If you don't, I cannot understand why you posted the previous paragraph.
I tought you were you are capable of civil discussion, but as soon as I do what you do you suddenly stop being?
If you feel offended because someone challenges your ideas, that's not my problem. Challenging ideas is necessary in science, and that is a fact.
There is a big difference between that and a personal attack. You can challenge me as long as you want, I'm not feeling attacked. I feel attacked if someone's main or only point in a response is "you are claiming your usual Bullshit, because you are a fanboy", because this is not directed at my points but at myself.
You are opening your mouth quite far considering not too long ago you massively attacked me because I didn't separate every bit of sarcasm from every bit of serious stuff in a series of blog entries (not even because of my supposedly "fanboyic claims"!), using Google translator, and a bit longer ago you actually called me "lazy" and some other insults because I did not do a graphical double integration on an animal without an existing postcranium, let alone proper multiview reconstruction of it.
And I'm a terrible person because I dared to call the terms "lousy" and "massively more powerful" sensationalistic, aren't I?
I'm running in circles, and I'm sick of it; I utter a question or at worst express a doubt?someone either calls me a fanboy or asks for evidence (always the former with some people)--> I post evidence-->I get called a fanboy by certain people. If this is the standard way of reacting to my posts, how am I supposed to make you guys content?
But by the same logic, you have done the same things, so stop being personal and either discuss or don't discuss.
What you are doing is assasination of my character, if you want to continue like that, fine, but I won’t.
But the age is the point, because age is clearly correlated with size..
Adults with a femur below 1.2m are everything but rare. I posted the data
here, and it takes about 2-3 minutes if you are a fast typer to validate them.
None of these are as old or large as sue, just relatively close. There are also multiple specimens similar to MOR 1125 and Bucky; Wyrex, Henry, DMNH 2827, BHI 6233 and 6232, MOR 009. The former is nowhere stated to be a freak, just a small adult, the same way sue is a large one.
This is already excluding specimens like USNM 6183 or Pete which are really small and probably imature, so stop complaining please. There are also various intermediate-sized specimens such as Black beauty or Huxley, in fact they seem to be quite evenly distributed based on the femur lenght-plot in
The Tyrant King.
Because sue is the only
T. rex that age, and the graph bases on it, while B-rex or Bucky are not the only rexes of their respective ages! If anything, that makes sue more exceptional.
For all we know, yes. For a
T. rex its age, not a
T. rex in general, which is all I'm saying.
Absolutely nothing. Just that people equate "a
T. rex Sue's age" with "A
T. rex"...
9.5 or 10-12.3m, with and, as with 99% of extinct lifeforms, potentially much greater scope due to the small sample compared to the actual population. In fact I would not be surprised if individual
T. rex varied by a factor of 3 or more.
Well, it doesn't look like that at all, they are not more of an exception than sue is. The average is not sue, it is smaller than sue, somewhere in between.
But we are trying to account for individual variation, or not?
We are doing with what we have, which is a sample of
T. rex, not a growth curve of one and the same individual of
T. rex. How much those correspond to growth curves is a very problematic point if those growth curves just base on the specimens in question.
Erickson et al 2004 only included a single specimen for relatively big age classes (such as sue), which means that while it tells us the approximate way they grew, it can hardly be conclusive about the average size of such specimens. It would look different had B-rex, Bucky, mor 009 or another relatively small specimen been included. The specimens you perceive as typical wouldn't be that typical any more.
That's the sad truth, the samples for the curves are awfully small, much smaller still than any sample one might try to deduce average adult size from, so there are big margins of error.
Yes, B-rex may be below the normal
T. rex her age. On the other hand, plenty of rexes above the norm for their respective age are also incorporated, those are
normal fluctuations one can expect in such a sample, and thus they compensate for one another. The growth curves don't help you since they don't actually include B-rex, and would look different with all the specimens you are discussing actually in them or out of them.
To reliably find out how far sue is from the norm, one would have to compare it either to others of the same age (non-existant), or a growth curve that does
not base on it as one of only 6 specimens and by a wide margin the only one its age.
So, the assertion of sue being less exceptional for its age than B-rex is reduced to absolutely nothing but a probability (of the same type as a random specimen being the norm, not the extreme), something the use of which you were arguing vehemently against...only it is an irrelevant one.
