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  • New BBC show on PRehistoric Life

    From Popping Mad@21:1/5 to All on Mon May 30 14:29:52 2022
    Anyone cqtch the BBC show on Prehistoric ecolsystems by Sir David.

    Supposedly these are all based on scientific discovery, but I am having
    trouble believing that most of it is pure unadultrated speculation.
    They seem to continually assign mamallian behaviors to dinosaurs and pterasaurs, which I find hard to take as objective science.

    But the biggest thing that really gets me is the roars and grunts these
    animals supposely make. There is just no was a bunch of hardrsaurs sold
    like buffalo. No birds make sound like that and these animals what
    resperatory systems that are far more complex that what mammals are
    capable, so the sound track is a huge failure, IMO.


    And that is just for starters. The TRex mating sequence is positively
    wrong. Anyone who has ever gotten close to birds knows, birds don't
    like be petted or to snuggle (and neither do reptiles for that matter).

    Whatever mating ritual they used, it was bound to be very visual and
    very complex.

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  • From Popping Mad@21:1/5 to Popping Mad on Mon May 30 15:53:04 2022
    On 5/30/22 14:29, Popping Mad wrote:
    Anyone cqtch the BBC show on Prehistoric ecolsystems by Sir David.

    Supposedly these are all based on scientific discovery, but I am having trouble believing that most of it is pure unadultrated speculation.
    They seem to continually assign mamallian behaviors to dinosaurs and pterasaurs, which I find hard to take as objective science.

    But the biggest thing that really gets me is the roars and grunts these animals supposely make. There is just no was a bunch of hardrsaurs sold
    like buffalo. No birds make sound like that and these animals what resperatory systems that are far more complex that what mammals are
    capable, so the sound track is a huge failure, IMO.


    And that is just for starters. The TRex mating sequence is positively
    wrong. Anyone who has ever gotten close to birds knows, birds don't
    like be petted or to snuggle (and neither do reptiles for that matter).

    Whatever mating ritual they used, it was bound to be very visual and
    very complex.


    And what is with the Suaropods standing and fighting on hind legs and
    the necks raised high up in a posutre which I thought we proven
    incorrect a decade+ ago.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Sight Reader@21:1/5 to Popping Mad on Sun Jun 5 13:42:02 2022
    On Monday, May 30, 2022 at 1:53:59 PM UTC-6, Popping Mad wrote:
    On 5/30/22 14:29, Popping Mad wrote:
    And that is just for starters. The TRex mating sequence is positively wrong. Anyone who has ever gotten close to birds knows, birds don't
    like be petted or to snuggle (and neither do reptiles for that matter).

    And what is with the Suaropods standing and fighting on hind legs and
    the necks raised high up in a posutre which I thought we proven
    incorrect a decade+ ago.

    I’m still new to the world of dinosaurs. There was a lot of stuff that seemed odd or peculiar but I know so little that it’s hard for me to know what to think. At least they kept the roaring and “acting like monsters” stuff down!

    The show appeared to do a lot of “anthropomorphizing” - perhaps designed to make dinosaurs more relatable - but it’s also easy to go too far the other way and “exoticize”, much as Hollywood might portray Ancient Greece or Rome as overly
    relatable while portraying (insert non-white civilization here) as overly bizarre.

    Anyway, here some some things that puzzled me. Could you comment on any of them?

    - Could pterosaurs stand on and use their hind legs that much? I thought they were more “all-fours” type guys.
    - I noticed the pterosaurs don’t seem to have uropatagia. Did they find some evidence for that?
    - Is there some sort of evidence that sauropods knocked down trees to get to the leaves?
    - How conclusive is the evidence of those inflating air sacs on the sauropods? I looked it up online and there appeared to some late 2021 paper about it, but didn’t know what to make of it.
    - Did sauropods hold their necks up or forward? I get confused on that.
    - Regarding the “nuzzling”, I’ve never really observed birds or crocodiles. Do they display bonding, affection, or emotions, and if so, how?
    - I heard that theropods probably would have hooted more than grunted. Would that also be true for herds of ceratopsians, hadrosaurs, sauropods and the like?

