Pachytstruthio, giant bird from Pleistocene Europe

[Pandora]

A giant early Pleistocene bird from eastern Europe: unexpected
component of terrestrial faunas at the time of early Homo arrival

Abstract

Giant birds, comparable in size to elephant birds and moa, have never
been reported from Europe. Here, we describe a femur from the lower
Pleistocene of the north Black Sea area (Crimea) that is referred to
Pachystruthio dmanisensis, comb. nov., a giant bird with an estimated
body mass of about 450 kg. This value makes this extinct bird one of
the largest known avians (comparable to Aepyornis maximus) and the
only bird of such giant size in Europe and the Northern Hemisphere in
general. In contrast to very large insular birds, Pachystruthio
dmanisensis was a good runner, which may be explained by its
coexistence with large carnivoran mammals. Pachystruthio dmanisensis
and associated assemblage of fossil mammals are shared with the
Dmanisi locality in Georgia (~1.8–1.7 Ma); thus, this giant bird was
likely a typical component of eastern European faunas at the time of
early hominin arrival. We suggest that Pachystruthio dmanisensis,
together with early Homo and a variety of mammals, reached the
northern Black Sea region via the southern Caucasus and Anatolia,
because the older (Pliocene) finds of this fauna are known from
Georgia and Turkey.

Open access:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02724634.2019.1605521

[Oxyaena]

I suspect the gradual worsening of the ice age around this time killed
this bird off, as it killed so many other members of the late Miocene
and Pliocene fauna off, such as *Deinotherium* and *Dinofelis* to name a
few.

--
"That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without
evidence." - The Hitch

https://peradectes.wordpress.com/

[John Harshman]

Note that, given the highly worn nature of the holotype and the
fragmentary and unassociated nature of the referred material, they can't
say much about the relationships of this bird. It's big, it's
flightless, it could apparently run. And that's about it.

[Peter Nyikos]

This is quite a significant find, Pandora. Suddenly the Northern
Hemisphere has its own mega-bird to join the two largest birds
ever known. And it is the ONLY one from one of the four largest
continents.

The true giants of the avian world were the largest species of
mihirungs (Dromornithidae) from the Miocene of Australia and
elephant birds (Aepyornithidae) from the late Quaternary of Madagascar,
with an estimated body mass of up to 700 kg.

> Open access:
> https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02724634.2019.1605521

"Late Quaternary" is conservative: the elephant bird surely made it into
the Holocene, and even into historic times. Its family survived for 30
million years, and humans only arrived in Madagascar a thousand or so
years ago. Like the moas, their demise can safely be attributed to humans.

It's different for *Pachystruthio.* We know of no humans that
early in Europe, although it's possible that this giant bird
lived until the advent of *Homo heiderlbergensis*.

Climate change seems much more likely -- but which direction?
Cold favors greater size, and the birds were well south of the
European ice cap, so I'd say the warm climate of an interglacial was
a bit more likely than the cold of the depths of the Ice Age to lead to
their demise, whether directly or indirectly. A greater variety of predators
could have migrated to their vicinity during an interglacial of thousands of
years, preying on the young.

The other giants had it a lot easier, what with the largest Australian
carnivorous mammal the relatively small *Thylacoleo* and no large
carnivorous mammal at all on Madagascar, and no mammals at all except
bats and pinnepeds on New Zealand.,


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

[Daud Deden]

Why ignore Homo georgicus, found at Dmanisi at the same period, 1.8ma?

[Peter Nyikos]

You realize you are strongly going against the opinions of the authors,
don't you?

One thing missing from the abstract, but very relevant for
s.b.p., is their near-certainty that *Pachystruthio* was a close relative
of the living ostrich *Struthio*. One could, of course, suspect that
from the name but such things are not givens. Here is a bit of
text from the main part of the article about that.

The separate generic status of Pachystruthio is supported by the presence of a morphologically distinct and very thick (2.9–3.3 mm) aepyornithoid eggshell in the late Pliocene–early Pleistocene of Azerbaijan (Burchak-Abramovich, 1953 [1]; Mikhailov and Kurochkin, 1988 [2] ), which was associated with bone remains of ‘S[truthio]’ transcaucasicus (see Burchak-Abramovich and Vekua, 1971 [3] ).
Eggshell associated with the holotype of P. pannonicus is also much thicker (2.6–3.4 mm) than in modern ostriches and, unlike ostriches, has pore canals, which form irregular longitudinal channels (Kretzoi, 1954 [4]).

