Pterosaur dietary hypotheses

[Pandora]

Pterosaur dietary hypotheses: a review of ideas and approaches.

Abstract

Pterosaurs are an extinct group of Mesozoic flying reptiles, whose
fossil record extends from approximately 210 to 66 million years ago.
They were integral components of continental and marginal marine
ecosystems, yet their diets remain poorly constrained. Numerous
dietary hypotheses have been proposed for different pterosaur groups,
including insectivory, piscivory, carnivory, durophagy,
herbivory/frugivory, filter-feeding and generalism. These hypotheses,
and subsequent interpretations of pterosaur diet, are supported by
qualitative (content fossils, associations, ichnology, comparative
anatomy) and/or quantitative (functional morphology, stable isotope
analysis) evidence. Pterosaur dietary interpretations are scattered
throughout the literature with little attention paid to the supporting
evidence. Reaching a robustly supported consensus on pterosaur diets
is important for understanding their dietary evolution, and their
roles in Mesozoic ecosystems. A comprehensive examination of the
pterosaur literature identified 314 dietary interpretations (dietary
statement plus supporting evidence) from 126 published studies.
Multiple alternative diets have been hypothesised for most principal
taxonomic pterosaur groups. Some groups exhibit a high degree of
consensus, supported by multiple lines of evidence, while others
exhibit less consensus. Qualitative evidence supports 87.3% of dietary
interpretations, with comparative anatomy most common (62.1% of
total). More speciose groups of pterosaur tend to have a greater range
of hypothesised diets. Consideration of dietary interpretations within
alternative phylogenetic contexts reveals high levels of consensus
between equivalent monofenestratan groups, and lower levels of
consensus between equivalent non-monofenestratan groups. Evaluating
the possible non-biological controls on apparent patterns of dietary
diversity reveals that numbers of dietary interpretations through time
exhibit no correlation with patterns of publication (number of
peer-reviewed publications through time). 73.8% of dietary
interpretations were published in the 21st century. Overall, consensus
interpretations of pterosaur diets are better accounted for by
non-biological signals, such as the impact of the respective quality
of the fossil record of different pterosaur groups on research levels.
That many interpretations are based on qualitative, often untestable
lines of evidence adds significant noise to the data. More
experiment-led pterosaur dietary research, with greater consideration
of pterosaurs as organisms with independent evolutionary histories,
will lead to more robust conclusions drawn from repeatable results.
This will allow greater understanding of pterosaur dietary diversity,
disparity and evolution and facilitate reconstructions of Mesozoic
ecosystems.

Open access:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/brv.12431

[Peter Nyikos]

I forget what the technical term is for this kind of study,
but it seems more like an "opinion poll" of the literature
than an actual attempt to resolve the issue of what was
eaten by which pterosaurs. Does the full article support this
impression? this abstract certainly gives it.

The iconic examples of popular "consensus" are Pteranodon being
a pelican-like fisherman, Quetzalcoatlus a carrion eater, and
Pterodaustro a filter feeder like a flamingo. A quick scan
shows the first and third being discussed in the text of the
article, but not the middle one. Does it try to resolve the
status of the first and third?

Anyway, as usual, I'm grateful to you for calling yet another
interesting article to our attention.


Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina

[erik simpson]

It's a long and detailed review (as stated in the title). The "Conclusions" is
pretty concise:

"(1) A range of diets have been proposed for pterosaurs including insectivory, piscivory, carnivory, durophagy, filter‐feeding and generalism.

(2) Most pterosaur dietary interpretations are supported by qualitative evidence including comparative anatomy, associations, content fossils and ichnofossils with a minority supported by quantitative evidence from functional morphology and isotope analyses.

(3) Some pterosaur principal groups exhibit high levels of consensus regarding diet, supported by several evidential categories; others exhibit lower levels of consensus, with different interpretations inferred from conflicting evidence of the same categorical type, and typically poorly constrained analogy drawn from comparative anatomy.

(4) More speciose pterosaur groups exhibit higher diversity of hypothesised diets. Whilst this may reflect biological signals such as ecological radiations or niche partitioning, non‐biological causes, such as historical biases in the data, quality of the fossil record and research intensity are more likely. These biases mean it is currently difficult to reliably test the hypothesis that the apparent patterns of pterosaur dietary diversity and disparity are biologically controlled.

(5) Examining patterns of dietary diversity using different phylogenies reveals higher consensus among monofenestratan groups and lower consensus in non‐monofenestratan groups. Better resolution on the membership of pterosaur groups would assist in uncovering true diets for respective groups.

(6) Numbers of pterosaur publications per year and dietary interpretations do not correlate through time. The majority of interpretations were proposed in the 21st century. The almost exponential rise in the number of publications containing dietary interpretations since the 1980s coincides with discoveries of new Lagerstätten and other exceptionally preserved sites, as well as applications of new techniques to pterosaurs.

(7) Many dietary interpretations are based on simple extrapolations and comparisons with modern biology with little scope for testing. Qualitative methods can serve as starting points for generating hypotheses, but quantitative tests provide more robust analyses and insights into dietary diversity, evolution and the ecological roles of pterosaurs. Improvements to current methods and application of novel methods to pterosaurs will provide better constraints on diets in pterosaurs with low levels of consensus, and better tests of dietary hypotheses in pterosaurs with high levels of consensus. This will allow reliable investigations into possible biological signals behind pterosaur dietary diversity and disparity, which will allow greater understanding of pterosaur dietary evolution and facilitate reconstructions of Mesozoic ecosystems. "

[Peter Nyikos]

So far from answering my questions, Erik, your posting of the
"Conclusions" is actually counterproductive, because that section
just reinforces the impressions I got from the abstract. Fact is, the body
of the article includes a great deal of meaty information about
the reasoning behind various dietary hypotheses.

In particular, although it says nothing specifically about the
diet of Quetzalcoatlus, it does have quite a lot of information
about the "family" to which it belongs:


(16) Azhdarchidae

Azhdarchids are from the Upper Cretaceous (99–66 Ma) of North America, North Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia (Barrett et al., 2008; Averianov et al., 2015). These pterosaurs exhibit 1.5–11 m wingspans and possess elongated necks and skulls (Fig. 1S), and disproportionally small bodies and feet for their size (Paul, 1987; Witton & Naish, 2008). Azhdarchids are interpreted as carnivorous and piscivorous with some suggestions of generalism, durophagy, insectivory and herbivory/frugivory (Fig. 3).

Carnivory interpretations are based on comparative anatomy, associations, ichnology and functional morphology (Fig. 3). Comparative anatomical interpretations include long necks and jaws (Fig. 1S) for carcass probing (Lawson, 1975; Wilkinson & Ruxton, 2012) and/or aerial predation (Nessov, 1984; Chatterjee & Templin, 2004). Their necks, however, have been reinterpreted as too stiff for these roles, and azhdarchids have alternatively been suggested as ground‐based predators and scavengers based on their long limbs (Witton & Naish, 2008, 2015; Witton, 2013; Naish & Witton, 2017). Where multiple azhdarchids are known, niche partitioning is suggested (Witton & Naish, 2008; Naish et al., 2015). The Haţeg Basin, Romania, for example contains Hatzegopteryx thambema with a 10 m wingspan (Witton & Naish, 2015), Eurazhdarcho langendorfensis with a 3 m wingspan, and an unnamed azhdarchid with a 3 m wingspan and short, wide cervical vertebrae (Vremir et al., 2015). Hatzegopteryx was reasoned to have consumed the largest prey, with the short‐necked azhdarchid consuming larger prey than Eurazhdarcho as its neck potentially offered greater mechanical advantages (Vremir et al., 2015).

Piscivory interpretations are based on comparative anatomy, functional morphology and ichnofossils (Fig. 3). Possible azhdarchid track‐ways on mudflats suggest wading behaviours (Unwin, 2007). However azhdarchid feet have been argued to have been too small to have provided support on sandy, muddy ground (Witton & Naish, 2008). Comparative anatomy of azhdarchid necks suggests some articulation at their shoulders which may have allowed their heads rudimentarily to bend forward and seize fish on the wing (Martill et al., 1998; Chatterjee & Templin, 2004; Averianov, 2013). Functional morphology indicates azhdarchid gapes similar to Rynchops, based on jaw bone articulations, suggesting skim‐feeding (Kellner & Langston, 1996; Ősi, 2004). However this was not supported by flume tank results indicating that skim‐feeding was energetically unfeasible (Humphries et al., 2007). Theoretical reconstructions of possible azhdarchid throat pouches suggest that scooping would have put incredibly high strain on their necks (Witton & Naish, 2015).

Durophagy interpretations are based on comparative anatomy and associations (Fig. 3). Contemporaneous invertebrate burrows led to the suggestion that azhdarchids were sediment probers for hard‐shelled organisms (Wellnhofer, 1991). Jaw fragments from Morocco possess bony protuberances tentatively interpreted as structures for crushing mollusc shells (Martill & Ibrahim, 2015).

Generalism interpretations are based on comparative anatomy and associations (Fig. 3). Numerous azhdarchid remains from terrestrial deposits led to the hypothesis that azhdarchids were opportunistic ground‐based foragers, with larger genera consuming more animals for higher energy returns (Witton & Naish, 2008, 2015; Witton, 2013).

Insectivory interpretations are based on ichnology (Fig. 3). Azhdarchid tracks on mudflats from the Unhangari Formation, South Korea, were interpreted as indicative of foraging for insects (Hwang et al., 2002).

Herbivory/frugivory interpretations are based on comparative anatomy (Fig. 3). Azhdarchids have been reasoned to have fed on fruits given some jaw similarities to tapejarids (see Section IV.14) (Ősi, Weishampel & Jianu, 2005).

===================== end of excerpt ========================


Lots of detailed information like this is given on the other two iconic
examples I gave, as well.

I've left in what you wrote below.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina

http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[erik simpson]

Actually, I did answer your question:

"I forget what the technical term is for this kind of study,
but it seems more like an "opinion poll" of the literature
than an actual attempt to resolve the issue of what was
eaten by which pterosaurs. Does the full article support this
impression?"

in case you misremebered. And I did read the article. Is this a sample of
your good behavior?

[Peter Nyikos]

Erik, your habit of bottom posting makes it hard to see just how
your claims succeed or fail to take into account what people
write far above what you add at the end.

This is a case where you failed, IMO. Both wrt what I had
written in the paragraph above, and in the paragraph directly below.

No, you did not.

> "I forget what the technical term is for this kind of study,
> but it seems more like an "opinion poll" of the literature
> than an actual attempt to resolve the issue of what was
> eaten by which pterosaurs. Does the full article support this
> impression?"

As you can see from the above, the truth is in between,
but leaning towards a resolution, inasmuch as there
is a lot of information which helps people to weigh
the pros and cons of this or that conclusion as to what
individual pterosaurs ate. It most assuredly is not an "opinion poll"
as both the abstract and the Conclusions -- your sole "answer"
to my question -- suggested.


> in case you misremebered.

Of course I didn't misremember. I specifically told you
that the Conclusions not only did not answer the question,
it reinforced the faulty impression I got from the abstract.

> And I did read the article.

FWIW.

> Is this a sample of
> your good behavior?

You refused to answer questions about what you consider to
be a violation of our agreement of four years ago, and you
did not stick to a substitute that you claimed you would follow
instead of our agreement.

Was THAT an example of YOUR good behavior?

Peter Nyikos
Professor of Mathematics
Univ. of South Carolina --standard disclaimer--

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, June 7, 2018 at 3:42:33 PM UTC-4, Pandora wrote:

Pandora, this really is not a very good abstract, but not for the usual
reason -- it UNDERSTATES the many good merits of the article
and makes it seem like a general overall survey of what various
sources have said.

For example, one might think that the table which lists
certain forms of diet along with certain genera, and the
authors who endorsed each, is typical of what is said about them.

But for example, *Pteranodon* is listed as having been
hypothesized to be a piscivore and a durophage, the latter
referring to a diet of food with hard outer covering, like
nuts and shellfish. But if one reads the details, one sees
overwhelming evidence for the former and sketchy evidence
for the latter. Take a look at what it says for those two hypotheses.

From (9) Pteranodontoidea (a) Pteranodontidae
Comparative anatomical analyses agree on piscivory (Fig. 3).
Skim-feeding was initially proposed as Pteranodon and modern avian
skimmers (Rynchops spp.) possess similarly narrow jaws (Marsh, 1876;
Eaton, 1910; Zusi, 1962). Spiral-shaped joints between
the quadrate and articular in the lower jaw were interpreted as
attachment points for throat sacs for scooping up fish (Eaton, 1910;
Hankin, 1912).
However, cervical vertebrae of Pteranodon were later judged too small
for scooping and skimming for fish (Witton, 2013). Functional
morphological analyses have tested the feasibility of feeding
behaviours. Bramwell & Whitfield (1974) placed scaled replicas of the
Pteranodon skeleton in wind-tunnels and inferred slow flight and gliding
speeds to help catch fish whilst on the wing. By contrast, other early
flight models found Pteranodon flight profiles were more suited for
skim-feeding, although their body masses were extrapolated from modern
seabirds (Hazlehurst & Rayner, 1992). Later energy expenditure modelling
found that capturing aquatic organisms on the wing or whilst resting on
water surfaces were energetically feasible behaviours (Habib, 2015).

Durophagy interpretations are based on content fossils (Fig. 3); a few
(disputed) crustacean remains have been found within Pteranodon throats
(Brown, 1943; Bennett, 2001).

In contrast, the evidence for durophagy in basal ctenochasmatoids is anatomical:

From (10) Ctenochasmatoidea (a) Basal ctenochasmatoids:
Durophagy interpretations are based on content fossils and comparative
anatomy (Fig. 3). Pterodaustro exhibit short, rounded teeth in their
upper jaws, perhaps for crushing hard-shelled crustaceans (Chinsamy,
Codorniú & Chiappe, 2009; Codorniú et al., 2013).

And the evidence for durophagy in another group was even stronger:

From (13) Tapejaridae
Durophagy interpretations are based on associations, comparative anatomy
and functional morphology (Fig. 3). The fossil records of tapejarids,
seeds and gymnosperm cones in the Lower Cretaceous partially correlate
(Pinheiro, Liparini & Schultz, 2014). Tapejara adductor muscle
reconstructions show well-developed systems for potentially consuming
harder items (Pinheiro et al., 2014). This is corroborated by 3D
constructs of the Tapejara skull which exhibited high bite forces for
potentially cracking open seeds (Henderson, 2018).

This is far more helpful information than either the abstract or the
Conclusons give. The authors didn't do a good job of selling their
product, so to speak: their article is a lot better than what the
Abstract and Conclusions suggest.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina

http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

[erik simpson]

So kindly explain how exactly my reply was "couterproductive". And I did
(repeat) answer your question, which answer also clearly (to me) encouraged
the reading of same, becase it was "long and detailed". You read it (FWIW).
So I wonder how I lead you astray with a counterproductive answer. This is a prime example of how it's hard to be civil with you, but I'll continue to
make the effort.

Glad you liked it.

[Peter Nyikos]

> So kindly explain how exactly my reply was "couterproductive".

You posted the conclusions verbatim, and that tended to reinforce
the faulty impression that the Abstract created.

As I told you in the reply which you are ignoring:

___________________________________________________

> "I forget what the technical term is for this kind of study,
> but it seems more like an "opinion poll" of the literature
> than an actual attempt to resolve the issue of what was
> eaten by which pterosaurs. Does the full article support this
> impression?"

As you can see from the above, the truth is in between,
but leaning towards a resolution, inasmuch as there
is a lot of information which helps people to weigh
the pros and cons of this or that conclusion as to what
individual pterosaurs ate. It most assuredly is not an "opinion poll"
as both the abstract and the Conclusions -- your sole "answer"
to my question -- suggested.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

> And I did
> (repeat) answer your question,

Tell me exactly in what way you believe you answered the question.

> which answer also clearly (to me) encouraged
> the reading of same, becase it was "long and detailed".

Your "because" is childish. And I'd love to see the reasoning,
if any, behind the idea that posting the conclusions verbatim
would encourage someone to read the article when it reinforced
the impression that it was a mere "opinion poll" of the
various papers.

> You read it (FWIW).

FWIW is a personal comment.

So much for your substitute for our agreement. Your behavior
prior to and subsequent to posting that substitute made it clear (to me)
first, that you had abandoned our 4+ year old agreement and
then, when you violated your own expressed claim that you would
only write on-topic in reply to me, it became clear that neither
agreement means anything more to you...

...except as a stick to beat me over the head with.

> So I wonder how I lead you astray with a counterproductive answer. This is a prime example of how it's hard to be civil with you, but I'll continue to
> make the effort.

There is no effort by you. All through this reply, you have been indulging
in what is known as "flamebait". For instance, your "FWIW", divorced from any justification, is just a copycat flinging of my justified "FWIW"
in the post which you have carefully avoided any direct reply.


> "
> Glad you liked it.

I'm glad I liked the article, no thanks to you.

Peter Nyikos

[erik simpson]

I picked up the "FWIW" from your reply above.

"Of course I didn't misremember. I specifically told you
that the Conclusions not only did not answer the question,
it reinforced the faulty impression I got from the abstract.


> And I did read the article.

FWIW.

Was that not personal there?
It was not "flamebait" there? You have a different idea of polite discourse
than I do. Anyway, try to forget I replied to you at all. I acknowledge that
error.

[John Harshman]

Don't make me turn this car around.

[erik simpson]

Sorry. As I said, I erred in interacting in the first place.

[Peter Nyikos]

It's obvious now that sincerely explaining your behavior as
suggested above has always been the furthest thing from your mind.
Your behavior below gives you away.

> > > You read it (FWIW).
> >
> > FWIW is a personal comment.
> >
> > So much for your substitute for our agreement. Your behavior
> > prior to and subsequent to posting that substitute made it clear (to me)
> > first, that you had abandoned our 4+ year old agreement and
> > then, when you violated your own expressed claim that you would
> > only write on-topic in reply to me, it became clear that neither
> > agreement means anything more to you...
> >
> > ...except as a stick to beat me over the head with.

You made no attempt to deny any of the above. Typical.

> > > So I wonder how I lead you astray with a counterproductive answer. This is a prime example of how it's hard to be civil with you, but I'll continue to
> > > make the effort.
> >
> > There is no effort by you. All through this reply, you have been indulging
> > in what is known as "flamebait". For instance, your "FWIW", divorced from any justification, is just a copycat flinging of my justified "FWIW"
> > in the post which you have carefully avoided any direct reply.
> >
> >
> > > "
> > > Glad you liked it.
> >
> > I'm glad I liked the article, no thanks to you.
> >
> > Peter Nyikos
>
> I picked up the "FWIW" from your reply above.

