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Albertonykus β Funny, Isn't It?
Published: 2013-01-04 13:49:15 +0000 UTC; Views: 5594; Favourites: 74; Downloads: 21
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Beating a dead horse , but some things are hard to resist taking a dig at now and then.Related content
Comments: 59
Don't show this to creatonists, they'll say you disrespect their beliefs and discriminate themΒ
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It just occurred to me that the phylogenetic principle behind nesting birds within Dinosauria also exposes the problem with traditional ideas of human "races". Nearly all human genetic diversity around the world today is ancestrally nested within that of sub-Saharan African "Negroids", so what we've been calling races within humanity are fundamentally paraphyletic groups. They're almost like how every predatory theropod above a certain mass got shoved into the "carnosaur" category back in the day. But what would be the proper name for such entities? I think it's "grade" instead of "clade", isn't it?
Source , for the benefit of lurkers.
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Yes, a paraphyletic assemblage of taxa representing a "phase" in evolution is a grade (e.g.: fish, traditional reptiles), though I would not consider the traditional "Carnosauria" a grade, as it was united by convergent rather than ancestral features.
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The dinosaurs look very similar to me. What are their species?Β
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That's the idea! From top to bottom, they are Jinfengopteryx, Jeholornis, and Microraptor.
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They are nice but how come the dinosaurs are very similar to each other and the mammals are very different to each other?Β
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I made that choice specifically to poke fun at the fact that almost everyone is comfortable with the fact that very anatomically distinct animals can be considered part of the same group (mammals in this instance), yet many at the same time claim that other groups (e.g.: birds in this instance) are "too different" to be considered part of a broader category (dinosaurs in this instance).
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You're welcome!Β
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Too bad bats and whales are still often mistaken for birds and fish. And I don't think a lot of people has ever heard of a pangolin (and they'll probably mistake it for a reptile).
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I still reckon that bats and whales being mammals is common knowledge for most well-educated people though, and most such people would probably accept that a pangolin was a mammal if told, even in the event that they hadn't heard of one before. (Just speaking from personal experience here, which naturally may be different from yours.) I'm aware that ignorance and stupidity often know no bounds however.
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Yes, a very cool story indeed. And also the mammals look quite good.
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Thanks. It was my first time seriously drawing them, so I may have been more meticulous than usual.
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You're welcome!
Also, it was not very hard for me to accept that birds are dinosaurs even before I knew phylogenetic nomenclature. Maybe it was because they mentioned it in Walking with Dinosaurs, at least in the version of my language, I do not know about the original or other versions.
That's why I am wondering why it is hard for people to accept this. And I think that you are doing good job. (I may have said this before.)
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Thanks as usual. It's been a while since I watched Walking with Dinosaurs, but I do remember the original also stating that birds are dinosaurs.
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You're welcome! By the way, how do you add italics in DA?
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Bracket the part you want italicized with < i > and . (Take out the spaces.)
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Pfft, everyone knows that dinosaurs were all the way JP says they are, because fictious movies are paleontoligcal fact!!!!!11
Really, though, this whole "Birds are descended from them but aren't dinosaurs" is like saying a cougar isn't a small cat because it's the size of normal pantherines, it's ridiculous and outright biologically impossible.
A crow, for instance, is a passerine. That doesn't mean that passerines aren't avians, and avians aren't dinosaurs because the crow doesn't look like a sauropod. That's illogical bullshit that people throw out so as not to associate the pseudosaurs of JP with birds and seeing the truth about dinosaurs. Theropods, especially, get that bullshit treatment.
I see a crow with you, hypothetically, and say "There's a crow over there." Just because I don't say "There's a genus Corvus corvid passerine avian dromaeosaurid maniraptor theropod eusaurischian saurischian dinosaur dinosauromorph ornithodire avemetatarsalian archosaur crurotarsian archosauriforme archosauromorph saurian neodiapsid diapsid romerid eureptile sauropsid reptile amniote tetrapod teleostome eugnathostomatid gnathostomatid vertebrate craniate chordate animal over there." doesn't mean crows aren't a part of any of those groups.
It's just an easier way of identifying animals. Identification has no say on biology, after all, so why they try to bring common terminology into the argument is beyond me.
Plus, as you said, mammals are far more differing to each other then dinosaurs. Most people know mammals more then they do dinosaurs (avian or otherwise) because people exhibit a queer sense of egotism; they always put mammals above other, more abundant, organsims.
I don't clade Yutyrannus with Saltopus because Yutyrannus looks nothing like Tyrannosaurus, that's nonsense. Yutyrannus cleanly clades into the Tyrannosauroidae.
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You think you're clever calling a nightbird, a fish and a... erm... a scaly reptile mammals?
You're lucky that you're not already burn for your heresy!
I wonder how many will misinterpret this.
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The "birds evolved from dinosaurs but aren't dinosaurs" thing? I don't think that really counts as a trope, and most media hardly even bring up the subject.
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I refuse to believe wailord, sandshrew, and zubat are related!!!111
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I know, I know, just pointing out that you make it seem alright to not accept both if you don't accept the first.
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Considering that I've yet to see anyone educated who doesn't accept that whales, bats, and pangolins are mammals, I must say that is the least of my concerns.
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Then what warrants you to desecrate the corpse of a dead horse rather than simple introduction to material?
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I don't really follow your reasoning... but just to answer your question, I just thought this would be a funny quip; it wasn't intended to actually educate anyone. Besides, one can say I've already done a simple breakdown of the situation here . I've also been wanting to write a less rant-y version on my blog for a long while now, but procrastination and stuff.
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Well, "bird" is just a common name. Whales are mammals, but there still has to be a line drawn between whales and other mammals. Which is the first whale? When does a non-whale become a whale? The fine line has to go somewhere.
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Yep, but as you rightly say that doesn't stop whales from being mammals. Whatever we choose to be the node that marks what a bird is, the members of said group would still be dinosaurs. I'm not saying that the less inclusive groups "whales" or "birds" don't exist, but that they shouldn't and can't be arbitrarily excluded from the larger groups they belong to.
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Out of curiosity, what are the three dinosaurs? Microraptor, Archaeopteryx, Jeholornis?
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From top to bottom: Jinfengopteryx, Jeholornis, and Microraptor.
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Some people just don't understand phylogenetic trees.
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This argument is perfect. But going off topic a bit, you've drawn those mammals very nicely
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Thanks! They took some work.
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Microraptor, Jeholornis, and... what's the top one? Jinfengopteryx?
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This really puts it in perspective with a modern context. You look at a whale and its body plan is completely different from a "traditional" mammal like a horse or a dog, while most dinosaurs that people don't want to be dinosaurs look very much like "traditional" dinosaurs. This is some illogical bull crap up in here.
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I know, right? Literally the only difference is that we learned as children that "whales are mammals", while the idea that "birds are dinosaurs" was enforced a lot less, if at all. That's not entirely unjustified, because the latter is a comparatively new discovery, but they're really the same concept!
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Thanks. Though I've had this idea half formed in my head for a while, its visualization was actually partly inspired by one of your works (the one that shows someone being cool with whales and bats both being mammals but going slack-jawed when told that tyrannosaurids and eagles are both dinosaurs).
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Yeah, I never brought that one to finish, did I? Ah well, your version is nicer.
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One of my favourite arguments against the people that say "yeah, birds are related to dinosaurs" but still cannot grasp that birds ARE dinosaurs by evolutionary descendence. 
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