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Post by Infinity Blade on Aug 3, 2022 2:44:21 GMT 5
An excerpt from google.books of Greg Paul next Princeton field guide book about the Mesozoic marine reptiles, out in october. It appears he's downsizing quite a bit the largest ichthyosaurs. Other parts of the book are available on g.books. Looking at my previous post, it looks like Max Hawthorne is not gonna appreciate Greg Paul's book.    I don't know Greg Paul, I assume he is a mosasaur, pliosaur, and/or ichthyosaur expert? Is he very credible and respected? I will say that his speculations about Megalodon seems to be quite inaccurate and not supported by most modern research, but if he's not a shark expert, I suppose that could be overlooked. What is his specialty and what is his resume as to published papers? Does he make any predictions about the hypothetical enormous ichthyosaurs that are hanging out there as potentially the largest macro predators? Greg Paul’s more of a dinosaur guy, particularly anatomy, functional morphology, and taxonomy thereof. He was/is still more or less respected, so he still counts as a reliable source (I still cite him for some things), although not all his takes are made equal. He has been especially controversial in his takes on phylogeny (most recently his multiple Tyrannosaurus species proposal). I think he must have at least some general knowledge on marine reptiles, but he’s not specialized in them, let alone megalodon. |
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Post by Grey on Aug 3, 2022 4:27:01 GMT 5
An excerpt from google.books of Greg Paul next Princeton field guide book about the Mesozoic marine reptiles, out in october. It appears he's downsizing quite a bit the largest ichthyosaurs. Other parts of the book are available on g.books. Looking at my previous post, it looks like Max Hawthorne is not gonna appreciate Greg Paul's book. I don't know Greg Paul, I assume he is a mosasaur, pliosaur, and/or ichthyosaur expert? Is he very credible and respected? I will say that his speculations about Megalodon seems to be quite inaccurate and not supported by most modern research, but if he's not a shark expert, I suppose that could be overlooked. What is his specialty and what is his resume as to published papers? Does he make any predictions about the hypothetical enormous ichthyosaurs that are hanging out there as potentially the largest macro predators? Infinity Blade pretty much said it all, Paul is also the guy behind the classic Predatory dinosaurs of the world which was Crichton's tool when he described his man-eating cloned theropods. Recently with Asier Larramendi he determined that the density of dinosaurs has been longly understated, and he also published the latest review about super-giants sauropods. Indeed his recent proposal of three species of tyrants kings has met rebuttal but Paul has always been controversial with the taxonomy, he's the one who synonymised Daspletosaurus and Tarbosaurus with Tyrannosaurus and Deinonychus with Velociraptor, hence Crichton's use of the later. He's probably not aware of the latest data regarding the great fish phylogeny. I'll see once the book is out but it seems he considers the estimates of 25 m+ ichthyosaurs to be based on misreadings of the sikanniensis specimen. All in all, he more or less confirms McHenry's discussions about marine megafauna and predatory size trends in his 2009 thesis. Wait and see but if Paul downsizes sikanniensis, the feedback from other marine reptiles researchers will be interesting. I think Adam Stuart Smith is on a similar book too. |
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