475 replies to this topic

[TheSearcher]

Clobhair-cean, on 11 February 2013 - 02:05 PM, said:

-Snip-

Of course, this whole "surviving dinosaurs" nonsense completely bypasses the fact that all extant birds are in fact dinosaurs and is still looking for forms that remained unchanged for 65 million years. This is why young-earth creationists are so invested in all non-avian dinosaur theorising.

Dammit man, I knew I had forgotten to mention something.

[Hawkin]

Clobhair-cean, on 11 February 2013 - 02:05 PM, said:

The coelacanth is not a really good analogue for the dinosaur situation. They are deep-water animals and we don't really have any deep-water fossils simply because the layers that contain them are mostly still underwater. We knew about a number of shallow water coelacanths that went extinct during the K-T event and assumed, due to the lack of evidence, that they were the only ones. Then a deep-water species was found to have survived until recent times and was found around the time when the explorations of the open oceans really started to get going. In contrast, we have an ample fossil record of the terrestrial fauna between the K-T event and our time and we see no sign of non-avian dinosaurs. What we see is the proliferation of mammals and birds that took up the ecological niches that used to be filled by dinosaurs in all parts of the world. If he had a non-avian dinosaur milling around, we would have some proof by now.

Of course, this whole "surviving dinosaurs" nonsense completely bypasses the fact that all extant birds are in fact dinosaurs and is still looking for forms that remained unchanged for 65 million years. This is why young-earth creationists are so invested in all non-avian dinosaur theorising.

The Coelancanth isn't a good analogue??? It existed with the dinos in the Cretaceous and still exist today. Sounds to me like a personal opinion.

[TheSearcher]

Mag357, on 11 February 2013 - 04:56 PM, said:

The Coelancanth isn't a good analogue??? It existed with the dinos in the Cretaceous and still exist today. Sounds to me like a personal opinion.

I think I know what Clobhair is getting at, since the Coelancanth is in essence a deep water animal it was most likely protected  a lot better than surface or shallow water animals. Like he said, we knew about a number of shallow water Coelacanths that went extinct during the K-T event and assumed, due to the lack of evidence, that they were the only ones. Besides deep water exploration is still a very hard thing to do, because of the extremely difficult environment, even now. So imagine, what it would be like for an paleontologist and getting fossils from the sea bottom.

I think that crocodilians would be a better example   The largest air-breathing survivors of the KT event were crocodilians and champsosaurs, they were (and crocodilians still are) semi-aquatic and had access to detritus. Modern crocodilians can live as scavengers and can survive for months without food and go into hibernation when conditions are unfavourable, and their young are small, grow slowly, and feed largely on invertebrates and dead organisms or fragments of organisms for their first few years. These characteristics have been linked to crocodilian survival at the end of the Cretaceous.

Is this maybe a better analogue?

[Clobhair-cean]

Mag357, on 11 February 2013 - 04:56 PM, said:

The Coelancanth isn't a good analogue??? It existed with the dinos in the Cretaceous and still exist today. Sounds to me like a personal opinion.

Basically, they are bad analogues because while we have plenty of post-K-T terrestrial fossil beds to examine, none of which contain a single non-avian dinosaur, we have   practically no access to the layers where we could have spotted any signs of surviving coelacanths. We didn't even know that deep-sea coelacanths even existed any time in history until we found two extant species.

Crocodiles are much better, but it has to be stated that even with their remarkable survival adaptations that make them fairly unique among tetrapods, most of them went extinct during the K-T event and only the smallest species managed to survive. Which is also true for dinosaurs, as their smallest and most adaptable variants, birds, are still very much around.

When people talk about surviving dinosaurs, they mean charismatic megafauna, sauropods, large theropods, ceratopsians, while ignoring the fact  that we don't really know of any land (or semi-aquatic) animal much larger than a metre in length that survived the K-T event.

[cormac mac airt]

Mag357, on 09 February 2013 - 05:47 PM, said:

Science tells us a lot of things and most of us accept what they tell us but science has been proven wrong
on things they say. Such as the Coelacanth. A fish that was suppose to be extinct along with the dinosaurs but they
were rediscovered in 1938 off the coast of S. Africa.

This is a bit misleading since the genetic evidence suggests that the specific species found today, Latimeria menadoensis and Latimeria chalumnae, diverged some 30 - 40 million years ago which greatly post-dates the time of the dinosaurs. The above argument is akin to saying that because Sarcosuchus predated the extinction of the dinosaurs and crocodilians still exist today then all crocodilians are examples of Sarcosuchus. That would be incorrect.

http://www.sciencedi...37811190500017X

cormac

[Harsh86_Patel]

Mag357, on 11 February 2013 - 07:43 AM, said:

I never mentioned anything about pseudoscience. Read my last post again and try to find that word mentioned. It would seem you theorized that's what I meant.
What I stated about the coelacanth is true. They were thought to be extinct until 1938. Google it.
Furthermore, Science doesn't know with 100% certainty that an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs. It's only theory but they implanted it in the public mind on
that's what happened. I remember a recent thread on this website that some scientist are having second thoughts that it wasn't an asteroid that killed off the
dinos and seem to think it was volcanoes that put them into extinction. My point being is science is always revising there theories.

But the extinction of coelacanth was never a scientific fact.I am talking about pseudoscience posing as science. Asteroid crash killing the Dinosaurs is also not a claim made by empirical science....it is a statement made by a hybrid sort of historians who dabble in science.None of the statements that you reject are based on empirical science.