That's exactly what I meant by you having done an unjustified copycat
jibe, mimicking a justified use of it by me.

>
> "Of course I didn't misremember. I specifically told you
> that the Conclusions not only did not answer the question,
> it reinforced the faulty impression I got from the abstract.
>
>
> > And I did read the article.
>
> FWIW.
>
>
> Was that not personal there?

Of course, but it was eminently just, whereas yours was simple trolling.

> It was not "flamebait" there?

No, flamebait refers to deliberately provocative statements that
you are pretty sure will rub the other the wrong way, and making them ONLY
because you expect that result.

> You have a different idea of polite discourse
> than I do.

Evidently you think you are polite here because of the contrast
with your relentlessly hypocritical and dishonest, sometimes libelous
behavior in talk.origins, year in and year out.

> Anyway, try to forget I replied to you at all. I acknowledge that
> error.

The error consisted in giving yourself away and then trying to buy
yourself back on the cheap.

Peter Nyikos

[John Harshman]

Children, settle down.

[Oxyaena]

Oh my god, yes, finally someone else on this newsgroup has some sense. I
never thought I'd say this, John, but thank you! Hallelujah, I`m not alone.

[Peter Nyikos]

You are too late, John. The damage has been done: Erik has let stand
my observation that he substituted a policy of his own for our
4+ year old agreement, a policy which he has repeatedly violated
in the back-and-forth on this thread.

You see most of it intact up there, but my "let stand" is partly
based on a reply to him to which he has not dared to follow up.
Instead, he cherry-picked from it in several places.

And so, the relationship between myself and Erik is now the
same sort of general relationship that you and he had with
Joe LyonLayden and Mario: no policies to adhere to in replies.
But I will try to be far more civil to Erik than he was to
these two newcomers.

The above comment notwithstanding, I WILL adhere to the amendment
that I proposed to our original agreement, which both you and Erik
(and Oxyaena, who has weighed in on this exchange) completely ignored:

It is a violation of our agreement for anyone to post
a distorted account to talk.origins of events in
sci.bio.paleontology. And if someone (call him A) does do that in
a way that makes another person (call him B) look a lot worse or
more ignorant than he really is, then B has the
right to call attention to that event in sci.bio.paleontology
without being charged with a violation of our agreement.

I think Erik knows why I proposed this amendment, and I think
that knowledge is the main reason he ignored it. You and Oxyaena
are off the hook, because that earlier post ended thus:

I am signing on to this right now, and I hope Harshman will also
do so too, but I don't make that a condition for dropping the issue of
what our agreement means. The only condition is that Erik sign on to it.

-- https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/J7FvEj7MLro/FCNB-Z4UAwAJ
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2018 18:47:55 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <55fe758f-a730-4fc5...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Evolution of the vertebrate brain

Peter Nyikos

[John Harshman]

It's never too late for reasonable people. Are you a reasonable person?
If so, dial it way back.

[Peter Nyikos]

I've had my say, and even though you have deleted everything else I wrote
to you, I am through with this thread unless someone posts on topic.

I stand by what I wrote, and I maintain that it reasonable, though
forceful.

Since you don't explain why you think it is unreasonable, I invite you to
consider whether all you are objecting to is my forcefulness -- and the
discomfort my unrefuted arguments cause Erik.

Peter Nyikos

[Daud Deden]

My opinion on the diet of pterosaurs is that the lca diet was that of a generalist which gradually speciated into ecological niches that promoted a preferred food type, eventually evolving a variety of specialized taxa with specialized diets, behaviour, mating rituals etc. My point being that if one begins with a specialist, it's too late, they are already likely doomed to extinction where climate/environment alters.

Vague, but on the right foot, imo.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Saturday, June 16, 2018 at 9:23:58 PM UTC-4, Daud Deden wrote:

> My opinion on the diet of pterosaurs is that the lca diet was that of a generalist which gradually speciated into ecological niches that promoted a preferred food type, eventually evolving a variety of specialized taxa with specialized diets, behaviour, mating rituals etc. My point being that if one begins with a specialist, it's too late, they are already likely doomed to extinction where climate/environment alters.
>
> Vague, but on the right foot, imo.

Yes, but you have to consider the possibility that diet can change
even after specialization. There are several examples of herbivores
evolving into carnivores. The best known among mammals is *Thylacoleo*,
a Pleistocene marsupial from a suborder of almost exclusively herbivores.

There are also examples of herbivores evolving into opportunistic
carnivores, like the well known black and brown rats. Such marsupials
include three related kangaroos, the Early to Middle Miocene *Ekaltadeta*,
the Early Pliocene *Jackmahoneya*, and the Pleistocene *Propleopus*.

These were the three known members of the subfamily *Propleopinae*
when the following book, where this information can be found on
pp. 151-153, as well as a fine exposition on *Thylacoleo* on 105-106:

_Prehistoric Animals of Australia and New Zealand: One Hundred
Million Years of Evolution_, by John Long, Michael Archer,
Timothy Flannery, and Suzanne Head, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.


As you may know, John Harshman rejects as "unscientific, because
subjective" any claim that either of the two earlier known
members of *Propleopinae* are ancestral to the the third,
or that the earliest is ancestral to the second.

That's because he pronounces the same verdict on ANY purported
example of an animal known only from fossils being ancestral
to any other animal, whether extinct or extant. That includes all
"subjective" talk about us being descended either from
*Australopithecus* or *Ardipithecus*, or even from *Homo erectus*.


Peter Nyikos
Professor of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

[John Harshman]

On 6/18/18 5:42 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Saturday, June 16, 2018 at 9:23:58 PM UTC-4, Daud Deden wrote:
>
>> My opinion on the diet of pterosaurs is that the lca diet was that of a generalist which gradually speciated into ecological niches that promoted a preferred food type, eventually evolving a variety of specialized taxa with specialized diets, behaviour, mating rituals etc. My point being that if one begins with a specialist, it's too late, they are already likely doomed to extinction where climate/environment alters.
>>
>> Vague, but on the right foot, imo.
>
> Yes, but you have to consider the possibility that diet can change
> even after specialization. There are several examples of herbivores
> evolving into carnivores. The best known among mammals is *Thylacoleo*,
> a Pleistocene marsupial from a suborder of almost exclusively herbivores.
>
> There are also examples of herbivores evolving into opportunistic
> carnivores, like the well known black and brown rats. Such marsupials
> include three related kangaroos, the Early to Middle Miocene *Ekaltadeta*,
> the Early Pliocene *Jackmahoneya*, and the Pleistocene *Propleopus*.
>
> These were the three known members of the subfamily *Propleopinae*
> when the following book, where this information can be found on
> pp. 151-153, as well as a fine exposition on *Thylacoleo* on 105-106:
>
> _Prehistoric Animals of Australia and New Zealand: One Hundred
> Million Years of Evolution_, by John Long, Michael Archer,
> Timothy Flannery, and Suzanne Head, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.
>
>
> As you may know, John Harshman

/John Harshman/paleontologists/

> rejects as "unscientific, because
> subjective" any claim that either of the two earlier known
> members of *Propleopinae* are ancestral to the the third,
> or that the earliest is ancestral to the second.
>
> That's because he pronounces the same verdict on ANY purported
> example of an animal known only from fossils being ancestral
> to any other animal, whether extinct or extant. That includes all
> "subjective" talk about us being descended either from
> *Australopithecus* or *Ardipithecus*, or even from *Homo erectus*.

This seems a gratuitous attack on a third party, surely a violation of
the general agreement. Why, otherwise, are you bringing me into this
discussion?

I might also point out that your claim that I would reject this as
unscientific is incorrect. You just misunderstand the proper means of
arriving at these conclusions, which is to optimize characters on trees
to determine the states at ancestral nodes, and thus the course of
evolutionary change.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Monday, June 18, 2018 at 9:21:03 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 6/18/18 5:42 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Saturday, June 16, 2018 at 9:23:58 PM UTC-4, Daud Deden wrote:
> >
> >> My opinion on the diet of pterosaurs is that the lca diet was that of a generalist which gradually speciated into ecological niches that promoted a preferred food type, eventually evolving a variety of specialized taxa with specialized diets, behaviour, mating rituals etc. My point being that if one begins with a specialist, it's too late, they are already likely doomed to extinction where climate/environment alters.
> >>
> >> Vague, but on the right foot, imo.
> >
> > Yes, but you have to consider the possibility that diet can change
> > even after specialization. There are several examples of herbivores
> > evolving into carnivores. The best known among mammals is *Thylacoleo*,
> > a Pleistocene marsupial from a suborder of almost exclusively herbivores.
> >
> > There are also examples of herbivores evolving into opportunistic
> > carnivores, like the well known black and brown rats. Such marsupials
> > include three related kangaroos, the Early to Middle Miocene *Ekaltadeta*,
> > the Early Pliocene *Jackmahoneya*, and the Pleistocene *Propleopus*.
> >
> > These were the three known members of the subfamily *Propleopinae*
> > when the following book, where this information can be found on
> > pp. 151-153, as well as a fine exposition on *Thylacoleo* on 105-106:
> >
> > _Prehistoric Animals of Australia and New Zealand: One Hundred
> > Million Years of Evolution_, by John Long, Michael Archer,
> > Timothy Flannery, and Suzanne Head, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.
> >
> >
> > As you may know, John Harshman
>
> /John Harshman/paleontologists/

Which ones? Kathleen Hunt certainly did not embrace the reigning
ideology when she wrote the FAQ on Equidae (actually Equioidea)
for the Talk.Origins Archive. She really laid it on thick about
various genera and even species being directly ancestral to others.

Kenneth V. Kardong departed from the reigning ideology in his
2012 standard text in vertebrate comparative anatomy and evolution,
by devoting more space to the traditional Linnean classification
than to the cladistic classification of vertebrates.

> > rejects as "unscientific, because
> > subjective" any claim that either of the two earlier known
> > members of *Propleopinae* are ancestral to the the third,
> > or that the earliest is ancestral to the second.

The above book has some information to suggest that the earliest
genus in *Propleopinae* could be what I call a prime candidate
for direct ancestry to either of the other two, and the second a prime candidate for direct ancestry to the last.

Do you remember my exacting standards for the concept of "prime
candidate"? It risks missing out on a huge number of actual
ancestries, but that is a price one must pay for challenging a
deeply entrenched ideology.

> > That's because he pronounces the same verdict on ANY purported
> > example of an animal known only from fossils being ancestral
> > to any other animal, whether extinct or extant. That includes all
> > "subjective" talk about us being descended either from
> > *Australopithecus* or *Ardipithecus*, or even from *Homo erectus*.
>
> This seems a gratuitous attack on a third party,

It's not an attack at all; it's an acknowledgement of the hand
anyone who challenges the reigning ideology has been dealt.

You may see it as a personal attack because you are the prime
mover of that ideology in sci.bio.paleontology. Oxyaena does
subscribe to it, but I don't recall him/her arguing for it using the
terms in quotes. However, you've certainly created the impression
that your use of these terms are almost universally accepted among
systematists.

I sure do miss Cal King; he could muster arguments against the
ideology that I overlooked. As it is, the hand I've been dealt
is especially onerous.

> surely a violation of
> the general agreement.

On what grounds?

> Why, otherwise, are you bringing me into this
> discussion?

Bringing people into discussions is not a violation. Perhaps
you'd better refresh your memory of how our agreement was worded.

By the way, your use of "the general agreement" is somewhat
misleading. With Richard Norman gone [I sure do miss him] the
only people around who were parties to that agreement are you,
me, Oxyaena (very belatedly) and Erik Simpson. But none of y'all,
especially not Erik, contested my thesis that Erik repudiated
that agreement by substituting a different policy of his own
devising.

> I might also point out that your claim that I would reject this as
> unscientific is incorrect.

In this instance, "point out that" = assert without proof

> You just misunderstand the proper means of
> arriving at these conclusions, which is to optimize characters on trees
> to determine the states at ancestral nodes, and thus the course of
> evolutionary change.

So far from misunderstanding them, I have incorporated them into my
definition of "prime ancestor candidate" -- characters
explicitly, optimization and "evolutionary change" implicitly via
the very concept of one species being ancestral to another.

Peter Nyikos
Professor of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

University of South Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

[John Harshman]

On 6/21/18 7:04 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Monday, June 18, 2018 at 9:21:03 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 6/18/18 5:42 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> On Saturday, June 16, 2018 at 9:23:58 PM UTC-4, Daud Deden wrote:
>>>
>>>> My opinion on the diet of pterosaurs is that the lca diet was that of a generalist which gradually speciated into ecological niches that promoted a preferred food type, eventually evolving a variety of specialized taxa with specialized diets, behaviour, mating rituals etc. My point being that if one begins with a specialist, it's too late, they are already likely doomed to extinction where climate/environment alters.
>>>>
>>>> Vague, but on the right foot, imo.
>>>
>>> Yes, but you have to consider the possibility that diet can change
>>> even after specialization. There are several examples of herbivores
>>> evolving into carnivores. The best known among mammals is *Thylacoleo*,
>>> a Pleistocene marsupial from a suborder of almost exclusively herbivores.
>>>
>>> There are also examples of herbivores evolving into opportunistic
>>> carnivores, like the well known black and brown rats. Such marsupials
>>> include three related kangaroos, the Early to Middle Miocene *Ekaltadeta*,
>>> the Early Pliocene *Jackmahoneya*, and the Pleistocene *Propleopus*.
>>>
>>> These were the three known members of the subfamily *Propleopinae*
>>> when the following book, where this information can be found on
>>> pp. 151-153, as well as a fine exposition on *Thylacoleo* on 105-106:
>>>
>>> _Prehistoric Animals of Australia and New Zealand: One Hundred
>>> Million Years of Evolution_, by John Long, Michael Archer,
>>> Timothy Flannery, and Suzanne Head, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.
>>>
>>>
>>> As you may know, John Harshman
>>
>> /John Harshman/paleontologists/
>
> Which ones?

Almost all, and most of the exceptions are aging out of the population.

> Kathleen Hunt certainly did not embrace the reigning
> ideology when she wrote the FAQ on Equidae (actually Equioidea)
> for the Talk.Origins Archive. She really laid it on thick about
> various genera and even species being directly ancestral to others.

Agreed, and she's an exception, assuming she's a paleontologist.

> Kenneth V. Kardong departed from the reigning ideology in his
> 2012 standard text in vertebrate comparative anatomy and evolution,
> by devoting more space to the traditional Linnean classification
> than to the cladistic classification of vertebrates.

Is he a paleontologist? Is what he did even an exception?

>>> rejects as "unscientific, because
>>> subjective" any claim that either of the two earlier known
>>> members of *Propleopinae* are ancestral to the the third,
>>> or that the earliest is ancestral to the second.
>
> The above book has some information to suggest that the earliest
> genus in *Propleopinae* could be what I call a prime candidate
> for direct ancestry to either of the other two, and the second a prime candidate for direct ancestry to the last.

Does it? What would that information be, and why does it suggest what
you say?

> Do you remember my exacting standards for the concept of "prime
> candidate"? It risks missing out on a huge number of actual
> ancestries, but that is a price one must pay for challenging a
> deeply entrenched ideology.

No, I don't remember. Remind me.

>>> That's because he pronounces the same verdict on ANY purported
>>> example of an animal known only from fossils being ancestral
>>> to any other animal, whether extinct or extant. That includes all
>>> "subjective" talk about us being descended either from
>>> *Australopithecus* or *Ardipithecus*, or even from *Homo erectus*.
>>
>> This seems a gratuitous attack on a third party,
>
> It's not an attack at all; it's an acknowledgement of the hand
> anyone who challenges the reigning ideology has been dealt.

You may be unconscious of the implications of your statements. You are
accusing me, personally, of being some kind of bigoted enforcer. That is
an attack, which you continue below.

> You may see it as a personal attack because you are the prime
> mover of that ideology in sci.bio.paleontology. Oxyaena does
> subscribe to it, but I don't recall him/her arguing for it using the
> terms in quotes. However, you've certainly created the impression
> that your use of these terms are almost universally accepted among
> systematists.

I see it as a personal attack because you call me out by name.

> I sure do miss Cal King; he could muster arguments against the
> ideology that I overlooked. As it is, the hand I've been dealt
> is especially onerous.

You misremember the power of Cal's arguments. And you have dealt your
own hand.

>> surely a violation of
>> the general agreement.
>
> On what grounds?

On the grounds that it's a personal attack, and not even an attempt to
argue with me but to inform another person, gratuitously, that I'm a
bigoted enforcer.

>> Why, otherwise, are you bringing me into this
>> discussion?
>
> Bringing people into discussions is not a violation. Perhaps
> you'd better refresh your memory of how our agreement was worded.

It's a violation if it's an attack.

> By the way, your use of "the general agreement" is somewhat
> misleading. With Richard Norman gone [I sure do miss him] the
> only people around who were parties to that agreement are you,
> me, Oxyaena (very belatedly) and Erik Simpson. But none of y'all,
> especially not Erik, contested my thesis that Erik repudiated
> that agreement by substituting a different policy of his own
> devising.

I suspect that nobody contested it because nobody considers it worth
talking about, not because they agree with you.

>> I might also point out that your claim that I would reject this as
>> unscientific is incorrect.
>
> In this instance, "point out that" = assert without proof

I presume that my claim that I wouldn't reject it as unscientific is
evidence that your claim to the contrary is incorrect. It seems that the
only way to maintain your claim is to add the claim that I'm lying. And
I explain below why I wouldn't reject it.

By the way, a point of clarification: "it" above does not refer to
claims of ancestry, which I do indeed reject as unscientific. It refers
to the bit about diet changing, etc., none of which requires assignment
of ancestry. The ancestry bit, in other words, adds nothing to the
analysis and might as well be left out.

>> You just misunderstand the proper means of
>> arriving at these conclusions, which is to optimize characters on trees
>> to determine the states at ancestral nodes, and thus the course of
>> evolutionary change.
>
> So far from misunderstanding them, I have incorporated them into my
> definition of "prime ancestor candidate" -- characters
> explicitly, optimization and "evolutionary change" implicitly via
> the very concept of one species being ancestral to another.

