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The Day the Dinosaurs Died

Now I want someone to make a parody version of "American Pie" but maybe call it "Dinosaurs Die."
 
infection said:
I know that there’s big concern about what’s perceived as a steep rise in people being “against science” because it’s “dangerous,” but I’m honestly not certain which is more dangerous: people believing that shape-shifting, reptilian aliens have infiltrated our government, or people believing that it’s a fact that there are millions of people that believe there are shape-shifting, reptilian aliens that have infiltrated our government.
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I'm not aware of the steep rise you're speaking of, of people being against science because it's "dangerous", or, perhaps I should say to the degree I am aware of that, It hasn't really been my concern. Rather, I'm aware of and interested in a rise of distrust of authority in general, political, religious, scientific authority.

The role of a sense of "dangerous" where that erosion is concerned was not something I've really focused on, but more just a rise in irrational thought, or maybe popular culture undermining "received wisdom" in many disciplines. In my case, I saw it mostly in the proliferation of alternative history, such as presented by the History Network, and shows like America Unearthed and Ancient Aliens, because I was involved in teaching history.

The reptilian business I myself first saw within the UFO community, but as far as "millions", I understand and concede your point, it was based on one poll:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeand...-illuminati-beyonce-vaccines-cliven-bundy-jfk

I don't know about a "danger" in any of this, though I do tend to defend rationality as a good standard,not to be lost sight of, just trying to keep track of unusual beliefs, and I do believe they've always been present, just a keen interest in those types cropping up in modern America.
 
infection said:
I know that there’s big concern about what’s perceived as a steep rise in people being “against science” because it’s “dangerous,” but I’m honestly not certain which is more dangerous: people believing that shape-shifting, reptilian aliens have infiltrated our government, or people believing that it’s a fact that there are millions of people that believe there are shape-shifting, reptilian aliens that have infiltrated our government.
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I'm a Fortean in temperament and philosophy. As in Charles Fort. So I've been open minded where many anomalous things are concerned, anything that threatens to upset apple carts, and in many areas. So, in and of themselves, unusual beliefs are not things I tend to regard as "dangerous", I've entertained many, and in all seriousness. At the same time, the strength of some popular cultural beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence against their accuracy, intrigues me. And creates a tension between the Fortean in me that enjoys entertaining impossible ideas and the rationalist that resists "true belief" in anything. I think we're all pretty complex beings, and tensions born of contradictions are common to all of us.
 
gandalfe said:
I am not sure. Probably? I am neither a paleontologist nor an ornithologist, so I'm not the best person to answer, but my understanding is that it's been researched since the mid-1800s, the discovery of Archaeopteryx, and that there are just too many similarities between dinosaurs and birds that are NOT shared by mammals or insects to see it any other way. They have found a bunch of dinos with feathers. Now, how exact it happened is another matter - did it start with the pterodactyl and other winged dinosaurs, or did another, smaller dinosaur develop wings and then fairly quickly speciate?
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pterodactyls are not dinosaurs so definitely not that! Yes, the idea is that they evolved from small feathered dinos.
 
gandalfe said:
I think it's gone past hypothesis to consensus.
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silesian said:
yeah, it is still a hypothesis but it seems to have growing evidence and support.
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So a friend of mine found a dissenting opinion expressed by a professor emeritus of zoology at a West coast university. This friend had expressed doubts that birds were avian dinosaurs, wrote to this professor, expressing his doubts, and received this reply. I can only note the dissent; I'm hardly in a position to judge one way or another:

"Unfortunately, museum politics, careers, and public sentiment have surely played major roles in the perpetuation of the dubious proposal that today’s birds are merely dinosaurs that flew off into the Cretaceous sunset. That notion is, understandably, popular with the lay public. Not surprisingly, museums were, and remain, quick to invest millions of dollars on splashy public displays consistent with that scenario. In the process, many paleontologists have serious career investments in the "birds-are-dinosaurs” story.

However, as you suspect, there is increasing evidence that current conventional wisdom regarding dinosaurs and birds may well be inaccurate: (1) the most recent and complete cladogram analyzing bird-dinosaur relationships indicates that birds are just as likely to been derived from early non-dinosaurian archosaurs; (2) the “dinosaurs” from which birds were supposedly derived (the “raptors”) may actually have been secondarily flightless birds!; (3) so-called feathers, and/or
"proto-feathers” in many dinosaurs (e.g., Sinosauropteryx) were very likely to actually have been misidentified, sub-cutaneous collagen fibers; (4) the old problem of birds having fingers 2-3-4 as opposed to the 1-2-3 fingers in dinosaurs remains….that is, dinosaurs with fingers 1-2-3 are hardly good ancestors for birds, all of which retain fingers 2-3-4. Weak, "just-so" stories to account for those differences have been proposed to account for the finger differences, but that problem remains.

You might ask, why have these inconsistencies with the "birds-are-dinosaurs" scenario not received more public attention? Simply put, they have been systematically ignored by dinosaur “experts,” and, in turn, by the popular press. Nevertheless, all of the points I’ve made in the previous paragraph have been put forth in heavily peer-reviewed, scholarly papers that appeared in highly prestigious scientific journals (SCIENCE, NATURE, etc.). Perhaps the best single source for you to more closely review all of these issues would be Dr. Alan Feduccia’s recent book, “Riddle of the Feathered Dragons,” Yale University Press (ISBN 978-0-16435-0)."
 
And here is the latest T Rex exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC:

 
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