    I can’t remember all the places in the show where I found myself scratching my uneducated head and thinking, “Hmm… really?” but these are the only ones I can remember right now (I think there were water scenes that were puzzling but I can’t
    remember which).

    Thanks a ton!

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  • From Peter Nyikos@21:1/5 to All on Mon Jun 13 08:32:18 2022
    On Sunday, June 5, 2022 at 4:42:03 PM UTC-4, thesigh...@gmail.com wrote:

    Hi! I'm an old-timer from sci.bio.paleontology, going all the way back to mid-90's, when this was still going strong, with several
    professional paleontologists. Now, only Pandora is a (probable) pro, although there is one amateur
    who is always worth reading: Inyo, who is deep into fossil observation and collecting, mostly invertebrates.

    By the way, do you have name or nickname you would like to be known by? Email masking hides your full email address from me.
    Note the three dots.

    On Monday, May 30, 2022 at 1:53:59 PM UTC-6, Popping Mad wrote:
    On 5/30/22 14:29, Popping Mad wrote:
    And that is just for starters. The TRex mating sequence is positively wrong. Anyone who has ever gotten close to birds knows, birds don't
    like be petted or to snuggle (and neither do reptiles for that matter).

    And what is with the Suaropods standing and fighting on hind legs and
    the necks raised high up in a posutre which I thought we proven
    incorrect a decade+ ago.

    I’m still new to the world of dinosaurs. There was a lot of stuff that seemed odd or peculiar but I know so little that it’s hard for me to know what to think. At least they kept the roaring and “acting like monsters” stuff down!

    The show appeared to do a lot of “anthropomorphizing” - perhaps designed to make dinosaurs more relatable - but it’s also easy to go too far the other way and “exoticize”, much as Hollywood might portray Ancient Greece or Rome as overly
    relatable while portraying (insert non-white civilization here) as overly bizarre.

    Anyway, here some some things that puzzled me. Could you comment on any of them?

    - Could pterosaurs stand on and use their hind legs that much? I thought they were more “all-fours” type guys.

    That's been conclusively settled in favor of quadrupedalism. It's only because Padian landed a faculty position
    at a prestigious university that his far-out bipedalism hypothesis was taken seriously.

    One popular hypothesis among people who do traveling museum displays of reproductions is that some
    pterosaurs, like Pteranodon, actually walked on their "hands," with their short legs dangling in the air
    and possibly able to manipulate things. I've never heard a professional opinion on this.


    - I noticed the pterosaurs don’t seem to have uropatagia. Did they find some evidence for that?

    On Pteranodon, yes. On Pterodactylus and most other pterosaurs, no.

    A Pteranodon urpatagium was described by Chris Bennett in 1987. I have a copy of the superbly
    illustrated "bible" on pterosaurs, _The_Illustrated_Encyclopedia_of_Pterosaurs_, by Peter Wellnhofer,
    from which I can give you lots of details on almost anything you ask about pterosaurs.


    - Is there some sort of evidence that sauropods knocked down trees to get to the leaves?

    I know of none.


    - How conclusive is the evidence of those inflating air sacs on the sauropods? I looked it up online and there appeared to some late 2021 paper about it, but didn’t know what to make of it.

    I haven't found it yet. Can you give me the reference?

    There does seem to be quite a lot of literature on air sacs on sauropods. Have you seen this one?

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3628838/

    Not much detail on them there, but a very nice discussion on long necked vertebrates in general, and references to
    two older studies.


    - Did sauropods hold their necks up or forward? I get confused on that.

    There isn't anything conclusive AFAIK. There is even some question on whether moas held their necks up. For a century
    or more it was assumed they held them up, based on ostriches and emus, but the prevailing hypothesis seems to
    be that they held them forward.

    As to sauropods, the conventional wisdom is that most sauropods held them forward, but Brachiosaurus
    may have held them up. That's because its forelegs were longer than their hind legs, just opposite
    from most dinosaurs.


    - Regarding the “nuzzling”, I’ve never really observed birds or crocodiles. Do they display bonding, affection, or emotions, and if so, how?

