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Albertonykus β Problems of an Aspiring Paleornithologist
Published: 2013-02-17 04:17:26 +0000 UTC; Views: 2474; Favourites: 26; Downloads: 8
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To be absolutely fair, I hear that Feduccia has actually contributed legit research in his own field (i.e.: ornithology that doesn't have to do with bird origins).Incidentally, I'd already had this idea before Feduccia's recent editorial was published.
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I never heard about him changing his mind, but only those who knew him know for sure. I suspect he didn't directly write much of the Dakotaraptor description; he's probably on the authorship because he was DePalma's advisor.
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Maybe I'll sound dumb asking, but I often hear about feduccia being a BANDit, what is a BANDit?
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BAND stands for Birds Are Not Dinosaurs. The few researchers who still hold that view are called BANDits.
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Oh okay, thanks for clearing that up.
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What do you think of Feduccia et al.'s claim that they can't construct a plausible scenario where a terrestrial animal evolves flight directly from the ground?
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Argument from personal incredulity.
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Is anything the BANDits say about cladistics true?
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That's pretty vague. You'll need to be more specific.
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Here are a few examples. The first is from Kurochkin (2006), the second is from Olson (2002), the third is from Feduccia (2012) & the rest are from Feduccia (1999).
1. Cladistics excludes stratigraphy, embryology, physiology, ecology, and biogeography from consideration and takes into account only formalized morphological characters, irrespective of space and time.
2. Cladistics assumes that speciation occurs via dichotomous branching.
3. Cladistics ignores evidence contrary to the topology being advocated.
4. Characters that cannot be accurately polarized are useless.
5. Cladistics assumes the minimization of homoplasy.
6. Cladistics weights all characters equally.
7. Similar structures with different functions cannot be homologous.
8. If one proposed synapomorphy is found to be homoplasious, the rest are similarly unreliable.
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1. Incorrect, mostly. Embryology, physiology, and behavior can all be used in cladistics. Biogeography and stratigraphy are not used because they are not genetically inherited traits.
2. Sort of. Dichotomous branching approximates the speciation of bisexually reproducing organisms the best. That does not mean practitioners of cladistics believe that it is the only method of speciation. Cladistics as usually applied has clear limitations when investigating organisms that use asexual reproduction and phylogeneticists have developed other ways to better portray relationships between such organisms (such as reconstructing phylogenies of genes instead of organisms themselves).
3. Like what? Cladistics is the method used to test the topology.
4. Incorrect. This is a holdover from traditional methods of running cladistics that required prior polarization of characters.
5. Correct, but assuming homoplasy without knowledge of phylogeny is fallacious.
6. Incorrect, characters can be weighted differently.
7. !?
8. I don't see how this even logically follows!
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Is it just me, or does the BANDits' failure to cite contradictory papers carry over to their modern bird work? I can think of at least three papers that specifically refute their modern bird work (Cracraft 1983, Raikow & Cracraft 1983, Livezey 1997), but I don't recall a BANDit ever citing them.
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Haha, doesn't surprise me.
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Feduccia is one of the few researchers left who does not accept that birds are dinosaurs.
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Is it just me, or are BANDit book reviews even more painful than their papers?
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They are. That tends to happen when one is given free rein to express their subjective notions (not that those don't creep into research papers).
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I seem to remember someone (I think Olson) stating that birds and theropods had fundamentally different tooth replacements and ankles without elaborating. Are you familiar with these arguments? I doubt they're compelling, but they're completely new to me.
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Those arguments likely originated from this paper . Almost needless to say, they have been rendered moot, as we know that some traditional theropods had avialan-like teeth anatomy and that Archaeopteryx had traditional theropod ankle morphology .
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Although I don't doubt the theropod origin of birds, how many Cenozoic-oriented ornithologists support or supported it? I can think of eight (Prum, Livezey, Zusi, Cracraft, Clarke, Smith, Mayr & van Grouw), but I don't know if that's reflective of the consensus in ornithology.
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I'm under the impression that the majority do accept it (or at the very least do not reject it).
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Have you read Feduccia & Czerkas' new paper on Caudipteryx? The abstract sounds better than their Scansoriopteryx paper, but I won't judge it based on that.
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I have. Andrea Cau's response mirrors many of my thoughts.
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Another thing I've noticed is that the abstract correctly notes that Caudipteryx being neoflightless doesn't mean it's not a theropod. Does the rest of the paper follow this logic?
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They claim that whether oviraptorosaurs are "theropods or birds" is still debated and come down on the side of them being non-theropods.
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Would you say that any BANDits are more "off the rails" than others? Olson has rejected several BAND ideas accepted by Feduccia (Sauriurae, transitional shorebirds, etc.).