[Abramelin]

Mag357, on 11 February 2013 - 07:43 AM, said:

I never mentioned anything about pseudoscience. Read my last post again and try to find that word mentioned. It would seem you theorized that's what I meant.
What I stated about the coelacanth is true. They were thought to be extinct until 1938. Google it.
Furthermore, Science doesn't know with 100% certainty that an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs. It's only theory but they implanted it in the public mind on
that's what happened. I remember a recent thread on this website that some scientist are having second thoughts that it wasn't an asteroid that killed off the
dinos and seem to think it was volcanoes that put them into extinction. My point being is science is always revising there theories.

Yes, they now think the Deccan Traps caused the atmosphere to deteriorate long before the Chicxulub event., and was already whiping out the dinos (and most other life forms). They now think the asteroid was the finishing blow.

[Hawkin]

Harsh86_Patel, on 12 February 2013 - 08:47 AM, said:

But the extinction of coelacanth was never a scientific fact.I am talking about pseudoscience posing as science. Asteroid crash killing the Dinosaurs is also not a claim made by empirical science....it is a statement made by a hybrid sort of historians who dabble in science.None of the statements that you reject are based on empirical science.

It seems though that Science has a competitor (Pseudoscience) just like Science was a competitor to Religion.

[Abramelin]

Dinos and humans still live together: our very own admin Saru is believed to be a dino:

http://www.unexplain...5

[Lilly]

Abramelin, on 12 February 2013 - 11:55 AM, said:

Dinos and humans still live together: our very own admin Saru is believed to be a dino:

http://www.unexplain...5

Man/Dino/Kitten...a hybrid that trumps even Man/Bear/Pig!

Edited by Lilly, 12 February 2013 - 12:16 PM.
sounds better

[TheSearcher]

Harsh86_Patel, on 12 February 2013 - 08:47 AM, said:

But the extinction of coelacanth was never a scientific fact.I am talking about pseudoscience posing as science. Asteroid crash killing the Dinosaurs is also not a claim made by empirical science....it is a statement made by a hybrid sort of historians who dabble in science.None of the statements that you reject are based on empirical science.

You're not entirely correct there, the impact theory is actually made by empirical science, as the hypothesis was first proposed by physicist Luis Alvarez (Nobel prize winner btw), his son geologist Walter Alvarez and chemists Frank Asaro and Helen Michel. If I'm not mistaken they posited it in 1980. for the first time.No hybrid sort of historians dabbling in science here.

Sorry but that is most definitely not pseudoscience.

Lilly, on 12 February 2013 - 12:01 PM, said:

Man/Dino/Kitten...a hybrid that trumps even Man/Bear/Pig!

So Saru is actually a Man/Dino/Kitten? Dayum, I have a hard time picturing that one.......

[Santy]

I must say I have enjoyed paging through this topic. I always find it intriguing hearing about our origins etc.

Talking to a physicist type, some time ago. It was explained to me that everything, yes every single thing, is what we have thought up. Hard to grasp, I enquired further. You cannot actually, truly know anything which you have not witnessed, which means you are influenced by heresay about topics occurring prior to your birth. News is how someone else is saying it is, and education is something which someone in the same boat has decided you are going to believe. At school I did a number of experiments to validate that which I had been taught. After that, there weren't any further experiments, but I believed in science and learned what followed without validation.
Books are footprints of those who passed this way earlier. The reader is a hunter, following the footprints.
Some time ago, I read a book about the evolution of the bird. It is superseded now, but at the time, there were all kinds of experiments about bird flight and so on. It became clear the extent to which science will bend findings to shoehorn everything into the evolution theory. The problem was nil finds of birds, prior to a certain timeline of fossils. Coupled with the earliest fossil of a feather, with identical characteristics to modern bird feathers, being dated almost on top of it. There being no time for evolution.
Later, following a find in China, fresh light was cast on the puzzle, but the answer did not complement evolution theory. It seems that evolution was contracting out to the Chinese and a lot of other places. Different essentials for bird flight was now evolved remotely in different places, on different creatures, even species. So evolution is an economist.

Maybe I do accept evolution, but the point I am making is that evolution should not be taken for granted. It does not make sense for it to exist exclusively. There may, because of the enormity, be overlying, coexisting phenomena, and who knows what influences over time.It is already obvious that we have been evolving ourselves, by forced weddings and so on. Why then could not other creatures have done so. Ants breed mushrooms.

What is so difficult about saying you don't know? At least, surely we can keep open minds, instead of signing, slavishly to theories without being compelled to do so.

[Harsh86_Patel]

TheSearcher, on 13 February 2013 - 10:53 AM, said:

You're not entirely correct there, the impact theory is actually made by empirical science, as the hypothesis was first proposed by physicist Luis Alvarez (Nobel prize winner btw), his son geologist Walter Alvarez and chemists Frank Asaro and Helen Michel. If I'm not mistaken they posited it in 1980. for the first time.No hybrid sort of historians dabbling in science here.

Sorry but that is most definitely not pseudoscience.



So Saru is actually a Man/Dino/Kitten? Dayum, I have a hard time picturing that one.......

An asteroid/meteorite impact will leave proofs there is no denying that but that event leading to extinction of all dinosaurs is an unverifiable statement and hence not a part of empirical science.In short it is an unverifiable assumption.

[The Silver Thong]

Lets start another thread that men and big feet are having sex in secret to keep the population alive but being covered up by a branch of the roman catholic church based in the american north west.

Edited by The Silver Thong, 14 February 2013 - 05:36 AM.

[Kozaky]

No, Man did not co-exist with dinosaurs, that concept was created by Fundamentalist Christians to back up their claims of a young earth.