A new shark-toothed theropod from Uzbekistan

[Peter Nyikos]

Carcharodontosauria (shark-toothed saurians) were the last of the
allosaurids, found in Laurasia up to the end of the Turonian
(early Late Cretaceous) but surviving in Gondwana to the end of the Cretaceous.
In a role reversal from what I've been accustomed to, the largest of these allosaurids
were considerably larger than the largest tyrannosauroids of the time.

The "new" find is actually a rediscovery:

"The chunk of jawbone was found in Uzbekistan's Kyzylkum Desert in the 1980s, and researchers rediscovered it in 2019 in an Uzbekistan museum collection."
https://www.microsoftnewskids.com/en-us/kids/animals/gigantic-shark-toothed-dinosaur-discovered-in-uzbekistan/ar-AAOhazl?ocid=entnewsntp

The chunk is a partial maxilla, but from comparison with other
carcharodontosaurs, the following is hypothesized [*ibid*]:

"The 26-foot-long (8 meters) beast weighed 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms), making it longer than an African elephant and heavier than a bison. Researchers named it *Ulughbegsaurus* *uzbekistanensis*, after Ulugh Beg, a 15th-century astronomer, mathematician and sultan from what is now Uzbekistan.

"What caught scientists by surprise was that the dinosaur was much larger — twice the length and more than five times heavier — than its ecosystem's previously known apex predator: a tyrannosaur, the researchers found."

That should probably be "tyrannosauroid," but as you can see from the url,
this article was chosen [from "Live Science"] with kids in mind as a hefty part
of the audience; there is a suitable picture at the top of the article to go with that.

The research paper on which it is based is free access:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.210923

I relied on it for my opening paragraph, but this being late Friday here,
I am quoting from the popularization from here on.

"The two dinosaur groups were fairly similar, but carcharodontosaurs were generally more slender and lightly-built than the heavyset tyrannosaurs, said study co-researcher Darla Zelenitsky, an associate professor of paleobiology at the University of Calgary. Even so, carcharodontosaurs were usually larger than tyrannosaur dinosaurs, reaching weights greater than 13,200 pounds (6,000 kg)."

Here too, "tyrannosauroid" is more precise, while "tyrannosaurid" is
the most precise term in the next sentence:

"Then, around 90 million to 80 million years ago, the carcharodontosaurs disappeared and the tyrannosaurs grew in size, taking over as apex predators in Asia and North America. "

"The new finding is the first carcharodontosaur dinosaur discovered in Central Asia, the researchers noted. Paleontologists already knew that the tyrannosaur *Timurlengia* lived at the same time and place, but at 13 feet (4 m) in length and about 375 pounds (170 kg) in weight, *Timurlengia* was several times smaller than *U. uzbekistanensis*, suggesting that *U. uzbekistanensis* was the apex predator in that ecosystem, gobbling up horned dinosaurs, long-necked sauropods and ostrich-like dinosaurs in the neighborhood, the team said."


Methinks that the part from "gobbling up..." on was inspired by
"The Land Before Time" cartoon series. My daughters each saw
the first two at a tender age, and were very fond of them.


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

[Glenn]

From the paper, "The contact surface for the premaxilla is not preserved due to damage at the anterior margin of the maxilla, where the first alveolus is broken and exposes an implanted tooth. "

Implanted?

Looks like a rock that someone took a dremel tool to. Allegedly in some basement in Russia for 30+ years, without documentation of where found...

[Oxyaena]

On 9/10/2021 9:57 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> Carcharodontosauria (shark-toothed saurians) were the last of the
> allosaurids, found in Laurasia up to the end of the Turonian
> (early Late Cretaceous) but surviving in Gondwana to the end of the Cretaceous.
> In a role reversal from what I've been accustomed to, the largest of these allosaurids
> were considerably larger than the largest tyrannosauroids of the time.
>
> The "new" find is actually a rediscovery:
>
> "The chunk of jawbone was found in Uzbekistan's Kyzylkum Desert in the 1980s, and researchers rediscovered it in 2019 in an Uzbekistan museum collection."
> https://www.microsoftnewskids.com/en-us/kids/animals/gigantic-shark-toothed-dinosaur-discovered-in-uzbekistan/ar-AAOhazl?ocid=entnewsntp
>
> The chunk is a partial maxilla, but from comparison with other
> carcharodontosaurs, the following is hypothesized [*ibid*]:
>
> "The 26-foot-long (8 meters) beast weighed 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms), making it longer than an African elephant and heavier than a bison. Researchers named it *Ulughbegsaurus* *uzbekistanensis*, after Ulugh Beg, a 15th-century astronomer, mathematician and sultan from what is now Uzbekistan.

The reason dinosaurs were larger and yet lighter than even mammals today
is because of their respiratory systems. Birds inherited their famous
respiratory systems from somewhere, you know. Pound for pound in a
confrontation between a dinosaur and a mammal of equivalent size and
weight the dinosaur would hands down. I know you have an irrational
fondness for Fedducia's bullshit, but even you must admit that the
scientific consensus that birds are dinosaurs is and was correct.

[Oxyaena]

That should be "the dinosaur would win hands down." Mea culpa.

[Peter Nyikos]

I'm pretty sure that the word the authors were looking for is "impacted."

That reminds me of a sore point between me and John Harshman. Mario and I had been discussing
the issue of how reliable IQ tests are, and I had used the following analogy as an example
of how a lot of IQ test questions measure vocabulary more [in the following case, at least ten times more]
than they do intelligence.

sea : littoral : : river : ___________

Turns out Mario didn't even know what the colons were all about, and before I
could tell him, Harshman explained that it was an analogy, and immediately spoiled
the riddle for him by saying that he thought "The word Peter is looking for is ..."

But I won't spoil the riddle for YOU just yet.


Now Harshman has gone to the opposite extreme, refusing to talk to Mario
about anything, using the half-truth that Mario is a "Nazi" as an excuse.

> Looks like a rock that someone took a dremel tool to. Allegedly in some basement in Russia

Correction: Soviet Union

> for 30+ years, without documentation of where found...

I take it that you looked carefully in the research article for any hint of that.

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

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

[John Harshman]

I think they mean "implanted", likely a new tooth that was yet to emerge
from the jaw.

> That reminds me of a sore point between me and John Harshman.

Why do you feel it necessary to keep talking about your old grievances?

> Mario and I had been discussing
> the issue of how reliable IQ tests are, and I had used the following analogy as an example
> of how a lot of IQ test questions measure vocabulary more [in the following case, at least ten times more]
> than they do intelligence.
>
> sea : littoral : : river : ___________
>
> Turns out Mario didn't even know what the colons were all about, and before I
> could tell him, Harshman explained that it was an analogy, and immediately spoiled
> the riddle for him by saying that he thought "The word Peter is looking for is ..."
>
> But I won't spoil the riddle for YOU just yet.
>
>
> Now Harshman has gone to the opposite extreme, refusing to talk to Mario
> about anything, using the half-truth that Mario is a "Nazi" as an excuse.

Half-truth? He's a virulent anti-semite who proposes that jews be
exterminated, not to mention various other so far unnamed groups. Sure,
he is not literally a member of the NSDAP, but of course that
organization is defunct.

[Peter Nyikos]

Why do you use the word "old"? Don't you hang on Harshman's every word here in s.b.p.?

And why do you feel it necessary to show that you are slavishly Harshman-serving
and Harshman-aping?

> > Mario and I had been discussing
> > the issue of how reliable IQ tests are, and I had used the following analogy as an example
> > of how a lot of IQ test questions measure vocabulary more [in the following case, at least ten times more]
> > than they do intelligence.
> >
> > sea : littoral : : river : ___________
> >
> > Turns out Mario didn't even know what the colons were all about, and before I
> > could tell him, Harshman explained that it was an analogy, and immediately spoiled
> > the riddle for him by saying that he thought "The word Peter is looking for is ..."
> >
> > But I won't spoil the riddle for YOU just yet.
> >
> >
> > Now Harshman has gone to the opposite extreme, refusing to talk to Mario
> > about anything, using the half-truth that Mario is a "Nazi" as an excuse.

> Half-truth? He's a virulent anti-semite who proposes that jews be
> exterminated, not to mention various other so far unnamed groups.

That's the truthful half of the half-truth.

Looks like you are revealing how clueless you are about what Nazism was, and is.

Are you equally clueless about what Stalinism was? Did you know that there is a major
resurgence of it in Russia? If so, do you give a hoot about it?

> Sure, he is not literally a member of the NSDAP, but of course that
> organization is defunct.

More evidence of your cluelessness.

How old are you, anyway? How is it that you display so little awareness
of what constitutes Nazism?

> >> Looks like a rock that someone took a dremel tool to. Allegedly in some basement in Russia
> >
> > Correction: Soviet Union
> >
> >> for 30+ years, without documentation of where found...
> >
> > I take it that you looked carefully in the research article for any hint of that.

No interest in this on-topic issue, Thrinaxodon?


Peter Nyikos

[Oxyaena]

Okay, genius. Why don't you enlighten us for once instead of giving us
vague allusions and snide remarks as you usually do?

>
> Are you equally clueless about what Stalinism was? Did you know that there is a major
> resurgence of it in Russia? If so, do you give a hoot about it?

Whataboutism noted.

>
>
>> Sure, he is not literally a member of the NSDAP, but of course that
>> organization is defunct.
>
> More evidence of your cluelessness.

Bullshit.

>
> How old are you, anyway? How is it that you display so little awareness
> of what constitutes Nazism?

Are you gonna actually take the time to explain what you *think* Nazism
is or are you gonna continue to jerk off into the wind as usual?

>
>
>
>>>> Looks like a rock that someone took a dremel tool to. Allegedly in some basement in Russia
>>>
>>> Correction: Soviet Union
>>>
>>>> for 30+ years, without documentation of where found...
>>>
>>> I take it that you looked carefully in the research article for any hint of that.
>
> No interest in this on-topic issue, Thrinaxodon?

Hey, douchebag, I already responded to your OP. Furthermore why did you
even bring my name up? I had nothing to do with this subthread up until now.

[Glenn]

Elsewhere in the paper they use "unerupted". That is closer to "impacted'. Implanted implies fraud. Fraudian, perhaps?

[Peter Nyikos]

My bad. For some reason I thought both posts that appeared below my last one
were by Oxyaena. Now I see that one was by you, John, and from Oxyaena's
reply to my first reply, it seems she is at least as clueless about Nazism as you are.

Rather than dwell on this theme with you, I take this opportunity to switch to some on-topic discussion,
and to make it more attractive to you, I will focus on systematics.

On Monday, September 13, 2021 at 10:46:07 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:

> On 9/13/21 6:32 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Friday, September 10, 2021 at 11:57:10 PM UTC-4, Glenn wrote:
> >> On Friday, September 10, 2021 at 6:57:32 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>> Carcharodontosauria (shark-toothed saurians) were the last of the
> >>> allosaurids, found in Laurasia up to the end of the Turonian
> >>> (early Late Cretaceous) but surviving in Gondwana to the end of the Cretaceous.
> >>> In a role reversal from what I've been accustomed to, the largest of these allosaurids
> >>> were considerably larger than the largest tyrannosauroids of the time.
> >>>
> >>> The "new" find is actually a rediscovery:
> >>>
> >>> "The chunk of jawbone was found in Uzbekistan's Kyzylkum Desert in the 1980s, and researchers rediscovered it in 2019 in an Uzbekistan museum collection."
> >>> https://www.microsoftnewskids.com/en-us/kids/animals/gigantic-shark-toothed-dinosaur-discovered-in-uzbekistan/ar-AAOhazl?ocid=entnewsntp
> >>>
> >>> The chunk is a partial maxilla, but from comparison with other
> >>> carcharodontosaurs, the following is hypothesized [*ibid*]:
> >>>
> >>> "The 26-foot-long (8 meters) beast weighed 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms), making it longer than an African elephant and heavier than a bison. Researchers named it *Ulughbegsaurus* *uzbekistanensis*, after Ulugh Beg, a 15th-century astronomer, mathematician and sultan from what is now Uzbekistan.
> >>>
> >>> "What caught scientists by surprise was that the dinosaur was much larger — twice the length and more than five times heavier — than its ecosystem's previously known apex predator: a tyrannosaur, the researchers found."

If you look at the illustrations, you can see that it is a relatively small fragment of the upper jaw,
making me wonder how they got it so neatly into the phylogeny and thus were able
to extrapolate from known specimens.

And I wonder how well they took into account the principle that as an organism evolves
to a much greater size, some parts of the anatomy increase more than others.
There were some pretty careless estimates made just from the sizes of various
teeth in homininae, and it might have actually come as a surprise to some paleontologists
to learn that *Gigantopithecus* really was the size one would expect from its huge molars.

> > I'm pretty sure that the word the authors were looking for is "impacted."
> I think they mean "implanted", likely a new tooth that was yet to emerge
> from the jaw.

Did you study the illustrations to see whether this is what they meant?

By the way, do you have some grounds for thinking "implanted" is a synonym for "unerupted"?


Back to the specimen. On a thread about a Cambrian invertebrate [IIRC a stem arthropod]
you were disappointed by the lack of a phylogenetic analysis. The following should put you
in hog heaven where this "shark-tooth" is concerned:

"Two phylogenetic analyses, each including the new taxon Ulughbegsaurus, were conducted with the
software TNT v. 1.5 [41] (electronic supplementary material, text S1: figures S3 and S4). Our first
analysis was performed using the data matrix proposed by Carrano et al. [42] then modified by
Hendrickx & Mateus [10] where Eoraptor represents the outgroup; the characters are treated as
unordered. Our second analysis was conducted using the matrix originally proposed by Porfiri et al.
[43] then modified by Chokchaloemwong et al. [40] where Ceratosaurus represents the outgroup;
characters 2, 4, 6, 13, 15, 17, 27, 69, 106, 148, 155, 158, 160, 167, 169, 171, 179, 181, 194, 195, 205, 208,
217, 233, 241, 259, 267, 271 were treated as ordered. A traditional heuristic search was done with 1000
replicates of Wagner trees using random addition sequences, followed by the tree bisection and
reconnection branch swapping that holds 10 trees per replicate. Consistency index and retention index
were calculated with PAUP 4.0a [44]."
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsos.210923 [Section 4, paragraph 1]

What does "were treated as ordered" mean? The section continued with:

"The first phylogenetic analysis produced 6320 most parsimonious treeswith a strict consensus tree placing
Ulughbegsaurus within a poorly resolved Neovenatoridae (Aerosteon, Australovenator, Chilantaisaurus,
Fukuiraptor, Megaraptor and Neovenator), a clade within Carcharodontosauria (figure 3a).

How can there be so many "most parsimonous trees"? Is there a quantitative measure of parsimony,
or is it just an order ranking, with 6320 maximal trees, none of which is comparable to any of the others?

"Neovenatoridae
was supported by 12 synapomorphies in this analysis, which includes two characters of the maxilla (i.e.
small foramen of promaxillary fenestra and sculptured external surface of maxilla and nasal). The second
phylogenetic analysis produced 284 most parsimonious trees with a strict consensus tree recovering
Ulughbegsaurus within Carcharodontosauria where Ulughbegsaurus, Siamraptor, Eocarcharia, Neovenator,
Concavenator and the clade of Acrocanthosaurus, Shaochilong and Carcharodontosaurinae all form a
polytomy (figure 3b).

Wow, big time disagreement with other "consensus" tree. Are such things taken
in their stride by your favorite systematists?


"Carcharodontosauria is supported by 18 synapomorphies, including two characters
of the maxilla (i.e. fused posterior paradental plates and approximately 20° ventral orientation at the jugal
contact). A major difference in the results of these two phylogenetic analyses is that Megaraptora is placed
within Carcharodontosauria and Tyrannosauroidea in the first and second analyses, respectively.


Our results are consistent with the results of the original analyses where Megaraptora is placed in
Allosauroidea by Carrano et al. [42] but in Tyrannosauroidea by Porfiri et al. [43].

Good grief! IIRC allosaurs are in Carnosauria and tyrannosaurs in Coelurosauria, two giant separate
clades.

If this is the unsatisfactory status of Megaraptora, can we be sure Maniraptora is safely ensconced
in Coelurosauria?

