Whatever happen to the Dinosaurs?

[carolinajazz]

This makes even less sense than your typical post. It has absolutely nothing to do with what I said or what your thread was about... except for the word "dinosaurs." Congrats!

....you question my motives for starting this thread, then insinuated I was a nutcase! That's why I said "lighten up! By the way, DO YOU HAVE any DVD's about Jurassic Park...yes or no?

 

[Harambe]

This makes even less sense than your typical post. It has absolutely nothing to do with what I said or what your thread was about... except for the word "dinosaurs." Congrats!

Hey mang... remember that time CJ couldn't figure out how to animate gifs in his signature?

LAWL

 

[Joe Bagadonuts]

....you question my motives for starting this thread, then insinuated I was a nutcase! That's why I said "lighten up! By the way, DO YOU HAVE any DVD's about Jurassic Park...yes or no?

No

 

[carolinajazz]

Hey mang... remember that time CJ couldn't figure out how to animate gifs in his signature?

LAWL

....still don't! I'm still using Windows XP, too! Just swapped out my flip phone for a Smart Phone in Oct....and it's beatin me pretty bad! However, I'm learning everyday! Can ya help me with that animation in my Signature? I'd sure like to see that basketball bounce off that kids head, how about you?

 

[NAOS]

He's saying that it is true that the Earth (and the rest of the solar system) was created from the remains of a previous star system. He obviously doesn't think fossils came from a different planet. He's making a point about static dogmas that get you nowhere, versus more robust conceptualization that allows for more dynamic and evolving explanations.

I do have a philosophical disagreement with that sentiment, as I believe the process with which you arrive at explanations is at least as important as the models you use to get there. Consequently, I think the Mormon explanation that NAOS mentions is only incidentally ahead of its time compared to the Biblical model, and thus not meaningfully so.

But I guess that discussion is better left for a different topic.

why do you think we disagree? where have I said that the process whereby someone arrives at conclusions is unimportant? I think my post says that I do think so.

I'll quickly agree to the hypothesis the vast majority of Mormon believers who adopted this explanation RE dinosaurs were simply over-writing the signs (bones) that the Earth isn't what their doctrines were claiming it was with a generalization that made things "fit". My post was about an exceptional thinker. That thinker was able to find the a truth that seems, to you and me, to be accidental, and make exceptional headway with it. On his way, he discarded that explanation of dinosaurs but retained the notion of Earthly accretion. He grew up in a time before plate tectonics was an accepted explanation, and therefore well before planetary accretion was adequately explained by cosmology/physics.

But we probably do disagree about things if we drill down further. I'd never expect the progress we make with respect to explaining phenomena to advance along a track without mistakes and accidental truths. My theory of truth is that it flashes unexpectedly and rarely, when our habits are sufficiently calmed to let it bust through rather than be covered too quickly with recognitions and handed-down ideas. The truth is something that doesn't make sense at first; something that we must adapt our senses to, since the senses that we bring into the present flashing of truth are adaptations to the past. This process of adapting to truth happens on conscious and unconscious levels, and thankfully the unconscious isn't too prideful to care whether a helpful notion is accidental or not -- it'll just use it. Labeling a truth as "incidental" or "accidental" is a judgment that can only come ex post facto, and has nothing to do with the use value of the truth.

The gentleman I'm speaking of grew up in and spent his whole life in the Basin & Range. After he was educated, and was out there working and raising a family, geologists would explain the formation of the entire region as one of steady accretion (roughly: 500 million years ago the western edge of the continent was near present-day Salt Lake City, and the western margin was added to by the western march of the North American plate, the subduction of the Pacific plate, and the suture of several island arcs to the North American craton). So, everyday, this this thinker was looking at one of the best examples of accretion that is currently visible in the geologic record, and he somehow knew accretion was real. He made the leap to applying that on a planetary scale -- a leap supported by an exceptional take on a fringe Mormon explanation -- and was right.



Let me try to pre-empt a series of clarifying posts by saying that I do think the habits and handed-down ideas we bring to the present flashing of truth are important. That part of the conversation always comes next, when people think I'm throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I'm not. Habits and handed-down ideas help us attain to the problems that truth reveals. But they don't solve those problems by themselves.

Here's a passage that I couldn't be more in love with. It's a stuffy institutional response to a guy named Wegener, who was an early advocate of continental drift (what would later be called "plate tectonics," which I'm sure you know is now the accepted theory):

Wegener's hypothesis in general is of the foot-loose type, in that it takes considerable liberty with our globe, and is less bound by restrictions or tied down by awkward, ugly facts than most of its rival theories. Its appeal seems to lie in the fact that it plays a game in which there are few restrictive rules and no sharply drawn code of conduct. So a lot of things go easily. But taking the situation as it now is, we must either modify radically most of the present rules of the geological game or else pass the hypothesis by. The best characterization of the hypothesis which I have heard was the remark made at the 1922 meeting of the Geological Society of America at Ann Arbor. It was this: "If we are to believe Wegener's hypothesis we must forget everything which has been learned in the last seventy years and start over again."

 

[Red]

I love paleontology. Growing up, I thought I was going to be one, in fact. Briefly majored in geology before switching. But, love fossils, and I have collected fossils my entire life. I don't expect many of you will agree with me on this, but 99.9% of vertebrate paleontologist agree that dinosaurs did not die out completely at the end of the Cretaceous Period some 65 million years ago. Most did, and a cometary impact is the most popular theory for their demise. But, one branch of dinosaur survived, and we call them birds. I have a flock of small dinosaurs in the form of doves feeding on my front lawn as I type.
Dispute paleontology if you will, but birds are avian dinosaurs:

https://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/avians.html

https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/feathered-dinosaur-bird-wings-discovered-china/story?id=32517806

Personally, I love this fact. Ever since this realization, I have enjoyed seeing birds for what they are: the only surviving branch of dinosaurs.

Again, as far as "what happened", the cometary impact continues to be the leading theory for the demise of most of the dinosaurs......

 

[Red]

And here are some dinosaur eggs I own, that were found in China. The first elongated specimen is the egg of an Oviraptor. And an illustration of what that critter looked like. The smaller egg is from a dinosaur that had the largest known claws of any creature that ever lived. How do we know which eggs go with which dinos? From embryonic remains found within some eggs.

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If that Oviraptor reminds you of a bird, it's because, as my previous post suggested, birds are in fact an avian branch of dinosaur. Dinosaurs did not die out completely. They got smaller, and they perfected flight.

https://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/dinosaur.html

"Dinosaurs are not extinct. Technically. Based on features of the skeleton, most people studying dinosaurs consider birds to be dinosaurs. This shocking realization makes even the smallest hummingbird a legitimate dinosaur. So rather than refer to "dinosaurs" and birds as discrete, separate groups, it is best to refer to the traditional, extinct animals as "non-avian dinosaurs" and birds as, well, birds, or "avian dinosaurs." It is incorrect to say that dinosaurs are extinct, because they have left living descendants in the form of cockatoos, cassowaries, and their pals — just like modern vertebrates are still vertebrates even though their Cambrian ancestors are long extinct."

 

[Red]

Here is the type of Dino who laid the smaller egg and another specimen, not mine, showing embryonic remains that permit identification of the dinos who laid these eggs.....

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