I'm not clear on what you mean by that.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, June 22, 2018 at 1:14:40 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 6/21/18 7:04 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Monday, June 18, 2018 at 9:21:03 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 6/18/18 5:42 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

> >>> There are several examples of herbivores
> >>> evolving into carnivores. The best known among mammals is *Thylacoleo*,
> >>> a Pleistocene marsupial from a suborder of almost exclusively herbivores.
> >>>
> >>> There are also examples of herbivores evolving into opportunistic
> >>> carnivores, like the well known black and brown rats. Such marsupials
> >>> include three related kangaroos, the Early to Middle Miocene *Ekaltadeta*,
> >>> the Early Pliocene *Jackmahoneya*, and the Pleistocene *Propleopus*.
> >>>
> >>> These were the three known members of the subfamily *Propleopinae*
> >>> when the following book, where this information can be found on
> >>> pp. 151-153, as well as a fine exposition on *Thylacoleo* on 105-106:
> >>>
> >>> _Prehistoric Animals of Australia and New Zealand: One Hundred
> >>> Million Years of Evolution_, by John Long, Michael Archer,
> >>> Timothy Flannery, and Suzanne Head, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> As you may know, John Harshman
> >>
> >> /John Harshman/paleontologists/
> >
> > Which ones?
>
> Almost all, and most of the exceptions are aging out of the population.

And so the anti-ancestry-designation ideology continues to triumph.
On grounds you've never been able to rationally articulate.

> > Kathleen Hunt certainly did not embrace the reigning
> > ideology when she wrote the FAQ on Equidae (actually Equioidea)
> > for the Talk.Origins Archive. She really laid it on thick about
> > various genera and even species being directly ancestral to others.
>
> Agreed, and she's an exception, assuming she's a paleontologist.

I don't see how signififant that is: vertebrate paleontologists are
a tiny minority of all systematists.

> > Kenneth V. Kardong departed from the reigning ideology in his
> > 2012 standard text in vertebrate comparative anatomy and evolution,
> > by devoting more space to the traditional Linnean classification
> > than to the cladistic classification of vertebrates.
>
> Is he a paleontologist?

I don't think so, but he is probably a comparative anatomist,
which is at least as relevant to systematics.

> Is what he did even an exception?

I'd be very glad if it is not. It would mean that the your
cladophilia does not permeate the anti-direct-ancestry leading
ideology.

Cladophilia is my term for not tolerating the traditional
Linnean classification within the science of systematics.
You have consistently championed it in sci.bio.paleontology,
and this is the first hint I have that cladophiles do not make up
the overwhelming majority of systematists today.

I am repeating a line from above because of the many lines in between:

> >>> As you may know, John Harshman

> >>> rejects as "unscientific, because
> >>> subjective" any claim that either of the two earlier known
> >>> members of *Propleopinae* are ancestral to the the third,
> >>> or that the earliest is ancestral to the second.
> >
> > The above book has some information to suggest that the earliest
> > genus in *Propleopinae* could be what I call a prime candidate
> > for direct ancestry to either of the other two, and the second a prime
> > candidate for direct ancestry to the last.
>
> Does it? What would that information be, and why does it suggest what
> you say?

In many features in addition to size, *Jackamahoneya toxoniensis*
is intermediate in morphology as well as age between the species
of *Ekalatadeta* and those of *Propleopus*. [p. 151]

Note, I said "suggests". One would have to do a very detailed study
of the known fossils of these species in order to tell whether there is
any prime candidate for direct ancestry between some pair of them.

> > Do you remember my exacting standards for the concept of "prime
> > candidate"? It risks missing out on a huge number of actual
> > ancestries, but that is a price one must pay for challenging a
> > deeply entrenched ideology.
>
> No, I don't remember. Remind me.

No apomorphies that might rule out direct ancestry between two
different vertebrates of which we have reasonably complete skeletons.

I'm not conversant enough with non-vertebrate fossils to make any
similar suggestions about them. There is a botanist who has a much
less stringent criterion, but I don't know enough about botany
to argue with him.

>
> >>> That's because he pronounces the same verdict on ANY purported
> >>> example of an animal known only from fossils being ancestral
> >>> to any other animal, whether extinct or extant. That includes all
> >>> "subjective" talk about us being descended either from
> >>> *Australopithecus* or *Ardipithecus*, or even from *Homo erectus*.
> >>
> >> This seems a gratuitous attack on a third party,
> >
> > It's not an attack at all; it's an acknowledgement of the hand
> > anyone who challenges the reigning ideology has been dealt.
>
> You may be unconscious of the implications of your statements. You are
> accusing me, personally, of being some kind of bigoted enforcer.

Come off it. You have endorsed this very thing MANY times in the past,
and it survives in your talk near the beginning about how
the few paleontologists who do not share it are slowly dying off.

You are reading all kinds of things into what I've written that aren't
even suggested there, perhaps on account of that one word "verdict".

I'll postpone dealing with the rest of your post to give you
a chance to compare the beginning of this post to this end.


Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
U. of So. Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

[John Harshman]

On 6/26/18 6:35 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Friday, June 22, 2018 at 1:14:40 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 6/21/18 7:04 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> On Monday, June 18, 2018 at 9:21:03 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>>>> On 6/18/18 5:42 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
>>>>> There are several examples of herbivores
>>>>> evolving into carnivores. The best known among mammals is *Thylacoleo*,
>>>>> a Pleistocene marsupial from a suborder of almost exclusively herbivores.
>>>>>
>>>>> There are also examples of herbivores evolving into opportunistic
>>>>> carnivores, like the well known black and brown rats. Such marsupials
>>>>> include three related kangaroos, the Early to Middle Miocene *Ekaltadeta*,
>>>>> the Early Pliocene *Jackmahoneya*, and the Pleistocene *Propleopus*.
>>>>>
>>>>> These were the three known members of the subfamily *Propleopinae*
>>>>> when the following book, where this information can be found on
>>>>> pp. 151-153, as well as a fine exposition on *Thylacoleo* on 105-106:
>>>>>
>>>>> _Prehistoric Animals of Australia and New Zealand: One Hundred
>>>>> Million Years of Evolution_, by John Long, Michael Archer,
>>>>> Timothy Flannery, and Suzanne Head, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> As you may know, John Harshman
>>>>
>>>> /John Harshman/paleontologists/
>>>
>>> Which ones?
>>
>> Almost all, and most of the exceptions are aging out of the population.
>
> And so the anti-ancestry-designation ideology continues to triumph.
> On grounds you've never been able to rationally articulate.

We disagree on whether I've rationally articulated the grounds. Let me
try again. Let me start by noting that you are jumping around between
two separate issues: the acceptance of paraphyletic groups and the
assignment of particular fossil species as ancestors (or "ancestor
candidates). I (and most people who do classification and/or
phylogenetics) take exception to both of them, but they're different things.

Here, we're talking about the latter, "ancestor candidates". The main
objection to that practice is that we gain nothing by doing it. All that
we can make use of is contained in the phylogenetic tree on which
ancestral nodes are not identified with real specimens. It's from those
trees that we determine what ancestral states are, what transitions in
characters happened, even where and when those ancestors probably lived.
Designating ancestor candidates adds nothing to any of that.

Further, there is no way to confirm that the candidate really is an
ancestor, only that it sure resembles the inferred ancestor quite closely.

So, to summarize, the practice is both unnecessary and sterile.

>>> Kathleen Hunt certainly did not embrace the reigning
>>> ideology when she wrote the FAQ on Equidae (actually Equioidea)
>>> for the Talk.Origins Archive. She really laid it on thick about
>>> various genera and even species being directly ancestral to others.
>>
>> Agreed, and she's an exception, assuming she's a paleontologist.
>
> I don't see how signififant that is: vertebrate paleontologists are
> a tiny minority of all systematists.

I don't see your point. We were talking about paleontologists, weren't
we? We were talking about assigning fossils as ancestors, and the people
who would potentially do that are, for the most part, paleontologists.
There's very little opportunity to do such a thing unless you're dealing
with fossils. So paleontologists are the relevant people in this
particular discussion.

>>> Kenneth V. Kardong departed from the reigning ideology in his
>>> 2012 standard text in vertebrate comparative anatomy and evolution,
>>> by devoting more space to the traditional Linnean classification
>>> than to the cladistic classification of vertebrates.
>>
>> Is he a paleontologist?
>
> I don't think so, but he is probably a comparative anatomist,
> which is at least as relevant to systematics.

How is it "at least as relevant" as actually work on phylogeny and
classification? Almost every vertebrate paleontologist, incidentally, is
a systematist. Species descriptions, character states, and phylogenetic
trees are the meat of vertebrate paleo.

>> Is what he did even an exception?
>
> I'd be very glad if it is not. It would mean that the your
> cladophilia does not permeate the anti-direct-ancestry leading
> ideology.

Sorry, but I think you misunderstand the question. I don't mean to
question whether acceptance of paraphyletic groups is an outlier. We
were talking about paleontologists, and I question whether Kardong's
practice is relevant to the practice among paleontologists, or for that
matter to that of other systematists.

> Cladophilia is my term for not tolerating the traditional
> Linnean classification within the science of systematics.
> You have consistently championed it in sci.bio.paleontology,
> and this is the first hint I have that cladophiles do not make up
> the overwhelming majority of systematists today.

No such hint was intended or present.

> I am repeating a line from above because of the many lines in between:
>
>>>>> As you may know, John Harshman
>>>>> rejects as "unscientific, because
>>>>> subjective" any claim that either of the two earlier known
>>>>> members of *Propleopinae* are ancestral to the the third,
>>>>> or that the earliest is ancestral to the second.
>>>
>>> The above book has some information to suggest that the earliest
>>> genus in *Propleopinae* could be what I call a prime candidate
>>> for direct ancestry to either of the other two, and the second a prime
>>> candidate for direct ancestry to the last.
>>
>> Does it? What would that information be, and why does it suggest what
>> you say?
>
> In many features in addition to size, *Jackamahoneya toxoniensis*
> is intermediate in morphology as well as age between the species
> of *Ekalatadeta* and those of *Propleopus*. [p. 151]
>
> Note, I said "suggests". One would have to do a very detailed study
> of the known fossils of these species in order to tell whether there is
> any prime candidate for direct ancestry between some pair of them.

What you presumably mean is that one would have to code lots of
characters for all the species and perform a phylogenetic analysis,
since your criterion is identity with the inferred ancestor. Note that
the book itself makes no such claim, at least in what you've quoted so far.

>>> Do you remember my exacting standards for the concept of "prime
>>> candidate"? It risks missing out on a huge number of actual
>>> ancestries, but that is a price one must pay for challenging a
>>> deeply entrenched ideology.
>>
>> No, I don't remember. Remind me.
>
> No apomorphies that might rule out direct ancestry between two
> different vertebrates of which we have reasonably complete skeletons.

Is that the sole criterion, or do you also add a stratigraphic one?

So, in formal terms, you are saying that in a phlogenetic analysis, the
candidate is a taxon that's on a zero-length branch from the ancestral
node. As you point out, that's conservative in the sense that it might
eliminate some actual ancestors. But does it give us any confidence that
the candidate is an ancestor, and what can we usefully do with that
confidence?

> I'm not conversant enough with non-vertebrate fossils to make any
> similar suggestions about them. There is a botanist who has a much
> less stringent criterion, but I don't know enough about botany
> to argue with him.

Then let's keep this about vertebrates for now.

>>>>> That's because he pronounces the same verdict on ANY purported
>>>>> example of an animal known only from fossils being ancestral
>>>>> to any other animal, whether extinct or extant. That includes all
>>>>> "subjective" talk about us being descended either from
>>>>> *Australopithecus* or *Ardipithecus*, or even from *Homo erectus*.
>>>>
>>>> This seems a gratuitous attack on a third party,
>>>
>>> It's not an attack at all; it's an acknowledgement of the hand
>>> anyone who challenges the reigning ideology has been dealt.
>>
>> You may be unconscious of the implications of your statements. You are
>> accusing me, personally, of being some kind of bigoted enforcer.
>
> Come off it. You have endorsed this very thing MANY times in the past,
> and it survives in your talk near the beginning about how
> the few paleontologists who do not share it are slowly dying off.

Not sure what "this very thing" means. If it's "some kind of bigoted
enforcer", then I deny any such role. I merely reflect and agree with
the common practice among the current scientific community.

> You are reading all kinds of things into what I've written that aren't
> even suggested there, perhaps on account of that one word "verdict".

"Verdict" is one relevant word, but the entire mention of me is
gratuitous and leans toward an attack on my character. If an attack
isn't what you intended, then never mind. But it's still a gratuitous
introduction of my name and supposed attitudes (supposed because I do
not actually object to the quote).

> I'll postpone dealing with the rest of your post to give you
> a chance to compare the beginning of this post to this end.

If you didn't intend an attack on my character, I retract that claim.

[ruben safir]

On 06/08/2018 08:53 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> I forget what the technical term is for this kind of study,
> but it seems more like an "opinion poll" of the literature
> than an actual attempt to resolve the issue of what was
> eaten by which pterosaurs

Journal review

[Peter Nyikos]

That is your private opinion. I think paleontologists in the field,
trying to determine which fossils are potentially the most
enlightening, would differ. And this applies also to paraphyletic
taxa -- the closer the rank to species, the more valuable.

> All that
> we can make use of is contained in the phylogenetic tree on which
> ancestral nodes are not identified with real specimens.

"real specimens" is confusing the issue; "accepted species" is
where it is at. It would be sheer madness to claim that Equus
evolved from the type specimen of Eohippus.

And no phylogenetic tree can hold a candle to pictures of
skeletons of an ancestral candiate. Your computerized systematics
does NOTHING for researchers in the field.

> It's from those
> trees that we determine what ancestral states are, what transitions in
> characters happened, even where and when those ancestors probably lived.
> Designating ancestor candidates adds nothing to any of that.

"any of that" is of use only to people who look at phylogenetic
trees divorced from anatomy and fossils. But what do you
expect from a theory of systematics which is increasingly based
on EXTANT species?

>
> Further, there is no way to confirm that the candidate really is an
> ancestor, only that it sure resembles the inferred ancestor quite closely.

And that is very valuable information for people who cannot
get really good information out of lists of hundreds of
characters. You are falling prey to ye olde "forests for the trees" problem.

<small snip>

> >>> Kathleen Hunt certainly did not embrace the reigning
> >>> ideology when she wrote the FAQ on Equidae (actually Equioidea)
> >>> for the Talk.Origins Archive. She really laid it on thick about
> >>> various genera and even species being directly ancestral to others.
> >>
> >> Agreed, and she's an exception, assuming she's a paleontologist.
> >
> > I don't see how signififant that is: vertebrate paleontologists are
> > a tiny minority of all systematists.
>
> I don't see your point. We were talking about paleontologists, weren't
> we? We were talking about assigning fossils as ancestors, and the people
> who would potentially do that are, for the most part, paleontologists.

Yes, but they are hamstrung by a systematics that has less and
less to do with them, dominated by non-paleontologists like yourself.

> There's very little opportunity to do such a thing unless you're dealing
> with fossils. So paleontologists are the relevant people in this
> particular discussion.
>
> >>> Kenneth V. Kardong departed from the reigning ideology in his
> >>> 2012 standard text in vertebrate comparative anatomy and evolution,
> >>> by devoting more space to the traditional Linnean classification
> >>> than to the cladistic classification of vertebrates.
> >>
> >> Is he a paleontologist?
> >
> > I don't think so, but he is probably a comparative anatomist,
> > which is at least as relevant to systematics.
>
> How is it "at least as relevant" as actually work on phylogeny and
> classification? Almost every vertebrate paleontologist, incidentally, is
> a systematist.

...forced into a cladophile systematics.

> Species descriptions, character states, and phylogenetic
> trees are the meat of vertebrate paleo.

No, just the bare bones. The real meat is being able to reconstruct
actual species.

>
> >> Is what he did even an exception?
> >
> > I'd be very glad if it is not. It would mean that the your
> > cladophilia does not permeate the anti-direct-ancestry leading
> > ideology.
>
> Sorry, but I think you misunderstand the question. I don't mean to
> question whether acceptance of paraphyletic groups is an outlier. We
> were talking about paleontologists, and I question whether Kardong's
> practice is relevant to the practice among paleontologists, or for that
> matter to that of other systematists.
>
> > Cladophilia is my term for not tolerating the traditional
> > Linnean classification within the science of systematics.
> > You have consistently championed it in sci.bio.paleontology,
> > and this is the first hint I have that cladophiles do not make up
> > the overwhelming majority of systematists today.
>
> No such hint was intended or present.

"Is what he did even an exception." How am I to interpret that,
now that you have reverted to your old cladophile self?

Given the paucity of the fossil record, and apparent stasis in
some lines for millions of years, stratigraphy plays a decisive
role only in extreme cases.

> So, in formal terms, you are saying that in a phlogenetic analysis, the
> candidate is a taxon that's on a zero-length branch from the ancestral
> node. As you point out, that's conservative in the sense that it might
> eliminate some actual ancestors. But does it give us any confidence that
> the candidate is an ancestor, and what can we usefully do with that
> confidence?

See above about researchers in the field. Adding more data to a
reasonably complete specimen could either strengthen or falsify
the "ancestor candidate" designation. That's the way science
progresses, although bombast of "the debate is over" sort
undermines that progress.

> > I'm not conversant enough with non-vertebrate fossils to make any
> > similar suggestions about them. There is a botanist who has a much
> > less stringent criterion, but I don't know enough about botany
> > to argue with him.
>
> Then let's keep this about vertebrates for now.
>
> >>>>> That's because he pronounces the same verdict on ANY purported
> >>>>> example of an animal known only from fossils being ancestral
> >>>>> to any other animal, whether extinct or extant. That includes all
> >>>>> "subjective" talk about us being descended either from
> >>>>> *Australopithecus* or *Ardipithecus*, or even from *Homo erectus*.
> >>>>
> >>>> This seems a gratuitous attack on a third party,
> >>>
> >>> It's not an attack at all; it's an acknowledgement of the hand
> >>> anyone who challenges the reigning ideology has been dealt.
> >>
> >> You may be unconscious of the implications of your statements. You are
> >> accusing me, personally, of being some kind of bigoted enforcer.
> >
> > Come off it. You have endorsed this very thing MANY times in the past,
> > and it survives in your talk near the beginning about how
> > the few paleontologists who do not share it are slowly dying off.
>
> Not sure what "this very thing" means. If it's "some kind of bigoted
> enforcer", then I deny any such role.

That's YOUR verbiage, and has nothing to do with "the few paleontologists

who do not share it are slowly dying off."

> I merely reflect and agree with
> the common practice among the current scientific community.

At one point, the current scientific community was even more
certain that the sun revolved around the earth.