If not, Feduccia will probably gain some new disciples to replace any that drop
away due to death, or whatever.


The following sentence concludes Section 4, which I have thus quoted in its
entirety, putting comments exactly where they are most effective.

"Based on both of our
phylogenetic analyses, however, it is evident that Ulughbegsaurus is assignable to the Carcharodontosauria."

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

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

PS The aforementioned insertion feature, far more easily done on Usenet
than in most other forums, is a boon to people who are trying to get at
the truth of things, and a bane to everyone whose primary objective is to make
it look like they have the upper hand in a debate, by hook or crook.

[John Harshman]

Uh, I am Harshman?

>>> Mario and I had been discussing
>>> the issue of how reliable IQ tests are, and I had used the following analogy as an example
>>> of how a lot of IQ test questions measure vocabulary more [in the following case, at least ten times more]
>>> than they do intelligence.
>>>
>>> sea : littoral : : river : ___________
>>>
>>> Turns out Mario didn't even know what the colons were all about, and before I
>>> could tell him, Harshman explained that it was an analogy, and immediately spoiled
>>> the riddle for him by saying that he thought "The word Peter is looking for is ..."
>>>
>>> But I won't spoil the riddle for YOU just yet.
>>>
>>>
>>> Now Harshman has gone to the opposite extreme, refusing to talk to Mario
>>> about anything, using the half-truth that Mario is a "Nazi" as an excuse.
>
>> Half-truth? He's a virulent anti-semite who proposes that jews be
>> exterminated, not to mention various other so far unnamed groups.
>
> That's the truthful half of the half-truth.
>
> Looks like you are revealing how clueless you are about what Nazism was, and is.

No.

> Are you equally clueless about what Stalinism was? Did you know that there is a major
> resurgence of it in Russia? If so, do you give a hoot about it?

No (though I also reject the prmise), yes, and yes. Why do you ask?

>> Sure, he is not literally a member of the NSDAP, but of course that
>> organization is defunct.
>
> More evidence of your cluelessness.
>
> How old are you, anyway? How is it that you display so little awareness
> of what constitutes Nazism?

I will admit that the NSDAP was defunct nearly a decade before my birth.
How old are you?

[John Harshman]

It seems clear that's what they meant, as it was exposed only because of
a break in the maxilla.

I see you have located the actual paper,
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.210923#d1e809

> Back to the specimen. On a thread about a Cambrian invertebrate [IIRC a stem arthropod]
> you were disappointed by the lack of a phylogenetic analysis. The following should put you
> in hog heaven where this "shark-tooth" is concerned:
>
> "Two phylogenetic analyses, each including the new taxon Ulughbegsaurus, were conducted with the
> software TNT v. 1.5 [41] (electronic supplementary material, text S1: figures S3 and S4). Our first
> analysis was performed using the data matrix proposed by Carrano et al. [42] then modified by
> Hendrickx & Mateus [10] where Eoraptor represents the outgroup; the characters are treated as
> unordered. Our second analysis was conducted using the matrix originally proposed by Porfiri et al.
> [43] then modified by Chokchaloemwong et al. [40] where Ceratosaurus represents the outgroup;
> characters 2, 4, 6, 13, 15, 17, 27, 69, 106, 148, 155, 158, 160, 167, 169, 171, 179, 181, 194, 195, 205, 208,
> 217, 233, 241, 259, 267, 271 were treated as ordered. A traditional heuristic search was done with 1000
> replicates of Wagner trees using random addition sequences, followed by the tree bisection and
> reconnection branch swapping that holds 10 trees per replicate. Consistency index and retention index
> were calculated with PAUP 4.0a [44]."
> https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsos.210923 [Section 4, paragraph 1]
>
> What does "were treated as ordered" mean?

A multistate character can be either ordered or unordered. If unordered,
going from one state to any other takes one step. If ordered, going from
state 1 to state 3 requires two steps, etc.

> The section continued with:
>
> "The first phylogenetic analysis produced 6320 most parsimonious treeswith a strict consensus tree placing
> Ulughbegsaurus within a poorly resolved Neovenatoridae (Aerosteon, Australovenator, Chilantaisaurus,
> Fukuiraptor, Megaraptor and Neovenator), a clade within Carcharodontosauria (figure 3a).
>
> How can there be so many "most parsimonous trees"? Is there a quantitative measure of parsimony,
> or is it just an order ranking, with 6320 maximal trees, none of which is comparable to any of the others?

The quantitative measure is the number of steps (changes) required to
fit the data to the tree. Not sure what you mean by "maximal" here;
these are the trees that require the least number of steps. The trees
are not identical, but only a few polytomies can produce a lot of trees.
It seems that figure 3 shows strict consensus trees, i.e. the nodes that
all the trees agree on. As you can see, there's plenty of agreement.

> "Neovenatoridae
> was supported by 12 synapomorphies in this analysis, which includes two characters of the maxilla (i.e.
> small foramen of promaxillary fenestra and sculptured external surface of maxilla and nasal). The second
> phylogenetic analysis produced 284 most parsimonious trees with a strict consensus tree recovering
> Ulughbegsaurus within Carcharodontosauria where Ulughbegsaurus, Siamraptor, Eocarcharia, Neovenator,
> Concavenator and the clade of Acrocanthosaurus, Shaochilong and Carcharodontosaurinae all form a
> polytomy (figure 3b).
>
> Wow, big time disagreement with other "consensus" tree. Are such things taken
> in their stride by your favorite systematists?

Usually one attempts to determine the causes of conflict and resolve
them. In this case the analyses use different characters, and somebody
ought to look at that. Of course only the maxillary characters are known
for the focal taxon, so maybe they didn't feel like going to the trouble.

> "Carcharodontosauria is supported by 18 synapomorphies, including two characters
> of the maxilla (i.e. fused posterior paradental plates and approximately 20° ventral orientation at the jugal
> contact). A major difference in the results of these two phylogenetic analyses is that Megaraptora is placed
> within Carcharodontosauria and Tyrannosauroidea in the first and second analyses, respectively.
>
>
> Our results are consistent with the results of the original analyses where Megaraptora is placed in
> Allosauroidea by Carrano et al. [42] but in Tyrannosauroidea by Porfiri et al. [43].
>
> Good grief! IIRC allosaurs are in Carnosauria and tyrannosaurs in Coelurosauria, two giant separate
> clades.
>
> If this is the unsatisfactory status of Megaraptora, can we be sure Maniraptora is safely ensconced
> in Coelurosauria?

You would have to consult the original analyses, the ones cited in this
paper. And you would need to argue about the homology assignments of the
various characters. But I think we can be sure.

> If not, Feduccia will probably gain some new disciples to replace any that drop
> away due to death, or whatever.
>
>
> The following sentence concludes Section 4, which I have thus quoted in its
> entirety, putting comments exactly where they are most effective.
>
> "Based on both of our
> phylogenetic analyses, however, it is evident that Ulughbegsaurus is assignable to the Carcharodontosauria."

And that's really all they were trying to do. They were unconcerned with
where carcharodonts actually go.

> Peter Nyikos
> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> University of South Carolina
> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
>
> PS The aforementioned insertion feature, far more easily done on Usenet
> than in most other forums, is a boon to people who are trying to get at
> the truth of things, and a bane to everyone whose primary objective is to make
> it look like they have the upper hand in a debate, by hook or crook.

What aforementioned insertion feature? Who are you talking about? Was
this an attack on me or on parties not present or what?

[Peter Nyikos]

You are evading the question. Are you afraid to say that the authors may have been guilty
of a malapropism?

> I see you have located the actual paper,
> https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.210923#d1e809

I see you didn't notice that I included it in the OP. Did I make it too boring for you to read
it without getting sleepy?

> > Back to the specimen. On a thread about a Cambrian invertebrate [IIRC a stem arthropod]
> > you were disappointed by the lack of a phylogenetic analysis. The following should put you
> > in hog heaven where this "shark-tooth" is concerned:
> >
> > "Two phylogenetic analyses, each including the new taxon Ulughbegsaurus, were conducted with the
> > software TNT v. 1.5 [41] (electronic supplementary material, text S1: figures S3 and S4). Our first
> > analysis was performed using the data matrix proposed by Carrano et al. [42] then modified by
> > Hendrickx & Mateus [10] where Eoraptor represents the outgroup; the characters are treated as
> > unordered. Our second analysis was conducted using the matrix originally proposed by Porfiri et al.
> > [43] then modified by Chokchaloemwong et al. [40] where Ceratosaurus represents the outgroup;
> > characters 2, 4, 6, 13, 15, 17, 27, 69, 106, 148, 155, 158, 160, 167, 169, 171, 179, 181, 194, 195, 205, 208,
> > 217, 233, 241, 259, 267, 271 were treated as ordered. A traditional heuristic search was done with 1000
> > replicates of Wagner trees using random addition sequences, followed by the tree bisection and
> > reconnection branch swapping that holds 10 trees per replicate. Consistency index and retention index
> > were calculated with PAUP 4.0a [44]."
> > https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsos.210923 [Section 4, paragraph 1]
> >
> > What does "were treated as ordered" mean?

> A multistate character can be either ordered or unordered. If unordered,
> going from one state to any other takes one step. If ordered, going from
> state 1 to state 3 requires two steps, etc.

Ah, like state 1 feathers (dinofuzz, optimistically called protofeathers), state 2 feathers,
state 3 feathers [barbs but no barbules, as in kiwis], state 4 feathers, and state 5 asymmetric flight remiges?

But you don't include any of these in your phylogenetic analyses, despite a "consensus" that the majority of
coelurosaurs had at least state 1, eh?

> > The section continued with:
> >
> > "The first phylogenetic analysis produced 6320 most parsimonious treeswith a strict consensus tree placing
> > Ulughbegsaurus within a poorly resolved Neovenatoridae (Aerosteon, Australovenator, Chilantaisaurus,
> > Fukuiraptor, Megaraptor and Neovenator), a clade within Carcharodontosauria (figure 3a).
> >
> > How can there be so many "most parsimonous trees"? Is there a quantitative measure of parsimony,
> > or is it just an order ranking, with 6320 maximal trees, none of which is comparable to any of the others?

> The quantitative measure is the number of steps (changes) required to
> fit the data to the tree. Not sure what you mean by "maximal" here;

Not all orderings are linear. Take the proper subsets of the set {1, 2, 3} with the order "is a subset of";
by proper subset I mean a subset missing at least one element. The maximal proper subsets
are {1,2}, {2,3} and {1,3}. They are maximal, because there is no proper subset that contains any
of them without being that subset itself.

It looks like you misunderstood my question, and are still optimistic about being
able to correct either both [42] and one of the analyses, or both [43] and the other.

Or did you misunderstand the paragraph which elicited "Good grief!" from me, now without
the accidental blank line that appeared in the post to which you were replying?

>And you would need to argue about the homology assignments of the
> various characters. But I think we can be sure.

Are you sure you think you are sure about the same thing that I asked you about us being sure of?

[A nice sentence for "The Princess Bride II", don't you think?]

> > If not, Feduccia will probably gain some new disciples to replace any that drop
> > away due to death, or whatever.

No reaction from you on this, perhaps because you misunderstood either my question
or the part of Section 4 immediately preceding it.

> >
> > The following sentence concludes Section 4, which I have thus quoted in its
> > entirety, putting comments exactly where they are most effective.
> >
> > "Based on both of our
> > phylogenetic analyses, however, it is evident that Ulughbegsaurus is assignable to the Carcharodontosauria."

> And that's really all they were trying to do. They were unconcerned with
> where carcharodonts actually go.

Are you concerned about where Megaraptora fit now? Or do you still not understand
why I said what I did about Feduccia?

> > Peter Nyikos
> > Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> > University of South Carolina
> > http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
> >
> > PS The aforementioned insertion feature, far more easily done on Usenet
> > than in most other forums, is a boon to people who are trying to get at
> > the truth of things, and a bane to everyone whose primary objective is to make
> > it look like they have the upper hand in a debate, by hook or crook.

> What aforementioned insertion feature?

"putting comments exactly where they are most effective."

> Who are you talking about?

Nobody in particular. I am talking about contrasts in people's attitudes. Let me add that a lot of
the people to whom it is a baneful feature do care about the truth when conversing
with people with whom they have bonded, or are arguing with people who
are so inept, they can eat their truth cake and have their upper hand cake too,
without having to take advantage of this wonderful feature of Usenet.

>Was
> this an attack on me or on parties not present or what?

Why do you ask? Are you feeling paranoid?

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

Univ. of South Carolina in Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[John Harshman]

Oh, sorry. I didn't know that's what you were proposing. So you're
trying to score more points off people who aren't here?

>> I see you have located the actual paper,
>> https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.210923#d1e809
>
> I see you didn't notice that I included it in the OP. Did I make it too boring for you to read
> it without getting sleepy?

Don't see it here. Did someone snip it?

>>> Back to the specimen. On a thread about a Cambrian invertebrate [IIRC a stem arthropod]
>>> you were disappointed by the lack of a phylogenetic analysis. The following should put you
>>> in hog heaven where this "shark-tooth" is concerned:
>>>
>>> "Two phylogenetic analyses, each including the new taxon Ulughbegsaurus, were conducted with the
>>> software TNT v. 1.5 [41] (electronic supplementary material, text S1: figures S3 and S4). Our first
>>> analysis was performed using the data matrix proposed by Carrano et al. [42] then modified by
>>> Hendrickx & Mateus [10] where Eoraptor represents the outgroup; the characters are treated as
>>> unordered. Our second analysis was conducted using the matrix originally proposed by Porfiri et al.
>>> [43] then modified by Chokchaloemwong et al. [40] where Ceratosaurus represents the outgroup;
>>> characters 2, 4, 6, 13, 15, 17, 27, 69, 106, 148, 155, 158, 160, 167, 169, 171, 179, 181, 194, 195, 205, 208,
>>> 217, 233, 241, 259, 267, 271 were treated as ordered. A traditional heuristic search was done with 1000
>>> replicates of Wagner trees using random addition sequences, followed by the tree bisection and
>>> reconnection branch swapping that holds 10 trees per replicate. Consistency index and retention index
>>> were calculated with PAUP 4.0a [44]."
>>> https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsos.210923 [Section 4, paragraph 1]
>>>
>>> What does "were treated as ordered" mean?
>
>> A multistate character can be either ordered or unordered. If unordered,
>> going from one state to any other takes one step. If ordered, going from
>> state 1 to state 3 requires two steps, etc.
>
> Ah, like state 1 feathers (dinofuzz, optimistically called protofeathers), state 2 feathers,
> state 3 feathers [barbs but no barbules, as in kiwis], state 4 feathers, and state 5 asymmetric flight remiges?

That depends on how you choose to code them. What you have there is a
multi-state character, but you have provided no information on whether
it's to be considered ordered or unordered in analysis.

> But you don't include any of these in your phylogenetic analyses, despite a "consensus" that the majority of
> coelurosaurs had at least state 1, eh?

Yes. The consensus is based on the phylogenetic distribution of known
feathers and optimization on a tree constructed from other data. The
sparse data for feathers just don't contribute much to supporting a tree
even if you include them.

>>> The section continued with:
>>>
>>> "The first phylogenetic analysis produced 6320 most parsimonious treeswith a strict consensus tree placing
>>> Ulughbegsaurus within a poorly resolved Neovenatoridae (Aerosteon, Australovenator, Chilantaisaurus,
>>> Fukuiraptor, Megaraptor and Neovenator), a clade within Carcharodontosauria (figure 3a).
>>>
>>> How can there be so many "most parsimonous trees"? Is there a quantitative measure of parsimony,
>>> or is it just an order ranking, with 6320 maximal trees, none of which is comparable to any of the others?
>
>> The quantitative measure is the number of steps (changes) required to
>> fit the data to the tree. Not sure what you mean by "maximal" here;
>
> Not all orderings are linear. Take the proper subsets of the set {1, 2, 3} with the order "is a subset of";
> by proper subset I mean a subset missing at least one element. The maximal proper subsets
> are {1,2}, {2,3} and {1,3}. They are maximal, because there is no proper subset that contains any
> of them without being that subset itself.

This has nothing at all to do with the meaning of "most parsimonious
trees". Nor does "maximal".

No idea, since if I misunderstood you, you haven't told me what you
really meant. Try saying what you mean rather than hinting at it.