[1] Burchak-Abramovich, N. I. 1953. Fossil Ostriches of Caucasus and Southern Ukraine. Azerbaijan SSR Academy of Science, Baku, Azerbaijan, 206 pp. [Russian][Google Scholar]

[2] Mikhailov, K. E., and E. N. Kurochkin. 1988. The eggshells of Struthioniformes from the Palearctic and its position in the system of views on Ratitae evolution. Transaction of the Joint Soviet-Mongolian Paleontological Expedition 34:43–64. [Google Scholar]

[3] Burchak-Abramovich, N. I., and A. K. Vekua. 1971. The fossil ostrich from the Akchagil layers of Georgia. Acta Zoologica Cracoviensia 16:1–26.
[Google Scholar]

[4] Kretzoi, M. 1954. Ostrich and camel remains from the Central Danube basin. Acta Geologica 2:231–242.[Google Scholar]

The evolutionary lineage of these giant early Pleistocene birds can probably be traced back to the early Pliocene and even Miocene of Anatolia: a very large femur from the early Pliocene of the Çalta locality in Turkey [5] may belong to Pachystruthio. The extinct species Struthio karatheodoris was described based on a slightly smaller, but still very large femur from the late Miocene (Maeotian) of Samos Island [6], which was a part of the Anatolian mainland at that time [7]. This specimen notably differs in proportions from modern and extinct ostriches [8] and thus could belong to this lineage as well. [9] further mentioned thick aepyornithoid eggshells in the middle Miocene Çandir locality in Turkey, which he attributed to the same evolutionary lineage as P. pannonicus.


I've omitted references [5] through [9] to keep this post from getting
too technical. Clicking on dates brings up the information immediately.

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

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

[Oxyaena]

Wrong, you ignore the cougar sized fossa relative *Cryptoprocta spelea*.

> and no mammals at all except
> bats and pinnepeds on New Zealand.,
>

[Peter Nyikos]

By the way, the Giant Moa (Dinornis maximus) of New Zealand is estimated
to have been up to 278 kg, almost twice the weight of the ostrich, the
heaviest living bird.

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

> > > Open access:
> > > https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02724634.2019.1605521
> >
> > "Late Quaternary" is conservative: the elephant bird surely made it into
> > the Holocene, and even into historic times. Its family survived for 30
> > million years, and humans only arrived in Madagascar a thousand or so
> > years ago. Like the moas, their demise can safely be attributed to humans.
> >
> > It's different for *Pachystruthio.* We know of no humans that
> > early in Europe, although it's possible that this giant bird
> > lived until the advent of *Homo heiderlbergensis*.
>
> Why ignore Homo georgicus, found at Dmanisi at the same period, 1.8ma?

Because I never heard of it before. It certainly looks promising, what
with all the stone tools associated with it.

However, I'll probably have to wait until I am at my office later
today before I can see how securely the finds have been dated
to 1.8ma. The Wikipedia entry which dates it at 1.8 ma gives only
the following research-level source:

Lordkipanidze D, Jashashvili T, Vekua A, Ponce de León MS, Zollikofer CP, Rightmire GP, Pontzer H, Ferring R, Oms O, Tappen M, Bukhsianidze M, Agusti J, Kahlke R, Kiladze G, Martinez-Navarro B, Mouskhelishvili A, Nioradze M, Rook L (2007). "Postcranial evidence from early Homo from Dmanisi, Georgia" (PDF). Nature. 449 (7160): 305–310.

The PDF link does not take me to anything like the article. Another
case of sloppy documentation by Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_erectus#Homo_erectus_georgicus

[John Harshman]

Not so far, I don't.

> One thing missing from the abstract, but very relevant for
> s.b.p., is their near-certainty that *Pachystruthio* was a close relative
> of the living ostrich *Struthio*. One could, of course, suspect that
> from the name but such things are not givens. Here is a bit of
> text from the main part of the article about that.
>
> The separate generic status of Pachystruthio is supported by the
presence of a morphologically distinct and very thick (2.9–3.3 mm)
aepyornithoid eggshell in the late Pliocene–early Pleistocene of
Azerbaijan (Burchak-Abramovich, 1953 [1]; Mikhailov and Kurochkin, 1988
[2] ), which was associated with bone remains of ‘S[truthio]’
transcaucasicus (see Burchak-Abramovich and Vekua, 1971 [3] ).
> Eggshell associated with the holotype of P. pannonicus is also much
thicker (2.6–3.4 mm) than in modern ostriches and, unlike ostriches, has
pore canals, which form irregular longitudinal channels (Kretzoi, 1954 [4]).

I'm not seeing how any of that contradicts what I said. In fact it would
seem to be, if anything, a claim that Pachystruthio is an elephant bird.