> > You are reading all kinds of things into what I've written that aren't
> > even suggested there, perhaps on account of that one word "verdict".
>
> "Verdict" is one relevant word, but the entire mention of me is
> gratuitous and leans toward an attack on my character. If an attack
> isn't what you intended, then never mind. But it's still a gratuitous
> introduction of my name and supposed attitudes (supposed because I do
> not actually object to the quote).

You represent "the common practice among the current scientific community"
in s.b.p. Not invoking your name would naturally lead to the reaction,
"what's this got to do with s.b.p."?

> > I'll postpone dealing with the rest of your post to give you
> > a chance to compare the beginning of this post to this end.
>
> If you didn't intend an attack on my character, I retract that claim.

Thank you. No such attack was intended, as I hope I've made clear.


Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Maths -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

[John Harshman]

Can you support this view of what paleontologists in the field find
useful? That's not my experience.

>> All that
>> we can make use of is contained in the phylogenetic tree on which
>> ancestral nodes are not identified with real specimens.
>
> "real specimens" is confusing the issue; "accepted species" is
> where it is at. It would be sheer madness to claim that Equus
> evolved from the type specimen of Eohippus.

Yes. That was not my intention.

> And no phylogenetic tree can hold a candle to pictures of
> skeletons of an ancestral candiate. Your computerized systematics
> does NOTHING for researchers in the field.

Of course it does. From a scientific perspective, you get exactly the
same thing from a hypothetical ancestor as from a fossil to which the
label is attached.

>> It's from those
>> trees that we determine what ancestral states are, what transitions in
>> characters happened, even where and when those ancestors probably lived.
>> Designating ancestor candidates adds nothing to any of that.
>
> "any of that" is of use only to people who look at phylogenetic
> trees divorced from anatomy and fossils. But what do you
> expect from a theory of systematics which is increasingly based
> on EXTANT species?

This is a complete misconception on your part. What I describe is
exactly what paleontologists do.

>> Further, there is no way to confirm that the candidate really is an
>> ancestor, only that it sure resembles the inferred ancestor quite closely.
>
> And that is very valuable information for people who cannot
> get really good information out of lists of hundreds of
> characters. You are falling prey to ye olde "forests for the trees" problem.

I think you are projecting your desire for some physical object to point
to onto scientists, who just don't do that sort of thing these days,
except when they're trying to hype a find to the public.

>>>>> Kathleen Hunt certainly did not embrace the reigning
>>>>> ideology when she wrote the FAQ on Equidae (actually Equioidea)
>>>>> for the Talk.Origins Archive. She really laid it on thick about
>>>>> various genera and even species being directly ancestral to others.
>>>>
>>>> Agreed, and she's an exception, assuming she's a paleontologist.
>>>
>>> I don't see how signififant that is: vertebrate paleontologists are
>>> a tiny minority of all systematists.
>>
>> I don't see your point. We were talking about paleontologists, weren't
>> we? We were talking about assigning fossils as ancestors, and the people
>> who would potentially do that are, for the most part, paleontologists.
>
> Yes, but they are hamstrung by a systematics that has less and
> less to do with them, dominated by non-paleontologists like yourself.

Do you even know any paleontologists? This characterization is, in my
experience, entirely false.

>> There's very little opportunity to do such a thing unless you're dealing
>> with fossils. So paleontologists are the relevant people in this
>> particular discussion.
>>
>>>>> Kenneth V. Kardong departed from the reigning ideology in his
>>>>> 2012 standard text in vertebrate comparative anatomy and evolution,
>>>>> by devoting more space to the traditional Linnean classification
>>>>> than to the cladistic classification of vertebrates.
>>>>
>>>> Is he a paleontologist?
>>>
>>> I don't think so, but he is probably a comparative anatomist,
>>> which is at least as relevant to systematics.
>>
>> How is it "at least as relevant" as actually work on phylogeny and
>> classification? Almost every vertebrate paleontologist, incidentally, is
>> a systematist.
>
> ...forced into a cladophile systematics.

What is your evidence that any forcing occurs?

>> Species descriptions, character states, and phylogenetic
>> trees are the meat of vertebrate paleo.
>
> No, just the bare bones. The real meat is being able to reconstruct
> actual species.

Not sure what you mean there. Do you mean reconstruct the anatomy of a
known fossil or to try to find an ancestor? Because those are two quite
different things. Anyway, assigning an actual species as ancestor
contributes nothing to either.

>>>> Is what he did even an exception?
>>>
>>> I'd be very glad if it is not. It would mean that the your
>>> cladophilia does not permeate the anti-direct-ancestry leading
>>> ideology.
>>
>> Sorry, but I think you misunderstand the question. I don't mean to
>> question whether acceptance of paraphyletic groups is an outlier. We
>> were talking about paleontologists, and I question whether Kardong's
>> practice is relevant to the practice among paleontologists, or for that
>> matter to that of other systematists.
>>
>>> Cladophilia is my term for not tolerating the traditional
>>> Linnean classification within the science of systematics.
>>> You have consistently championed it in sci.bio.paleontology,
>>> and this is the first hint I have that cladophiles do not make up
>>> the overwhelming majority of systematists today.
>>
>> No such hint was intended or present.
>
> "Is what he did even an exception." How am I to interpret that,
> now that you have reverted to your old cladophile self?

I mean it's not an exception to modern paleontologists being cladists
because Kardong isn't a paleontologist.

What sort of extreme cases? How do you recognize an extreme case?

>> So, in formal terms, you are saying that in a phlogenetic analysis, the
>> candidate is a taxon that's on a zero-length branch from the ancestral
>> node. As you point out, that's conservative in the sense that it might
>> eliminate some actual ancestors. But does it give us any confidence that
>> the candidate is an ancestor, and what can we usefully do with that
>> confidence?
>
> See above about researchers in the field. Adding more data to a
> reasonably complete specimen could either strengthen or falsify
> the "ancestor candidate" designation. That's the way science
> progresses, although bombast of "the debate is over" sort
> undermines that progress.

I'm not sure what above you are referring to. Adding more data could
strengthen a hypothesis or weaken it, but what good does it do,
scientifically, to declare an ancestor candidate or to strengthen such a
declaration? What can we learn from it that we can't learn without it?

>>> I'm not conversant enough with non-vertebrate fossils to make any
>>> similar suggestions about them. There is a botanist who has a much
>>> less stringent criterion, but I don't know enough about botany
>>> to argue with him.
>>
>> Then let's keep this about vertebrates for now.
>>
>>>>>>> That's because he pronounces the same verdict on ANY purported
>>>>>>> example of an animal known only from fossils being ancestral
>>>>>>> to any other animal, whether extinct or extant. That includes all
>>>>>>> "subjective" talk about us being descended either from
>>>>>>> *Australopithecus* or *Ardipithecus*, or even from *Homo erectus*.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> This seems a gratuitous attack on a third party,
>>>>>
>>>>> It's not an attack at all; it's an acknowledgement of the hand
>>>>> anyone who challenges the reigning ideology has been dealt.
>>>>
>>>> You may be unconscious of the implications of your statements. You are
>>>> accusing me, personally, of being some kind of bigoted enforcer.
>>>
>>> Come off it. You have endorsed this very thing MANY times in the past,
>>> and it survives in your talk near the beginning about how
>>> the few paleontologists who do not share it are slowly dying off.
>>
>> Not sure what "this very thing" means. If it's "some kind of bigoted
>> enforcer", then I deny any such role.
>
> That's YOUR verbiage, and has nothing to do with "the few paleontologists
> who do not share it are slowly dying off."

What very thing have I endorsed?

>> I merely reflect and agree with
>> the common practice among the current scientific community.
>
> At one point, the current scientific community was even more
> certain that the sun revolved around the earth.

Were they? How did you measure the degree of certainty? And that's a
universal argument against any view held by the scientific community at
any time, however well-reasoned and supported, and so not a worthwhile
argument to make.

>>> You are reading all kinds of things into what I've written that aren't
>>> even suggested there, perhaps on account of that one word "verdict".
>>
>> "Verdict" is one relevant word, but the entire mention of me is
>> gratuitous and leans toward an attack on my character. If an attack
>> isn't what you intended, then never mind. But it's still a gratuitous
>> introduction of my name and supposed attitudes (supposed because I do
>> not actually object to the quote).
>
> You represent "the common practice among the current scientific community"
> in s.b.p. Not invoking your name would naturally lead to the reaction,
> "what's this got to do with s.b.p."?

I doubt it would.

>>> I'll postpone dealing with the rest of your post to give you
>>> a chance to compare the beginning of this post to this end.
>>
>> If you didn't intend an attack on my character, I retract that claim.
>
> Thank you. No such attack was intended, as I hope I've made clear.

Excellent.

[Oxyaena]

Actually, no. I happen to be married to a paleontologist and he accepts
the scientific consensus that Linnaean taxonomy is outdated, and that
cladistics is a far better method at explaining evolutionary
relationships than Linnaean taxonomy, which was designed in an era
before evolution.

>
>> All that
>> we can make use of is contained in the phylogenetic tree on which
>> ancestral nodes are not identified with real specimens.
>
> "real specimens" is confusing the issue; "accepted species" is
> where it is at. It would be sheer madness to claim that Equus
> evolved from the type specimen of Eohippus.

Of course it would be sheer madness, just as much it would be madness to
declare that humans are descended from Lucy, the holotype of
*Australopithecus afarensis*. Designating any fossil taxon, no matter
how intermediate in form they are, as the ancestor of anything alive
today is always unwise specifically because most fossils lack DNA, and
only in a very few cases can we definitively say that a fossil species
is the ancestor of something alive today, one of those rare cases is the
fact that *Homo heidelbergensis* is ancestral to both Neanderthals,
Denisovans, and modern humans.

>
> And no phylogenetic tree can hold a candle to pictures of
> skeletons of an ancestral candiate. Your computerized systematics
> does NOTHING for researchers in the field.

You wouldn't know, since you've never done any fieldwork.

>
>
>> It's from those
>> trees that we determine what ancestral states are, what transitions in
>> characters happened, even where and when those ancestors probably lived.
>> Designating ancestor candidates adds nothing to any of that.
>
> "any of that" is of use only to people who look at phylogenetic
> trees divorced from anatomy and fossils. But what do you
> expect from a theory of systematics which is increasingly based
> on EXTANT species?
>

I happen to agree with you on this, but I also agree with Harshman
insomuch that extinct taxa are tricky to handle when it comes to
systematics precisely because we don't have any DNA from them, and it's
a general rule of biology that molecular phylogenetics is far superior
to any cladogram derived from purely morphological data alone.

>>
>> Further, there is no way to confirm that the candidate really is an
>> ancestor, only that it sure resembles the inferred ancestor quite closely.
>
> And that is very valuable information for people who cannot
> get really good information out of lists of hundreds of
> characters. You are falling prey to ye olde "forests for the trees" problem.
>
> <small snip>
>
>>>>> Kathleen Hunt certainly did not embrace the reigning
>>>>> ideology when she wrote the FAQ on Equidae (actually Equioidea)
>>>>> for the Talk.Origins Archive. She really laid it on thick about
>>>>> various genera and even species being directly ancestral to others.
>>>>
>>>> Agreed, and she's an exception, assuming she's a paleontologist.
>>>
>>> I don't see how signififant that is: vertebrate paleontologists are
>>> a tiny minority of all systematists.
>>
>> I don't see your point. We were talking about paleontologists, weren't
>> we? We were talking about assigning fossils as ancestors, and the people
>> who would potentially do that are, for the most part, paleontologists.
>
> Yes, but they are hamstrung by a systematics that has less and
> less to do with them, dominated by non-paleontologists like yourself.

You don't know any actual paleontologists, do you?

>
>
>
>> There's very little opportunity to do such a thing unless you're dealing
>> with fossils. So paleontologists are the relevant people in this
>> particular discussion.
>>
>>>>> Kenneth V. Kardong departed from the reigning ideology in his
>>>>> 2012 standard text in vertebrate comparative anatomy and evolution,
>>>>> by devoting more space to the traditional Linnean classification
>>>>> than to the cladistic classification of vertebrates.
>>>>
>>>> Is he a paleontologist?
>>>
>>> I don't think so, but he is probably a comparative anatomist,
>>> which is at least as relevant to systematics.
>>
>> How is it "at least as relevant" as actually work on phylogeny and
>> classification? Almost every vertebrate paleontologist, incidentally, is
>> a systematist.
>

[snip idiocy]

>
>> Species descriptions, character states, and phylogenetic
>> trees are the meat of vertebrate paleo.
>
> No, just the bare bones. The real meat is being able to reconstruct
> actual species.
>>
>>>> Is what he did even an exception?
>>>
>>> I'd be very glad if it is not. It would mean that the your
>>> cladophilia does not permeate the anti-direct-ancestry leading
>>> ideology.
>>
>> Sorry, but I think you misunderstand the question. I don't mean to
>> question whether acceptance of paraphyletic groups is an outlier. We
>> were talking about paleontologists, and I question whether Kardong's
>> practice is relevant to the practice among paleontologists, or for that
>> matter to that of other systematists.
>>
>>> Cladophilia is my term for not tolerating the traditional
>>> Linnean classification within the science of systematics.
>>> You have consistently championed it in sci.bio.paleontology,
>>> and this is the first hint I have that cladophiles do not make up
>>> the overwhelming majority of systematists today.
>>
>> No such hint was intended or present.
>
> "Is what he did even an exception." How am I to interpret that,
> now that you have reverted to your old cladophile self?

You are the one who coined the term "cladophilia". Cladophilia doesn't
exist. Just because you have a problem with the current scientific
consensus doesn't mean jack shit in the long run. Are you actually
suggesting that you, a mere mathematician with no actual expertise on
this subject, knows far more about the issue of taxonomy than actual
specialists in the relevant fields? Sorry, Peter, but Harshman has you
beat on this.

Logical fallacy of false equivocation. That scientific consensus was
derived from the data they had available at the time, as soon as new
evidence came about the paradigm shifted, as indeed it should be in
science. As new evidence came about that traditional Linnaean taxonomy
was insufficient in describing evolutionary relationships, and that a
new method, cladistics, far surpassed it in that area, the paradigm also
shifted.

Just because you have a problem with how the scientific consensus shifts
based on the available evidence doesn't mean that you're in the right,
and all of the experts are wrong. Indeed, that is how it should be, or
otherwise it wouldn't be science. Science is based off of the pursuit of
knowledge, and when new evidence comes about that overturns or modifies
old theories and hypotheses, those theories and hypotheses must be
revised or discarded in order to accommodate the new evidence, and the
scientific consensus shifts accordingly.

[ruben safir]

On 06/07/2018 03:42 PM, Pandora wrote:
>
> Pterosaurs are an extinct group of Mesozoic flying reptiles,

what is a reptile?

[ruben safir]

On 06/11/2018 11:12 AM, erik simpson wrote:
> I forget what the technical term is for this kind of study,

literature survey, retrospective
?

[erik simpson]

Where did you read that? I didn't say that. And you already responded to Peter
above, who did say that.

[ruben safir]

On 07/18/2018 12:52 PM, erik simpson wrote:
> Where did you read that? I didn't say that. And you already responded to Peter
> above, who did say that.

I said that. They are more common in drug research, but you have to be
real careful on the interpretation of data from diffierent resreach
projects.

[Peter Nyikos]

A good definition, what with the cladophile prohibition against
paraphyletic taxa in peer-reviewed publications in paleontology,
is "a non-avian, non-mammalian amniote."

If you are sufficiently old, you might remember that there was
talk in the popular literature, especially the part aimed at pre-adults,
of "the Age of Amphibians," "the Age of Reptiles," etc.
Back then, one of the classes of Vertebrata was called "Reptilia",
which precisely describes the set of organisms I defined at the
end of the last paragraph.

FTR, the others were Agnatha, Placodermi [extinct] Chondrichthyes,
Osteichthyes, Amphibia, Aves, and Mammalia. I don't know what they
would have done with conodonts, had they known their true nature.
Perhaps they would have been incorporated in Agnatha, or they
might have been given their own class, Conodonta.

It just now occurred to me: for decades there was a mystery marine
creature called Palaeospondylus. Romer and Colbert tentatively
put it in Placodermi. But the possibility occurred to me that
it might have been an "aberrant" [nowadays we would use a different
word, I think] member of Conodonta.


Peter Nyikos
Professor of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

[Peter Nyikos]

You don't support this denial below.

> I happen to be married to a paleontologist

Why don't you encourage him to post here? It's been ages since we
have had a professional paleontologist post to s.b.p. even as
frequently as once a year. Somewhere between June 2001 and December
2010, the last such regular left this newsgroup. John Harshman might
remember when that was, and possibly even who it was.

> and he accepts
> the scientific consensus that Linnaean taxonomy is outdated, and that
> cladistics is a far better method at explaining evolutionary
> relationships than Linnaean taxonomy,

You mean "phylogenetic relationships." Richard Zander is actively
promoting evolutionary trees, as opposed to phylogenetic trees.

His method uses the concept of "candidate ancestor" [I forget his term,
but I should look it up because his standards are more lax than
my "prime ancestor candidate"] and his evolutionary tree of monotremes,
for example, gives far more information than any phylogenetic tree
could.

For instance, there is a "popular consensus" that *Steropodon* was
a primitive platypus, which would have it more closely related
to Ornithorhynchus and Obdurodon than to Tachyglossus and Zaglossus.
But with the fossil gap so enormous, the Linnean solution would have
been to put the Cretaceous/Paleocene monotremes into a paraphyletic
taxon, perhaps on the level of an order, and I'm sure Zander would
be amenable to that.

> which was designed in an era
> before evolution.

And which was redesigned wonderfully by the time of Romer's 1945 classic
_Vertebrate Paleontology_ and is still respected by Kardong.

>
> >
> >> All that
> >> we can make use of is contained in the phylogenetic tree on which
> >> ancestral nodes are not identified with real specimens.
> >
> > "real specimens" is confusing the issue; "accepted species" is
> > where it is at. It would be sheer madness to claim that Equus
> > evolved from the type specimen of Eohippus.
>
> Of course it would be sheer madness, just as much it would be madness to
> declare that humans are descended from Lucy, the holotype of
> *Australopithecus afarensis*. Designating any fossil taxon,

Harshman very clearly did not talk about taxa, and your introduction
of "taxon" here marks a change of subject.

> no matter
> how intermediate in form they are, as the ancestor of anything alive
> today is always unwise specifically because most fossils lack DNA,

So you think it would be unwise to say that birds are descended from
non-avian members of the taxon Dinosauria?

If so, I'll be sure to e-mail Feduccia with this news; it would be
music to his ears.