> >And you would need to argue about the homology assignments of the
>> various characters. But I think we can be sure.
>
> Are you sure you think you are sure about the same thing that I asked you about us being sure of?

Yes.

> [A nice sentence for "The Princess Bride II", don't you think?]
>
>
>>> If not, Feduccia will probably gain some new disciples to replace any that drop
>>> away due to death, or whatever.
>
> No reaction from you on this, perhaps because you misunderstood either my question
> or the part of Section 4 immediately preceding it.

Or perhaps because the dead horse has been flogged enough already.

>>> The following sentence concludes Section 4, which I have thus quoted in its
>>> entirety, putting comments exactly where they are most effective.
>>>
>>> "Based on both of our
>>> phylogenetic analyses, however, it is evident that Ulughbegsaurus is assignable to the Carcharodontosauria."
>
>> And that's really all they were trying to do. They were unconcerned with
>> where carcharodonts actually go.
>
> Are you concerned about where Megaraptora fit now? Or do you still not understand
> why I said what I did about Feduccia?

It's more a matter of not caring. Seems like you trolling for a reaction.

>>> Peter Nyikos
>>> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
>>> University of South Carolina
>>> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos
>>>
>>> PS The aforementioned insertion feature, far more easily done on Usenet
>>> than in most other forums, is a boon to people who are trying to get at
>>> the truth of things, and a bane to everyone whose primary objective is to make
>>> it look like they have the upper hand in a debate, by hook or crook.
>
>> What aforementioned insertion feature?
>
> "putting comments exactly where they are most effective."
>
>> Who are you talking about?
>
> Nobody in particular. I am talking about contrasts in people's attitudes. Let me add that a lot of
> the people to whom it is a baneful feature do care about the truth when conversing
> with people with whom they have bonded, or are arguing with people who
> are so inept, they can eat their truth cake and have their upper hand cake too,
> without having to take advantage of this wonderful feature of Usenet.
>
>
>> Was
>> this an attack on me or on parties not present or what?
>
> Why do you ask? Are you feeling paranoid?

You are seeming very like a troll today. Why?

[Peter Nyikos]

<snip continuing evasion of question>

> >> I see you have located the actual paper,
> >> https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.210923#d1e809
> >
> > I see you didn't notice that I included it in the OP. Did I make it too boring for you to read
> > it without getting sleepy?

> Don't see it here. Did someone snip it?

You can't see the OP? I can see it here in Google Groups. Looks like Giganews is letting you down.

> >>> Back to the specimen. On a thread about a Cambrian invertebrate [IIRC a stem arthropod]
> >>> you were disappointed by the lack of a phylogenetic analysis. The following should put you
> >>> in hog heaven where this "shark-tooth" is concerned:
> >>>
> >>> "Two phylogenetic analyses, each including the new taxon Ulughbegsaurus, were conducted with the
> >>> software TNT v. 1.5 [41] (electronic supplementary material, text S1: figures S3 and S4). Our first
> >>> analysis was performed using the data matrix proposed by Carrano et al. [42] then modified by
> >>> Hendrickx & Mateus [10] where Eoraptor represents the outgroup; the characters are treated as
> >>> unordered. Our second analysis was conducted using the matrix originally proposed by Porfiri et al.
> >>> [43] then modified by Chokchaloemwong et al. [40] where Ceratosaurus represents the outgroup;
> >>> characters 2, 4, 6, 13, 15, 17, 27, 69, 106, 148, 155, 158, 160, 167, 169, 171, 179, 181, 194, 195, 205, 208,
> >>> 217, 233, 241, 259, 267, 271 were treated as ordered. A traditional heuristic search was done with 1000
> >>> replicates of Wagner trees using random addition sequences, followed by the tree bisection and
> >>> reconnection branch swapping that holds 10 trees per replicate. Consistency index and retention index
> >>> were calculated with PAUP 4.0a [44]."
> >>> https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsos.210923 [Section 4, paragraph 1]
> >>>
> >>> What does "were treated as ordered" mean?
> >
> >> A multistate character can be either ordered or unordered. If unordered,
> >> going from one state to any other takes one step. If ordered, going from
> >> state 1 to state 3 requires two steps, etc.
> >
> > Ah, like state 1 feathers (dinofuzz, optimistically called protofeathers), state 2 feathers,
> > state 3 feathers [barbs but no barbules, as in kiwis], state 4 feathers, and state 5 asymmetric flight remiges?

> That depends on how you choose to code them. What you have there is a
> multi-state character, but you have provided no information on whether
> it's to be considered ordered or unordered in analysis.

What, don't you remember Prum's hypothetical stages in the evolution of feathers?
You seemed to be quite a fan of his about half a dozen years ago.

> > But you don't include any of these in your phylogenetic analyses, despite a "consensus" that the majority of
> > coelurosaurs had at least state 1, eh?

> Yes. The consensus is based on the phylogenetic distribution of known
> feathers and optimization on a tree constructed from other data. The
> sparse data for feathers just don't contribute much to supporting a tree
> even if you include them.

So you think that, unlike the case of mammalian hair, loss of feathers in non-avian dinosaurs
was a great rarity?

> >>> The section continued with:
> >>>
> >>> "The first phylogenetic analysis produced 6320 most parsimonious treeswith a strict consensus tree placing
> >>> Ulughbegsaurus within a poorly resolved Neovenatoridae (Aerosteon, Australovenator, Chilantaisaurus,
> >>> Fukuiraptor, Megaraptor and Neovenator), a clade within Carcharodontosauria (figure 3a).
> >>>
> >>> How can there be so many "most parsimonous trees"? Is there a quantitative measure of parsimony,
> >>> or is it just an order ranking, with 6320 maximal trees, none of which is comparable to any of the others?
> >
> >> The quantitative measure is the number of steps (changes) required to
> >> fit the data to the tree. Not sure what you mean by "maximal" here;
> >
> > Not all orderings are linear. Take the proper subsets of the set {1, 2, 3} with the order "is a subset of";
> > by proper subset I mean a subset missing at least one element. The maximal proper subsets
> > are {1,2}, {2,3} and {1,3}. They are maximal, because there is no proper subset that contains any
> > of them without being that subset itself.

> This has nothing at all to do with the meaning of "most parsimonious
> trees". Nor does "maximal".

Thanks for clearing up that much. But it seems that biologists sometimes work with an
impoverished model where you try too hard to shoehorn things into linear order,
and even to assign numbers to them. [Mohs scale of hardness was a lot like that,
until some physics-savvy person fixed it up.]

On the other hand, in a phylogenetic tree, EVERY SPECIES is incomparable to every
other species. ALL species are at maximal points, at the tips of all the branches.
I could kick myself for not thinking of this example right off the bat.

> >> these are the trees that require the least number of steps. The trees
> >> are not identical, but only a few polytomies can produce a lot of trees.
> >> It seems that figure 3 shows strict consensus trees, i.e. the nodes that
> >> all the trees agree on. As you can see, there's plenty of agreement.


> >
> >>> "Neovenatoridae
> >>> was supported by 12 synapomorphies in this analysis, which includes two characters of the maxilla (i.e.
> >>> small foramen of promaxillary fenestra and sculptured external surface of maxilla and nasal). The second
> >>> phylogenetic analysis produced 284 most parsimonious trees with a strict consensus tree recovering
> >>> Ulughbegsaurus within Carcharodontosauria where Ulughbegsaurus, Siamraptor, Eocarcharia, Neovenator,
> >>> Concavenator and the clade of Acrocanthosaurus, Shaochilong and Carcharodontosaurinae all form a
> >>> polytomy (figure 3b).
> >>>
> >>> Wow, big time disagreement with other "consensus" tree. Are such things taken
> >>> in their stride by your favorite systematists?
> >
> >> Usually one attempts to determine the causes of conflict and resolve
> >> them. In this case the analyses use different characters, and somebody
> >> ought to look at that.

Did they give you enough information to combine the two sets of characters, and
to then see what happens?

> >> Of course only the maxillary characters are known
> >> for the focal taxon, so maybe they didn't feel like going to the trouble.

I've decided to make a fresh start on the paragraph on which we obviously
didn't connect. So I'll repost the paragraph later today, with my comments, but
without any distracting marginal attribution marks, and then we can try to communicate about it again.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics

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

[John Harshman]

Again, it all depends on how you choose to code it. Prum's (and Brush's)
stages could be considered as an ordered or unordered character.

>>> But you don't include any of these in your phylogenetic analyses, despite a "consensus" that the majority of
>>> coelurosaurs had at least state 1, eh?
>
>> Yes. The consensus is based on the phylogenetic distribution of known
>> feathers and optimization on a tree constructed from other data. The
>> sparse data for feathers just don't contribute much to supporting a tree
>> even if you include them.
>
> So you think that, unlike the case of mammalian hair, loss of feathers in non-avian dinosaurs
> was a great rarity?

No. Where are you getting all these notions?

>>>>> The section continued with:
>>>>>
>>>>> "The first phylogenetic analysis produced 6320 most parsimonious treeswith a strict consensus tree placing
>>>>> Ulughbegsaurus within a poorly resolved Neovenatoridae (Aerosteon, Australovenator, Chilantaisaurus,
>>>>> Fukuiraptor, Megaraptor and Neovenator), a clade within Carcharodontosauria (figure 3a).
>>>>>
>>>>> How can there be so many "most parsimonous trees"? Is there a quantitative measure of parsimony,
>>>>> or is it just an order ranking, with 6320 maximal trees, none of which is comparable to any of the others?
>>>
>>>> The quantitative measure is the number of steps (changes) required to
>>>> fit the data to the tree. Not sure what you mean by "maximal" here;
>>>
>>> Not all orderings are linear. Take the proper subsets of the set {1, 2, 3} with the order "is a subset of";
>>> by proper subset I mean a subset missing at least one element. The maximal proper subsets
>>> are {1,2}, {2,3} and {1,3}. They are maximal, because there is no proper subset that contains any
>>> of them without being that subset itself.
>
>> This has nothing at all to do with the meaning of "most parsimonious
>> trees". Nor does "maximal".
>
> Thanks for clearing up that much. But it seems that biologists sometimes work with an
> impoverished model where you try too hard to shoehorn things into linear order,
> and even to assign numbers to them. [Mohs scale of hardness was a lot like that,
> until some physics-savvy person fixed it up.]
>
> On the other hand, in a phylogenetic tree, EVERY SPECIES is incomparable to every
> other species. ALL species are at maximal points, at the tips of all the branches.
> I could kick myself for not thinking of this example right off the bat.

I really have no idea what you're talking about here, but it seems as
far as I can discern to have nothing at all to do with phylogenetics.

>>>> these are the trees that require the least number of steps. The trees
>>>> are not identical, but only a few polytomies can produce a lot of trees.
>>>> It seems that figure 3 shows strict consensus trees, i.e. the nodes that
>>>> all the trees agree on. As you can see, there's plenty of agreement.
>
>
>>>
>>>>> "Neovenatoridae
>>>>> was supported by 12 synapomorphies in this analysis, which includes two characters of the maxilla (i.e.
>>>>> small foramen of promaxillary fenestra and sculptured external surface of maxilla and nasal). The second
>>>>> phylogenetic analysis produced 284 most parsimonious trees with a strict consensus tree recovering
>>>>> Ulughbegsaurus within Carcharodontosauria where Ulughbegsaurus, Siamraptor, Eocarcharia, Neovenator,
>>>>> Concavenator and the clade of Acrocanthosaurus, Shaochilong and Carcharodontosaurinae all form a
>>>>> polytomy (figure 3b).
>>>>>
>>>>> Wow, big time disagreement with other "consensus" tree. Are such things taken
>>>>> in their stride by your favorite systematists?
>>>
>>>> Usually one attempts to determine the causes of conflict and resolve
>>>> them. In this case the analyses use different characters, and somebody
>>>> ought to look at that.
>
> Did they give you enough information to combine the two sets of characters, and
> to then see what happens?

Sure. They gave the references to the original analyses. You could look
up the data matrices and their explanations thereof. They could differ
in what characters are included, their coded states, and the taxa
included. Go ahead.

[Peter Nyikos]

No answer.

>> I can see it here in Google Groups. Looks like Giganews is letting you down.

Well? is it true that Giganews doesn't show the OP?

It looks like a no-brainer: count the steps, like you said. It's plain to see in which direction
the characters changed.

> >>> But you don't include any of these in your phylogenetic analyses, despite a "consensus" that the majority of
> >>> coelurosaurs had at least state 1, eh?
> >
> >> Yes. The consensus is based on the phylogenetic distribution of known
> >> feathers and optimization on a tree constructed from other data. The
> >> sparse data for feathers just don't contribute much to supporting a tree
> >> even if you include them.
> >
> > So you think that, unlike the case of mammalian hair, loss of feathers in non-avian dinosaurs
> > was a great rarity?

> No. Where are you getting all these notions?

Isn't it obvious? absence of feathers in fossil after fossil of the same species
could mean actual loss of feathers. That's why I think it is a good idea to include feathers
[in the broad sense that seems to be the consensus these days]
in a phylogenetic analysis in which the taxa have enough preserved
of the places where one might expect feathers to have been attached in real life.

Really, what's the harm in doing that?

> >>>>> The section continued with:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> "The first phylogenetic analysis produced 6320 most parsimonious treeswith a strict consensus tree placing
> >>>>> Ulughbegsaurus within a poorly resolved Neovenatoridae (Aerosteon, Australovenator, Chilantaisaurus,
> >>>>> Fukuiraptor, Megaraptor and Neovenator), a clade within Carcharodontosauria (figure 3a).
> >>>>>
> >>>>> How can there be so many "most parsimonous trees"? Is there a quantitative measure of parsimony,
> >>>>> or is it just an order ranking, with 6320 maximal trees, none of which is comparable to any of the others?
> >>>
> >>>> The quantitative measure is the number of steps (changes) required to
> >>>> fit the data to the tree. Not sure what you mean by "maximal" here;
> >>>
> >>> Not all orderings are linear. Take the proper subsets of the set {1, 2, 3} with the order "is a subset of";
> >>> by proper subset I mean a subset missing at least one element. The maximal proper subsets
> >>> are {1,2}, {2,3} and {1,3}. They are maximal, because there is no proper subset that contains any
> >>> of them without being that subset itself.
> >
> >> This has nothing at all to do with the meaning of "most parsimonious
> >> trees". Nor does "maximal".
> >
> > Thanks for clearing up that much. But it seems that biologists sometimes work with an
> > impoverished model where you try too hard to shoehorn things into linear order,
> > and even to assign numbers to them. [Mohs scale of hardness was a lot like that,
> > until some physics-savvy person fixed it up.]
> >
> > On the other hand, in a phylogenetic tree, EVERY SPECIES is incomparable to every
> > other species. ALL species are at maximal points, at the tips of all the branches.
> > I could kick myself for not thinking of this example right off the bat.

> I really have no idea what you're talking about here,

Explaining the difference between "maximal" and "maximum = above everything else"

> but it seems as
> far as I can discern to have nothing at all to do with phylogenetics.

It has everything to do with phylogenetic classification, which is based on
the prohibition against putting taxa at the nodes of phylogenetic trees.

By "nodes" I mean "branching points." Just as Gould did in the now-obsolete
trade secret about how data used to be put at both nodes and branch tips,
just never in between.

> >>>> these are the trees that require the least number of steps. The trees
> >>>> are not identical, but only a few polytomies can produce a lot of trees.
> >>>> It seems that figure 3 shows strict consensus trees, i.e. the nodes that
> >>>> all the trees agree on. As you can see, there's plenty of agreement.
> >
> >
> >>>
> >>>>> "Neovenatoridae
> >>>>> was supported by 12 synapomorphies in this analysis, which includes two characters of the maxilla (i.e.
> >>>>> small foramen of promaxillary fenestra and sculptured external surface of maxilla and nasal). The second
> >>>>> phylogenetic analysis produced 284 most parsimonious trees with a strict consensus tree recovering
> >>>>> Ulughbegsaurus within Carcharodontosauria where Ulughbegsaurus, Siamraptor, Eocarcharia, Neovenator,
> >>>>> Concavenator and the clade of Acrocanthosaurus, Shaochilong and Carcharodontosaurinae all form a
> >>>>> polytomy (figure 3b).
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Wow, big time disagreement with other "consensus" tree. Are such things taken
> >>>>> in their stride by your favorite systematists?
> >>>
> >>>> Usually one attempts to determine the causes of conflict and resolve
> >>>> them. In this case the analyses use different characters, and somebody
> >>>> ought to look at that.
> >
> > Did they give you enough information to combine the two sets of characters, and
> > to then see what happens?