>
> [1] Burchak-Abramovich, N. I. 1953. Fossil Ostriches of Caucasus and Southern Ukraine. Azerbaijan SSR Academy of Science, Baku, Azerbaijan, 206 pp. [Russian][Google Scholar]
>
> [2] Mikhailov, K. E., and E. N. Kurochkin. 1988. The eggshells of Struthioniformes from the Palearctic and its position in the system of views on Ratitae evolution. Transaction of the Joint Soviet-Mongolian Paleontological Expedition 34:43–64. [Google Scholar]
>
> [3] Burchak-Abramovich, N. I., and A. K. Vekua. 1971. The fossil ostrich from the Akchagil layers of Georgia. Acta Zoologica Cracoviensia 16:1–26.
> [Google Scholar]
>
> [4] Kretzoi, M. 1954. Ostrich and camel remains from the Central Danube basin. Acta Geologica 2:231–242.[Google Scholar]
>
> The evolutionary lineage of these giant early Pleistocene birds can probably be traced back to the early Pliocene and even Miocene of Anatolia: a very large femur from the early Pliocene of the Çalta locality in Turkey [5] may belong to Pachystruthio. The extinct species Struthio karatheodoris was described based on a slightly smaller, but still very large femur from the late Miocene (Maeotian) of Samos Island [6], which was a part of the Anatolian mainland at that time [7]. This specimen notably differs in proportions from modern and extinct ostriches [8] and thus could belong to this lineage as well. [9] further mentioned thick aepyornithoid eggshells in the middle Miocene Çandir locality in Turkey, which he attributed to the same evolutionary lineage as P. pannonicus.

Same comment as for the previous quote. And I think the evidence that
it's an aepyornithid is not stated, if that is indeed the authors'
belief. Seems to be the eggshells associated with referred specimens.

[John Harshman]

What is your reference for this information?

[Oxyaena]

That's because it *is* promising, dolt. Dunning-Kruger strikes again, it
seems.

>
> However, I'll probably have to wait until I am at my office later
> today before I can see how securely the finds have been dated
> to 1.8ma. The Wikipedia entry which dates it at 1.8 ma gives only
> the following research-level source:
>
> Lordkipanidze D, Jashashvili T, Vekua A, Ponce de León MS, Zollikofer CP, Rightmire GP, Pontzer H, Ferring R, Oms O, Tappen M, Bukhsianidze M, Agusti J, Kahlke R, Kiladze G, Martinez-Navarro B, Mouskhelishvili A, Nioradze M, Rook L (2007). "Postcranial evidence from early Homo from Dmanisi, Georgia" (PDF). Nature. 449 (7160): 305–310.
>
> The PDF link does not take me to anything like the article. Another
> case of sloppy documentation by Wikipedia.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_erectus#Homo_erectus_georgicus
>
>
>
>>
>>> Climate change seems much more likely -- but which direction?
>>> Cold favors greater size, and the birds were well south of the
>>> European ice cap, so I'd say the warm climate of an interglacial was
>>> a bit more likely than the cold of the depths of the Ice Age to lead to
>>> their demise, whether directly or indirectly. A greater variety of predators
>>> could have migrated to their vicinity during an interglacial of thousands of
>>> years, preying on the young.
>>>
>>> The other giants had it a lot easier, what with the largest Australian
>>> carnivorous mammal the relatively small *Thylacoleo* and no large
>>> carnivorous mammal at all on Madagascar, and no mammals at all except
>>> bats and pinnepeds on New Zealand.,
>>>
>>>
>>> Peter Nyikos
>>> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
>>> University of South Carolina
>>> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/
>

[Oxyaena]

Which could easily come just as well from ostriches, any evidence for a
link to aepyornithids is tenuous at best.

[John Harshman]

[Peter Nyikos]

If you doubt that the Elephant bird lived on into historic times,
Wikipedia has enough accounts to set all but the most obstinate
people's doubts to rest. Why were too lazy to look?

If you want to know about the 30 million year figure, offhand
I can't recall the other place I read about it, but I know I've
seen it in David Day's _Vanished Species_ (former title:
The Doomsday Book of Animals) and the book comes with the hearty
recommendation of David Attenborough.


By the way, I've begun a thread, "Mega-selection pressures" very
early today, and you haven't showed up yet.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/talk.origins/0bYRzGhWgdI/lAlI7KTrCwAJ

If you are content to let your groupie, Oxyaena, represent you
on that thread, it's your loss. She's having a hard time understanding
the first paragraph of my OP, and her handwaving to obscure that
fact is rather clumsy.


Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
U. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[John Harshman]

Because that wasn't what I was asking about. Why were you too clueless
to realize it?

> If you want to know about the 30 million year figure, offhand
> I can't recall the other place I read about it, but I know I've
> seen it in David Day's _Vanished Species_ (former title:
> The Doomsday Book of Animals) and the book comes with the hearty
> recommendation of David Attenborough.