Oh, wait: by barring paraphyletic taxa, even on the genus level,
you have created yourself a dandy loophole here. But it reinforces
what I wrote above about Monotremata.

> and only in a very few cases can we definitively say that a fossil species
> is the ancestor of something alive today, one of those rare cases is the
> fact that *Homo heidelbergensis* is ancestral to both Neanderthals,
> Denisovans, and modern humans.

What about the specimens in that south African cave? Don't they upset
this neat apple-cart? An issue of National Geographic two or three
years ago made it seem like there is too much uncertainty surrounding
these Homini.

>
> >
> > And no phylogenetic tree can hold a candle to pictures of
> > skeletons of an ancestral candiate. Your computerized systematics
> > does NOTHING for researchers in the field.
>
> You wouldn't know, since you've never done any fieldwork.

I have, but not on a level to really benefit. I note that you did
not deny what I wrote, but only resorted to a personal put-down.

Did you make loopholes for yourself in your agreement which I've
never seen?

Remainder deleted, to be replied to later.


Peter Nyikos
Professor of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
U. of So. Carolina in Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

[Oxyaena]

Yes, I do, and it isn't denial, fuckwad. I never insulted you in this
post, but apparently you're all too willing to act like the immature
sociopath you are rather than leave sbp out of the nonsense you conduct
in talk.origins.

>
>
>> I happen to be married to a paleontologist
>
> Why don't you encourage him to post here? It's been ages since we
> have had a professional paleontologist post to s.b.p. even as
> frequently as once a year. Somewhere between June 2001 and December
> 2010, the last such regular left this newsgroup. John Harshman might
> remember when that was, and possibly even who it was.
>
>> and he accepts
>> the scientific consensus that Linnaean taxonomy is outdated, and that
>> cladistics is a far better method at explaining evolutionary
>> relationships than Linnaean taxonomy,
>
> You mean "phylogenetic relationships." Richard Zander is actively
> promoting evolutionary trees, as opposed to phylogenetic trees.
>
> His method uses the concept of "candidate ancestor" [I forget his term,
> but I should look it up because his standards are more lax than
> my "prime ancestor candidate"] and his evolutionary tree of monotremes,
> for example, gives far more information than any phylogenetic tree
> could.
>
> For instance, there is a "popular consensus" that *Steropodon* was
> a primitive platypus, which would have it more closely related
> to Ornithorhynchus and Obdurodon than to Tachyglossus and Zaglossus.
> But with the fossil gap so enormous, the Linnean solution would have
> been to put the Cretaceous/Paleocene monotremes into a paraphyletic
> taxon, perhaps on the level of an order, and I'm sure Zander would
> be amenable to that.

And that is specifically why it is flawed, because cladistics was
invented in order to more accurately show relationships among organisms,
something Linnaean taxonomy, with its emphasis on paraphyletic
solutions, wouldn't be able to do.

>
>> which was designed in an era
>> before evolution.
>
> And which was redesigned wonderfully by the time of Romer's 1945 classic
> _Vertebrate Paleontology_ and is still respected by Kardong.
>
>
>>
>>>
>>>> All that
>>>> we can make use of is contained in the phylogenetic tree on which
>>>> ancestral nodes are not identified with real specimens.
>>>
>>> "real specimens" is confusing the issue; "accepted species" is
>>> where it is at. It would be sheer madness to claim that Equus
>>> evolved from the type specimen of Eohippus.
>>
>> Of course it would be sheer madness, just as much it would be madness to
>> declare that humans are descended from Lucy, the holotype of
>> *Australopithecus afarensis*. Designating any fossil taxon,
>
> Harshman very clearly did not talk about taxa, and your introduction
> of "taxon" here marks a change of subject.
>
>
>> no matter
>> how intermediate in form they are, as the ancestor of anything alive
>> today is always unwise specifically because most fossils lack DNA,
>
> So you think it would be unwise to say that birds are descended from
> non-avian members of the taxon Dinosauria?

You apparently misunderstand what I wrote, I was stating that specifying
any particular species as the ancestor of anything alive today is
unwise, not the clade they belong to.

>
> If so, I'll be sure to e-mail Feduccia with this news; it would be
> music to his ears.

Misinterpreting what I write seems to be a favored hobby of yours.

>
> Oh, wait: by barring paraphyletic taxa, even on the genus level,
> you have created yourself a dandy loophole here. But it reinforces
> what I wrote above about Monotremata.

There need not be any loophole. Again, you misinterpret what I write.
And yes, I do exclude paraphyletic taxa because it doesn't do a good job
of accurately showing evolutionary relationships among organisms.

>
>
>> and only in a very few cases can we definitively say that a fossil species
>> is the ancestor of something alive today, one of those rare cases is the
>> fact that *Homo heidelbergensis* is ancestral to both Neanderthals,
>> Denisovans, and modern humans.
>
> What about the specimens in that south African cave? Don't they upset
> this neat apple-cart? An issue of National Geographic two or three
> years ago made it seem like there is too much uncertainty surrounding
> these Homini.

*Homo naledi*? No, they are not the direct ancestor of anything alive
today, they are more primitive than even *Homo erectus* and more closely
resemble very early members of the genus *Homo*, such as *Homo habilis*
or even *Homo rudolfensis* than the more advanced species of *Homo*.

>
>>
>>>
>>> And no phylogenetic tree can hold a candle to pictures of
>>> skeletons of an ancestral candiate. Your computerized systematics
>>> does NOTHING for researchers in the field.
>>
>> You wouldn't know, since you've never done any fieldwork.
>
> I have, but not on a level to really benefit. I note that you did
> not deny what I wrote, but only resorted to a personal put-down. >
> Did you make loopholes for yourself in your agreement which I've
> never seen?
>

Once again, you lie about having never seen it. I was the one who came
to you to propose to let bygones be bygones. Your apparent self-serving
memory is intact, Nyikos.

> Remainder deleted, to be replied to later.

So you admit you'd rather insult me than partake in constructive
discussion on paleontology, since you haven't replied to any of my
otherr posts here yet.

[Peter Nyikos]

Where?

> and it isn't denial,

"Actually, no" is NOT a denial in your vocabulary???

> fuckwad. I never insulted you in this
> post,

"fuckwad" is not an insult in your vocabulary???

> but apparently you're all too willing to act like the immature
> sociopath you are rather than leave sbp out of the nonsense you conduct
> in talk.origins.

I see you did make ample loopholes in your "agreement" to
be civil, or whatever, in s.b.p. It sure isn't anything like the
agreement Richard Norman, John Harshman, Erik Simpson and I
made over 4 years ago to leave aside personal animosities in
talk.origins and to treat s.b.p. as a sort of "embassy," with
us behaving like good ambassadors.

I think it is within the bounds of that last bit to make
simple factual statements like the lack of support for a denial,
your private vocabulary notwithstanding.

FYI, I have always treated everyone here in s.b.p. except you
(especially during your "Thrinaxodon" incarnation) as though they
had been signatories, until mid-June.

At that point, Erik Simpson made it clear that he
was abandoning our original agreement by clamming
up in response to my asking him point blank whether he'd repudiated it.
In the preceding month, I had summoned all my
diplomatic talents to stay within the letter of the agreement,
and succeeded.

But your perennial animosity towards me prevented you from looking
closely at what I had been saying up to that point.

> >> I happen to be married to a paleontologist
> >
> > Why don't you encourage him to post here?

<crickets>

> > It's been ages since we
> > have had a professional paleontologist post to s.b.p. even as
> > frequently as once a year. Somewhere between June 2001 and December
> > 2010, the last such regular left this newsgroup. John Harshman might
> > remember when that was, and possibly even who it was.

No response. Are you beginning not to care about the future of
sci.bio.paleontology, the way you obviously did NOT care
in your Thrinaxodon incarnation?

> >> and he accepts
> >> the scientific consensus that Linnaean taxonomy is outdated, and that
> >> cladistics is a far better method at explaining evolutionary
> >> relationships than Linnaean taxonomy,
> >
> > You mean "phylogenetic relationships." Richard Zander is actively
> > promoting evolutionary trees, as opposed to phylogenetic trees.
> >
> > His method uses the concept of "candidate ancestor" [I forget his term,
> > but I should look it up because his standards are more lax than
> > my "prime ancestor candidate"] and his evolutionary tree of monotremes,
> > for example, gives far more information than any phylogenetic tree
> > could.
> >
> > For instance, there is a "popular consensus" that *Steropodon* was
> > a primitive platypus, which would have it more closely related
> > to Ornithorhynchus and Obdurodon than to Tachyglossus and Zaglossus.
> > But with the fossil gap so enormous, the Linnean solution would have
> > been to put the Cretaceous/Paleocene monotremes into a paraphyletic
> > taxon, perhaps on the level of an order, and I'm sure Zander would
> > be amenable to that.

>
> And that is specifically why it is flawed, because cladistics was
> invented in order to more accurately show relationships among organisms,

"relationships" is strangely defined in cladistic systematics,
as though Mitochondrial Eve were more closely related to you
and me than she was to her own mother.

You may think it is flawed to think about relationships in any
different way, but if so, I don't think you should discuss your
family tree in everyday conversation. Especially not if there
is a "long branch" leading to great-great grandchildren of a sibling of
of yours, making them all more closely related to you than you
are to your own grandparents.

> something Linnaean taxonomy, with its emphasis on paraphyletic
> solutions, wouldn't be able to do.

It can however do a better job with relationships the way ordinary people
discuss their relatives.

> >
> >> which was designed in an era
> >> before evolution.
> >
> > And which was redesigned wonderfully by the time of Romer's 1945 classic
> > _Vertebrate Paleontology_ and is still respected by Kardong.

I spent four decades getting a good feel for the advantages of
that wonderful redesign before I learned how cladists have
thrown out this baby with the phenetic bathwater.


My next reply to this post will pick up where this one leaves off.


Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
University of South Carolina

[Peter Nyikos]

On Tuesday, July 31, 2018 at 2:18:21 PM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
> On 7/31/2018 9:20 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Wednesday, July 11, 2018 at 11:26:09 PM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
> >> On 7/10/2018 3:00 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>> On Wednesday, June 27, 2018 at 8:57:34 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:


> >>>> All that
> >>>> we can make use of is contained in the phylogenetic tree on which
> >>>> ancestral nodes are not identified with real specimens.
> >>>
> >>> "real specimens" is confusing the issue; "accepted species" is
> >>> where it is at. It would be sheer madness to claim that Equus
> >>> evolved from the type specimen of Eohippus.
> >>
> >> Of course it would be sheer madness, just as much it would be madness to
> >> declare that humans are descended from Lucy, the holotype of
> >> *Australopithecus afarensis*. Designating any fossil taxon,
> >
> > Harshman very clearly did not talk about taxa, and your introduction
> > of "taxon" here marks a change of subject.

Below, you act as though you had written "species" instead of "taxon."
But I should have realized just how committed you are to cladophilia,
my term for the prohibition of paraphyletic taxa, including even
conditional hypotheses like "prime ancestor candidate".

> >> no matter
> >> how intermediate in form they are, as the ancestor of anything alive
> >> today is always unwise specifically because most fossils lack DNA,
> >
> > So you think it would be unwise to say that birds are descended from
> > non-avian members of the taxon Dinosauria?
>
> You apparently misunderstand what I wrote, I was stating that specifying
> any particular species

Yes, I failed to read your mind. You obviously confine "taxa" to
species because claiming that birds descended from unknown dinosaurs
is not implying that non-avian dinosaurs are a taxon. They are an
informal category as opposed to being a cladophile-sanctioned taxon.

> as the ancestor of anything alive today is
> unwise, not the clade they belong to.

Your use of "clade" shows how your mind is hamstrung in discussing
even such a common expression as "non-avian dinosaur."

>
> >
> > If so, I'll be sure to e-mail Feduccia with this news; it would be
> > music to his ears.
>
> Misinterpreting what I write seems to be a favored hobby of yours.

Calling failure to read your mind (e.g. taxon = species)
"misinterpreting" what you wrote is the real hobby on display here.

>
> >
> > Oh, wait: by barring paraphyletic taxa, even on the genus level,
> > you have created yourself a dandy loophole here. But it reinforces
> > what I wrote above about Monotremata.
>
> There need not be any loophole. Again, you misinterpret what I write.
> And yes, I do exclude paraphyletic taxa because it doesn't do a good job
> of accurately showing evolutionary relationships among organisms.

Correction: phylogenetic relationships, exemplified by
phylogenetic trees that put all organisms, living or dead,
at the tips of branches, obliterating all possible
ancestor-descendant relationships.

> >> and only in a very few cases can we definitively say that a fossil species
> >> is the ancestor of something alive today, one of those rare cases is the
> >> fact that *Homo heidelbergensis* is ancestral to both Neanderthals,
> >> Denisovans, and modern humans.
> >
> > What about the specimens in that south African cave? Don't they upset
> > this neat apple-cart? An issue of National Geographic two or three
> > years ago made it seem like there is too much uncertainty surrounding
> > these Homini.
>
> *Homo naledi*? No, they are not the direct ancestor of anything alive
> today, they are more primitive than even *Homo erectus* and more closely
> resemble very early members of the genus *Homo*, such as *Homo habilis*
> or even *Homo rudolfensis* than the more advanced species of *Homo*.

Thanks for bringing me up to date. Can you provide a good reference?


My concluding reply to this post will pick up where I left off here.


Peter Nyikos

Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
University of South Carolina

>
> >

> > If so, I'll be sure to e-mail Feduccia with this news; it would be
> > music to his ears.
>
> Misinterpreting what I write seems to be a favored hobby of yours.

Calling failure to read your mind (e.g. taxon = species)
"misinterpreting" what you wrote is the real hobby on display here.

>
> >
> > Oh, wait: by barring paraphyletic taxa, even on the genus level,
> > you have created yourself a dandy loophole here. But it reinforces
> > what I wrote above about Monotremata.
>
> There need not be any loophole. Again, you misinterpret what I write.
> And yes, I do exclude paraphyletic taxa because it doesn't do a good job
> of accurately showing evolutionary relationships among organisms.

Correction: phylogenetic relationships, exemplified by
phylogenetic trees that put all organisms, living or dead,
at the tips of branches, obliterating all possible
ancestor-descendant relationships.

> >> and only in a very few cases can we definitively say that a fossil species
> >> is the ancestor of something alive today, one of those rare cases is the
> >> fact that *Homo heidelbergensis* is ancestral to both Neanderthals,
> >> Denisovans, and modern humans.
> >
> > What about the specimens in that south African cave? Don't they upset
> > this neat apple-cart? An issue of National Geographic two or three
> > years ago made it seem like there is too much uncertainty surrounding
> > these Homini.
>
> *Homo naledi*? No, they are not the direct ancestor of anything alive
> today, they are more primitive than even *Homo erectus* and more closely
> resemble very early members of the genus *Homo*, such as *Homo habilis*
> or even *Homo rudolfensis* than the more advanced species of *Homo*.

Thanks for bringing me up to date. Can you provide a good reference?


My concluding reply to this post will pick up where I left off here.


Peter Nyikos

Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
University of South Carolina

>
> >

> > If so, I'll be sure to e-mail Feduccia with this news; it would be
> > music to his ears.
>
> Misinterpreting what I write seems to be a favored hobby of yours.

Calling failure to read your mind (e.g. taxon = species)
"misinterpreting" what you wrote is the real hobby on display here.

>
> >
> > Oh, wait: by barring paraphyletic taxa, even on the genus level,
> > you have created yourself a dandy loophole here. But it reinforces
> > what I wrote above about Monotremata.
>
> There need not be any loophole. Again, you misinterpret what I write.
> And yes, I do exclude paraphyletic taxa because it doesn't do a good job
> of accurately showing evolutionary relationships among organisms.

Correction: phylogenetic relationships, exemplified by
phylogenetic trees that put all organisms, living or dead,
at the tips of branches, obliterating all possible
ancestor-descendant relationships.

> >> and only in a very few cases can we definitively say that a fossil species
> >> is the ancestor of something alive today, one of those rare cases is the
> >> fact that *Homo heidelbergensis* is ancestral to both Neanderthals,
> >> Denisovans, and modern humans.
> >
> > What about the specimens in that south African cave? Don't they upset
> > this neat apple-cart? An issue of National Geographic two or three
> > years ago made it seem like there is too much uncertainty surrounding
> > these Homini.
>
> *Homo naledi*? No, they are not the direct ancestor of anything alive
> today, they are more primitive than even *Homo erectus* and more closely
> resemble very early members of the genus *Homo*, such as *Homo habilis*
> or even *Homo rudolfensis* than the more advanced species of *Homo*.

Thanks for bringing me up to date. Can you provide a good reference?


My concluding reply to this post will pick up where I left off here.


Peter Nyikos

Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

University of South Carolina
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Peter Nyikos]

Sorry about the two "hiccups" at the end of the post to which
I am replying. I've snipped them below.

> http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Peter Nyikos]

This is the third and concluding reply to Oxyaena's highly
critical post.

I forgot how very beneficial it was to have such aids even
on a low level, on one expedition.

We took copies of a laminated picture of various fossil shark teeth
as we panned for them along a riverbed.

I was able to identify almost every tooth -- a feat that would have
been impossible if we had instead been given a whole booklet of detailed
character descriptions. As always, a picture was worth a thousand words.

> > I note that you did
> > not deny what I wrote, but only resorted to a personal put-down.
> > Did you make loopholes for yourself in your agreement which I've
> > never seen?
> >

> Once again, you lie about having never seen it.

There is no lie involved. I never dreamed that the following
constituted our agreement -- I was thinking in terms of the
agreement I had made at least four years ago with Norman, Harshman,
and Simpson.

> I was the one who came
> to you to propose to let bygones be bygones. Your apparent self-serving
> memory is intact, Nyikos.

No, it is your perverse interpretation of "letting bygones be bygones"
that is apparently self-serving. You have been making vicious
attacks on me for what you don't consider to be "bygones".

And at least one of the ones you made in talk.origins is on
the Lamechian level of "seventy-sevenfold":

Lamech said to his wives,
"Adah and Zillah, hear my voice,
Lamech's wives, listen to what I have to say:
I killed a man for wounding me,
a boy for striking me.
Sevenfold revenge is taken for Cain,
but seventy-sevenfold for Lamech.
--Genesis 4: 23-24.


I had said you had shown ignorance of WHEN conditions of the universe
were such that life could begin somewhere. Your response was,
not to put too fine a point on it, a berserker rage.

Documentation on request.