> Sure. They gave the references to the original analyses. You could look
> up the data matrices and their explanations thereof. They could differ
> in what characters are included, their coded states, and the taxa
> included. Go ahead.

I can't go ahead, but you can: I never learned how to program data
into a computer, whereas you have the knowledge to program it in just the right way.

Don't be surprised: my mathematical research has been almost exclusively
the theorem-proof and theorem-{examples of structures covered by the theorem}
sort. The few times I needed data to be fed into a computer, someone else did it for me.


Peter Nyikos

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

Specialty: set-theoretic topology

[John Harshman]

I wasn't referring to the OP. I was referring to the post I was replying to.

>>> I can see it here in Google Groups. Looks like Giganews is letting you down.
>
> Well? is it true that Giganews doesn't show the OP?

I have Thunderbird set to posts disappear after 30 days. But sure, I
could look at the OP since it's less than 30 days old.

Yes, you could definitely code that as an ordered character. There are
potential complications that I won't go into.

>>>>> But you don't include any of these in your phylogenetic analyses, despite a "consensus" that the majority of
>>>>> coelurosaurs had at least state 1, eh?
>>>
>>>> Yes. The consensus is based on the phylogenetic distribution of known
>>>> feathers and optimization on a tree constructed from other data. The
>>>> sparse data for feathers just don't contribute much to supporting a tree
>>>> even if you include them.
>>>
>>> So you think that, unlike the case of mammalian hair, loss of feathers in non-avian dinosaurs
>>> was a great rarity?
>
>> No. Where are you getting all these notions?
>
> Isn't it obvious? absence of feathers in fossil after fossil of the same species
> could mean actual loss of feathers.

How would you distinguish loss of feathers from non-preservation?
Usually we infer loss (when coding characters) only when there is
preserved skin. And even there it tends to be a patch here and a patch
there, so you don't know if there were feathers on some other part of
the body.

> That's why I think it is a good idea to include feathers
> [in the broad sense that seems to be the consensus these days]
> in a phylogenetic analysis in which the taxa have enough preserved
> of the places where one might expect feathers to have been attached in real life.

> Really, what's the harm in doing that?

No harm if you code most taxa as missing data. Just no benefit either.

>>>>>>> The section continued with:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> "The first phylogenetic analysis produced 6320 most parsimonious treeswith a strict consensus tree placing
>>>>>>> Ulughbegsaurus within a poorly resolved Neovenatoridae (Aerosteon, Australovenator, Chilantaisaurus,
>>>>>>> Fukuiraptor, Megaraptor and Neovenator), a clade within Carcharodontosauria (figure 3a).
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> How can there be so many "most parsimonous trees"? Is there a quantitative measure of parsimony,
>>>>>>> or is it just an order ranking, with 6320 maximal trees, none of which is comparable to any of the others?
>>>>>
>>>>>> The quantitative measure is the number of steps (changes) required to
>>>>>> fit the data to the tree. Not sure what you mean by "maximal" here;
>>>>>
>>>>> Not all orderings are linear. Take the proper subsets of the set {1, 2, 3} with the order "is a subset of";
>>>>> by proper subset I mean a subset missing at least one element. The maximal proper subsets
>>>>> are {1,2}, {2,3} and {1,3}. They are maximal, because there is no proper subset that contains any
>>>>> of them without being that subset itself.
>>>
>>>> This has nothing at all to do with the meaning of "most parsimonious
>>>> trees". Nor does "maximal".
>>>
>>> Thanks for clearing up that much. But it seems that biologists sometimes work with an
>>> impoverished model where you try too hard to shoehorn things into linear order,
>>> and even to assign numbers to them. [Mohs scale of hardness was a lot like that,
>>> until some physics-savvy person fixed it up.]
>>>
>>> On the other hand, in a phylogenetic tree, EVERY SPECIES is incomparable to every
>>> other species. ALL species are at maximal points, at the tips of all the branches.
>>> I could kick myself for not thinking of this example right off the bat.
>
>> I really have no idea what you're talking about here,
>
> Explaining the difference between "maximal" and "maximum = above everything else"

Still have no idea what you mean. What does this have to do with
parsimonious trees?

>> but it seems as
>> far as I can discern to have nothing at all to do with phylogenetics.
>
> It has everything to do with phylogenetic classification, which is based on
> the prohibition against putting taxa at the nodes of phylogenetic trees.

So nothing to do with phylogenetics, then. You have wandered far off
your original topic.

> By "nodes" I mean "branching points." Just as Gould did in the now-obsolete
> trade secret about how data used to be put at both nodes and branch tips,
> just never in between.

Yes, that's what "nodes" mean. But I still don't understand what
"maximal" has to do with it, or what the relevance of any of this is to
phylogenetics.

>>>>>> these are the trees that require the least number of steps. The trees
>>>>>> are not identical, but only a few polytomies can produce a lot of trees.
>>>>>> It seems that figure 3 shows strict consensus trees, i.e. the nodes that
>>>>>> all the trees agree on. As you can see, there's plenty of agreement.
>>>
>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>> "Neovenatoridae
>>>>>>> was supported by 12 synapomorphies in this analysis, which includes two characters of the maxilla (i.e.
>>>>>>> small foramen of promaxillary fenestra and sculptured external surface of maxilla and nasal). The second
>>>>>>> phylogenetic analysis produced 284 most parsimonious trees with a strict consensus tree recovering
>>>>>>> Ulughbegsaurus within Carcharodontosauria where Ulughbegsaurus, Siamraptor, Eocarcharia, Neovenator,
>>>>>>> Concavenator and the clade of Acrocanthosaurus, Shaochilong and Carcharodontosaurinae all form a
>>>>>>> polytomy (figure 3b).
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Wow, big time disagreement with other "consensus" tree. Are such things taken
>>>>>>> in their stride by your favorite systematists?
>>>>>
>>>>>> Usually one attempts to determine the causes of conflict and resolve
>>>>>> them. In this case the analyses use different characters, and somebody
>>>>>> ought to look at that.
>>>
>>> Did they give you enough information to combine the two sets of characters, and
>>> to then see what happens?
>
>> Sure. They gave the references to the original analyses. You could look
>> up the data matrices and their explanations thereof. They could differ
>> in what characters are included, their coded states, and the taxa
>> included. Go ahead.
>
> I can't go ahead, but you can: I never learned how to program data
> into a computer, whereas you have the knowledge to program it in just the right way.

No programming is necessary. Just look at the characters and taxa, see
how they match and fail to match. Are the same characters coded
differently in some of the same taxa? What is the disagreement of the data?

> Don't be surprised: my mathematical research has been almost exclusively
> the theorem-proof and theorem-{examples of structures covered by the theorem}
> sort. The few times I needed data to be fed into a computer, someone else did it for me.

Sure. But what you want to know doesn't require running any program,
just examining the data. You want to read the two source papers. I see
that the second source's (Porfiri et al.) abstract has a couple of
useful points: "Megaraptorids are a group of predatory dinosaurs that
inhabited Gondwana from Cenomanian to Santonian times (Late Cretaceous).
Phylogenetic relationships of megaraptorids have been matter of recent
debate, being alternatively interpreted as basal coelurosaurs,
carcharodontosaurian allosauroids, megalosauroids, and basal
tyrannosauroids. One of the main reasons for such different
interpretations is the incomplete nature of most available megaraptorid
skeletons and, in particular, the scarce information about their cranial
anatomy." So Porfiri et al. has better data on Megaraptor than was
available to Carrano et al. Missing data result in ambiguity.

[Peter Nyikos]

Just to clear up a "don't see it here" from you.

On Tuesday, September 14, 2021 at 12:41:28 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 9/13/21 8:09 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Monday, September 13, 2021 at 3:04:02 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 9/13/21 11:39 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

> >> I see you have located the actual paper,
> >> https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.210923#d1e809
> >
> > I see you didn't notice that I included it in the OP. Did I make it too boring for you to read
> > it without getting sleepy?

> Don't see it here. Did someone snip it?

Nobody snipped it. It's further down, at the bottom of what you see below.

> >>> Back to the specimen. On a thread about a Cambrian invertebrate [IIRC a stem arthropod]
> >>> you were disappointed by the lack of a phylogenetic analysis. The following should put you
> >>> in hog heaven where this "shark-tooth" is concerned:
> >>>
> >>> "Two phylogenetic analyses, each including the new taxon Ulughbegsaurus, were conducted with the
> >>> software TNT v. 1.5 [41] (electronic supplementary material, text S1: figures S3 and S4). Our first
> >>> analysis was performed using the data matrix proposed by Carrano et al. [42] then modified by
> >>> Hendrickx & Mateus [10] where Eoraptor represents the outgroup; the characters are treated as
> >>> unordered. Our second analysis was conducted using the matrix originally proposed by Porfiri et al.
> >>> [43] then modified by Chokchaloemwong et al. [40] where Ceratosaurus represents the outgroup;
> >>> characters 2, 4, 6, 13, 15, 17, 27, 69, 106, 148, 155, 158, 160, 167, 169, 171, 179, 181, 194, 195, 205, 208,
> >>> 217, 233, 241, 259, 267, 271 were treated as ordered. A traditional heuristic search was done with 1000
> >>> replicates of Wagner trees using random addition sequences, followed by the tree bisection and
> >>> reconnection branch swapping that holds 10 trees per replicate. Consistency index and retention index
> >>> were calculated with PAUP 4.0a [44]."
> >>> https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsos.210923 [Section 4, paragraph 1]

See that last line?

I'll be reposting something further down in Section 4, that is the source of an even longer
failure to communicate. Later today.


Peter Nyikos

[Peter Nyikos]

It's not a certainty, but a hypothesis. As more and more good fossils
accumulate, the hypothesis is supported. You know, ye olde "scientific method".

> Usually we infer loss (when coding characters) only when there is
> preserved skin. And even there it tends to be a patch here and a patch
> there, so you don't know if there were feathers on some other part of
> the body.

So you seem to want certainty here, but not in telling whether X is a sister group of Y.

For example, there was a revolutionary pair of papers which upset the {theropod, sauropod, ornithischian}
sister group relationship.

Baron et al. 2017, "A new hypothesis of dinosaur relationships and early dinosaur evolution",
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/A-new-hypothesis-of-dinosaur-relationships-and-Baron-Norman/f03f6a706a883b18303e61b4cca6a56d942bf637

Langer et al. 2017, "Untangling the dinosaur family tree":
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Untangling-the-dinosaur-family-tree-Langer-Ezcurra/8c8ff01b0526f76d1a98c88c01d1978c9de75614

A couple of years ago, you said that these papers had been superseded and we are
back to the traditional division. But I don't recall what evidence you provided.
Can you cite a paper or two that put this Ornithoscelida hypothesis to rest, in your opinion?

Temporarily, at least. I expect you to think that a stake has been driven through
its heart, but I would like to see the opinion of some well known authority.

> > That's why I think it is a good idea to include feathers
> > [in the broad sense that seems to be the consensus these days]
> > in a phylogenetic analysis in which the taxa have enough preserved
> > of the places where one might expect feathers to have been attached in real life.
>
> > Really, what's the harm in doing that?

> No harm if you code most taxa as missing data. Just no benefit either.

Except that you might discover that there is no correlation between having
hairlike growths optimistically called "protofeathers" and having feathers
with barbs and barbules. Then the whole "feathered dinosaur" hypothesis could
be split in two: dinofuzz and feathers.

[Trivia: General Winfield Scott, Mexican War hero, was called "Old Fuss and Feathers."]

> >>>>>>> The section continued with:
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> "The first phylogenetic analysis produced 6320 most parsimonious treeswith a strict consensus tree placing
> >>>>>>> Ulughbegsaurus within a poorly resolved Neovenatoridae (Aerosteon, Australovenator, Chilantaisaurus,
> >>>>>>> Fukuiraptor, Megaraptor and Neovenator), a clade within Carcharodontosauria (figure 3a).
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> How can there be so many "most parsimonous trees"? Is there a quantitative measure of parsimony,
> >>>>>>> or is it just an order ranking, with 6320 maximal trees, none of which is comparable to any of the others?
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> The quantitative measure is the number of steps (changes) required to
> >>>>>> fit the data to the tree. Not sure what you mean by "maximal" here;
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Not all orderings are linear. Take the proper subsets of the set {1, 2, 3} with the order "is a subset of";
> >>>>> by proper subset I mean a subset missing at least one element. The maximal proper subsets
> >>>>> are {1,2}, {2,3} and {1,3}. They are maximal, because there is no proper subset that contains any
> >>>>> of them without being that subset itself.
> >>>
> >>>> This has nothing at all to do with the meaning of "most parsimonious
> >>>> trees". Nor does "maximal".
> >>>
> >>> Thanks for clearing up that much. But it seems that biologists sometimes work with an
> >>> impoverished model where you try too hard to shoehorn things into linear order,
> >>> and even to assign numbers to them. [Mohs scale of hardness was a lot like that,
> >>> until some physics-savvy person fixed it up.]
> >>>
> >>> On the other hand, in a phylogenetic tree, EVERY SPECIES is incomparable to every
> >>> other species. ALL species are at maximal points, at the tips of all the branches.
> >>> I could kick myself for not thinking of this example right off the bat.
> >
> >> I really have no idea what you're talking about here,
> >
> > Explaining the difference between "maximal" and "maximum = above everything else"

> Still have no idea what you mean.

Oh, really? you are still unable to comprehend the difference, are you?

>What does this have to do with
> parsimonious trees?

We could rank them in a nonlinear order, "X is more parsimonious than Y", and
then have a bunch of maximal trees. The benefit might be that some maximal
ones may be found to be parsimonious for weightier reasons than some others.

> >> but it seems as
> >> far as I can discern to have nothing at all to do with phylogenetics.
> >
> > It has everything to do with phylogenetic classification, which is based on
> > the prohibition against putting taxa at the nodes of phylogenetic trees.

> So nothing to do with phylogenetics, then.

Now you know why I make a distinction between cladistics and cladistic
classification, and don't allow luster to get transferred from one to the other.
The classification adds no information to that obtainable from the phylogenetic tree
that is the basis for it in the first place. And most people have a much
easier time understanding the trees one sees on the internet than the classifications.

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

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

[John Harshman]

I don't think that works. You have to take taphonomy into account. The
conditions for the preservation of feathers or skin are extremely rare,
and you can't just count up fossils with or without them.

>> Usually we infer loss (when coding characters) only when there is
>> preserved skin. And even there it tends to be a patch here and a patch
>> there, so you don't know if there were feathers on some other part of
>> the body.
>
> So you seem to want certainty here, but not in telling whether X is a sister group of Y.

No. I'm saying that absence of evidence (of feathers) is not evidence of
absence.

> For example, there was a revolutionary pair of papers which upset the {theropod, sauropod, ornithischian}
> sister group relationship.
>
> Baron et al. 2017, "A new hypothesis of dinosaur relationships and early dinosaur evolution",
> https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/A-new-hypothesis-of-dinosaur-relationships-and-Baron-Norman/f03f6a706a883b18303e61b4cca6a56d942bf637
>
> Langer et al. 2017, "Untangling the dinosaur family tree":
> https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Untangling-the-dinosaur-family-tree-Langer-Ezcurra/8c8ff01b0526f76d1a98c88c01d1978c9de75614
>
> A couple of years ago, you said that these papers had been superseded and we are
> back to the traditional division. But I don't recall what evidence you provided.
> Can you cite a paper or two that put this Ornithoscelida hypothesis to rest, in your opinion?

I'm not sure it's put to rest. It's still a matter of contention,
though. Several dinosaur paleontologists criticized the original paper,
if I recall. In fact, you will note that the second paper you reference
finds the traditional topology, not the Ornithoscelida topology.

> Temporarily, at least. I expect you to think that a stake has been driven through
> its heart, but I would like to see the opinion of some well known authority.

I would hope that data analysis would be a better guide than authority.