    I've read that some kinds of birds preen each other, but that's because they have feathers.
    Some tyrannosauroids had "dinofuzz" (not true feathers) but none have been found on TRex.


    - I heard that theropods probably would have hooted more than grunted. Would that also be true for herds of ceratopsians, hadrosaurs, sauropods and the like?

    Without digging into the literature, all I can say is:

    (1) Hadrosaurs had various vocal specializations based on their air passages. One that has long been speculated on is
    Parasaurolophus, which had a horn-like portion of its air passage sticking far to the back, with the air traveling first up
    and then down the tube inside the "horn" on its way to the lungs and air sacs. I don't know whether anyone has tried to
    catalogue the possible sounds.

    (2) The later members of each clade (theropods, sauropods, ornithischians) are rather far phylogenetically from
    the later members of the other two. Not much closer than their relationship to pterosaurs and crocodilians.
    The iconic ceratopsians are from the upper Cretaceous. So there is limited data that you can transfer from
    one clade to the other.

    (3) For what it's worth, we once camped close to an inlet where we later found out there was an alligator
    close to our tent. It made a sound like a power lawn mower.


    I can’t remember all the places in the show where I found myself scratching my uneducated head and thinking, “Hmm… really?” but these are the only ones I can remember right now (I think there were water scenes that were puzzling but I can’t
    remember which).

    Have you recalled any since you made this post?


    Thanks a ton!

    You're welcome. I would have replied earlier, but I only felt ready to return to sci.bio.paleontology this weekend.
    I've been on a half-year posting break on account of my professional duties being especially
    time-consuming, and world events (Ukraine war, various US events) and family taking up my free time.
    But paleontology is my favorite scientific subject, unless you count mathematics,
    and I hope to post here regularly from now on.


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

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  • From John Harshman@21:1/5 to Peter Nyikos on Mon Jun 13 09:47:55 2022
    On 6/13/22 8:32 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
    - I heard that theropods probably would have hooted more than grunted. Would that also be true for herds of ceratopsians, hadrosaurs, sauropods and the like?
    Without digging into the literature, all I can say is:

    (1) Hadrosaurs had various vocal specializations based on their air passages. One that has long been speculated on is
    Parasaurolophus, which had a horn-like portion of its air passage sticking far to the back, with the air traveling first up
    and then down the tube inside the "horn" on its way to the lungs and air sacs. I don't know whether anyone has tried to
    catalogue the possible sounds.

    Hopson 1975:

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/2400327

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Peter Nyikos@21:1/5 to John Harshman on Mon Jun 13 19:22:51 2022
    On Monday, June 13, 2022 at 12:48:03 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
    On 6/13/22 8:32 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
    On Sunday, June 5, 2022 at 4:42:03 PM UTC-4, thesigh...@gmail.com wrote:
    - I heard that theropods probably would have hooted more than grunted. Would that also be true for herds of ceratopsians, hadrosaurs, sauropods and the like?
    Without digging into the literature, all I can say is:

    (1) Hadrosaurs had various vocal specializations based on their air passages. One that has long been speculated on is
    Parasaurolophus, which had a horn-like portion of its air passage sticking far to the back, with the air traveling first up
    and then down the tube inside the "horn" on its way to the lungs and air sacs. I don't know whether anyone has tried to
    catalogue the possible sounds.
    Hopson 1975:

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/2400327

    I couldn't find anything to fit what I wrote. The following, on page 41, was the only part that gave
    any details about possible sounds, but it doesn't come close:

    " With a resonating function of the lateral diverticula established, further modification of
    the sound-producing system becomes possible. An obvious way to modify the intensity
    and pitch of the sound is to increase the length and modify the diameter of the tube through
    which air is passed. I believe that the shifting of the nasal capsule and the lateral diverticula
    to the supraorbital region was a mechanism for lengthening the vestibular tube without
    radically altering the feeding apparatus. Also, the surrounding of the vestibular passage by
    the premaxillae and the constriction of the beak served to enhance the resonator function of the tube."

    What's more, this was about lambeosaurines, not Parasaurolophus.