What was David Day's reference for that?

> By the way, I've begun a thread, "Mega-selection pressures" very
> early today, and you haven't showed up yet.
>
> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/talk.origins/0bYRzGhWgdI/lAlI7KTrCwAJ
>
> If you are content to let your groupie, Oxyaena, represent you
> on that thread, it's your loss. She's having a hard time understanding
> the first paragraph of my OP, and her handwaving to obscure that
> fact is rather clumsy.

Oxyaena doesn't represent me. Oxyaena is not my groupie. You have
insulted both of us in a single sentence. You are a vile person.

[Peter Nyikos]

How is anyone supposed to know that "this information" only
includes the last sentence?

> Why were you too clueless
> to realize it?

Dr. Dr. Kleinman-style repartee noted.

Note to non-followers of talk.origins: Dr. Dr. Kleinman is a silly
twit who never shows any sign of having earned his two doctorates.
Until recently, he was the number one self-styled creationist
for people to argue with, because he was so inept: people could
easily look good in comparison to him. One of his most annoying
traits is to seize upon the wording of something but not its
main point, and to indulge in mindless repartee about it.

> > If you want to know about the 30 million year figure, offhand
> > I can't recall the other place I read about it, but I know I've
> > seen it in David Day's _Vanished Species_ (former title:
> > The Doomsday Book of Animals) and the book comes with the hearty
> > recommendation of David Attenborough.
>
> What was David Day's reference for that?

This being a book for a general audience -- and a superb one at that --
Day kept references to a minimum. But FWIW, here is what he wrote
about that:

These giant birds shad through their long history adapted to
many changes and could be numbered among the most successful
of bird species -- enduring more than thirty times as long
as humans have existed at all. [p. 20]

I took the word "species" informally since Day says in the next paragraph:

From fossil evidence, it is likely that there were between
three and seven species of Elephant Bird or Aepyornithidae,
varying in height from 300cm (10ft) to less than 90cm (3ft).
However, nearly all these were phehistoric forms, most dying
out before *Homo* *sapiens* had even evolved.


On the next page occurs a rare reference:

Evidently by 1658 the giant birds had already withdrawn
from the major part of their habitat. In his report of that
year the Sieur Etienne de Flacourt, Director of the French
East India company and Governor of Madagascar, wrote of the
Elephant Bird under its local name: "The Vouron Patra is a
giant bird that lives in the country of the Amphatres people
[in the south of Madagascar] and lays eggs like the Ostrich;
so that people of these places may not catch it, it lives
in the loneliest places."

> > By the way, I've begun a thread, "Mega-selection pressures" very
> > early today, and you haven't showed up yet.
> >
> > https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/talk.origins/0bYRzGhWgdI/lAlI7KTrCwAJ

On the other hand, Kleinman has shown up there. But you still haven't;
in fact you breezed by this information as though it never
existed. Evidently you find insulting me more important than engaging
in highly on-topic scientific discussion.

And so, all your crap about wanting on-topic discussion over the
years is pure hypocrisy -- but I've known that for years; this
is just the latest example.

> > If you are content to let your groupie, Oxyaena, represent you
> > on that thread, it's your loss. She's having a hard time understanding
> > the first paragraph of my OP, and her handwaving to obscure that
> > fact is rather clumsy.
>
> Oxyaena doesn't represent me. Oxyaena is not my groupie.

Yes, she is. You have shown blatant favoritism towards Oxyaena,
even posting a one-sided and completely off-topic bit about
"insults" which I set up a whole thread to correct in detail,
it was so blatantly Oxyaena-slanted. You, true to form,
never showed up on that thread.

Oxyaena has repaid you many-fold for your favoritism,
and you've always played "see no evil, hear no evil,
speak no evil" about her numerous libels against me;
in fact, you've acted as though they never existed.

>You have
> insulted both of us in a single sentence. You are a vile person.

I see that truthful insults are "vile" if directed against you
and your groupies, but libel against me is non-vile by your
twisted [a]moral standards.

[John Harshman]

By giving me just a little credit for knowing something about birds. You
do know I'm an ornithologist, right?

>> Why were you too clueless
>> to realize it?
>
> Dr. Dr. Kleinman-style repartee noted.

Note that it exactly parallels your just-previous "repartee". Perhaps
you could try resisting the temptation to pack an insult into every
statement?