>>> That's why I think it is a good idea to include feathers
>>> [in the broad sense that seems to be the consensus these days]
>>> in a phylogenetic analysis in which the taxa have enough preserved
>>> of the places where one might expect feathers to have been attached in real life.
>>
>>> Really, what's the harm in doing that?
>
>> No harm if you code most taxa as missing data. Just no benefit either.
>
> Except that you might discover that there is no correlation between having
> hairlike growths optimistically called "protofeathers" and having feathers
> with barbs and barbules. Then the whole "feathered dinosaur" hypothesis could
> be split in two: dinofuzz and feathers.

What exactly do you mean by that? There could only be a correlation if
you scored them as separate characters. But why would you expect a given
fossil to have both, if one evolved from the other? I'm not sure you
have thought this through.

I still don't know, based on your example, what the difference it. The
tips of the trees are indeed above everything else.

> >What does this have to do with
>> parsimonious trees?
>
> We could rank them in a nonlinear order, "X is more parsimonious than Y", and
> then have a bunch of maximal trees. The benefit might be that some maximal
> ones may be found to be parsimonious for weightier reasons than some others.

Still no idea what you're saying. What does "maximal" mean here? If it
means "most parsimonious", just use that word. The most parsimonious
trees are those that require the least number of steps to explain the
data. In the current study, there are 6320 different trees, all of the
same length, that have the least number of steps.

I'm not sure you mean the same thing by "parsimonious" as I do, or what
that has to do with "maximal".

>>>> but it seems as
>>>> far as I can discern to have nothing at all to do with phylogenetics.
>>>
>>> It has everything to do with phylogenetic classification, which is based on
>>> the prohibition against putting taxa at the nodes of phylogenetic trees.
>
>> So nothing to do with phylogenetics, then.
>
> Now you know why I make a distinction between cladistics and cladistic
> classification,

Everyone makes that distinction, not just you. But I don't understand
your reason, though it seems to have something to do with not liking
cladistic classification. This is all irrelevant to what we were discussing.

> and don't allow luster to get transferred from one to the other.
> The classification adds no information to that obtainable from the phylogenetic tree
> that is the basis for it in the first place. And most people have a much
> easier time understanding the trees one sees on the internet than the classifications.

All true. But what does this have to do with what we were talking about?
Is this you wandering off down a rabbit hole?

[John Harshman]

Yes, though that isn't what I was talking about, and it's not what was
in the OP, though I do see that you did include a link in the OP. That
part had indeed been snipped. You added that link later, after the snip
had happened.

[Peter Nyikos]

I didn't suggest anything so simplistic as your last line.

> >> Usually we infer loss (when coding characters) only when there is
> >> preserved skin. And even there it tends to be a patch here and a patch
> >> there, so you don't know if there were feathers on some other part of
> >> the body.
> >
> > So you seem to want certainty here, but not in telling whether X is a sister group of Y.

> No. I'm saying that absence of evidence (of feathers) is not evidence of
> absence.

General truisms like this don't add to the discussion.

> > For example, there was a revolutionary pair of papers which upset the {theropod, sauropod, ornithischian}
> > sister group relationship.
> >
> > Baron et al. 2017, "A new hypothesis of dinosaur relationships and early dinosaur evolution",
> > https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/A-new-hypothesis-of-dinosaur-relationships-and-Baron-Norman/f03f6a706a883b18303e61b4cca6a56d942bf637
> >
> > Langer et al. 2017, "Untangling the dinosaur family tree":
> > https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Untangling-the-dinosaur-family-tree-Langer-Ezcurra/8c8ff01b0526f76d1a98c88c01d1978c9de75614
> >
> > A couple of years ago, you said that these papers had been superseded and we are
> > back to the traditional division. But I don't recall what evidence you provided.
> > Can you cite a paper or two that put this Ornithoscelida hypothesis to rest, in your opinion?

> I'm not sure it's put to rest. It's still a matter of contention,
> though. Several dinosaur paleontologists criticized the original paper,
> if I recall. In fact, you will note that the second paper you reference
> finds the traditional topology, not the Ornithoscelida topology.

But weakly supported, and leaving considerable doubt. If you know
of any progress in the last four years, why don't you provide it?

> > Temporarily, at least. I expect you to think that a stake has been driven through
> > its heart, but I would like to see the opinion of some well known authority.

> I would hope that data analysis would be a better guide than authority.

I'm glad you are not living up to my pessimistic expectations. So, no authority needed.

In fact, you are proving my point for me: some of the most basic
sister group relationships are still up for grabs. As for your
excuses for not scoring presence of feathers, I have never seen you cite
a paper that gives any excuses at all. Can you find one now?


Remainder deleted, to be replied to tomorrow or the day after.


By the way, something you posted later made me think more carefully
about what I wanted to say about that disagreement about Megaraptora
being carnosaurs or coelurosaurs. So I've decided to postpone that for another day too.

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

University of So. Carolina in Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[John Harshman]

Then what were you suggesting?

>>>> Usually we infer loss (when coding characters) only when there is
>>>> preserved skin. And even there it tends to be a patch here and a patch
>>>> there, so you don't know if there were feathers on some other part of
>>>> the body.
>>>
>>> So you seem to want certainty here, but not in telling whether X is a sister group of Y.
>
>> No. I'm saying that absence of evidence (of feathers) is not evidence of
>> absence.
>
> General truisms like this don't add to the discussion.

They do if you are violating that truism, which it seems you are.

>>> For example, there was a revolutionary pair of papers which upset the {theropod, sauropod, ornithischian}
>>> sister group relationship.
>>>
>>> Baron et al. 2017, "A new hypothesis of dinosaur relationships and early dinosaur evolution",
>>> https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/A-new-hypothesis-of-dinosaur-relationships-and-Baron-Norman/f03f6a706a883b18303e61b4cca6a56d942bf637
>>>
>>> Langer et al. 2017, "Untangling the dinosaur family tree":
>>> https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Untangling-the-dinosaur-family-tree-Langer-Ezcurra/8c8ff01b0526f76d1a98c88c01d1978c9de75614
>>>
>>> A couple of years ago, you said that these papers had been superseded and we are
>>> back to the traditional division. But I don't recall what evidence you provided.
>>> Can you cite a paper or two that put this Ornithoscelida hypothesis to rest, in your opinion?
>
>> I'm not sure it's put to rest. It's still a matter of contention,
>> though. Several dinosaur paleontologists criticized the original paper,
>> if I recall. In fact, you will note that the second paper you reference
>> finds the traditional topology, not the Ornithoscelida topology.
>
> But weakly supported, and leaving considerable doubt. If you know
> of any progress in the last four years, why don't you provide it?

I don't, though I do recall reading a recent paper that supported
Ornithoscelida. Can't remember where.

>>> Temporarily, at least. I expect you to think that a stake has been driven through
>>> its heart, but I would like to see the opinion of some well known authority.
>
>> I would hope that data analysis would be a better guide than authority.
>
> I'm glad you are not living up to my pessimistic expectations. So, no authority needed.
>
> In fact, you are proving my point for me: some of the most basic
> sister group relationships are still up for grabs. As for your
> excuses for not scoring presence of feathers, I have never seen you cite
> a paper that gives any excuses at all. Can you find one now?

Some relationships are up for grabs, but not all. Birds are dinosaurs;
that isn't a live question. No excuses are necessary for not scoring
feathers. You seem to be getting farther and farther from the topic.

> Remainder deleted, to be replied to tomorrow or the day after.
>
>
> By the way, something you posted later made me think more carefully
> about what I wanted to say about that disagreement about Megaraptora
> being carnosaurs or coelurosaurs. So I've decided to postpone that for another day too.

OK.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Sunday, September 12, 2021 at 10:05:02 PM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
> On 9/10/2021 9:57 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > Carcharodontosauria (shark-toothed saurians) were the last of the
> > allosaurids, found in Laurasia up to the end of the Turonian
> > (early Late Cretaceous) but surviving in Gondwana to the end of the Cretaceous.
> > In a role reversal from what I've been accustomed to, the largest of these allosaurids
> > were considerably larger than the largest tyrannosauroids of the time.
> >
> > The "new" find is actually a rediscovery:
> >
> > "The chunk of jawbone was found in Uzbekistan's Kyzylkum Desert in the 1980s, and researchers rediscovered it in 2019 in an Uzbekistan museum collection."
> > https://www.microsoftnewskids.com/en-us/kids/animals/gigantic-shark-toothed-dinosaur-discovered-in-uzbekistan/ar-AAOhazl?ocid=entnewsntp
> >
> > The chunk is a partial maxilla, but from comparison with other
> > carcharodontosaurs, the following is hypothesized [*ibid*]:
> >
> > "The 26-foot-long (8 meters) beast weighed 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms), making it longer than an African elephant and heavier than a bison. Researchers named it *Ulughbegsaurus* *uzbekistanensis*, after Ulugh Beg, a 15th-century astronomer, mathematician and sultan from what is now Uzbekistan.


> The reason dinosaurs were larger and yet lighter than even mammals today
> is because of their respiratory systems.

I'd like to see anyone support that claim with a citation to a peer reviewed research article.

> Birds inherited their famous
> respiratory systems from somewhere, you know.

Yes, but do you have any evidence besides an unreferenced claim
at the beginning of a Wikipedia article saying that coelurosaurs
had hollow bones?

Coelurosaurs are a clade that is included in a larger clade with carnosaurs,
and this clade in turn was just a part of Theropoda. What makes you think
the giant sauropods, or the ornithiscians had hollow bones?

> Pound for pound in a
> confrontation between a dinosaur and a mammal of equivalent size and
> weight the dinosaur would hands down.

This may be true of cassowaries today, but I wonder how a cassowary would fare
in a confrontation with a leopard, or some other carnivore of no greater size than itself.

Over in Africa, there must have been many confrontations of ostriches with
mammals of various kinds, and ostriches can hold their own with their famous kicks,
but whether they can "win hands down" is a different question.

[I often use a simile mixing fiction and fact in talk.origins, when speaking
of people with their heads buried in the sand while kicking furiously
from time to time at those they have killfiled.]

> I know you have an irrational
> fondness for Fedducia's bullshit,

You "know" all kinds of falsehoods, and this is one of them.

However, I am sure Harshman will be delighted to hear you denigrate Feduccia
like that. I have him to thank for my knowing about Feduccia in the first place.
The occasion was a thread where Harshman panned a paper of Feduccia
without even bothering to show that what Feduccia was proposing was wrong.

IIRC John's main ire was focused on the journal *Auk* for daring to publish anything
by Feduccia. By the time I found that thread, it was about 50 posts deep,
because he had quite a number of adoring fans, most of whom said nothing
scientific that would have even addressed the points Feduccia was making.
IOW, they acted just like you are acting now.

The only critic of this mutual backslapping was Ray Martinez,
but he had no reason to be fond of Feduccia, but he had his own creationist
bilge to propound.

When I came on the scene, I wanted to know what the big fuss was all
about, and Harshman's replies were too weak to be decisive,
and that is the way things have been ever since.

> but even you must admit that the
> scientific consensus that birds are dinosaurs is and was correct.

It certainly was NOT when Harshman's role model Henry Gee, then editor
of _Nature_, pontificated, "Birds are dinosaurs. The debate is over."

He did this on the basis of two new finds in China, one of which was *Sinosauropteryx*,
a fligtless coelurosaur covered with hairlike fibers on much of its body; and
*Caudipteryx*, a creature with true feathers who many to this day
[including quite a number who do believe birds to be dinosaurs]
believe to be a secondarily flightless bird. There is at least one fairly
thorough cladistic analysis that has it in a clade whose sister taxon is *Confuciusornis*,
with *Archaeopteryx* several clades removed.

In short, neither of the two creatures that made Henry Gee so sure
were of much use as evidence for birds being dinosaurs.

But biologists are slaves of external funding, and the implicit message Henry's editorial
came out loud and clear. Any paper that dared to dispute the hypothesis that birds are dinosaurs
would be held to astronomically high standards by _Nature_,
while any paper that supported the hypothesis would be welcomed with open arms,
at least as far as being reviewed by people who firmly believed in the hypothesis.
These reviewers would naturally get a very good first impression of the submission.

Fast forward to the present, and Harshman has always been long on rhetoric and
short on hard data and reasoning. Just yesterday his "evidence" for birds being
dinosaurs was a close paraphrase of Henry Gee's *ipse dixit*.

> > "What caught scientists by surprise was that the dinosaur was much larger — twice the length and more than five times heavier — than its ecosystem's previously known apex predator: a tyrannosaur, the researchers found."
> >
> > That should probably be "tyrannosauroid," but as you can see from the url,
> > this article was chosen [from "Live Science"] with kids in mind as a hefty part
> > of the audience; there is a suitable picture at the top of the article to go with that.
> >
> > The research paper on which it is based is free access:
> > https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.210923
> >
> > I relied on it for my opening paragraph, but this being late Friday here,
> > I am quoting from the popularization from here on.
> >
> > "The two dinosaur groups were fairly similar, but carcharodontosaurs were generally more slender and lightly-built than the heavyset tyrannosaurs, said study co-researcher Darla Zelenitsky, an associate professor of paleobiology at the University of Calgary. Even so, carcharodontosaurs were usually larger than tyrannosaur dinosaurs, reaching weights greater than 13,200 pounds (6,000 kg)."

You really aren't interested in details like this, Oxyaena, unless you get to report on them, are you?

> > Here too, "tyrannosauroid" is more precise, while "tyrannosaurid" is
> > the most precise term in the next sentence:
> >
> > "Then, around 90 million to 80 million years ago, the carcharodontosaurs disappeared and the tyrannosaurs grew in size, taking over as apex predators in Asia and North America."
> >
> > "The new finding is the first carcharodontosaur dinosaur discovered in Central Asia, the researchers noted. Paleontologists already knew that the tyrannosaur *Timurlengia* lived at the same time and place, but at 13 feet (4 m) in length and about 375 pounds (170 kg) in weight, *Timurlengia* was several times smaller than *U. uzbekistanensis*, suggesting that *U. uzbekistanensis* was the apex predator in that ecosystem, gobbling up horned dinosaurs, long-necked sauropods and ostrich-like dinosaurs in the neighborhood, the team said."

You may be younger than me, Oxyaena, but you don't seem to be young at heart the way I am.
You thought that the following was criticism, didn't you?

> >
> > Methinks that the part from "gobbling up..." on was inspired by
> > "The Land Before Time" cartoon series. My daughters each saw
> > the first two at a tender age, and were very fond of them.

Well, it wasn't. It always makes me glad to see children waxing enthusiastic about
prehistoric animals. Sadly, I didn't see much sign of such children when I was growing up.
I still remember when I was avidly reading _The First Mammals_ by Scheele, in the library
only a year or two after it was published, and a classmate of mine of above average
intelligence berated me for reading such a book, and recommended that I switch to reading
books on Greek mythology instead.

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

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

[Glenn]

How much, if any, of this is accurate?

"Birds from chickadees to Sandhill Cranes have hollow bones. Not all bones in a bird’s body are hollow, though, and the number of hollow bones varies among species. Large gliding and soaring birds tend to have more, while diving birds have less.

Penguins, loons, and puffins don’t have any hollow bones. It’s thought that solid bones make it easier for these birds to dive.

Flightless birds do have hollow bones. Ostriches and emus have hollow femurs. It’s thought that the air sac system that extends into their upper legs is used to reduce their body heat by panting.