By the way, Lamech probably killed his victims immediately,
before their offenses against him could become "bygones".
If so, he certainly stayed within the letter of your "agreement"
with me.

>
> > Remainder deleted, to be replied to later.
>
> So you admit you'd rather insult me than partake in constructive
> discussion on paleontology,

There was no discussion of paleontology there, only of an elitist
concept of "scientific consensus" that seeks to stifle all criticism
of popular trends in science. The people who respect the concept
of falsification are the big losers.

Can you try and argue otherwise without going into another
berserker rage?


By the way, you haven't responded to my post of yesterday
in reply to Ruben Safir, even though there was actual
paleontology at the end, not just systematics. Can you say "double standard"?

> since you haven't replied to any of my
> otherr posts here yet.

This kind of perverse logic is typical of the way you attack
statements before they can become bygones.

Except that the level has gone back down to "Cainian" rather
than "Lamechian."


It's a good thing I use "letting bygones be bygones" in a completely
different way than you do, otherwise there would be a never-ending
flamewar between us, with posts coming thick and fast before the
last post of the other party is too long ago to become a "bygone."


Peter Nyikos

Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

U. of So. Carolina
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Peter Nyikos]

Yes, and the article is especially valuable because it does not
go out on a limb with interpretations. It just tells, in great
detail, what data other studies have used, and their reasoning.

I documented a lot of this for Erik, who had neglected to mention any
of this, but simply quoted from the "Conclusions", in the following
post to this thread:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/RNINuDOndSM/LbZWAfndAwAJ
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2018 06:45:54 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <243ac0a3-c053-4659...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Pterosaur dietary hypotheses

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

Univ. of So. Carolina at Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Oxyaena]

I meant the post you originally responded to, jackass. Are you not able
to read?


[snip baseless slander]

>
>>>> I happen to be married to a paleontologist
>>>
>>> Why don't you encourage him to post here?
>
>
> <crickets>
>
>
>>> It's been ages since we
>>> have had a professional paleontologist post to s.b.p. even as
>>> frequently as once a year. Somewhere between June 2001 and December
>>> 2010, the last such regular left this newsgroup. John Harshman might
>>> remember when that was, and possibly even who it was.
>
> No response. Are you beginning not to care about the future of
> sci.bio.paleontology, the way you obviously did NOT care
> in your Thrinaxodon incarnation?

I *do* care about the future of sbp, you slanderous psychopath, but he
has not expressed interest in posting here.

>
>
>>>> and he accepts
>>>> the scientific consensus that Linnaean taxonomy is outdated, and that
>>>> cladistics is a far better method at explaining evolutionary
>>>> relationships than Linnaean taxonomy,
>>>
>>> You mean "phylogenetic relationships." Richard Zander is actively
>>> promoting evolutionary trees, as opposed to phylogenetic trees.
>>>
>>> His method uses the concept of "candidate ancestor" [I forget his term,
>>> but I should look it up because his standards are more lax than
>>> my "prime ancestor candidate"] and his evolutionary tree of monotremes,
>>> for example, gives far more information than any phylogenetic tree
>>> could.
>>>
>>> For instance, there is a "popular consensus" that *Steropodon* was
>>> a primitive platypus, which would have it more closely related
>>> to Ornithorhynchus and Obdurodon than to Tachyglossus and Zaglossus.
>>> But with the fossil gap so enormous, the Linnean solution would have
>>> been to put the Cretaceous/Paleocene monotremes into a paraphyletic
>>> taxon, perhaps on the level of an order, and I'm sure Zander would
>>> be amenable to that.
>
>>
>> And that is specifically why it is flawed, because cladistics was
>> invented in order to more accurately show relationships among organisms,
>
> "relationships" is strangely defined in cladistic systematics,
> as though Mitochondrial Eve were more closely related to you
> and me than she was to her own mother.

Fair point, but it's ultimately missing the bigger picture here.
Cladistics is meant to represent relationships between species-level and
higher taxa, not individuals.

>
> You may think it is flawed to think about relationships in any
> different way, but if so, I don't think you should discuss your
> family tree in everyday conversation. Especially not if there
> is a "long branch" leading to great-great grandchildren of a sibling of
> of yours, making them all more closely related to you than you
> are to your own grandparents.
>
>
>> something Linnaean taxonomy, with its emphasis on paraphyletic
>> solutions, wouldn't be able to do.
>
> It can however do a better job with relationships the way ordinary people
> discuss their relatives.

That's the whole reason why Linnaean taxonomy fails, because it doesn't
do a good job at explaining species-level or higher relationships
between taxa, only individuals. I am not on opposite sides here, Peter,
I too believe that modern taxonomy should be reformed or refined, with
less emphasis on ultra-cladistics, but I don't believe that Linnaean
taxonomy is the right way to do so.

>
>
>>>
>>>> which was designed in an era
>>>> before evolution.
>>>
>>> And which was redesigned wonderfully by the time of Romer's 1945 classic
>>> _Vertebrate Paleontology_ and is still respected by Kardong.
>
> I spent four decades getting a good feel for the advantages of
> that wonderful redesign before I learned how cladists have
> thrown out this baby with the phenetic bathwater.

That's fine, but cladistics is still ultimately a better taxonomic
system for the reasons I outlined above, but I do believe that
cladistics should be phased out, or at least refined as a model of
phylogeny, but I don't believe Linnaean taxonomy is the right model to
supersede cladistics, and until a better system comes along, I'm
sticking with cladistics. Do you understand my reasoning?

[ruben safir]

On 07/31/2018 08:47 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> "a non-avian, non-mammalian amniote."

ROFL!

It is interesting that an entire family that we all felt secure we
understood, Reptiles, ended up a non-existing phylogetic group. There
are no reptiles. We have Archosaurs, Squamata, Synapsida, Mammals,
Aves, Dinasoria, Testudinata..

Turles, Snakes and Crocs are less related to each other than Birds and
Crocs..

What an amazing discovery.

[erik simpson]

On Wednesday, August 1, 2018 at 9:08:42 AM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Wednesday, July 18, 2018 at 2:55:50 PM UTC-4, ruben safir wrote:
> > On 07/18/2018 12:52 PM, erik simpson wrote:
> > > Where did you read that? I didn't say that. And you already responded to Peter
> > > above, who did say that.
> >
> >
> > I said that. They are more common in drug research, but you have to be
> > real careful on the interpretation of data from diffierent resreach
> > projects.
>
> Yes, and the article is especially valuable because it does not
> go out on a limb with interpretations. It just tells, in great
> detail, what data other studies have used, and their reasoning.
>
> I documented a lot of this for Erik, who had neglected to mention any
> of this, but simply quoted from the "Conclusions", in the following
> post to this thread:
>
> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/RNINuDOndSM/LbZWAfndAwAJ
> Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2018 06:45:54 -0700 (PDT)
> Message-ID: <243ac0a3-c053-4659...@googlegroups.com>
> Subject: Re: Pterosaur dietary hypotheses
>

Is what you just quoted in

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/XkQnfhHW0Hs/8c4mA4zfBQAJ

different from what I had done previously?

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/RNINuDOndSM/dNSnC25OAwAJ

It isn't obvious to me, although I could (and did) thank you for your efforts.
They were not "counterproductive".

[Oxyaena]

On 7/31/2018 4:35 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
[snip mindless bullshit I've already addressed in my prior post to this
and have no interest in repeating my explanations]

>>
>> *Homo naledi*? No, they are not the direct ancestor of anything alive
>> today, they are more primitive than even *Homo erectus* and more closely
>> resemble very early members of the genus *Homo*, such as *Homo habilis*
>> or even *Homo rudolfensis* than the more advanced species of *Homo*.
>
> Thanks for bringing me up to date. Can you provide a good reference?
>
>

Yes.

Berger, L. R.; Hawks, J.; Dirks, P. HGM; Elliott, M.; Roberts, E. M. (9
May 2017). "Homo naledi and Pleistocene hominin evolution in
subequatorial Africa". eLife. 6. doi:10.7554/eLife.24234.

They concluded in their analysis that *Homo naledi* was not a direct
ancestor of modern humans, and was probably an offshoot branch of
*Homo*, with *H. naledi* retaining features found in australopithecines
that were lost in later human species, *H. erectus* onward. An
interesting feature of the site where they discovered *H. naledi* was
that the individual fossils appear to have been deliberately disposed
of, akin to a burial, albeit there is no evidence there is that there
was anything symbolic about it, and the burial appears to have been more
of a "removing the trash" scenario than anything else, since I imagine
even primitive hominins wouldn't have wanted corpses stinking up their
living quarters.

[Oxyaena]

On 8/1/2018 10:51 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> This is the third and concluding reply to Oxyaena's highly
> critical post.
>
> On Tuesday, July 31, 2018 at 2:18:21 PM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
>> On 7/31/2018 9:20 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> On Wednesday, July 11, 2018 at 11:26:09 PM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
>>>> On 7/10/2018 3:00 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
>>>>> And no phylogenetic tree can hold a candle to pictures of
>>>>> skeletons of an ancestral candiate. Your computerized systematics
>>>>> does NOTHING for researchers in the field.
>>>>
>>>> You wouldn't know, since you've never done any fieldwork.
>>>
>>> I have, but not on a level to really benefit.
>
> I forgot how very beneficial it was to have such aids even
> on a low level, on one expedition.
>
> We took copies of a laminated picture of various fossil shark teeth
> as we panned for them along a riverbed.

Interesting, I live by a quarry with rocks of Devonian age filled to the
fucking brim with ancient Devonian-age fish. It's the same area where
the holotype specimen of *Dunkleosteus* was found. I`m sure you know
where that was. I went on a few fossil hunting trips in my days,
although since Ohio mostly contains only Paleozoic era sediments I've
only ever found fossilized shells of various invertebrates, I do have a
few trilobite fossils at my house.

>
> I was able to identify almost every tooth -- a feat that would have
> been impossible if we had instead been given a whole booklet of detailed
> character descriptions. As always, a picture was worth a thousand words.
>
>
>
>>> I note that you did
>>> not deny what I wrote, but only resorted to a personal put-down.
>>> Did you make loopholes for yourself in your agreement which I've
>>> never seen?
>>>
>
>> Once again, you lie about having never seen it.

[snip slander]

>
>
>
>>
>>> Remainder deleted, to be replied to later.
>>
>> So you admit you'd rather insult me than partake in constructive
>> discussion on paleontology,
>
> There was no discussion of paleontology there, only of an elitist
> concept of "scientific consensus" that seeks to stifle all criticism
> of popular trends in science. The people who respect the concept
> of falsification are the big losers.
>
> Can you try and argue otherwise without going into another
> berserker rage?

Can you?

>
>
> By the way, you haven't responded to my post of yesterday
> in reply to Ruben Safir, even though there was actual
> paleontology at the end, not just systematics. Can you say "double standard"?
>

I didn't read all the way through, since the cladophobe bullshit
infested every corner of my screen I quickly clicked out of it lest I
get your disease.

>
>> since you haven't replied to any of my
>> otherr posts here yet.
>
> This kind of perverse logic is typical of the way you attack
> statements before they can become bygones.
>
> Except that the level has gone back down to "Cainian" rather
> than "Lamechian."
>
>
> It's a good thing I use "letting bygones be bygones" in a completely
> different way than you do, otherwise there would be a never-ending
> flamewar between us, with posts coming thick and fast before the
> last post of the other party is too long ago to become a "bygone."

You are the master of psychological projection of your own faults unto
others. I wonder if you teach the art of psychological projection to
your pupils, Nyikos.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, August 1, 2018 at 1:16:36 PM UTC-4, ruben safir wrote:
> On 07/31/2018 08:47 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > "a non-avian, non-mammalian amniote."
>
> ROFL!
>
> It is interesting that an entire family that we all felt secure we
> understood, Reptiles, ended up a non-existing phylogetic group.

You are well over a century behind the times, Ruben. A century ago,
no paleontologist worth his salt was ignorant of the fact that
mammals and birds descended from what was universally understood
to be the class Reptilia.

But I don't think ANY paleontologist lost any sleep over the fact
that he was dealing in what is NOW called a "paraphyletic taxon."
I've often posted to s.b.p. about how Romer, near the beginning
of his classic _Vertebrate Paleontolgy_ (1945 edition) talked
about "horizontal" and "vertical" subdivisions of a phylogenetic
tree, and gave pros [1] and cons of each method.

The "horizontal" explicitly produced paraphyletic taxa, [2] the
"vertical" just as explicitly produced clades -- the only things
that Harshman and Oxyaena (and, if she is telling the truth, her husband)
will ever call "taxa".

Over a century of systematics (when nobody thought there was
anything the matter with horizontal subdivisions that produced
paraphyletic taxa) shoved down the memory hole.

[1] I'll gladly expound on the pros of the traditional classification,
if you are willing to listen.

[2] It has to be done the way Romer illustrated it, to avoid
polyphyletic taxa. Those were pretty well purged from the formal
classification, with the exception of Holostei, whose polyphyletic
nature was explicitly acknowledged by Romer [yes, he used the
word "polyphyletic"].

> There
> are no reptiles. We have Archosaurs, Squamata, Synapsida, Mammals,
> Aves, Dinasoria, Testudinata..

Your use of lower case "reptiles" makes this a fallacious pastiche of formal
and everyday usage.

> Turles, Snakes and Crocs are less related to each other than Birds and
> Crocs..
>
> What an amazing discovery.

Done, and taken in its stride, before any of us was born.

You have a lot of catching up to do. :-)


Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

PS You snipped the part about Palaeospondylus. THAT was paleontology,
as opposed to systematics, and I was hoping it would interest
you on that account.

Btw, did you see how I told Oxyaena to go easy on you
for posting something more appropriate to talk.origins or
to the defunct newsgroup, sci.bio.evolution?
The reason we keep talking about systematics here is
out of courtesy to John Harshman, because Giganews
does not support sci.bio.systematics.

[John Harshman]

It's not necessary to be insulting. You can achieve your points without
it. Added bonus: you can feel smug for maintaining good manners.

[John Harshman]

On 8/1/18 1:09 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> The "horizontal" explicitly produced paraphyletic taxa, [2] the
> "vertical" just as explicitly produced clades -- the only things
> that Harshman and Oxyaena (and, if she is telling the truth, her husband)
> will ever call "taxa".

I just want to point out that you don't know if Oxyaena is male or
female, and you don't know if the paleontologists he/she is married to
is male or female. I think you're just unconsciously supposing that all
paleontologists are male and just running with that.

[Oxyaena]

It *could* be a homosexual relationship, after all. As I`m sure you all
know, I am notoriously averse to giving out personal information, and
the one about my spouse is true, but I'm not giving up information on my
gender, nor my spouse's gender.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, August 1, 2018 at 5:56:30 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 8/1/18 1:09 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > The "horizontal" explicitly produced paraphyletic taxa, [2] the
> > "vertical" just as explicitly produced clades -- the only things
> > that Harshman and Oxyaena (and, if she is telling the truth, her husband)
> > will ever call "taxa".
>
> I just want to point out that you don't know if Oxyaena is male or
> female, and you don't know if the paleontologists he/she is married to
> is male or female.

The default assumption on "husband" is that its spouse is female,
even these days; but I see your point.

While still working with the default assumption, I told jillery
the following last night in talk.origins:


[1] Oh, yes, Oxyaena gave away the fact in sci.bio.paleontology that
she is married [2] and her husband is a paleontologist.

He won't post there, according to Oxyaena. I wonder whether that has
anything to do with the way Oxyaena, under her old T-name, went
on a spam rampage that almost destroyed sci.bio.paleontology.

But I think it's safe to assume she will never tell
the truth about the connection, if any.

Jillery and Thrinaxodon [I refer to Oxyaena that way whenever
she goes into a berserker rage] both answered that post in their
own inimitable ways, but neither of them tried to "un-out"
Oxyaena as a woman, so they might want to address this issue
in talk.origins, like Oxyaena did here in reply to you.

By the way, the "agreement" Oxyaena and I had is nothing like
the one Richard Norman and Erik Simpson and you and I had
for four years or so, and Thrinaxodon was too incensed to
tell me I misinterpreted her/his use of "bygones". Until
'e does, I will just go on my interpretation.

> I think you're just unconsciously supposing that all
> paleontologists are male and just running with that.

If you really think this, then you are probably in at least an
intermediate stage of Alzheimer's, having forgotten
all about the thread I set up with "Christine Janis"
in the Subject line in talk.origins late last year.
And you had participated in it, pretty copiously at that.

And I know Christine is a woman. In fact, I told people
in the OP of that thread that Tom Holtz [1] had written
in sci.bio.paleontology [2] that Christine was already
known back then as "Our Lady of the Ungulates."

[1] Respected dinosaur paleontologist with whom I had a
number of informative discussions in s.b.p. back in
its golden age. His was the first name that popped
into my mind when I told Oxyaena that we hadn't had
a professional paleontologist regular [3] here for years.

[2] In 1997, if memory serves. Not knowing who Christine
was back then, I had replied to a post of hers saying,
"You write with the ease and grace of a professional, Christine.
What is your specialty?" That's when Tom gave me that
information, prefaced by a remark that Christine was
too modest to brag about such designations.

[3] Christine doesn't count. She posts here in s.b.p. less than once
a year, if that.

Christine is the widow (by ca. two decades by now) of the man
who co-originated an astronomically based theory
of periodic mass extinctions, Jack Sepkoski.
[I'll have to look up the spelling.]

No, it wasn't the Nemesis theory, but (IIRC) one involving passage
through the galactic plane. He and his co-author wrote it up
in a PNAS article.

Peter Nyikos

[John Harshman]

On 8/2/18 9:19 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Wednesday, August 1, 2018 at 5:56:30 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 8/1/18 1:09 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> The "horizontal" explicitly produced paraphyletic taxa, [2] the
>>> "vertical" just as explicitly produced clades -- the only things
>>> that Harshman and Oxyaena (and, if she is telling the truth, her husband)
>>> will ever call "taxa".
>>
>> I just want to point out that you don't know if Oxyaena is male or
>> female, and you don't know if the paleontologists he/she is married to
>> is male or female.
>
> The default assumption on "husband" is that its spouse is female,
> even these days; but I see your point.

"Husband" is your word, not Oxyaena's. He/she just said he/she was
married to a paleontologist.

[Peter Nyikos]

I forgot that I had deduced the spouse's status from the following excerpt:

I happen to be married to a paleontologist and he accepts
the scientific consensus

So your first sentence is correct, but the "just" makes
your second sentence at best incomplete.