Thanks. Without a reference it's not all that useful. How long does the
author think humans existed? We don't know. Based on Wikipedia, elephant
birds have no fossil record in Madagascar much preceding human
settlement, and the Eocene fossil from Egypt mentioned in the article
may or may not even be a paleognath. So the evidence for the claim that
elephant birds have a 30-million-year fossil record seems both thin and
dubious. However, there is DNA evidence, and if you allow for molecular
clock analyses to be valid, divergence within Madagascar can be extended
to the Late Oligocene. (Grealy A, Phillips M, Miller G, Gilbert MTP,
Rouillard JM, Lambert D, Bunce M, Haile J. 2017Eggshell palaeogenomics:
palaeognath evolutionary history revealed through ancient nuclear and
mitochondrial DNA from Madagascan elephant bird (Aepyornis sp.)
eggshell. Mol. Phylogenet. Evol. 109, 151–163.) Still, no fossils.

> On the next page occurs a rare reference:
>
> Evidently by 1658 the giant birds had already withdrawn
> from the major part of their habitat. In his report of that
> year the Sieur Etienne de Flacourt, Director of the French
> East India company and Governor of Madagascar, wrote of the
> Elephant Bird under its local name: "The Vouron Patra is a
> giant bird that lives in the country of the Amphatres people
> [in the south of Madagascar] and lays eggs like the Ostrich;
> so that people of these places may not catch it, it lives
> in the loneliest places."
>
>>> By the way, I've begun a thread, "Mega-selection pressures" very
>>> early today, and you haven't showed up yet.
>>>
>>> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/talk.origins/0bYRzGhWgdI/lAlI7KTrCwAJ
>
> On the other hand, Kleinman has shown up there. But you still haven't;
> in fact you breezed by this information as though it never
> existed. Evidently you find insulting me more important than engaging
> in highly on-topic scientific discussion.
>
> And so, all your crap about wanting on-topic discussion over the
> years is pure hypocrisy -- but I've known that for years; this
> is just the latest example.

The irony of a long post that's mostly off-topic, demanding my on-topic
participation in a different thread, escapes you. One assumes.

>>> If you are content to let your groupie, Oxyaena, represent you
>>> on that thread, it's your loss. She's having a hard time understanding
>>> the first paragraph of my OP, and her handwaving to obscure that
>>> fact is rather clumsy.
>>
>> Oxyaena doesn't represent me. Oxyaena is not my groupie.
>
> Yes, she is. You have shown blatant favoritism towards Oxyaena,
> even posting a one-sided and completely off-topic bit about
> "insults" which I set up a whole thread to correct in detail,
> it was so blatantly Oxyaena-slanted. You, true to form,
> never showed up on that thread.
>
> Oxyaena has repaid you many-fold for your favoritism,
> and you've always played "see no evil, hear no evil,
> speak no evil" about her numerous libels against me;
> in fact, you've acted as though they never existed.
>
>
> >You have
>> insulted both of us in a single sentence. You are a vile person.
>
> I see that truthful insults are "vile" if directed against you
> and your groupies, but libel against me is non-vile by your
> twisted [a]moral standards.

Seriously, you are generally not worth talking to because of all these
off-topic, obsessive insults and random digressions. And I think you've
been getting worse lately. I seldom look at things you post for just
that reason. Add to that that the thread was rapidly taken over by
others who commonly post nothing but insults and complaints, I see good
reason to avoid it.

[Oxyaena]

Indeed.

--
"I would rather be the son of an ape than be descended from a man afraid
to face the truth." - TH Huxley

https://peradectes.wordpress.com/

[Oxyaena]

On 7/23/2019 8:10 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
[snip irrelevant, borderline libelous crap]

>
>
>>> If you are content to let your groupie, Oxyaena, represent you
>>> on that thread, it's your loss. She's having a hard time understanding
>>> the first paragraph of my OP, and her handwaving to obscure that
>>> fact is rather clumsy.
>>
>> Oxyaena doesn't represent me. Oxyaena is not my groupie.
>
> Yes, she is. You have shown blatant favoritism towards Oxyaena,
> even posting a one-sided and completely off-topic bit about
> "insults" which I set up a whole thread to correct in detail,
> it was so blatantly Oxyaena-slanted. You, true to form,
> never showed up on that thread.

Jeez, it's as if Harshman and I are two completely separate people, but
that can't be right.

>
> Oxyaena has repaid you many-fold for your favoritism,
> and you've always played "see no evil, hear no evil,
> speak no evil" about her numerous libels against me;
> in fact, you've acted as though they never existed.

I have nothing to do with this petty bullshit of yours, and frankly, I
reckon Harshman doesn't either. Fuck off.

>
>
> >You have
>> insulted both of us in a single sentence. You are a vile person.
>
> I see that truthful insults are "vile" if directed against you
> and your groupies, but libel against me is non-vile by your
> twisted [a]moral standards.

It is only libel when not done by you, how blatantly self-serving.