This bone specialization isn’t found only in birds. Fossils show evidence of air pockets in carnivorous dinosaur bones. Humans have hollow bones around their sinuses. They can also be found in the skulls of other mammals and crocodiles."

https://www.montananaturalist.org/blog-post/avian-adaptations/

[John Harshman]

On 9/15/21 12:16 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Sunday, September 12, 2021 at 10:05:02 PM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
>> On 9/10/2021 9:57 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> Carcharodontosauria (shark-toothed saurians) were the last of the
>>> allosaurids, found in Laurasia up to the end of the Turonian
>>> (early Late Cretaceous) but surviving in Gondwana to the end of the Cretaceous.
>>> In a role reversal from what I've been accustomed to, the largest of these allosaurids
>>> were considerably larger than the largest tyrannosauroids of the time.
>>>
>>> The "new" find is actually a rediscovery:
>>>
>>> "The chunk of jawbone was found in Uzbekistan's Kyzylkum Desert in the 1980s, and researchers rediscovered it in 2019 in an Uzbekistan museum collection."
>>> https://www.microsoftnewskids.com/en-us/kids/animals/gigantic-shark-toothed-dinosaur-discovered-in-uzbekistan/ar-AAOhazl?ocid=entnewsntp
>>>
>>> The chunk is a partial maxilla, but from comparison with other
>>> carcharodontosaurs, the following is hypothesized [*ibid*]:
>>>
>>> "The 26-foot-long (8 meters) beast weighed 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms), making it longer than an African elephant and heavier than a bison. Researchers named it *Ulughbegsaurus* *uzbekistanensis*, after Ulugh Beg, a 15th-century astronomer, mathematician and sultan from what is now Uzbekistan.
>
>
>> The reason dinosaurs were larger and yet lighter than even mammals today
>> is because of their respiratory systems.
>
> I'd like to see anyone support that claim with a citation to a peer reviewed research article.

Good luck with that.

>> Birds inherited their famous
>> respiratory systems from somewhere, you know.
>
> Yes, but do you have any evidence besides an unreferenced claim
> at the beginning of a Wikipedia article saying that coelurosaurs
> had hollow bones?
>
> Coelurosaurs are a clade that is included in a larger clade with carnosaurs,
> and this clade in turn was just a part of Theropoda. What makes you think
> the giant sauropods, or the ornithiscians had hollow bones?

Well, giant sauropods had extensively pneumatized cervical vertebrae. So
that's something.

>> Pound for pound in a
>> confrontation between a dinosaur and a mammal of equivalent size and
>> weight the dinosaur would hands down.
>
> This may be true of cassowaries today, but I wonder how a cassowary would fare
> in a confrontation with a leopard, or some other carnivore of no greater size than itself.
>
> Over in Africa, there must have been many confrontations of ostriches with
> mammals of various kinds, and ostriches can hold their own with their famous kicks,
> but whether they can "win hands down" is a different question.
>
> [I often use a simile mixing fiction and fact in talk.origins, when speaking
> of people with their heads buried in the sand while kicking furiously
> from time to time at those they have killfiled.]
>
>> I know you have an irrational
>> fondness for Fedducia's bullshit,
>
> You "know" all kinds of falsehoods, and this is one of them.
>
> However, I am sure Harshman will be delighted to hear you denigrate Feduccia
> like that. I have him to thank for my knowing about Feduccia in the first place.
> The occasion was a thread where Harshman panned a paper of Feduccia
> without even bothering to show that what Feduccia was proposing was wrong.

Left as an exercise for the student?

> IIRC John's main ire was focused on the journal *Auk* for daring to publish anything
> by Feduccia. By the time I found that thread, it was about 50 posts deep,
> because he had quite a number of adoring fans, most of whom said nothing
> scientific that would have even addressed the points Feduccia was making.
> IOW, they acted just like you are acting now.

No, your memory has for once failed you. It's not publishing anything by
Feduccia that's the problem, it was publishing that particular crap
article by Feduccia. And I must assume that I pointed out at least some
of its crap features.

If you want specifics, the one I remember best is that in the middle of
the article he went from claiming that dromaeosaurs couldn't possibly be
related to birds to claiming that they couldn't possibly be dinosaurs.

> The only critic of this mutual backslapping was Ray Martinez,
> but he had no reason to be fond of Feduccia, but he had his own creationist
> bilge to propound.
>
> When I came on the scene, I wanted to know what the big fuss was all
> about, and Harshman's replies were too weak to be decisive,
> and that is the way things have been ever since.

Your memory is colored by your personal needs to be intellectually
superior to other people.

>> but even you must admit that the
>> scientific consensus that birds are dinosaurs is and was correct.
>
> It certainly was NOT when Harshman's role model Henry Gee, then editor
> of _Nature_, pontificated, "Birds are dinosaurs. The debate is over."

It should be unnecessary to say that Henry Gee is not my role model. But
in that case he was right.

> He did this on the basis of two new finds in China, one of which was *Sinosauropteryx*,
> a fligtless coelurosaur covered with hairlike fibers on much of its body; and
> *Caudipteryx*, a creature with true feathers who many to this day
> [including quite a number who do believe birds to be dinosaurs]
> believe to be a secondarily flightless bird.

No, there are only a very few people who believe that. And we would have
to argue over the meaning of "bird" to discuss that. The real question
is about the tree topology, and that has indeed been well settled.

> There is at least one fairly
> thorough cladistic analysis that has it in a clade whose sister taxon is *Confuciusornis*,
> with *Archaeopteryx* several clades removed.

Could you cite that one? You aren't referring to Maryanska, are you?

> In short, neither of the two creatures that made Henry Gee so sure
> were of much use as evidence for birds being dinosaurs.

In short, you have not bothered to look at the evidence. That evidence
was at least good enough for Feduccia to change his mind about whether
birds were coelurosaurs. Of course he settled that by then going on to
claim that coelurosaurs weren't dinosaurs.

> But biologists are slaves of external funding, and the implicit message Henry's editorial
> came out loud and clear. Any paper that dared to dispute the hypothesis that birds are dinosaurs
> would be held to astronomically high standards by _Nature_,
> while any paper that supported the hypothesis would be welcomed with open arms,
> at least as far as being reviewed by people who firmly believed in the hypothesis.
> These reviewers would naturally get a very good first impression of the submission.

That, dare I say it, is paranoid.

> Fast forward to the present, and Harshman has always been long on rhetoric and
> short on hard data and reasoning. Just yesterday his "evidence" for birds being
> dinosaurs was a close paraphrase of Henry Gee's *ipse dixit*.

I don't recall presenting any evidence. Your memory is exceeding
convenient for you.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, September 15, 2021 at 5:07:25 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 9/15/21 12:16 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Sunday, September 12, 2021 at 10:05:02 PM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
> >> On 9/10/2021 9:57 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>> Carcharodontosauria (shark-toothed saurians) were the last of the
> >>> allosaurids, found in Laurasia up to the end of the Turonian
> >>> (early Late Cretaceous) but surviving in Gondwana to the end of the Cretaceous.
> >>> In a role reversal from what I've been accustomed to, the largest of these allosaurids
> >>> were considerably larger than the largest tyrannosauroids of the time.
> >>>
> >>> The "new" find is actually a rediscovery:
> >>>
> >>> "The chunk of jawbone was found in Uzbekistan's Kyzylkum Desert in the 1980s, and researchers rediscovered it in 2019 in an Uzbekistan museum collection."
> >>> https://www.microsoftnewskids.com/en-us/kids/animals/gigantic-shark-toothed-dinosaur-discovered-in-uzbekistan/ar-AAOhazl?ocid=entnewsntp
> >>>
> >>> The chunk is a partial maxilla, but from comparison with other
> >>> carcharodontosaurs, the following is hypothesized [*ibid*]:
> >>>
> >>> "The 26-foot-long (8 meters) beast weighed 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms), making it longer than an African elephant and heavier than a bison. Researchers named it *Ulughbegsaurus* *uzbekistanensis*, after Ulugh Beg, a 15th-century astronomer, mathematician and sultan from what is now Uzbekistan.
> >
> >
> >> The reason dinosaurs were larger and yet lighter than even mammals today
> >> is because of their respiratory systems.
> >
> > I'd like to see anyone support that claim with a citation to a peer reviewed research article.

> Good luck with that.

It's Oxyaena who needs good luck with that, not I.

I've got no dog in this fight, assuming one develops at all. At this point I certainly can't
endorse the part about dinosaurs being larger yet lighter than mammals today.
A lot depends on how much meat there is on those bones,
as any formerly obese person who has successfully slimmed down can testify.
See also something I repost below, thanks to an elephant in this room, er, thread.

> >> Birds inherited their famous
> >> respiratory systems from somewhere, you know.
> >
> > Yes, but do you have any evidence besides an unreferenced claim
> > at the beginning of a Wikipedia article saying that coelurosaurs
> > had hollow bones?
> >
> > Coelurosaurs are a clade that is included in a larger clade with carnosaurs,
> > and this clade in turn was just a part of Theropoda. What makes you think
> > the giant sauropods, or the ornithiscians had hollow bones?

> Well, giant sauropods had extensively pneumatized cervical vertebrae. So
> that's something.

So is something I am forced to tell you about due to your general
habit of ignoring Glenn. [See below for one possible reason, generalized
as "What Harshman doesn't know can't hurt him."]

------------------------------------ Glenn asking about pneumatic bones ________________________

How much, if any, of this is accurate?

"Birds from chickadees to Sandhill Cranes have hollow bones. Not all bones in a bird’s body are hollow, though, and the number of hollow bones varies among species. Large gliding and soaring birds tend to have more, while diving birds have less.

Penguins, loons, and puffins don’t have any hollow bones. It’s thought that solid bones make it easier for these birds to dive.

Flightless birds do have hollow bones. Ostriches and emus have hollow femurs. It’s thought that the air sac system that extends into their upper legs is used to reduce their body heat by panting.

This bone specialization isn’t found only in birds. Fossils show evidence of air pockets in carnivorous dinosaur bones. Humans have hollow bones around their sinuses. They can also be found in the skulls of other mammals and crocodiles."

https://www.montananaturalist.org/blog-post/avian-adaptations/

========================= end of Glenn's query =====================================

About penguins and loons...this suggests that Spinosaurus did not have hollow bones. True?

The bit about panting is interesting. I thought the main reason for those air sacs was
to support the continuous unidirectional movement in the lungs, in contrast to the
cul-de-sacs in our lungs, the alveoli.

> >> Pound for pound in a
> >> confrontation between a dinosaur and a mammal of equivalent size and
> >> weight the dinosaur would hands down.
> >
> > This may be true of cassowaries today, but I wonder how a cassowary would fare
> > in a confrontation with a leopard, or some other carnivore of no greater size than itself.
> >
> > Over in Africa, there must have been many confrontations of ostriches with
> > mammals of various kinds, and ostriches can hold their own with their famous kicks,
> > but whether they can "win hands down" is a different question.
> >
> > [I often use a simile mixing fiction and fact in talk.origins, when speaking
> > of people with their heads buried in the sand while kicking furiously
> > from time to time at those they have killfiled.]
> >
> >> I know you have an irrational
> >> fondness for Fedducia's bullshit,
> >
> > You "know" all kinds of falsehoods, and this is one of them.
> >
> > However, I am sure Harshman will be delighted to hear you denigrate Feduccia
> > like that.

The shoe surely fits, and you, Harshman, haven't said you don't want to wear it.
A wildly unequivocal claim by you which triggered my stopping where I did below
suggests that you will be wearing it a lot.

> > I have him to thank for my knowing about Feduccia in the first place.
> > The occasion was a thread where Harshman panned a paper of Feduccia
> > without even bothering to show that what Feduccia was proposing was wrong.

> Left as an exercise for the student?

Baloney. Let's see YOU, no student, do what you failed to do back then.

> > IIRC John's main ire was focused on the journal *Auk* for daring to publish anything
> > by Feduccia. By the time I found that thread, it was about 50 posts deep,
> > because he had quite a number of adoring fans, most of whom said nothing
> > scientific that would have even addressed the points Feduccia was making.
> > IOW, they acted just like you are acting now.

> No, your memory has for once failed you.

Maybe the distinction is academic. Read on.

> It's not publishing anything by
> Feduccia that's the problem, it was publishing that particular crap
> article by Feduccia.

Don't you look on everything Feduccia publishes on the BAD issue
as crap? Your reaction to _Riddle of the Feathered Dragons_ was that
it was a pretty useless book because Feduccia did not stick his neck
out to propose an alternative hypothesis on bird evolutions, nor
even to deny outright that birds are dinosaurs.

For me, there was a tremendous wealth of information in it,
partly because of all the information we were given about the new
finds in China. There is a whole chapter largely devoted to enantiornithine birds,
which I had never heard of before I opened the book. There were details
I never would have imagined: literally thousands of fossils of *Confuciusornis*,
in contrast to something like a baker's dozen of fossils of *Archaeopteryx*.

There was much else that was new to me, and your comment showed me where
your priorities lie like nothing else showed me before. Partly, that was because
it reminded me of Prum's 2002 *agent* *provocateur* article in which he condemned Feduccia
for having "abandoned science" because Feduccia didn't want to commit
to a definite hypothesis as to what the sister group of birds was.

>And I must assume that I pointed out at least some
> of its crap features.

Just like you figured you must assume that you had NOT said that the Higgs
field was the Higgs boson. But Glenn showed you that you had indeed said
such a thing. Which may explain a bracketed comment I made up there.

>
> If you want specifics, the one I remember best is that in the middle of
> the article he went from claiming that dromaeosaurs couldn't possibly be
> related to birds to claiming that they couldn't possibly be dinosaurs.

I've never seen such unequivocal things coming from Feduccia, neither
in any of his articles or in either of his books on the subject,
the more recent one being barely a year old. Have you seen it?

And I am forced to conclude that you are flagrantly editorializing,
on the basis of what I've recounted about Prum's pseudoscientific condemnation
and your own reaction to the _Riddle_ book.


Remainder deleted, to be replied to tomorrow. You are spoiling for a fight,
and I've given you enough of it already for one day.

Besides, I want to get an early start tomorrow, and I've got some things to attend to
before I turn in for the night.

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

Univ. of South Carolina in Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[John Harshman]

My general habit is because Glenn is an annoying troll who for the most
part posts either naked URLs or simple insults. Attempts to engage him
on those rare times when he posts something substrantive have quickly
devolved into the aforementioned behavior.

> [See below for one possible reason, generalized
> as "What Harshman doesn't know can't hurt him."]
>
> ------------------------------------ Glenn asking about pneumatic bones ________________________
>
> How much, if any, of this is accurate?
>
> "Birds from chickadees to Sandhill Cranes have hollow bones. Not all bones in a bird’s body are hollow, though, and the number of hollow bones varies among species. Large gliding and soaring birds tend to have more, while diving birds have less.
>
> Penguins, loons, and puffins don’t have any hollow bones. It’s thought that solid bones make it easier for these birds to dive.
>
> Flightless birds do have hollow bones. Ostriches and emus have hollow femurs. It’s thought that the air sac system that extends into their upper legs is used to reduce their body heat by panting.
>
> This bone specialization isn’t found only in birds. Fossils show evidence of air pockets in carnivorous dinosaur bones. Humans have hollow bones around their sinuses. They can also be found in the skulls of other mammals and crocodiles."
>
> https://www.montananaturalist.org/blog-post/avian-adaptations/
>
> ========================= end of Glenn's query =====================================
>
> About penguins and loons...this suggests that Spinosaurus did not have hollow bones. True?
>
> The bit about panting is interesting. I thought the main reason for those air sacs was
> to support the continuous unidirectional movement in the lungs, in contrast to the
> cul-de-sacs in our lungs, the alveoli.

True enough. But there can be multiple functions.

>>>> Pound for pound in a
>>>> confrontation between a dinosaur and a mammal of equivalent size and
>>>> weight the dinosaur would hands down.
>>>
>>> This may be true of cassowaries today, but I wonder how a cassowary would fare
>>> in a confrontation with a leopard, or some other carnivore of no greater size than itself.
>>>
>>> Over in Africa, there must have been many confrontations of ostriches with
>>> mammals of various kinds, and ostriches can hold their own with their famous kicks,
>>> but whether they can "win hands down" is a different question.
>>>
>>> [I often use a simile mixing fiction and fact in talk.origins, when speaking
>>> of people with their heads buried in the sand while kicking furiously
>>> from time to time at those they have killfiled.]
>>>
>>>> I know you have an irrational
>>>> fondness for Fedducia's bullshit,
>>>
>>> You "know" all kinds of falsehoods, and this is one of them.
>>>
>>> However, I am sure Harshman will be delighted to hear you denigrate Feduccia
>>> like that.
>
> The shoe surely fits, and you, Harshman, haven't said you don't want to wear it.
> A wildly unequivocal claim by you which triggered my stopping where I did below
> suggests that you will be wearing it a lot.

I see no reason to comment on your constant speculations regarding my
motives and reactions. Nor will I wear any shoes you try to put on me.

