creature386 on Jun 18, 2019 0:07:44 GMT 5
Since I see that a lot of the newer members seem to struggle with distinguishing good from bad sources, here are a few tips.
The first tip is to wonder how the authors of a source know what they are telling you.
Sometimes, it's straightforward. When a zoo claims that its chimp Bobo weighs 40 kg, you can trust that they put him on a scale and noted the numbers (you could ask if his stomach was empty or not, but this is pedantry). Likewise, the question which regions a certain animal inhabits are easy to answer and don't require a particularly high-quality source.
Unfortunately, a lot questions people debate about are far less obvious. How big was the owner of this tibia? What is the average weight of this species? What is this species' bite force? All interesting questions, but all with different ways to answer them. For the first, you could either use isometric scaling or some allometric equation. For the second, that depends on what you mean by "average" (which region? which gender? which age?). For the latter, there are, again, multiple ways to calculate bite force (FEA, modeling a skull, measuring it directly). Of course, you also have to get units right. All of these are things that would be good to know when discussing if certain data you have is reliable.
The second tip is to check an author's credibility. That's something far less people struggle with, but there are still some tips. Generally, the closer someone is to the primary data, the more reliable. But beware of what I call the "telephone effect". You surely know this game where you tell your neighbor what your other neighbor told you and the message gets blurred until it's incomprehensible. It is for this reason that scientific papers are the most reliable, but also hard to understand. Wikipedia and science journalism (e.g. Science Daily) often work as a gateway between the world of academia and the world of the simple man. However, being secondary sources, they simply things, add own interpretations and are, due to the poorer oversight, more prone to errors than peer reviewed literature (the last point is more of a problem for Wikipedia than for newspapers, obviously) A lot of websites you find on Google cite Wikipedia or newspapers and are hence one filter-level above the original data. You don't just want to stick as close to the original data (the truth) as possible, you should also be able to visualize the path the data traveled in your head. A possible path could be:
Primary data --> Scientific paper --> Wikipedia --> Prehistoric Wildlife
If you have no idea where a certain piece of information comes from, you have a problem (this is related to the first tip). I have no idea where Bob Strauss from dinosaurs.about.com gets his data from.
Besides proximity to the original source, you can also check for obvious things like if the author has any degrees or has a reputation of making errors. Just be aware of one caveat: A scientist not under peer-review (in an interview or on their blog) is a good source. A scientist under peer-review is an even better source.
How good your source is depends on the subject matter under discussion (see tip one, again). Thomas Holz has a list of various genera of dinosaurs with weight and length estimates, but in many ways, he had no way of knowing their dimensions and just made educated guesses. His list would have never passed peer review.
The third tip is to look if there is a consensus. This can be very powerful evidence. If a scientific paper claims something and ten other papers, who studied the same subject matter, got the same result, you can be sure you won't find any mistakes that they didn't. That's why I think that even people who have no understanding of phylogeny, comparative anatomy etc. are perfectly justified in believing in universal common descend. However, only with an accurate understanding of phylogeny can you see caveats with this approach. If an organism has a mutation, its descendants will carry the mutation, too. If Wikipedia gets something wrong and ten websites copy this error, all this probes is that Wikipedia did indeed say this. For this reason, you should be aware of this "flow of information" and stick as close to the original data as possible.
The fourth tip should be really obvious, but many still get that wrong. Make sure the source supports what you are saying. If we are debating average weight, make sure the source talks about average weight. If we are talking about bite force, make sure your source uses the correct units (using psi for force is like using kg for length, it ain't work that way). This should be the first thing to do, but it was the last thing I thought of.
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Post by dinosauria101 on Jun 18, 2019 16:10:22 GMT 5
Thank you very much, creature! Should help to avoid future issues with this kind of thing
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Post by creature386 on Aug 4, 2019 22:04:31 GMT 5
Two more things I'd like to add.
1. It's not just the intelligence of the authors, but also their intent that matters. There are educational websites for children as well as movies who had scientists among their advisors, yet they are not always accurate because the authors sometimes choose to oversimplify information for the ease of understanding or for entertainment.
2. Avoid citing something you "heard on Carnivora". Newspaper articles and Wikipedia are not always reliable, but accessible. Scientific papers are not always accessible, but reliable. You can get the worst of both worlds through a practice which has become unfortunately common here lately and this is using one's vague memory of what someone posted in an online forum as a source. This puts others in the uncomfortable position of having to click through endless threads in order to get what you meant (due to the low reliability of such sources, people often have to examine such posts themselves). So, if you want to use an online forum as a source, either try finding it, try finding its sources or, if you think it is important enough, use the "Paper/Material share & request thread".
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Post by dinosauria101 on Aug 4, 2019 22:06:54 GMT 5
Good idea about the sources. It's a bit hard to be specific with a blocked IP, so I will only reference Carnivora when I can gather source material
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Post by creature386 on Aug 5, 2019 2:36:37 GMT 5
Since you still seem to like using it, maybe I should go in more detail when "I heard it on Carnivora" is a valid source and when not.
It's OK when… …the point is tangential …you are asking for more information
It's not OK when… …you are passing off something as a fact …you are trying to win an Internet argument …such information is the entire justification behind a certain thread
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Post by dinosauria101 on Aug 6, 2019 16:05:32 GMT 5
No one seems to go into more detail about it, so I'd just like to give a bit of a warning about about.com It seems to be pulling the most random information it can find from all around the internet, or even just making stuff up! The only uncommon estimate of theirs that likely holds water is 1.5 ton Megaraptor; a Murusraptor skeleton which is a very close relative and should be similar enough is the same robusticity as Neovenator (even though they are not related), who weighs 1.5 tons at 7.8 meters. But for the most part.....no.
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Post by creature386 on Aug 6, 2019 17:37:18 GMT 5
You mean dinosaurs.about.com? I think it was mentioned here a couple of times and I even made a video warning about it:
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Post by dinosauria101 on Aug 6, 2019 17:40:00 GMT 5
Oh yes, I just searched the thread for the URL and couldn't really find a detailed description. Good video though; hits all the shortcomings on the head
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Post by theropod on Oct 24, 2019 13:35:59 GMT 5
www.kronosrising.com/secret-behind-megalodons-bite-by-max-hawthorne/This may seem petty, but for such a genius, as the guy seems to believe he is, it’s quite remarkable he doesn’t know sharks don’t have a maxilla. Also he seems to argue adult megalodons were pretty much exclusively scavengers… FSM, always those people who do everything to make the evidence fit the hypothesis, and not vice versa.
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Post by Verdugo on Oct 29, 2019 8:15:02 GMT 5
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Post by Infinity Blade on Oct 29, 2019 9:06:50 GMT 5
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Post by dinosauria101 on Mar 6, 2020 21:45:22 GMT 5
I don't know where else to post this, but the English translations on this website are so bad it's almost side-splittingly funny (eg: Mapusaurus=Maple)! tieba.baidu.com/p/702558114
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