Do you know where Steadman currently stands on BAD? He provisionally accepted BAND in his review of Mesozoic Birds, but as he was open-minded about the issue, I wouldn't be surprised if he came around.
Also, this may be of interest.
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I'm not familiar enough with the totality of their individual claims to say. Regarding Steadman, I haven't found any more recent commentary by him on avian origins.
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Are there any similarly vocal ornithologists who accept the theropod origin of birds? There's Prum, but he hasn't published much lately⦠has he?
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I get the feeling that the theropod origin of birds is quite widely accepted by ornithologists these days. Prum is the only one I can think of who regularly and vocally opposes BANDits though, and while he hasn't published on that subject in a while, BANDits haven't come up with a whole lot of new arguments since his 2003 rebuttal to them either. (In terms of other publications, he still appears to be going strong . Slowed down a little lately, but it's probably too early to say if that trend will continue.)
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What has Cracraft done lately? He's only addressed BAND very briefly in his 1986 paper (as far as I know), but he's had some harsh words for the BANDit's heterodox ideas on neornithine phylogeny.
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He's on the authorship of the new Jarvis et al. paper and a quick Google Scholar search finds that he has also been involved in other recent studies on modern bird phylogeny. This is not new, but you might find it of interest. It's a commentary in which he talks favorably about the dinosaurian origin of birds.
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Can I please have a copy of that commentary? Send me a note.
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I thought you'd never ask.
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Be careful; I hear that if you complain, you'll have to read Campbell's papers in detention!
(Campbell is a BANDit who, among other things, thinks Microraptor is a bird while Sinornithosaurus is a dinosaur and that caenagnathoids would have to be secondarily featherless if Caudipteryx was an oviraptorosaur.)
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Haha! That sounds familiar, yes.
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Do you like the idea of lampooning Feduccia's more heterodox ideas about neornithines? His 1996 book (much of which can be previewed for free on Google Books, if you're so inclined) has some good examples (off the top of my head, he supports a diphyletic Galloanserae, with galliforms as palaeognaths closely related to tinamous and anseriforms derived from charadriiforms).
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Certainly worth considering.
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According to Darren Naish, "[Feduccia's]Β take on bird history and evolution is idiosyncratic and frequently misleading, and I donβt just mean his take on Mesozoic bird history and bird origins." Do you know any examples of what he's talking about?
Also, this is probably going to make me look like an idiot, but how do you pronounce Feduccia anyway? Feh-doo-shah?
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I don't know for sure what Darren refers to, but this paper on neornithine diverification appears to discuss some examples.
I essentially pronounce it the same way.
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Two related questions:
1. How many BANDits/MANIACs are still in the field since Larry Martin passed away?
2. What do MANIACs think actually belongs in Coelurosauria?
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1. Feduccia is easily the most vocal. Czerkas counts too.
2. Compsognathid-type things. (I don't know if they still think tyrannosauroids are carnosaurs.)
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1. What about Ruben & Olson?
2. Where do they place therizinosaurs and arctometatarsalians sensu Mortimer? I seem to rember reading a MANIAC rant about how Mononykus was a dinosaur that was described as a bird, while Caudipteryx and Protarchaeopteryx were birds that were described as dinosaurs (never mind that, uh, Protarchaeopteryx was described as a bird).
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1. They may still be BANDits, but I haven't seen them actively advocate that in a long time.
2. Based on this review , they consider therizinosaurs to be birds. Feduccia thinks that ornithomimosaurs at least are still theropods, going by his latest output.
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Have you read Czerkas & Feduccia's recent papers on Scansoriopteryx? It's probably about as bad as you think it is, but this sentence really sums it up:
"Instead of regarding Aves as a sub-Class derived from dinosaurs, ScansoriopteryxΒ reinstates the validity of regarding Aves as a separate Class uniquely avian and non-dinosaurian. "
LOLWUT? And to think I actually supported these people back in 2011β¦
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Yep, I've read (i.e.: skimmed through) it. Certainly didn't expect anything else from that corner!
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I hope I never have to be subjected to this kind of inhumane torture.
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Can you link me to this hilarious piece of BS?
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Feduccia has written a lot of this sort of thing over the years, but here's the latest that's been published.
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"Whatever happened to astronomer Carl Sagan's well-worn axiom, 'Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence'?"
My irony meter exploded. You owe me a new one.
Also, did you know that (according to Riddle of the Feathered Dragons) Protarcharopteryx could fly because seriemas can too? Yeah. Sure. Whatever.
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The sad thing, though, is that, according to Predatory Dinosaurs of the World, Feduccia was this close at the time to ditching the BAND.
That said, the only thing more hilarious than this would be a parody of The Island of Doctor Moreau with Feduccia as Moreau, the BAD supporter of your choice as Prendick and Longisquama-type "thecodonts" as the Beast Folk.
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