>>> I have him to thank for my knowing about Feduccia in the first place.
>>> The occasion was a thread where Harshman panned a paper of Feduccia
>>> without even bothering to show that what Feduccia was proposing was wrong.
>
>> Left as an exercise for the student?
>
> Baloney. Let's see YOU, no student, do what you failed to do back then.

But I didn't fail back then. You just remember things the way you like them.

>>> IIRC John's main ire was focused on the journal *Auk* for daring to publish anything
>>> by Feduccia. By the time I found that thread, it was about 50 posts deep,
>>> because he had quite a number of adoring fans, most of whom said nothing
>>> scientific that would have even addressed the points Feduccia was making.
>>> IOW, they acted just like you are acting now.
>
>> No, your memory has for once failed you.
>
> Maybe the distinction is academic. Read on.
>
>> It's not publishing anything by
>> Feduccia that's the problem, it was publishing that particular crap
>> article by Feduccia.
>
> Don't you look on everything Feduccia publishes on the BAD issue
> as crap?

Yes, but he did a certain amount of useful work before he got onto that
schtick.

> Your reaction to _Riddle of the Feathered Dragons_ was that
> it was a pretty useless book because Feduccia did not stick his neck
> out to propose an alternative hypothesis on bird evolutions, nor
> even to deny outright that birds are dinosaurs.

That's only one reason it was useless.

> For me, there was a tremendous wealth of information in it,
> partly because of all the information we were given about the new
> finds in China. There is a whole chapter largely devoted to enantiornithine birds,
> which I had never heard of before I opened the book. There were details
> I never would have imagined: literally thousands of fossils of *Confuciusornis*,
> in contrast to something like a baker's dozen of fossils of *Archaeopteryx*.

OK, that much would be useful to a person who didn't know about it. So
it's not quite a useless book. Its main thesis, however, is useless.

> There was much else that was new to me, and your comment showed me where
> your priorities lie like nothing else showed me before. Partly, that was because
> it reminded me of Prum's 2002 *agent* *provocateur* article in which he condemned Feduccia
> for having "abandoned science" because Feduccia didn't want to commit
> to a definite hypothesis as to what the sister group of birds was.

You misremember Prum's article too. And I'm pretty sure you aren't right
about where my priorities lie, whatever you may suppose.

>> And I must assume that I pointed out at least some
>> of its crap features.
>
> Just like you figured you must assume that you had NOT said that the Higgs
> field was the Higgs boson. But Glenn showed you that you had indeed said
> such a thing. Which may explain a bracketed comment I made up there.

Nope, that explains nothing.

>> If you want specifics, the one I remember best is that in the middle of
>> the article he went from claiming that dromaeosaurs couldn't possibly be
>> related to birds to claiming that they couldn't possibly be dinosaurs.
>
> I've never seen such unequivocal things coming from Feduccia, neither
> in any of his articles or in either of his books on the subject,
> the more recent one being barely a year old. Have you seen it?

No.

> And I am forced to conclude that you are flagrantly editorializing,
> on the basis of what I've recounted about Prum's pseudoscientific condemnation
> and your own reaction to the _Riddle_ book.

I find it amusing that you conclude I'm flagrantly editorializing and in
the same sentence call Prum's ideas pseudoscientific.

> Remainder deleted, to be replied to tomorrow. You are spoiling for a fight,
> and I've given you enough of it already for one day.

I'm not, really. You started a fight, and I'm trying to correct your
misunderstandings.

[Peter Nyikos]

I don't suppose you looked into this before the emphasis of this thread shifted
to Oxyaena referring to "Feduccia's bullshit," with you twice playing "see no evil,
hear no evil, speak no evil" about it, the second time unmistakably so.

This is relevant to a comment that I snipped for focus the first time I
responded to this post, but now I include it below.

> >>>>> I'm pretty sure that the word the authors were looking for is "impacted."

> >>>> I think they mean "implanted", likely a new tooth that was yet to emerge
> >>>> from the jaw.
> >>>

> >>> Did you study the illustrations to see whether this is what they meant?
> >>>
> >>> By the way, do you have some grounds for thinking "implanted" is a synonym for "unerupted"?
> >
> >> It seems clear that's what they meant, as it was exposed only because of
> >> a break in the maxilla.
> >
> > You are evading the question. Are you afraid to say that the authors may have been guilty
> > of a malapropism?

> Oh, sorry. I didn't know that's what you were proposing.

I wasn't. I asked a straighforward question, but your complete evasion of it led to my new
question, which you also evaded with:

> So you're
> trying to score more points off people who aren't here?

A mere malapropism, which almost anyone can be guilty of from time
to time, and of no more significance than a spoonerism, has elicited
this comment from you.

A short while ago I wrote, on the "Vaccination" thread, that I have known
for a decade that you are addicted to double standards, but this is a stretch even for you,
outdoing even the one you displayed there.

Your perennial savaging of Feduccia, continued on this very thread,
combined with this evasive display of umbrage at my remark,
has taken your standard for double standards to new heights.

Already, close to a decade ago, I used the term "Sanguinary hemophiliac"
to describe someone who regularly bleeds profusely at slight pinpricks,
but indulges with bloodthirsty gusto in denigrating others of his choosing.

You "feigned the 'tard" back then by professing not to understand what "Sanguinary hemophiliac"
could possibly be a metaphor for, and so I have been excruciatingly explicit this time around.


I've responded to most of the rest of what you wrote earlier, so I've deleted that
portion here. I've also deleted something at the end which I deleted the
first time around too.


Peter Nyikos

[John Harshman]

You mean before *you* shifted the emphasis of the thread? No, I don't
really care. And you have access to the same information I do. If you
care, why not look?

It's truly amazing how everything, no matter how it starts, quickly
becomes a diatribe about your virtue contrasted with the sins of other
people. I think we've had enough of this thread.

[Glenn]

Trolls never get enough.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Tuesday, September 14, 2021 at 7:18:15 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 9/14/21 3:36 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Tuesday, September 14, 2021 at 11:37:11 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 9/14/21 7:50 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

Picking up where I left off on Tuesday:

> >>> That's why I think it is a good idea to include feathers
> >>> [in the broad sense that seems to be the consensus these days]
> >>> in a phylogenetic analysis in which the taxa have enough preserved
> >>> of the places where one might expect feathers to have been attached in real life.
> >>
> >>> Really, what's the harm in doing that?
> >
> >> No harm if you code most taxa as missing data. Just no benefit either.
> >
> > Except that you might discover that there is no correlation between having
> > hairlike growths optimistically called "protofeathers" and having feathers
> > with barbs and barbules. Then the whole "feathered dinosaur" hypothesis could
> > be split in two: dinofuzz and feathers.

> What exactly do you mean by that?

What I mean should be obvious to anyone. What is it about it that
you don't understand?


Your next comment sheds no light on any confusion you might have, but only
raises objections to how the correlation, or lack of it, could be detected:

> There could only be a correlation if
> you scored them as separate characters.

Why would you be unable to tell whether there is a correlation by scoring them
as various steps of the same character?

However, I do like the idea of scoring them as separate characters. Scoring them
as steps of the same character might not have any basis in reality.
After all, you don't think of your own hair as a bunch of protofeathers.
Nor, more to the point, do we think of the "hair" of pterosaurs as protofeathers.

> But why would you expect a given
> fossil to have both, if one evolved from the other?

Why do you think ANYONE would entertain such an expectation? I certainly never
hinted at having one. Quite the contrary.

> I'm not sure you have thought this through.

You are trolling. Why?

[John Harshman]

On 9/16/21 11:48 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> On Tuesday, September 14, 2021 at 7:18:15 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>> On 9/14/21 3:36 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>> On Tuesday, September 14, 2021 at 11:37:11 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
>>>> On 9/14/21 7:50 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> Picking up where I left off on Tuesday:
>
>>>>> That's why I think it is a good idea to include feathers
>>>>> [in the broad sense that seems to be the consensus these days]
>>>>> in a phylogenetic analysis in which the taxa have enough preserved
>>>>> of the places where one might expect feathers to have been attached in real life.
>>>>
>>>>> Really, what's the harm in doing that?
>>>
>>>> No harm if you code most taxa as missing data. Just no benefit either.
>>>
>>> Except that you might discover that there is no correlation between having
>>> hairlike growths optimistically called "protofeathers" and having feathers
>>> with barbs and barbules. Then the whole "feathered dinosaur" hypothesis could
>>> be split in two: dinofuzz and feathers.
>
>> What exactly do you mean by that?
>
> What I mean should be obvious to anyone. What is it about it that
> you don't understand?

Just what do you mean by correlation here? Do you mean to test whether
the presence of one in a taxon implies the presence of the other? Do you
mean to test whether one appears on branches where the other previously
appeared?

> Your next comment sheds no light on any confusion you might have, but only
> raises objections to how the correlation, or lack of it, could be detected:
>
>> There could only be a correlation if
>> you scored them as separate characters.
>
> Why would you be unable to tell whether there is a correlation by scoring them
> as various steps of the same character?

What in such a case would a correlation mean? It wouldn't mean that they
were present on the same taxon. What, in such a case, is a correlation?

> However, I do like the idea of scoring them as separate characters. Scoring them
> as steps of the same character might not have any basis in reality.
> After all, you don't think of your own hair as a bunch of protofeathers.
> Nor, more to the point, do we think of the "hair" of pterosaurs as protofeathers.

That isn't clear. What is clear, however, is that the protofeathers of
maniraptorans are protofeathers.

> > But why would you expect a given
>> fossil to have both, if one evolved from the other?
>
> Why do you think ANYONE would entertain such an expectation? I certainly never
> hinted at having one. Quite the contrary.

Then what is your expectation?

>> I'm not sure you have thought this through.
>
> You are trolling. Why?

Are we now descending into the inevitable end of all threads in which
you participate, the contrasting of your virtue with the faults of others?

[Glenn]

Well at least I learned from you that fossils evolve.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, September 16, 2021 at 3:05:06 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 9/16/21 11:48 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Tuesday, September 14, 2021 at 7:18:15 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 9/14/21 3:36 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>> On Tuesday, September 14, 2021 at 11:37:11 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >>>> On 9/14/21 7:50 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >
> > Picking up where I left off on Tuesday:
> >
> >>>>> That's why I think it is a good idea to include feathers
> >>>>> [in the broad sense that seems to be the consensus these days]
> >>>>> in a phylogenetic analysis in which the taxa have enough preserved
> >>>>> of the places where one might expect feathers to have been attached in real life.
> >>>>
> >>>>> Really, what's the harm in doing that?
> >>>
> >>>> No harm if you code most taxa as missing data. Just no benefit either.
> >>>
> >>> Except that you might discover that there is no correlation between having
> >>> hairlike growths optimistically called "protofeathers" and having feathers
> >>> with barbs and barbules. Then the whole "feathered dinosaur" hypothesis could
> >>> be split in two: dinofuzz and feathers.
> >
> >> What exactly do you mean by that?
> >
> > What I mean should be obvious to anyone. What is it about it that
> > you don't understand?

> Just what do you mean by correlation here? Do you mean to test whether
> the presence of one in a taxon implies the presence of the other?

I thought you knew more about correlation than this. You seem to
have this naive notion below that it is meaningful not only within "a taxon"
even within "a fossil."

Rather than try to educate you in the statistical meaning of "correlation,"
I'll try to cut this Gordian knot without using the word again below.

> Do you
> mean to test whether one appears on branches where the other previously
> appeared?

No.

> > Your next comment sheds no light on any confusion you might have, but only
> > raises objections to how the correlation, or lack of it, could be detected:
> >
> >> There could only be a correlation if
> >> you scored them as separate characters.
> >
> > Why would you be unable to tell whether there is a correlation by scoring them
> > as various steps of the same character?

> What in such a case would a correlation mean? It wouldn't mean that they
> were present on the same taxon. What, in such a case, is a correlation?

Sorry, I've decided not to get bogged down in such questions. Wait
for the cutting of the Gordian knot below.

> > However, I do like the idea of scoring them as separate characters. Scoring them
> > as steps of the same character might not have any basis in reality.
> > After all, you don't think of your own hair as a bunch of protofeathers.
> > Nor, more to the point, do we think of the "hair" of pterosaurs as protofeathers.

> That isn't clear.

What isn't clear about what I wrote just now

> What is clear, however, is that the protofeathers of
> maniraptorans are protofeathers.

Why? because a good number of maniraptorans have what you optimistically call "protofeathers"
and a good number (including *Caudipteryx*) have true feathers?

> > > But why would you expect a given
> >> fossil to have both, if one evolved from the other?
> >
> > Why do you think ANYONE would entertain such an expectation? I certainly never
> > hinted at having one. Quite the contrary.

> Then what is your expectation?

You are flagrantly evading the question. But I'll humor you by cutting the Gordian
knot now.

We are both agreed that true feathers -- calamus, shaft, barbs, barbules and hooks --
are too complicated to have arisen independently on more than one lineage.
So my expectation is that they are all in one clade, perhaps only within Maniraptora.
And that hairlike "protofeathers" are widely distributed through Dinosauria,
and perhaps through Archosauria.

What is YOUR expectation?

> >> I'm not sure you have thought this through.
> >
> > You are trolling. Why?

> Are we now descending into the inevitable end of all threads in which
> you participate, the contrasting of your virtue with the faults of others?

You are trolling again. There is no hint at any virtue by me anywhere in this post.

On the other hand, this artificial whining of yours is doing nothing to promote
the notion that your behavior above is faultless. One which I don't think even YOU believe.

And you are trolling when you say "all threads in which you participate."

It never happened during our oasis of civilization that lasted from
1995 to the beginning of 1998 in sci.bio.paleontology. An oasis that Erik
destroyed with your active cooperation, and of course Oxyaena's.

Coming back to the present: neither half of the alleged contrasting happens with Glenn,
or with anyone here with whom I have not had exchanges in talk.origins. The latter include
Pandora, Mario, Inyo, and Ruben Safir.

By the way, Pandora is a lot more active in back and forth discussion in
sci.anthropology.paleo than she is here, and I'm happy to report that
we have gotten along well there as well as here. Do you fondly
imagine that you are just as virtuous as she is?

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

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

[John Harshman]

Can you understand that correlation of characters on a phylogenetic tree
can't be assessed in the simple way that you would use for correlation
of x and y values in a set of points?

So I do ask again: what do you mean by correlation here and how would
you detect it?

>> Do you
>> mean to test whether one appears on branches where the other previously
>> appeared?
>
> No.

Then what?

>>> Your next comment sheds no light on any confusion you might have, but only
>>> raises objections to how the correlation, or lack of it, could be detected:
>>>
>>>> There could only be a correlation if
>>>> you scored them as separate characters.
>>>
>>> Why would you be unable to tell whether there is a correlation by scoring them
>>> as various steps of the same character?
>
>> What in such a case would a correlation mean? It wouldn't mean that they
>> were present on the same taxon. What, in such a case, is a correlation?
>
> Sorry, I've decided not to get bogged down in such questions. Wait
> for the cutting of the Gordian knot below.

OK.

>>> However, I do like the idea of scoring them as separate characters. Scoring them
>>> as steps of the same character might not have any basis in reality.
>>> After all, you don't think of your own hair as a bunch of protofeathers.
>>> Nor, more to the point, do we think of the "hair" of pterosaurs as protofeathers.
>
>> That isn't clear.
>
> What isn't clear about what I wrote just now

It isn't clear that the hair of pterosaurs is not homologous to feathers.

>> What is clear, however, is that the protofeathers of
>> maniraptorans are protofeathers.
>
> Why? because a good number of maniraptorans have what you optimistically call "protofeathers"
> and a good number (including *Caudipteryx*) have true feathers?

Yes, and some appear to have both. Velociraptor, for example. And one
might also note that Velociraptor and Microraptor are both
Deinonychosaurs. That sort of thing.

>>>> But why would you expect a given
>>>> fossil to have both, if one evolved from the other?
>>>
>>> Why do you think ANYONE would entertain such an expectation? I certainly never
>>> hinted at having one. Quite the contrary.
>
>> Then what is your expectation?
>
> You are flagrantly evading the question. But I'll humor you by cutting the Gordian
> knot now.
>
> We are both agreed that true feathers -- calamus, shaft, barbs, barbules and hooks --
> are too complicated to have arisen independently on more than one lineage.
> So my expectation is that they are all in one clade, perhaps only within Maniraptora.
> And that hairlike "protofeathers" are widely distributed through Dinosauria,
> and perhaps through Archosauria.
>
> What is YOUR expectation?