Yes, "he" could indeed refer to a homosexual relationship. Or it
could refer to a "transgender" relationship with either spouse
being of either biological sex. You originally suggested the latter
as a possibilty, with the spouse being an XX transgendered "male".

However, I'm just going to let the sleeping dogs lie [double entendre
intended] on the status of this topic in talk.origins. If jillery
and/or Oxyaena want to do something about the part you snipped below,
it's completely up to them.

As for the evidence of (at least) moderate Alzheimer's that you
also snipped, it took place in s.b.p. and so I wouldn't be
importing it from talk.origins if I mentioned it again.

If you don't mis-remember what our original agreement
contained, you know that this wouldn't violate it.
Of course, like any good ambassador, I'll be extremely
judicious about the circumstances under which I'd mention it again.

Peter Nyikos

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, August 1, 2018 at 1:32:04 PM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
> On 8/1/2018 10:51 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > This is the third and concluding reply to Oxyaena's highly
> > critical post.
> >
> > On Tuesday, July 31, 2018 at 2:18:21 PM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
> >> On 7/31/2018 9:20 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>> On Wednesday, July 11, 2018 at 11:26:09 PM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
> >>>> On 7/10/2018 3:00 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >
> >>>>> And no phylogenetic tree can hold a candle to pictures of
> >>>>> skeletons of an ancestral candiate. Your computerized systematics
> >>>>> does NOTHING for researchers in the field.
> >>>>
> >>>> You wouldn't know, since you've never done any fieldwork.
> >>>
> >>> I have, but not on a level to really benefit.
> >
> > I forgot how very beneficial it was to have such aids even
> > on a low level, on one expedition.
> >
> > We took copies of a laminated picture of various fossil shark teeth
> > as we panned for them along a riverbed.

Here, I snipped a reminisce by you about an expedition of yours, without
any attempt to connect it with the opening lines of this post.

And those lines have been reinforced by what I wrote next,
while your reminisce did nothing to undermine them.

> >
> > I was able to identify almost every tooth -- a feat that would have
> > been impossible if we had instead been given a whole booklet of detailed
> > character descriptions. As always, a picture was worth a thousand words.

I rest my case -- for now.

> >
> >
> >>> I note that you did
> >>> not deny what I wrote, but only resorted to a personal put-down.

You do not deny this.

> >>> Did you make loopholes for yourself in your agreement which I've
> >>> never seen?
> >>>
> >
> >> Once again, you lie about having never seen it.

I explained why it was not a lie, but you snipped the explanation
along with what you falsely label thus:

> [snip slander]

The following was written with complete sincerity, with lots
of evidence to back it up:

________________repost of portion of your snip _______________

I had said you had shown ignorance of WHEN conditions of the universe
were such that life could begin somewhere. Your response was,
not to put too fine a point on it, a berserker rage.

Documentation on request.

________________end of repost __________________________


One might quibble about the words "berserker rage," but I
think that putting a finer point on it would make the description
even more unflattering. Here is what I was describing:


===================== repost with deletion marked by [...] ====================

On Thursday, July 26, 2018 at 10:05:03 AM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
> On 7/25/2018 9:17 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

[...]

> > you *also* showed your ignorance about when life
> > could reasonably be expected to arise and evolve in our universe.
> > Since I pointed it out diplomatically, you simply breezed by the
> > correction as though it hadn't been there, and even complimented
> > me about how flame free my posting was.
>
>
> You never demonstrated any ignorance about my supposed lack of knowledge
> on the probability of life arising elsewhere in our universe, zero.

You are shamelessly changing the subject by ignoring the word "when"
in what I wrote. You made the following benighted claim in your OP
to the thread on the Fermi paradox:

Considering that the universe is only 13.8 billion years old, and the
universe only settled down enough for life to develop some 4.5 Ga, ala
when our Solar System formed, this makes sense. There simply hasn't been
enough time for alien civilizations to spread through the galaxy.

In my reply to this bit, I wrote:

Hold it! The stars that become supernovae were much more common
in the universe during the first billion years than later. They
typically have a life span of a million years or less.

So the universe had plenty of heavy elements by about 11 billion
years ago, and there are stars that old that have plenty of them.

By the way, the planetary system within 100 light years of us
that SETI considered the best target for a long time
is Delta Pavonis, a G star like our sun. It is estimated to be
over 6.5 billion years old, yet has a higher percentage of
heavy elements than our sun.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Pavonis



> My posts to Glenn, Bill, and others had nothing to do with abiogenesis,
> they only dealt with matters of biology and occasionally chemistry and
> planetary geology, nothing to do with the actual matter of abiogenesis,
> which I purposefully left out because my OP on the subject of
> astrobiology had nothing to do with it.

Again you change the subject. The excerpt above was from my very
first post to the thread, and it had nothing to do with your replies
to others. It consisted of a VERY detailed reply to your OP:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/jI6KRtcqX30/0E97QgICBwAJ
Subject: Re: Potential answers to the Fermi Paradox
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2018 14:55:48 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <7f9ca503-e43b-445e...@googlegroups.com>

Your reply to that post stopped long before the part I quoted up
there, but you left it all in.

> It's like you like to read
> between the lines, and then forget to read the lines. And the few
> details I gave about the matter of abiogenesis in that thread, showed I
> have a substantial amount of knowledge of the subject you are accusing
> me to be ignorant of.

There is no such accusation above. It is YOU who are reading between
the lines: Everything I wrote in the part to which you are responding
referred back to your OP, nothing else.


> In short, another demonstration of your
> dishonesty, blatant distorting of the facts, and outright slander. I
> could sue you for libel, Peter, but unlike you I`m a decent person so I
> won't.

All you are doing here is showing how relentless your perennial vendetta
against me is. If you were to sue me for libel, you would not
only lose, you would be hit by a countersuit for frivolous lawsuit.

Remainder deleted, to be replied to later.

Peter Nyikos
Professor of Mathematics

Univ. of South Carolina at Columbia --standard disclaimer--
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ end of excerpt ++++++++++++++++

Here is data for easy access to the above post:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/Xub9hqEyM0A/l7gpBG1zCAAJ
Subject: Re: The evolution of the bacterial flagellum: For Peter
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2018 10:08:39 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <8174902f-492c-4d99...@googlegroups.com>


The only reply anyone has made to the above post was you,
digging yourself in deeper with a two-line reply:

[snip mindless bullshit]

Fixed it for you, Petey.

And so you displayed shamelessness and arrogance on top of the
dishonesty documented above.


Peter Nyikos

[Oxyaena]

On 8/3/2018 6:15 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
[snip dishonest lying, snip personal attacks on my character, snip
fuckwad snipping on-topic content from the post he was replying to since
apparently he'd rather flame me than engage in on-topic discussionm I
was reminiscing about a previous expedition because he reminisced about
a previous expedition, snip him hypocritically accusing me of undergoing
a berserker rage, snip more slander, snip yet even more slander etc etc etc]

This gets tiresome, Peter. I`m not going to dignify your bullshit
anymore by responding to you, consider this my last response to you,
Peter, period.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, August 1, 2018 at 1:19:57 PM UTC-4, erik simpson wrote:
> On Wednesday, August 1, 2018 at 9:08:42 AM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Wednesday, July 18, 2018 at 2:55:50 PM UTC-4, ruben safir wrote:
> > > On 07/18/2018 12:52 PM, erik simpson wrote:
> > > > Where did you read that? I didn't say that. And you already responded to Peter
> > > > above, who did say that.
> > >
> > >
> > > I said that. They are more common in drug research, but you have to be
> > > real careful on the interpretation of data from diffierent resreach
> > > projects.
> >
> > Yes, and the article is especially valuable because it does not
> > go out on a limb with interpretations. It just tells, in great
> > detail, what data other studies have used, and their reasoning.
> >
> > I documented a lot of this for Erik, who had neglected to mention any
> > of this,

...and who shows no sign below of having read about these positive
features this time around, none of which are hinted at in the "Conclusions".

> > but simply quoted from the "Conclusions", in the following
> > post to this thread:
> >
> > https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/RNINuDOndSM/LbZWAfndAwAJ
> > Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2018 06:45:54 -0700 (PDT)
> > Message-ID: <243ac0a3-c053-4659...@googlegroups.com>
> > Subject: Re: Pterosaur dietary hypotheses

Those "Conclusions" would have misled me into thinking that this
study was just another "poll" of conclusions by the authors of
the papers studied. Fortunately, I decided to read the actual
paper despite the zero encouragement either the abstract or
the conclusions gave me.

The authors just didn't know how to advertise the body of their
paper properly. I've run into this kind of shortcoming before.
Once I even refereed a paper for Proceedings of the American
Mathematical society where I suggested ways of vastly improving
the abstract, and the author was suitably grateful for that.

> >
>
> Is what you just quoted in
>
> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/XkQnfhHW0Hs/8c4mA4zfBQAJ
>
> different from what I had done previously?

We've been through this before, Erik, right on this "Pterosaur
dietary hypotheses Subject, line.

You are like a person asking,

"Is the ream of white paper that you gave me for my printer different
from the ream of black paper that I gave you for yours?"

> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/RNINuDOndSM/dNSnC25OAwAJ
>
> It isn't obvious to me,

"It isn't obvious to me -- after all, black and white are both colors."

> although I could (and did) thank you for your efforts.
> They were not "counterproductive".

But yours were, back then. They were misleading, and I told you why
back then, too.


You even stated when I was done that you had made a
mistake in replying to me. And now you've repeated the
same mistake.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

U. of South Carolina in Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, August 3, 2018 at 7:55:54 PM UTC-4, Oxyaena made a
"promise" at the end of what 'e wrote, which 'e "broke" today.

> On 8/3/2018 6:15 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

> [snip dishonest lying,

There was none. No wonder you snipped whatever you thought
you could label "lying'.

> snip personal attacks on my character,

Totally deserved, and so you snipped it, lest you catch the "disease"
of asking yourself whether they were justified.

> snip fuckwad snipping on-topic content from the post

Said content was but accurately summarized, but I didn't want
it to distract from the issue at hand, which included your lie,

You wouldn't know, since you've never done any fieldwork.

> he was replying to since
> apparently he'd rather flame me than engage in on-topic discussion

You mean further swapping of irrelevant anecdotes, further obscuring
your lie quoted above. This is what you are describing below.

> I was reminiscing about a previous expedition because he reminisced about
> a previous expedition,

To illustrate a point, which you totally ignored, being satisfied
with the lie you wrote above.

My point ended with a quote to "a picture is worth a thousand words"
and your anecdote never had anything to that, one way OR the other.

> snip him hypocritically accusing me of undergoing
> a berserker rage,

There is no hypocrisy in using a term which I explained in
the post you to which you are replying, AFTER I had made
the accusation in the PRECEDING post.

And the reason there is no hypocrisy is that I've never
written anything even 10% as over-the-top in reaction to
ANYTHING, not even something as over-the-top as your
reaction.

And, since your reaction to my saying something perfectly ACCURATE
about a display of ignorance by you, I can even say that I'vea
NEVER reacted, when confronted with that kind of evidence, with anything EXCEPT, sometimes, an admission that I had screwed up.

THAT is the biggest difference between you and me, not the
difference you ostentatiously alleged in talk.origins --
that you don't talk about people behind their backs, but say
negative things only to their face.

Even if that had been true, the difference was not as great
as the one I've described just now.

But you made it false on the thread "Paraphyly vs. Monophyly"
in two replies to John Harshman.


> snip more slander,

...by yourself. What you are snipping is documentation of that.

> snip yet even more slander etc etc etc]

More of the same slander by YOU.

>
> This gets tiresome, Peter. I`m not going to dignify your bullshit
> anymore by responding to you, consider this my last response to you,
> Peter, period.

I initially toyed with the idea of replying "Good riddance," like
John Harshman did in talk.origins about a sci.bio.paleontology regular,
but I realized that even if you DID mean it, you would insult me
behind my back in reply to others.

And you did (see above), thereby showing an alleged difference between us
to be no difference at all.

And then you surprised even me by breaking this "promise" so
very soon -- today, less than a week later, on that same mis-named thread,
"Paraphyly vs. Monophyly" -- but only after having talked behind my back
about me in a derogatory way.

Peter Nyikos

[Oxyaena]

On 8/8/2018 12:24 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Friday, August 3, 2018 at 7:55:54 PM UTC-4, Oxyaena made a
> "promise" at the end of what 'e wrote, which 'e "broke" today.
>
>
>> On 8/3/2018 6:15 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
>> [snip dishonest lying,
>
> There was none. No wonder you snipped whatever you thought
> you could label "lying'.

I didn't "think" I could label it lying, it was lying, you turd.

>
>
>> snip personal attacks on my character,
>
> Totally deserved, and so you snipped it, lest you catch the "disease"
> of asking yourself whether they were justified.

Double standards noted. So my attacks on *your* character aren't
justified, but the baseless assertions you pass off as fact about *my*
character are? What universe do you think this is, Nyikos? There's
nothing myopic about it, your attacks on my character aren't justified,
no matter what word games you will inevitably play to make it seem so.

>
>
>
>> snip fuckwad snipping on-topic content from the post
>
> Said content was but accurately summarized, but I didn't want
> it to distract from the issue at hand, which included your lie,

How was it a "lie"? You're a mathematician, not a paleontologist,
digging for fossils on a late summer afternoon with your grandkids
doesn't count as "field work".

>
> You wouldn't know, since you've never done any fieldwork.
>
>> he was replying to since
>> apparently he'd rather flame me than engage in on-topic discussion
>
> You mean further swapping of irrelevant anecdotes

Psychological projection noted. And before you accuse me of "snipping",
it wasn't a lie. See above.

>
>> I was reminiscing about a previous expedition because he reminisced about
>> a previous expedition,
>
> To illustrate a point, which you totally ignored, being satisfied
> with the lie you wrote above.

To illustrate a *fallacious* point that still doesn't refute my original
statement, that you've never done fieldwork, since you're a
mathematician, not a paleontologist, and digging for fossils on a late
summer afternoon with your grandkids doesn't count as fieldwork.

>
> My point ended with a quote to "a picture is worth a thousand words"
> and your anecdote never had anything to that, one way OR the other.

Why should I have responded to it? There was no need to.

>
>
>> snip him hypocritically accusing me of undergoing
>> a berserker rage,
>
> There is no hypocrisy in using a term which I explained in
> the post you to which you are replying, AFTER I had made
> the accusation in the PRECEDING post.

Dishonesty noted.

>
> And the reason there is no hypocrisy is that I've never
> written anything even 10% as over-the-top in reaction to
> ANYTHING, not even something as over-the-top as your
> reaction.

Bullshit noted.

>
> And, since your reaction to my saying something perfectly ACCURATE
> about a display of ignorance by you, I can even say that I'vea
> NEVER reacted, when confronted with that kind of evidence, with anything EXCEPT, sometimes, an admission that I had screwed up.
>

You've failed to conclusively demonstrate that I am ignorant on the
issue of abiogenesis, as Casanova pointed out to you in a thread you
cowardly ran away from.

> THAT is the biggest difference between you and me, not the
> difference you ostentatiously alleged in talk.origins --
> that you don't talk about people behind their backs, but say
> negative things only to their face.

There was nothing "alleged" about it.

>
> Even if that had been true, the difference was not as great
> as the one I've described just now.
>
>

What "difference"? All you've done is assert without basis things that
are not evident, a la lying.

>
>
>> snip more slander,
>
> ...by yourself. What you are snipping is documentation of that.

Bullshit.

>
>
>> snip yet even more slander etc etc etc]
>
> More of the same slander by YOU.

Again, let's add "slander" to the list of words you don't understand but
keep using anyways. Look up the difference between "slander" and
"libel", and then file suit against me, only for it to be inevitably
dismissed due to its frivolous nature.

>
>>
>> This gets tiresome, Peter. I`m not going to dignify your bullshit
>> anymore by responding to you, consider this my last response to you,
>> Peter, period.
>
> I initially toyed with the idea of replying "Good riddance," like
> John Harshman did in talk.origins about a sci.bio.paleontology regular,
> but I realized that even if you DID mean it, you would insult me
> behind my back in reply to others.

Like you acknowledge you do below?

>
> And you did (see above), thereby showing an alleged difference between us
> to be no difference at all.

Wow, you *are* capable of self-reflection! This is the day pigs will
fly, I say! What we have here is the incredibly rare acknowledgement of
Nyikos's own faults.


[snip mindless drivel]





>
> Peter Nyikos

A name which will live in infamy among the denizens of Usenet.

>

[Peter Nyikos]

A lot of your post below looks like it was ghost-written by jillery.


But then, maybe you are just aping jillery's dirty debating tactics,
several of them, including an adaptation of one of jillery's favorite
mindless formulae to your own nefarious purposes. Instead of writing...

Your unjustified attacks on my character disqualify you
from complaining about my allegedly unjustified attacks
on your character

...you adapted the wording to your own nefarious ends:

[copied from below]

> So my attacks on *your* character aren't
> justified, but the baseless assertions you pass off as fact about *my*
> character are?

You also adapted a notorious flaming of Martin Harran by your
flatterer jillery. That flaming used the word "universe" in the same way
you did in your next sentence,

What universe do you think this is, Nyikos?

Anyway, it's clear that you are just trolling below, trying to make
me waste my time with your off-topic, slanderous insults that you don't
even intend to document.

Did you really mean it when you showed gratitude to John Harshman
for stopping a far more innocent tiff between Erik Simpson and myself?
Were you just pretending to prefer on-topic discussion while hoping
to be able to flame me relentlessly at the earliest opportunity?

Or are you deep in the throes of a bipolar disorder, first sincerely
wanting to have on-topic discussions and now just as sincerely
preferring off-topic garbage born of pure spite?


Either way, I'm not going to respond to your charges below until
you start documenting some of them.

And if you retort, "Your words here are sufficient documentation,"
or words to that effect, you will merely be adopting another
dirty debating tactic of jillery and of innumerable internet trolls.


Peter Nyikos

PS I've left in everything you posted below, on the off chance
that you might want to give REAL documentation for something,
anything you wrote.

[erik simpson]

Chill, Oxy. He isn't worth the aggravation you're seeming to feel.

[Oxyaena]

On 8/13/2018 11:41 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> A lot of your post below looks like it was ghost-written by jillery.
>

If you truly think so then you're a bonafide paranoiac, since Jillery
had nothing to do with this post.

>
> But then, maybe you are just aping jillery's dirty debating tactics,
> several of them, including an adaptation of one of jillery's favorite
> mindless formulae to your own nefarious purposes. Instead of writing...
>

Baseless accusations noted.