>
>>
>>> Peter Nyikos
>>> Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
>>> U. of South Carolina at Columbia
>>> http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
>>>
>>>
>>>>> and humans only arrived in Madagascar a thousand or so
>>>>> years ago. Like the moas, their demise can safely be attributed to humans.
>>>>>
>>>>> It's different for *Pachystruthio.* We know of no humans that
>>>>> early in Europe, although it's possible that this giant bird
>>>>> lived until the advent of *Homo heiderlbergensis*.
>>>>>
>>>>> Climate change seems much more likely -- but which direction?
>>>>> Cold favors greater size, and the birds were well south of the
>>>>> European ice cap, so I'd say the warm climate of an interglacial was
>>>>> a bit more likely than the cold of the depths of the Ice Age to lead to
>>>>> their demise, whether directly or indirectly. A greater variety of predators
>>>>> could have migrated to their vicinity during an interglacial of thousands of
>>>>> years, preying on the young.
>>>>>
>>>>> The other giants had it a lot easier, what with the largest Australian
>>>>> carnivorous mammal the relatively small *Thylacoleo* and no large
>>>>> carnivorous mammal at all on Madagascar, and no mammals at all except
>>>>> bats and pinnepeds on New Zealand.,
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Peter Nyikos
>>>>> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
>>>>> University of South Carolina
>>>>> http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/
>>>>>
>>>
>

[Daud Deden]

I hate to intrude upon this merry teaparty, but does the 'pachy-' refer to dense femur or to some other dense body part?

[John Harshman]

On 7/23/19 8:38 PM, Daud Deden wrote:

>
> I hate to intrude upon this merry teaparty, but does the 'pachy-' refer to dense femur or to some other dense body part?
>

Since the genus was erected by Kretzoi 1954 (reference in the paper
originally cited), you would have to look there for an explanation. But
it doesn't refer to the femur, at least not the femur mentioned in this
abstract.

[Peter Nyikos]

That's a good question. It seems that "Pachy" has acquired a secondary
colloquial meaning, "heavy". One probable example is the extinct moa,
Pachyornis:

This genus contains three species,[1] and are part of the
Anomalopteryginae or lesser moa subfamily. Pachyornis moa
were the stoutest and most heavy-legged genus of the family.
The most notable species being Pachyornis elephantopus
- the Heavy-Footed Moa.

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

"the family" in the excerpt is Emeidae.

David Day's book, referenced in my text that you've kept in,
also harps on its heaviness. After the undisputed champions of bigness,
in the genus *Dinornis*, it turns to the above subfamily:

Other huge forms of the moa were the shorter, but very heavy,
`Elephant-Footed Moas' of the genera Pachyornis and Emeus.
[p. 22 of the original version, _The Doomsday Book of Animals_]


By the way, the clash between myself and the others that you see
is neither "merry" nor a party ("teaparty") for me, and our relationship
never has been one for me. Both unilaterally took an adversarial attitude
towards me in their very first encounters with me after I returned to
talk.origins and sci.bio.paleontology. Harshman did it immediately,
Thrinaxodon (Oxyaena's original moniker, under which she was banned in
talk.origins for her outrageous behavior) when she first showed up a
year or two later. She was so extreme that, while signing her posts
"Thrinaxodon," she caused her byline to read "Nyikos repellent" for
about a hundred posts.

Anyway, the personal put-downs that you see from them above are a mixture of
dishonesty and hypocrisy, with Oxyaena leaning towards the former and
Harshman towards the latter.

However, I cannot tell whether either is doing it in a merrily
mischievous way. Many of the baseless 1000+ insults that Harshman
has hurled at me these last 8 1/2 years, mostly in talk.origins, have
obviously been in that spirit, but it's too close to call as far as
his spiel on this thread is concerned.

In Oxyaena's case, she had great fun in talk.origins the first
few months of my boycott, posting falsehoods and illogic that
were so outrageous, I believe she was hoping the temptation
to expose how ridiculous they were would cause me to carelessly
break my boycott. She even admitted a few weeks ago, when asked
why she keeps replying to me if my posts aren't worth replying to,
that it was because it was fun.

But perhaps the novelty of the fun has worn off: Oxyaena certainly
seems testy in what you see above. But she may just be going through
a downturn in her perennially bipolar emotions.

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

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

[John Harshman]

The answer would need to refer to the original description of the genus,

Kretzoi, M. 1954. Ostrich and camel remains from the Central Danube

basin. Acta Geologica 2:231–242. So far I don't find a copy.

[erik simpson]

Apparently, a copy may be viewed here:

https://adtplus.arcanum.hu/hu/view/MTA_ActaGeologica_02/

but, as they say "Dokumentum megtekintése előfizetést igényel" (Viewing a
document requires a subscription).