As I said, this is a normal and, considering there are several other rexes similar to B-rex, I don't see why we should just ignore her. The point, which is that the average size for
T. rex is well below sue's size, still stands, and you have got nothing to argue against that.
What's the average size you found for an 18-year-old
T. rex? I'd be interested in seeing it.
At the same time, sue is the known maximum for a specimen that age (and the whole species for that matter). Isn't that relevant to this so-called "hard-data"-approach?
Sue's femur is only 3% longer than Stan's, while the whole animal is over 10% longer. Ontogenetically younger specimens tend to have longer legs, you are actually being quite liberal if you use sue to scale the specimens from femur lenght, but we should so it since its lenght figure is the most reliable.
Just a moment, you accuse me of, what was that?, "bring[ing] up strawmen and attack[ing] a persons credibility"? I know you don't like me, and you don't have to, but seriously, don't accuse others of double-standards when they are just doing the same thing you do, or even the same thing scientists do.
Femur lenght can be used as a proxy for body size, it's probably the most frequently used one in rigorous work on top of that. There are fluctuations, as with all measurements, but it is a more readily available, and hopefully more reliable measurement than total lenght is.
I'm aware you dislike extrapolations of size from single bones, but we have absolutely no choice. So if you consider this so ridiculous, this debate is over because then you are not arguing about the same issue as I do.
Or, if that's unavailable, probability. How do we know a 1m long
T. rex fossil is a hatchling? Histology?
We try one thing, if we cannot do it, we try the next best thing. If we cannot figure out a specimens state of maturity, we assume it corresponds to the norm, in accordance with, if available, other known indications such as size or general morphology.
What we do know for a fact that sue is exceptionally old and mature.
Or probability and comparison. If one has no reason to presume a specimen is not in line, one doesn't assume it to be an outlier. A basic principle of estimating things, and a basic principle of science. You did it yourself, you assumed sue was normal for its age.
What one should certainly never do; assume something while a more probable assumption could be made.
So what is it that you suggest to do? Guess?
I do not get what you want to tell me with that.
Why are you arguing against me saying that sue is not the norm then?
Did I in ANY WAY deny that? For a 28-year-old T. rex, sue likely isn’t anything special. But a 28-year old
T. rex IS something special, in most other theropods, including
Allosaurus, no specimens this mature have been described.
I cannot say whether this is true or false, but it is a decent guess I think, tough I doubt the average adult rex is larger than MOR 555 in terms of dimensions (because weight of that specimen is tricky).
I recall femur lenght was a better correlate for weight than circumference, I´ll look for it later. Femur lenght is certainly not well-corelated with weight, rather lenght, at least within one species.
Sometimes I really can’t figure you out, you can first rant on me with incredible anger and later be that diplomatic, all in the same post!
You can do the same with other bones, I chose to use the femur, is there anything wrong with that? if you have got a sample of data on bones that is as good or better than that on femora, post them!
Sue is relatively large, relatively. This is rather extraordinary compared to other
T. rex specimens, because as a simple fact sue is the largest, which does not mean extraordinary as in "Wow, I found a 3t Great white shark laying on the beach!!!" or "Wow I just shot a 1t bear!".
Not my attacks, Grey’s, and lately apparently yours (see what you yourself state for the definition we are seemingly using), the latter of which I find more disturbing because I’m used to grey...
It's not me to whom these debates always serve for personal vendetta.
You seemingly consider yourself a master strawman-finder, so how about this one?
Never did I say I tought this
should be
necessary in a
"proper scientific discussion".
This is the theory behind
debates, whether I like or apply it or not, and what is bad or good about it is a different question. Surely there are many good analogies, the one I made being on a quite different point. A debate should best be won by superior arguments alone, which does not mean there are actually people who do so, or at least that there are not those who win them with inferior ones. This is not a forum about philosophy or even science theory, it was just an anecdote.
EDIT: One revision; MOR 008 displays extensive fusion of cranial elements, possibly as a result senescence, as reported in Molnar (2001), so it may be a very old specimen similar to sue (and ironically, at least 8% smaller than the latter). It would be interesting to see what the growth curve would look like with a few more specimens, eg. this one or B-rex in it; even for its age sue may be a big specimen. Regardless of how big or small exactly, that has only minor influence on the attempt of deducing an average size, and the try to deduce average size will yield a better result than not trying it at all.
books.google.at/books?id=mgc6CS4EUPsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=mesozoic+vertebrate+life&hl=de&sa=X&ei=QNZuUua8JsHPhAe7xoB4&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=theropod%20paleopathology&f=false