> Your unjustified attacks on my character disqualify you
> from complaining about my allegedly unjustified attacks
> on your character
>
> ...you adapted the wording to your own nefarious ends:
>
> [copied from below]
>> So my attacks on *your* character aren't
>> justified, but the baseless assertions you pass off as fact about *my*
>> character are?
>
> You also adapted a notorious flaming of Martin Harran by your
> flatterer jillery. That flaming used the word "universe" in the same way
> you did in your next sentence,

Baseless accusations noted. Note that you didn't do anything to counter
what I wrote, thereby implicitly agreeing with it.

>
> What universe do you think this is, Nyikos?
>
> Anyway, it's clear that you are just trolling below, trying to make
> me waste my time with your off-topic, slanderous insults that you don't
> even intend to document.

Psychological projection noted. Do the words "self-reflection" mean
anything to you?

>
> Did you really mean it when you showed gratitude to John Harshman
> for stopping a far more innocent tiff between Erik Simpson and myself?
> Were you just pretending to prefer on-topic discussion while hoping
> to be able to flame me relentlessly at the earliest opportunity?
>

Hypocrisy noted.

> Or are you deep in the throes of a bipolar disorder, first sincerely
> wanting to have on-topic discussions and now just as sincerely
> preferring off-topic garbage born of pure spite?

Psychological projection and baseless insults noted.

>
>
> Either way, I'm not going to respond to your charges below until
> you start documenting some of them.

This is the typical tactic that you use when you are faced with
inconveniences, but I shouldn't be surprised that you're a coward, it's
just who you are.

>
> And if you retort, "Your words here are sufficient documentation,"
> or words to that effect,

That's because they *are*, asshole, all one needs to do is scroll
through the thread so what I mean.

> you will be merely adopting another dirty debating tactic of jillery and of innumerable internet trolls.
>

Baseless accusations noted.

>
> Peter Nyikos
>
> PS I've left in everything you posted below

So for *once* you're giving the whole truth rather than dishonestly
snipping whatever inconveniences you from my posts? Perhaps there's
slightly more hope for you than anyone thought.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Monday, August 13, 2018 at 1:29:35 PM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
> On 8/13/2018 11:41 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >
> > A lot of your post below looks like it was ghost-written by jillery.
> >
>
> If you truly think so then you're a bonafide paranoiac, since Jillery
> had nothing to do with this post.

Simulation of failure to understand plain English ("looks like") noted.

>
> >
> > But then, maybe you are just aping jillery's dirty debating tactics,
> > several of them, including an adaptation of one of jillery's favorite
> > mindless formulae to your own nefarious purposes. Instead of writing...
> >
>
> Baseless accusations noted.

Simulation of failure to understand plain English ("maybe"), noted.

> > Your unjustified attacks on my character disqualify you
> > from complaining about my allegedly unjustified attacks
> > on your character
> >
> > ...you adapted the wording to your own nefarious ends:
> >
> > [copied from below]
> >> So my attacks on *your* character aren't
> >> justified, but the baseless assertions you pass off as fact about *my*
> >> character are?
> >
> > You also adapted a notorious flaming of Martin Harran by your
> > flatterer jillery. That flaming used the word "universe" in the same way
> > you did in your next sentence,
>
> Baseless accusations noted. Note that you didn't do anything to counter
> what I wrote, thereby implicitly agreeing with it.

Jillery-style illogic, noted. The counter has been amply done
in the following post, and there was no need to repeat it:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/nNhyCBvm_9k/S6_G3GPNDQAJ
Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2018 18:35:34 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <4cda99f4-dae5-4e50...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Paraphyly vs. Monophyly

>
> >
> > What universe do you think this is, Nyikos?
> >
> > Anyway, it's clear that you are just trolling below, trying to make
> > me waste my time with your off-topic, slanderous insults that you don't
> > even intend to document.
>
> Psychological projection noted.

That's a typical "adult troll" version of the childish
"I know you are, but what am I?"

> Do the words "self-reflection" mean
> anything to you?

Of course, but they mean next to nothing to you, by all available evidence.

> >
> > Did you really mean it when you showed gratitude to John Harshman
> > for stopping a far more innocent tiff between Erik Simpson and myself?
> > Were you just pretending to prefer on-topic discussion while hoping
> > to be able to flame me relentlessly at the earliest opportunity?
> >
>
> Hypocrisy noted.

There is no hypocrisy, idiot, in the plain questions from which you
are running away with this two word comeback.

> > Or are you deep in the throes of a bipolar disorder, first sincerely
> > wanting to have on-topic discussions and now just as sincerely
> > preferring off-topic garbage born of pure spite?
>
> Psychological projection and baseless insults noted.

You are afraid to answer ALL the above questions. Is anyone surprised
by this, even yourself?

>
> >
> >
> > Either way, I'm not going to respond to your charges below until
> > you start documenting some of them.
>
> This is the typical tactic that you use when you are faced with
> inconveniences, but I shouldn't be surprised that you're a coward, it's
> just who you are.

The post I've linked above provides more documentation than you ever
did for any of your accusations against me. Your pathetic response
only shows how incapable of self-reflection you are.

>
> >
> > And if you retort, "Your words here are sufficient documentation,"
> > or words to that effect,
>
> That's because they *are*, asshole, all one needs to do is scroll
> through the thread so what I mean.

That is all one needs to see that you have no evidence whatsoever
for your accusations, not even a description of any alleged behaviors
which might be used as documentation.

>
> > you will be merely adopting another dirty debating tactic of jillery and of innumerable internet trolls.
> >
>
> Baseless accusations noted.

Evidently you have been so steeped in trollish behavior by others over the
years on the internet that you can no longer comprehend the dishonesty of it
all by now.

Peter Nyikos

> >
> > Peter Nyikos
> >
> > PS I've left in everything you posted below

>>on the off chance that you might want to give
>>REAL documentation for something,
>>anything you wrote.

Those last three lines are a restoration of something you
dishonestly snipped, because it was inconvenient for you
to have the plain fact that you STILL aren't documenting anything
to be so glaringly obvious.

> So for *once* you're giving the whole truth rather than dishonestly
> snipping whatever inconveniences you from my posts?

There never was any dishonest snipping by me, and I defy you
to find even one example that you allege to be one.

> Perhaps there's
> slightly more hope for you than anyone thought.

You are too self-centered to use words like "than anyone thought"
without those words being blatantly dishonest.

Peter Nyikos

[Daud Deden]

On Thursday, June 7, 2018 at 3:42:33 PM UTC-4, Pandora wrote:
> Pterosaur dietary hypotheses: a review of ideas and approaches.
>
> Abstract
>
> Pterosaurs are an extinct group of Mesozoic flying reptiles, whose
> fossil record extends from approximately 210 to 66 million years ago.
> They were integral components of continental and marginal marine
> ecosystems, yet their diets remain poorly constrained. Numerous
> dietary hypotheses have been proposed for different pterosaur groups,
> including insectivory, piscivory, carnivory, durophagy,
> herbivory/frugivory, filter-feeding and generalism. These hypotheses,
> and subsequent interpretations of pterosaur diet, are supported by
> qualitative (content fossils, associations, ichnology, comparative
> anatomy) and/or quantitative (functional morphology, stable isotope
> analysis) evidence. Pterosaur dietary interpretations are scattered
> throughout the literature with little attention paid to the supporting
> evidence. Reaching a robustly supported consensus on pterosaur diets
> is important for understanding their dietary evolution, and their
> roles in Mesozoic ecosystems. A comprehensive examination of the
> pterosaur literature identified 314 dietary interpretations (dietary
> statement plus supporting evidence) from 126 published studies.
> Multiple alternative diets have been hypothesised for most principal
> taxonomic pterosaur groups. Some groups exhibit a high degree of
> consensus, supported by multiple lines of evidence, while others
> exhibit less consensus. Qualitative evidence supports 87.3% of dietary
> interpretations, with comparative anatomy most common (62.1% of
> total). More speciose groups of pterosaur tend to have a greater range
> of hypothesised diets. Consideration of dietary interpretations within
> alternative phylogenetic contexts reveals high levels of consensus
> between equivalent monofenestratan groups, and lower levels of
> consensus between equivalent non-monofenestratan groups. Evaluating
> the possible non-biological controls on apparent patterns of dietary
> diversity reveals that numbers of dietary interpretations through time
> exhibit no correlation with patterns of publication (number of
> peer-reviewed publications through time). 73.8% of dietary
> interpretations were published in the 21st century. Overall, consensus
> interpretations of pterosaur diets are better accounted for by
> non-biological signals, such as the impact of the respective quality
> of the fossil record of different pterosaur groups on research levels.
> That many interpretations are based on qualitative, often untestable
> lines of evidence adds significant noise to the data. More
> experiment-led pterosaur dietary research, with greater consideration
> of pterosaurs as organisms with independent evolutionary histories,
> will lead to more robust conclusions drawn from repeatable results.
> This will allow greater understanding of pterosaur dietary diversity,
> disparity and evolution and facilitate reconstructions of Mesozoic
> ecosystems.
>
> Open access:
> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/brv.12431

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-45171201

[Peter Nyikos]

If what Oxyaena wrote were true, my charges would jolly well be
worth the aggravation of typing what 'e typed.

Just look at your own aggravation over my characterizing a post
you did as "counterproductive." You even reopened that old wound
of yours after over a month had passed, because the memory of it was
so aggravating.

Do you have a weird system of morality whereby my characterization
was worse than multiple slanders?

Or do you have a system (all too common, alas) of subjectivistic
morality whereby things are either good or bad on the basis of
whether they are favorable or unfavorable for yourself and those
people (if any) about whom you really care?

Peter Nyikos

[Oxyaena]

On 8/13/2018 5:16 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Monday, August 13, 2018 at 1:29:35 PM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
>> On 8/13/2018 11:41 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>>
>>> A lot of your post below looks like it was ghost-written by jillery.
>>>
>>
>> If you truly think so then you're a bonafide paranoiac, since Jillery
>> had nothing to do with this post.
>
> Simulation of failure to understand plain English ("looks like") noted.
>

Verbal acrobatics noted.

>>
>>>
>>> But then, maybe you are just aping jillery's dirty debating tactics,
>>> several of them, including an adaptation of one of jillery's favorite
>>> mindless formulae to your own nefarious purposes. Instead of writing...
>>>
>>
>> Baseless accusations noted.
>
> Simulation of failure to understand plain English ("maybe"), noted.
>

Verbal acrobatics and intellectual cowardice noted.

>
>>> Your unjustified attacks on my character disqualify you
>>> from complaining about my allegedly unjustified attacks
>>> on your character
>>>
>>> ...you adapted the wording to your own nefarious ends:
>>>
>>> [copied from below]
>>>> So my attacks on *your* character aren't
>>>> justified, but the baseless assertions you pass off as fact about *my*
>>>> character are?
>>>
>>> You also adapted a notorious flaming of Martin Harran by your
>>> flatterer jillery. That flaming used the word "universe" in the same way
>>> you did in your next sentence,
>>
>> Baseless accusations noted. Note that you didn't do anything to counter
>> what I wrote, thereby implicitly agreeing with it.
>
> Jillery-style illogic, noted. The counter has been amply done
> in the following post, and there was no need to repeat it:
>
> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/nNhyCBvm_9k/S6_G3GPNDQAJ
> Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2018 18:35:34 -0700 (PDT)
> Message-ID: <4cda99f4-dae5-4e50...@googlegroups.com>
> Subject: Re: Paraphyly vs. Monophyly

Verbal acrobatics and baseless accusations noted.

>
>
>>
>>>
>>> What universe do you think this is, Nyikos?
>>>
>>> Anyway, it's clear that you are just trolling below, trying to make
>>> me waste my time with your off-topic, slanderous insults that you don't
>>> even intend to document.
>>
>> Psychological projection noted.
>
> That's a typical "adult troll" version of the childish
> "I know you are, but what am I?"

Verbal acrobatics noted. What's the point in replying with anything else
to you, when you've sufficiently proven time and time again arguing with
you is like banging your head on a wall repeatedly while idiotically
hoping you won't get brain damage from doing so.

>
>
>> Do the words "self-reflection" mean
>> anything to you?
>
> Of course, but they mean next to nothing to you, by all available evidence.
>

Psychological projection and empty insults noted.

>>>
>>> Did you really mean it when you showed gratitude to John Harshman
>>> for stopping a far more innocent tiff between Erik Simpson and myself?
>>> Were you just pretending to prefer on-topic discussion while hoping
>>> to be able to flame me relentlessly at the earliest opportunity?
>>>
>>
>> Hypocrisy noted.
>
> There is no hypocrisy, idiot, in the plain questions from which you
> are running away with this two word comeback.

Cowardice noted.

>
>
>>> Or are you deep in the throes of a bipolar disorder, first sincerely
>>> wanting to have on-topic discussions and now just as sincerely
>>> preferring off-topic garbage born of pure spite?
>>
>> Psychological projection and baseless insults noted.
>
> You are afraid to answer ALL the above questions. Is anyone surprised
> by this, even yourself?

Contrast this with your refusal to answer any of MY questions.

>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Either way, I'm not going to respond to your charges below until
>>> you start documenting some of them.
>>
>> This is the typical tactic that you use when you are faced with
>> inconveniences, but I shouldn't be surprised that you're a coward, it's
>> just who you are.
>
> The post I've linked above provides more documentation than you ever
> did for any of your accusations against me. Your pathetic response
> only shows how incapable of self-reflection you are.

Lack of sufficient documentation and continued baseless accusations noted.

>
>>
>>>
>>> And if you retort, "Your words here are sufficient documentation,"
>>> or words to that effect,
>>
>> That's because they *are*, asshole, all one needs to do is scroll
>> through the thread so what I mean.
>
> That is all one needs to see that you have no evidence whatsoever
> for your accusations, not even a description of any alleged behaviors
> which might be used as documentation.

Bullshit noted.

>
>>
>>> you will be merely adopting another dirty debating tactic of jillery and of innumerable internet trolls.
>>>
>>
>> Baseless accusations noted.
>
> Evidently you have been so steeped in trollish behavior by others over the
> years on the internet that you can no longer comprehend the dishonesty of it
> all by now.

Psychological projection noted.

>
> Peter "King of Deceit" Nyikos

[Daud Deden]

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/08/world-s-oldest-pterosaur-may-have-had-pouch-pelican

[Daud Deden]

My response to Peter Nykos at SAP, repeated here:

My interest is in fauna of the tropical rainforest, past, present and future.

Specifically, powered flight in all animals initially required still-air conditions, such as beneath the dense forest canopy.

Homo spp. also originated there, along crystalline streams, separating from the arboreal apes that remained above swamp forests & wetlands.

SBP appears to have a different interest range.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Monday, August 13, 2018 at 7:43:30 PM UTC-4, Daud Deden wrote:

This is a fascinating article about a newly discovered article,
with lovely pictures. The following excerpt, by the well known
paleontologist Steve Brusatte, tells us a good bit about it:

It's a trifecta: a Triassic pterosaur from a new place, preserved
in an immaculate way, and found in rocks from an environment
that we didn't think they lived in so early during their evolution.
What this means is that pterosaurs were already geographically
widespread and thriving in a variety of environments very early
in their evolution.

A great deal of fascinating information appears in the technical
article linked at the end.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-018-0627-y.epdf

IIRC this Nature article is free access. Unfortunately, the
article isn't in copy-and-paste format. I'll make do with
correcting a misleading comment in the BBC popularization
you've linked.


It is about 210 millions years old, pre-dating its known relatives
by 65 million years.

"relatives" is not among pterosaurs, but only in desert-dwelling
pterosaurs of whatever affinity. The abstract of the technical
article states that it is closely related to a species of
*Dimorphodon*, and I can see the close resemblance in the skull.

Named Caelestiventus hanseni, the species' delicate bones were
preserved in the remains of a desert oasis.

IIRC *Dimorphodon* is NOT known from a desert environment, and also goes
back at least 210 million years. Brusatte was referring to this
environment when he wrote "...an environment that we didn't think
they lived in so early during their evolution."


And so, the following statement right near the beginning of the
BBC popularization is also misleading:

The discovery suggests that these animals thrived
around the world before the dinosaurs evolved.

However, these minor flaws should not detract from the enjoyment
of either the BBC article or the technical one, which should
repay many hours of careful reading.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --

University of So. Carolina at Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, August 22, 2018 at 1:44:16 PM UTC-4, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Monday, August 13, 2018 at 7:43:30 PM UTC-4, Daud Deden wrote:

> > https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-45171201
>
> This is a fascinating article about a newly discovered article,

I meant "newly discovered pterosaur," of course.


Peter Nyikos

[Peter Nyikos]

On Monday, August 13, 2018 at 1:29:35 PM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:

> Do the words "self-reflection" mean
> anything to you?

Of course they do. For instance, Erik Simpson may have done
a lot of it since I replied on Aug 14 to his Aug 13 post to
this thread. [It was in reply to the same post of yours to
which I am replying here.]

That Aug 13 post was his last post to sci.bio.paleontology
up to now.

Coincidence? Perhaps. But a long period of self-reflection
by him may be appropriate, in view of the contents of my Aug 14 reply.

Peter Nyikos

[Daud Deden]

I've ignored the mandatory soap opera crap. No interest in he said she said immature rantings, and certainly not interested in ""explanations"".

Topic: pterosaur dietary hypothesis

I don't know what the original lineage consumed, but if like the vast majority of taxa, especially flying taxa, it was an omnivore/scavenger beneath the tropical rainforest canopy.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Saturday, August 25, 2018 at 11:01:23 PM UTC-4, Daud Deden wrote:

> I've ignored the mandatory soap opera crap. No interest in he said she said immature rantings, and certainly not interested in ""explanations"".

Don't let these deter you from learning a lot of fascinating
information about:

> Topic: pterosaur dietary hypothesis

There is plenty of information in the article linked in the OP,
and the following post by me contains a hefty chunk of it, while
being completely free of the kinds of things of which you express
disapproval:



https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/RNINuDOndSM/4Jm7rHMGBAAJ
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2018 19:07:42 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <72df7790-4317-46d9...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: Pterosaur dietary hypotheses

There are many hypotheses for the various kinds of pterosaurs,
including piscivory for such iconic genera as *Pteranodon*,
and durophagy for others. Durophagy refers to a diet of food
with hard outer covering, like nuts and shellfish.

> I don't know what the original lineage consumed, but if like the vast majority of taxa, especially flying taxa, it was an omnivore/scavenger beneath the tropical rainforest canopy.

That's an interesting idea, but why not insectivore, like the
supposed ancestors of bats?

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--

University of South Carolina at Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/