This should be a natural for Peter (if it's free). I don't want to try to
navigate the site with no Hungarian.

[Oxyaena]

Your perennial pattern of malicious slandering and insufferable trolling
grows old after a while. 'Nuff said.

>
>
> Peter Nyikos
> Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
> U. of South Carolina in Columbia
> http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
>

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, July 24, 2019 at 12:22:55 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:

And is lying low in the wake of the post where I showed how he
is hoist with his own petard:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/Jbunj0MWiJY/7A1jKQvFBQAJ
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2019 09:11:46 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <b0c701ce-0625-45dc...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Crackpotteries

Having snipped everything except the preamble in his reply,
John asked why this was a timely post, and I told him it
made hash out of every complaint about my "insults" (observations,
by his own petard) to which he devoted so much time to below.

Since then, he has been lying low, letting his perennial net.sidekick,
erik simpson, try to get John un-hoisted.

Here you made an unmarked snip of my suggestion, together with documentation,
that "pachy" may refer refer to "heavy". This was done with reference
to *Pachyornis*, a name which may well have inspired "Pachystruthio,"
and was probably conferred by an English speaker. The expression "thick-set",
one meaning of which is "heavy-set," might have smoothed the transition from
"thick" to "heavy."


Evidently happy with your unmarked snip, you pontificated as follows:

> The answer would need to refer to the original description of the genus,

or not. In this case, the can might be kicked down the road,
with a simple statement somewhere (not necessarily the original paper)
that the name was inspired by "Pachyornis" and by the generic name
of the ostrich.

All in all, it might be more fruitful to find out how "Pachyornis"
was chosen.

> Kretzoi, M. 1954. Ostrich and camel remains from the Central Danube
> basin. Acta Geologica 2:231–242. So far I don't find a copy.

Your net.sidekick did the useful thing of letting everyone
know that the text is in Hungarian. I'll check tomorrow to see whether
the article is paywalled down at my university.

It would also be interesting if it turned out that M. Kretzoi is still
alive.

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

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

[John Harshman]

See, this is why I don't like responding to you. The ratio of on-topic
discussion to vituperation is very low.

[Peter Nyikos]

.

> See, this is why I don't like responding to you.
> The ratio of on-topic
> discussion to vituperation is very low.

"very low" in this case means "about 50%": compare the length
of my preamble, where I talk about you in the third person,
with my on-topic discussion which starts where I address
you in the second person. There are two lines and two words
where I get off-topic, but that hardly affects the ratio.

"very high," on the other hand, seems to be 0%, since your
whole comment here is vituperation by your suddenly-new-found standards,
wherein insults no longer qualify as "observations", like
they did back in February.

By the way, your claim that you dislike responding to me rings
very hollow, and it's not only because of what I've written
just now. The number of your posts, both in talk.origins
and here in s.b.p., plummeted during the twenty (20) day hiatus
in my replies to you. Now they seem to be picking up briskly,
including a completely off-topic t.o. post where you cheered
for someone who was showering me with contempt, leaving his words in.


Peter Nyikos

[John Harshman]

Ratio: 0.

[Oxyaena]

Why not try "0%"? It'd significantly improve your credibility.

>
> "very high," on the other hand, seems to be 0%, since your
> whole comment here is vituperation by your suddenly-new-found standards,
> wherein insults no longer qualify as "observations", like
> they did back in February.
>
> By the way, your claim that you dislike responding to me rings
> very hollow, and it's not only because of what I've written
> just now. The number of your posts, both in talk.origins
> and here in s.b.p., plummeted during the twenty (20) day hiatus
> in my replies to you. Now they seem to be picking up briskly,
> including a completely off-topic t.o. post where you cheered
> for someone who was showering me with contempt, leaving his words in.
>
>
> Peter Nyikos
>

[John Harshman]