    The following comes closer, but it's only a start:

    "Recently, a team of paleontologists computer-modeled this crest from various fossil specimens and fed it with a virtual blast of air. Lo and behold, the simulated crest produced a deep, resonating sound--evidence that Parasaurolophus evolved its
    cranial ornament in order to communicate with other members of the herd (to warn them of danger, for example, or signal sexual availability)."
    https://www.thoughtco.com/things-to-know-parasaurolophus-1093795

    Not only does the simulation rely on the computer program, it sounds like they only modeled bone structure.
    Nowadays, forensic science is far enough advanced to get some idea of muscles and other tissues from the bone structure.
    Those would be very helpful in advancing our understanding on the variety of possible sounds.


    Peter Nyikos

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From John Harshman@21:1/5 to Peter Nyikos on Tue Jun 14 08:30:26 2022
    On 6/13/22 7:22 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
    On Monday, June 13, 2022 at 12:48:03 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
    On 6/13/22 8:32 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
    On Sunday, June 5, 2022 at 4:42:03 PM UTC-4, thesigh...@gmail.com wrote: >>>> - I heard that theropods probably would have hooted more than grunted. Would that also be true for herds of ceratopsians, hadrosaurs, sauropods and the like?
    Without digging into the literature, all I can say is:

    (1) Hadrosaurs had various vocal specializations based on their air passages. One that has long been speculated on is
    Parasaurolophus, which had a horn-like portion of its air passage sticking far to the back, with the air traveling first up
    and then down the tube inside the "horn" on its way to the lungs and air sacs. I don't know whether anyone has tried to
    catalogue the possible sounds.
    Hopson 1975:

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/2400327

    I couldn't find anything to fit what I wrote. The following, on page 41, was the only part that gave
    any details about possible sounds, but it doesn't come close:

    " With a resonating function of the lateral diverticula established, further modification of
    the sound-producing system becomes possible. An obvious way to modify the intensity
    and pitch of the sound is to increase the length and modify the diameter of the tube through
    which air is passed. I believe that the shifting of the nasal capsule and the lateral diverticula
    to the supraorbital region was a mechanism for lengthening the vestibular tube without
    radically altering the feeding apparatus. Also, the surrounding of the vestibular passage by
    the premaxillae and the constriction of the beak served to enhance the resonator function of the tube."

    What's more, this was about lambeosaurines, not Parasaurolophus.

    Last I heard, Parasaurolophus was a lambeosaurine. What do you know?

    The following comes closer, but it's only a start:

    "Recently, a team of paleontologists computer-modeled this crest from various fossil specimens and fed it with a virtual blast of air. Lo and behold, the simulated crest produced a deep, resonating sound--evidence that Parasaurolophus evolved its
    cranial ornament in order to communicate with other members of the herd (to warn them of danger, for example, or signal sexual availability)."
    https://www.thoughtco.com/things-to-know-parasaurolophus-1093795

    Not only does the simulation rely on the computer program, it sounds like they only modeled bone structure.
    Nowadays, forensic science is far enough advanced to get some idea of muscles and other tissues from the bone structure.
    Those would be very helpful in advancing our understanding on the variety of possible sounds.

    Here's more detail, in a press release from the sponsoring institution.

    https://www.sandia.gov/media/dinosaur.htm

    I'm wondering if there ever was an actual publication.

    There are further references here:

    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-parasaurolophus-set-the-mood-94657740/

    And here's another:

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/240297485_Dinosaurian_Cacophony

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Sight Reader@21:1/5 to peter2...@gmail.com on Tue Jun 14 09:07:15 2022
    On Monday, June 13, 2022 at 9:32:20 AM UTC-6, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
    Hi! I'm an old-timer from sci.bio.paleontology, going all the way back to mid-90's, when this was still going strong, with several professional paleontologists.

    Yay!! Thank you SO much for the awesome information! The nickname I use is sight reader; these days it’s simply too dangerous to display much more than that. Is there a forum of some sort where I can find paleontology workers patient enough to help a
    layman?

    That's been conclusively settled in favor of quadrupedalism. It's only because Padian landed a faculty position
    at a prestigious university that his far-out bipedalism hypothesis was taken seriously.