Yes, that makes sense.

>>>> I'm not sure you have thought this through.
>>>
>>> You are trolling. Why?
>
>> Are we now descending into the inevitable end of all threads in which
>> you participate, the contrasting of your virtue with the faults of others?
>
> You are trolling again. There is no hint at any virtue by me anywhere in this post.

It's tacitly assumed. But I would be glad to end this nonsense and get
back to the real discussion. To encourage that, I'll just snip the rest.

[Oxyaena]

On 9/16/2021 9:08 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
[snip]

>
>
>> What is clear, however, is that the protofeathers of
>> maniraptorans are protofeathers.
>
> Why? because a good number of maniraptorans have what you optimistically call "protofeathers"
> and a good number (including *Caudipteryx*) have true feathers?

Why are you so disparaging of the term "protofeathers"? Feathers
obviously had to start from somewhere. Creation *ex nihilo* is not a
thing that occurs in nature, only in mythology. It makes sense that'd
we'd find traits that are of a transitional nature.

>
>
>>>> But why would you expect a given
>>>> fossil to have both, if one evolved from the other?
>>>
>>> Why do you think ANYONE would entertain such an expectation? I certainly never
>>> hinted at having one. Quite the contrary.
>
>> Then what is your expectation?
>
> You are flagrantly evading the question. But I'll humor you by cutting the Gordian
> knot now.
>
> We are both agreed that true feathers -- calamus, shaft, barbs, barbules and hooks --
> are too complicated to have arisen independently on more than one lineage.
> So my expectation is that they are all in one clade, perhaps only within Maniraptora.
> And that hairlike "protofeathers" are widely distributed through Dinosauria,
> and perhaps through Archosauria.

Given that pterosaurs also exhibit what you like to call "dinofuzz,"
that's a reasonable expectation. In fact there's evidence that
crocodiles have LOST this "dinofuzz," due to some quirk of genetics. I
used to know the exact series of mutations in question, but it's been
some years since I last read on the topic.

>
> What is YOUR expectation?
>
>
>>>> I'm not sure you have thought this through.
>>>
>>> You are trolling. Why?
>
>> Are we now descending into the inevitable end of all threads in which
>> you participate, the contrasting of your virtue with the faults of others?
>
> You are trolling again. There is no hint at any virtue by me anywhere in this post.

You're right, there is no virtue by you anywhere in this post, there is
only the taint of typical Nyikosian self-righteousness.

>
> On the other hand, this artificial whining of yours is doing nothing to promote
> the notion that your behavior above is faultless. One which I don't think even YOU believe.

Obviously Harshman only wants to engage in on-topic discussion, but
you're too insufferable to actually have a decent on-topic conversation
with.

>
> And you are trolling when you say "all threads in which you participate."

No he isn't, he's stating the truth.

>
> It never happened during our oasis of civilization that lasted from
> 1995 to the beginning of 1998 in sci.bio.paleontology. An oasis that Erik
> destroyed with your active cooperation, and of course Oxyaena's.

As usual, your conveniently self-serving memory downplays the active
role you played in the decline of sbp.

>
> Coming back to the present: neither half of the alleged contrasting happens with Glenn,
> or with anyone here with whom I have not had exchanges in talk.origins. The latter include
> Pandora, Mario, Inyo, and Ruben Safir.

I love how you sing the praises of a fucking Nazi. By the way, why no
mention of Daud? He was a participant too, and still makes for much more
enjoyable conversation than you ever have.

[snip idiocy]

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, September 15, 2021 at 4:20:15 PM UTC-4, Glenn wrote:
> On Wednesday, September 15, 2021 at 12:16:40 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Sunday, September 12, 2021 at 10:05:02 PM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
> > > On 9/10/2021 9:57 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > > > Carcharodontosauria (shark-toothed saurians) were the last of the
> > > > allosaurids, found in Laurasia up to the end of the Turonian
> > > > (early Late Cretaceous) but surviving in Gondwana to the end of the Cretaceous.
> > > > In a role reversal from what I've been accustomed to, the largest of these allosaurids
> > > > were considerably larger than the largest tyrannosauroids of the time.
> > > >
> > > > The "new" find is actually a rediscovery:
> > > >
> > > > "The chunk of jawbone was found in Uzbekistan's Kyzylkum Desert in the 1980s, and researchers rediscovered it in 2019 in an Uzbekistan museum collection."
> > > > https://www.microsoftnewskids.com/en-us/kids/animals/gigantic-shark-toothed-dinosaur-discovered-in-uzbekistan/ar-AAOhazl?ocid=entnewsntp
> > > >
> > > > The chunk is a partial maxilla, but from comparison with other
> > > > carcharodontosaurs, the following is hypothesized [*ibid*]:
> > > >
> > > > "The 26-foot-long (8 meters) beast weighed 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms), making it longer than an African elephant and heavier than a bison. Researchers named it *Ulughbegsaurus* *uzbekistanensis*, after Ulugh Beg, a 15th-century astronomer, mathematician and sultan from what is now Uzbekistan.
> >

Glenn, it appears the url you found that the following Oxyaena pontification is another exemplar of
the old adage, "A little learning is a dangerous thing":

> > > The reason dinosaurs were larger and yet lighter than even mammals today
> > > is because of their respiratory systems.
> > I'd like to see anyone support that claim with a citation to a peer reviewed research article.

Harshman said "Good luck on that" to *ME*, probably to deflect attention
from a blunder by his faithful ally Oxyaena.

> > > Birds inherited their famous
> > > respiratory systems from somewhere, you know.

> > Yes, but do you have any evidence besides an unreferenced claim
> > at the beginning of a Wikipedia article saying that coelurosaurs
> > had hollow bones?

> > Coelurosaurs are a clade that is included in a larger clade with carnosaurs,
> > and this clade in turn was just a part of Theropoda. What makes you think
> > the giant sauropods, or the ornithiscians had hollow bones?

> > > Pound for pound in a
> > > confrontation between a dinosaur and a mammal of equivalent size and
> > > weight the dinosaur would hands down.

<snip to where you came in, Glenn>

> How much, if any, of this is accurate?
>
> "Birds from chickadees to Sandhill Cranes have hollow bones. Not all bones in a bird’s body are hollow, though, and the number of hollow bones varies among species. Large gliding and soaring birds tend to have more, while diving birds have less.
>
> Penguins, loons, and puffins don’t have any hollow bones. It’s thought that solid bones make it easier for these birds to dive.
>
> Flightless birds do have hollow bones. Ostriches and emus have hollow femurs. It’s thought that the air sac system that extends into their upper legs is used to reduce their body heat by panting.
>
> This bone specialization isn’t found only in birds. Fossils show evidence of air pockets in carnivorous dinosaur bones. Humans have hollow bones around their sinuses. They can also be found in the skulls of other mammals and crocodiles."
>
> https://www.montananaturalist.org/blog-post/avian-adaptations/

You overlooked the part that suggests why Harshman completely shied away from what
looks like another illustration of Oxyaena's Dunning-Kruger syndrome:

"But hollow bones don’t make a bird lighter, as is commonly thought. According to a researcher from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, bird bones are heavier than animals of similar size. If you compare just the bones, the skeleton of a two-ounce bird is heavier than the skeleton of a two-ounce mouse. A bird’s bones are denser. This density makes these thin, hollow bones stiffer and stronger to keep them from breaking. Crisscrossing struts or trusses also provide structural strength."

Among the things I skipped over was Harshman again misusing the word "paranoid," like he has
almost every one of the hundred or more times he's used it against me over the last decade.

I'll be dealing with that later today. Meanwhile, I just note the contrast between that and
his behavior in the wake of the words of his Useful Idiot.

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

Univ. of So. Carolina in Columbia
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos

[Peter Nyikos]

Pressing departmental duties and efforts to start on-topic conversations on s.b.p.,
along with some activity in two other Usenet "newsgroups" have made me put this
thread on hold. However, we are on Fall Break and so I can devote a bit of attention
to a few neglected threads. I already started replying to parts of this post in
"Nyikos and Oxyaena on bird origins."

On Thursday, September 16, 2021 at 11:54:14 PM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:
> On 9/16/2021 9:08 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> [snip]

This snip followed a talk.origins "custom" much used by yourself and your dearest ally, jillery,
of leaving in a bit of context but snipping the attribution line of who had provided the context.

[On Thursday, September 16, 2021 at 3:05:06 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:]

> >> What is clear, however, is that the protofeathers of
> >> maniraptorans are protofeathers.
> >
> > Why? because a good number of maniraptorans have what you optimistically call "protofeathers"
> > and a good number (including *Caudipteryx*) have true feathers?

<snip of disingenuously dishonest comment by you, dealt with on the new thread, "Nyikos and Oxyaena on bird origins.">

> Feathers obviously had to start from somewhere. Creation *ex nihilo* is not a
> thing that occurs in nature, only in mythology. It makes sense that'd
> we'd find traits that are of a transitional nature.

Generalities that belabor the obvious are useless in this context.

If I had any sympathies for creationism, your silly comment would
have some merit. Did you make it because you confuse my recognition
of some people you believe to be creationists as being more honorable
than you [a nanometer high bar to clear] or Harshman [a centimeter
high bar to clear] as being somehow tending towards sympathy
with creationism?

Case in point: Glenn.

> >
> >>>> But why would you expect a given
> >>>> fossil to have both, if one evolved from the other?
> >>>
> >>> Why do you think ANYONE would entertain such an expectation? I certainly never
> >>> hinted at having one. Quite the contrary.

<snip of on-topic issues, discussed on the new thread>

> >>>> I'm not sure you have thought this through.
> >>>
> >>> You are trolling. Why?
> >
> >> Are we now descending into the inevitable end of all threads in which
> >> you participate, the contrasting of your virtue with the faults of others?
> >
> > You are trolling again. There is no hint at any virtue by me anywhere in this post.

> You're right,

And Harshman was wrong about me making such contrasts this time, of course.
Thanks for acknowledging that much before completely changing the subject,
by deliberately misreading "hint at any virtue" in the following way:

> there is no virtue by you anywhere in this post, there is
> only the taint of typical Nyikosian self-righteousness.

This is Harshman-serving deceit about the way I showed how despicably your hero behaved in
text that you cravenly deleted. In this way I exemplified the adage,
"in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."

But only someone as amoral (or does "anti-Nyikos-agenda-driven" hit the spot?) as yourself
would consider a one-eyed man to be behaving self-righteously by explaining the pitfalls
that a blind man hasn't succeeded in avoiding.

> >
> > On the other hand, this artificial whining of yours is doing nothing to promote
> > the notion that your behavior above is faultless. One which I don't think even YOU believe.

And I'm sure you don't believe it either, hence your ignoring of this issue.

> Obviously Harshman only wants to engage in on-topic discussion,

Obviously, you are prostituting your integrity by falling in line with a perennial Harshman
scam that he uses whenever his attempts to get the upper hand in personal attacks has failed.

<snip of things to be dealt with if either Harshman or you tries to continue promoting them>

> > It never happened during our oasis of civilization that lasted from
> > 1995 to the beginning of 1998 in sci.bio.paleontology. An oasis that Erik
> > destroyed with your active cooperation, and of course Oxyaena's.

<snip of things to be dealt with in separate reply>

> > Coming back to the present: neither half of the alleged contrasting happens with Glenn,
> > or with anyone here with whom I have not had exchanges in talk.origins. The latter include
> > Pandora, Mario, Inyo, and Ruben Safir.

<snip of hate-crazed lie by you>

> By the way, why no
> mention of Daud? He was a participant too,

Yes, was. He seems to have abandoned sci.bio.paleontology, and actually posted
off topic about plesiosaurs to sci.anthropology.paleo, instead of on topic to here.

He also posts off-topic about Homo erectus to sci.lang, promoting his "dome huts"
hobbyhorse which would be on topic to sci.anthropology paleo.

> and still makes for much more
> enjoyable conversation than you ever have.

I think you would very much enjoy how he is even more blatant about hypocritically claiming to want
on-topic posting than your rescuer from talk.origins oblivion, Harshman.

Documentation on request.


> [snip idiocy]

As usual, you are shamelessly lying with this mindless snip. This time, I will even repost what you snipped,
in case there are people who haven't caught on to your *modus operandi* yet.

[begin repost]

By the way, Pandora is a lot more active in back and forth discussion in
sci.anthropology.paleo than she is here, and I'm happy to report that
we have gotten along well there as well as here. Do you fondly
imagine that you are just as virtuous as she is?

[end of repost]

This was in reply to Harshman, whose boots you continued to lick by hiding
this decidedly non-idiotic comment by me and thereby hiding how blatantly he lied
about "the inevitable end of all threads in which you participate".


Peter Nyikos

PS I rectified Daud's off-topic treatment in the thread, "Fully quadrupedal swimming in plesiosaurs."

Did my mention of Daud in the OP scare you away from that thread? You never did participate.
And, although it is still going strong, I don't expect you start participating.

[Oxyaena]

On 10/7/2021 7:26 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:

[snip idiocy and excuses]

>
>
>> Feathers obviously had to start from somewhere. Creation *ex nihilo* is not a
>> thing that occurs in nature, only in mythology. It makes sense that'd
>> we'd find traits that are of a transitional nature.
>
> Generalities that belabor the obvious are useless in this context.

Then don't make stupid comments.

>
> If I had any sympathies for creationism,

Then why do you continue to engage in apologia for obvious
pseudoscience, read: intelligent design.

> your silly comment would
> have some merit. Did you make it because you confuse my recognition
> of some people you believe to be creationists as being more honorable
> than you [a nanometer high bar to clear] or Harshman [a centimeter
> high bar to clear] as being somehow tending towards sympathy
> with creationism?
>
> Case in point: Glenn.

Glenn is more honorable than me? You're pathetic.

>
>
>>>
>>>>>> But why would you expect a given
>>>>>> fossil to have both, if one evolved from the other?
>>>>>
>>>>> Why do you think ANYONE would entertain such an expectation? I certainly never
>>>>> hinted at having one. Quite the contrary.
>
>
> <snip of on-topic issues, discussed on the new thread>
>
>
>>>>>> I'm not sure you have thought this through.
>>>>>
>>>>> You are trolling. Why?
>>>
>>>> Are we now descending into the inevitable end of all threads in which
>>>> you participate, the contrasting of your virtue with the faults of others?
>>>
>>> You are trolling again. There is no hint at any virtue by me anywhere in this post.
>
>> You're right,
>
> And Harshman was wrong about me making such contrasts this time, of course.
> Thanks for acknowledging that much before completely changing the subject,
> by deliberately misreading "hint at any virtue" in the following way:

I only acknowledged that you were right in an obliviously ironic way.

[snip groveling]

You know it's true.

[snip idiocy]

[Glenn]

On Saturday, October 9, 2021 at 4:36:50 PM UTC-7, Oxyaena wrote:
> On 10/7/2021 7:26 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
> [snip idiocy and excuses]
> >
> >
> >> Feathers obviously had to start from somewhere. Creation *ex nihilo* is not a
> >> thing that occurs in nature, only in mythology. It makes sense that'd
> >> we'd find traits that are of a transitional nature.
> >
> > Generalities that belabor the obvious are useless in this context.
> Then don't make stupid comments.
> >
> > If I had any sympathies for creationism,
> Then why do you continue to engage in apologia for obvious
> pseudoscience, read: intelligent design.
> > your silly comment would
> > have some merit. Did you make it because you confuse my recognition
> > of some people you believe to be creationists as being more honorable
> > than you [a nanometer high bar to clear] or Harshman [a centimeter
> > high bar to clear] as being somehow tending towards sympathy
> > with creationism?
> >
> > Case in point: Glenn.

> Glenn is more honorable than me? You're pathetic.
> >

I'm still waiting for the evidence that a dinosaur would "hands down" in a confrontation with a mammal of same size and weight.

[John Harshman]

So now I'm a little curious. Who said that? Was it a person who hasn't
been seen here in almost a year?

[Glenn]

Well I'll leave you to being curious, and allow you one riddle. "It" was not a person who was and is still posting to this thread, and it was not Peter.

[John Harshman]

It was a very simple question. It would be an easy one to answer.