No, that's backwards. 0% would be no on-topic content at all. Of course
there are problems with the on-topic/vituperation ratio as a measure,
since the ideal case of 100% on-topic, 0% vituperation would be
undefined. A better measure would be the on-topic/total content ratio,
in which 100% would be 1.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Thursday, July 25, 2019 at 9:11:26 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 7/25/19 5:38 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Thursday, July 25, 2019 at 12:38:09 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 7/24/19 7:21 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>> On Wednesday, July 24, 2019 at 12:22:55 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >>>
> >>> And is lying low in the wake of the post where I showed how he
> >>> is hoist with his own petard:
> >>>
> >>> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sci.bio.paleontology/Jbunj0MWiJY/7A1jKQvFBQAJ
> >>> Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2019 09:11:46 -0700 (PDT)
> >>> Message-ID: <b0c701ce-0625-45dc...@googlegroups.com>
> >>> Subject: Re: Crackpotteries
> >>>
> >>> Having snipped everything except the preamble in his reply,
> >>> John asked why this was a timely post, and I told him it
> >>> made hash out of every complaint about my "insults" (observations,
> >>> by his own petard) to which he devoted so much time to below.
> >>>
> >>> Since then, he has been lying low, letting his perennial net.sidekick,
> >>> erik simpson, try to get John un-hoisted.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> On 7/24/19 8:08 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>>>> On Tuesday, July 23, 2019 at 11:38:25 PM UTC-4, Daud Deden wrote:
> >>>>>> On Tuesday, July 23, 2019 at 3:22:26 PM UTC-4, Oxyaena wrote:

... something I'm calling to your attention for the first time, John:

> >>>>>>> [snip irrelevant, borderline libelous crap]

Actually, what Oxyaena snipped was over 96% on-topic material
about Pachystruthio and the Elephant Bird, including everything
Pandora had posted, a question-and-answer session between you
and me, and a notification, complete with a link, of a highly
on-topic thread that I had begun in talk.origins.

It seems that, by Oxyaena's hyper-sensitive standards,
the following, representing all the off-topic material she snipped, was
"borderline libelous crap":

Why were too lazy to look?

Why were you too clueless to realize it?

In stunning contrast, what Oxyaena left in was completely off-topic:

> >>>>>>>>>> If you are content to let your groupie, Oxyaena, represent you
> >>>>>>>>>> on that thread, it's your loss. She's having a hard time understanding
> >>>>>>>>>> the first paragraph of my OP, and her handwaving to obscure that
> >>>>>>>>>> fact is rather clumsy.
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> Oxyaena doesn't represent me. Oxyaena is not my groupie.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> Yes, she is. You have shown blatant favoritism towards Oxyaena,
> >>>>>>>> even posting a one-sided and completely off-topic bit about
> >>>>>>>> "insults" which I set up a whole thread to correct in detail,
> >>>>>>>> it was so blatantly Oxyaena-slanted. You, true to form,
> >>>>>>>> never showed up on that thread.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Jeez, it's as if Harshman and I are two completely separate people, but
> >>>>>>> that can't be right.

Have you been able to make any sense out of this, John? It
reads as though Oxyaena were claiming to be a sock puppet
of yours, but that can't be right.

> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> Oxyaena has repaid you many-fold for your favoritism,
> >>>>>>>> and you've always played "see no evil, hear no evil,
> >>>>>>>> speak no evil" about her numerous libels against me;
> >>>>>>>> in fact, you've acted as though they never existed.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> I have nothing to do with this petty bullshit of yours, and frankly, I
> >>>>>>> reckon Harshman doesn't either. Fuck off.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> >You have
> >>>>>>>>> insulted both of us in a single sentence.

Now comes something by you that fits "borderline libelous crap" perfectly:

> >>>>>>>>> You are a vile person.

Note, not "You are posting vile things". Instead you post
an across-the-board condemnation of myself, such as I have
almost never been subjected to in my ca. 19 years of posting
to Usenet, including ca. 8 years in talk.abortion.

> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> I see that truthful insults are "vile" if directed against you
> >>>>>>>> and your groupies, but libel against me is non-vile by your
> >>>>>>>> twisted [a]moral standards.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> It is only libel when not done by you, how blatantly self-serving.

Fortunately, no one has ever shown libel by me in all my life.
So Oxyaena's sarcasm actually is more true than she intended it to be.


Here, I snipped a huge amount of purely on-topic material that
Oxyaena had left in, and Oxyaena's .sig.

That also applies to everything by yourself that Oxyaena left in her
post. But then, you never said that there was anything wrong
with off-topic writing. Everything you've ever said about it to
me since I returned to talk.origins and s.b.p. after almost
a decade of absence consisted of strong-arming me to stop it.


Peter Nyikos

[John Harshman]

Ratio: still 0. You can stop. On-topic posts may be answered, provided I
have anything to say.

[Peter Nyikos]

For you and me. For Oxyaena, it is ca. -.95 on a scale of -1 to 1.


>You can stop.

You can stop belaboring the obvious.

> On-topic posts may be answered, provided I
> have anything to say.

Ask me if I care.


Peter Nyikos

[Oxyaena]

Well considering it's Peter, 0% of any content from him would be nice.
It's significantly more peaceful when he takes his long ass breaks from sbp.

[Oxyaena]

Stop using others to excuse your own bad behavior. "Whataboutism" is not
something a mature person would do, then again, since when were you a
mature person?

>
> Peter Nyikos