    Thank you! I’ll have to watch it again, but I recall they showed Pterosaurs rearing up a lot and seemed to use their “hands” more like crutches rather than primary weight-bearing limbs of locomotion.

    A Pteranodon urpatagium was described by Chris Bennett in 1987. I have a copy of the superbly
    illustrated "bible" on pterosaurs, _The_Illustrated_Encyclopedia_of_Pterosaurs_, by Peter Wellnhofer,
    from which I can give you lots of details on almost anything you ask about pterosaurs.

    I’ll have to look that book up! So are we saying the only conclusive evidence is in FAVOR of uropatagium? I noticed that none the pterosaurs had uropatagia either in Prehistoric Planet or on Jurassic World Dominion, so I had assumed some sort of
    conclusive evidence had come up against them. I gotta say, not having uropatagia kinda made them look like they were split in two while flying, lol..

    - Is there some sort of evidence that sauropods knocked down trees to get to the leaves?
    I know of none.

    THANK YOU!! My jaw hit the floor when they showed sauropods rearing up, leaning on a tree, then bringing the whole thing down. Yes, I imagine it would definitely be an efficient way of knocking leaves down to get in reach, but my mind was racing trying
    to imagine what kind of evidence they must have discovered to justify showing that: maybe scrapes on the bark of felled trees, perhaps some sort of evidence of repeated abrasions on the necks and bellies of sauropods…?

    - How conclusive is the evidence of those inflating air sacs on the sauropods? I looked it up online and there appeared to some late 2021 paper about it, but didn’t know what to make of it.
    I haven't found it yet. Can you give me the reference?

    I think I found it but on second inspection it’s starting to sound more like it’s merely saying (big surprise) that the necks of sauropods were extensively pneumaticized. I had attempted to do a quick search on why they were showing all these bubbles
    popping out of sauropod necks while still watching the show, so naturally I was a bit distracted while reading and probably confirmation-biased my way to a conclusion:

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-03689-8

    There does seem to be quite a lot of literature on air sacs on sauropods. Have you seen this one?

    That looks like a really nice (and accessible!) survey paper! I certainly have a better chance of deciphering that one than the mess I made trying to read the previous one.

    (2) The later members of each clade (theropods, sauropods, ornithischians) are rather far phylogenetically from
    the later members of the other two. Not much closer than their relationship to pterosaurs and crocodilians.
    The iconic ceratopsians are from the upper Cretaceous. So there is limited data that you can transfer from
    one clade to the other.

    That’s kinda what I figured. I recall the show went with a very mammalian sound mix when large herds went trundling by - a low, grumbling and grunting assemblage rather than a higher, more “hooty” mix. I would imagine hadrosaurs and ceratopsians
    are distant enough from birds that there would be no reason to assume their sounds would bear any auditory resemblance to birds, so I’m guessing there’s no reason to suspect they may have sounded “hootier”.

    Have you recalled any since you made this post?

    I hope to watch it when again when I visit family in about a week and perhaps take better notes. Naturally, I was so overwhelmed and excited with the joy and beauty of simply SEEING these creatures visualized that I didn’t want to ruin it by being
    overly analytical, but there were still a lot of conjectures they visualized that seemed unnecessarily risky.


    You're welcome. I would have replied earlier, but I only felt ready to return to sci.bio.paleontology this weekend.

    Again, thank you for taking the time to help out a layman!

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From John Harshman@21:1/5 to Peter Nyikos on Tue Jun 14 08:17:32 2022
    On 6/13/22 7:22 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
    On Monday, June 13, 2022 at 12:48:03 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
    On 6/13/22 8:32 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
    On Sunday, June 5, 2022 at 4:42:03 PM UTC-4, thesigh...@gmail.com wrote: >>>> - I heard that theropods probably would have hooted more than grunted. Would that also be true for herds of ceratopsians, hadrosaurs, sauropods and the like?
    Without digging into the literature, all I can say is:

    (1) Hadrosaurs had various vocal specializations based on their air passages. One that has long been speculated on is
    Parasaurolophus, which had a horn-like portion of its air passage sticking far to the back, with the air traveling first up
    and then down the tube inside the "horn" on its way to the lungs and air sacs. I don't know whether anyone has tried to
    catalogue the possible sounds.
    Hopson 1975:

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/2400327

    I couldn't find anything to fit what I wrote. The following, on page 41, was the only part that gave
    any details about possible sounds, but it doesn't come close:

    " With a resonating function of the lateral diverticula established, further modification of
    the sound-producing system becomes possible. An obvious way to modify the intensity
    and pitch of the sound is to increase the length and modify the diameter of the tube through
    which air is passed. I believe that the shifting of the nasal capsule and the lateral diverticula
    to the supraorbital region was a mechanism for lengthening the vestibular tube without
    radically altering the feeding apparatus. Also, the surrounding of the vestibular passage by
    the premaxillae and the constriction of the beak served to enhance the resonator function of the tube."

    What's more, this was about lambeosaurines, not Parasaurolophus.

    The following comes closer, but it's only a start:

    "Recently, a team of paleontologists computer-modeled this crest from various fossil specimens and fed it with a virtual blast of air. Lo and behold, the simulated crest produced a deep, resonating sound--evidence that Parasaurolophus evolved its
    cranial ornament in order to communicate with other members of the herd (to warn them of danger, for example, or signal sexual availability)."
    https://www.thoughtco.com/things-to-know-parasaurolophus-1093795

    Not only does the simulation rely on the computer program, it sounds like they only modeled bone structure.
    Nowadays, forensic science is far enough advanced to get some idea of muscles and other tissues from the bone structure.
    Those would be very helpful in advancing our understanding on the variety of possible sounds.

    My, you are a complainer. Perhaps you could find the actual source for
    that simulation rather than relying on a brief mention in a popular
    article. It could be that your complaint is resolved.

    Here's a more recent elaboration of Hopson's ideas, though I suppose you
    won't like it either:

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/1304529

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Peter Nyikos@21:1/5 to Popping Mad on Tue Jun 14 11:05:20 2022
    On Monday, May 30, 2022 at 3:53:59 PM UTC-4, Popping Mad wrote:
    On 5/30/22 14:29, Popping Mad wrote:
    Anyone cqtch the BBC show on Prehistoric ecolsystems by Sir David.

    I didn't.

    By the way, it's nice to see you posting here again. I'm back after an unexpectedly long posting break,
    lasting half a year.

    Supposedly these are all based on scientific discovery, but I am having trouble believing that most of it is pure unadultrated speculation.
    They seem to continually assign mamallian behaviors to dinosaurs and pterasaurs, which I find hard to take as objective science.

    Perhaps it's time to coin a word: `mammalomorphism,' with the same idea
    as `anthropomorphism.'

    But didn't they ascribe avian behaviors too, especially to pterosaurs?


    But the biggest thing that really gets me is the roars and grunts these animals supposely make. There is just no was a bunch of hardrsaurs sold like buffalo. No birds make sound like that and these animals what resperatory systems that are far more complex that what mammals are capable, so the sound track is a huge failure, IMO.


    And that is just for starters. The TRex mating sequence is positively wrong. Anyone who has ever gotten close to birds knows, birds don't
    like be petted or to snuggle (and neither do reptiles for that matter).

    We have a pet cockatiel who likes to be petted, if it is done in the right way and on a favorable occasion.

    Its predecessor, which lived for over 25 years with us, was the same way.
    We would regularly precede our petting with "pat on the head," said in
    a distinctive tone of voice.


    Whatever mating ritual they used, it was bound to be very visual and
    very complex.

    And what is with the Suaropods standing and fighting on hind legs and
    the necks raised high up in a posutre which I thought we proven
    incorrect a decade+ ago.

    Elephants can rear up, and if (some large) sauropods did it,
    their necks would not have had to change the angle to their bodies so drastically
    as when they were on all fours.

    In one popular old book, there is an illustration of a Diplodocus rearing up to prop its feet against a pine tree,
    and pulling off needles with teeth that were well adapted to such a use. The angle the neck made
    with the rest of the body was just like when on all fours. It also shows the long claw on the pollex digging
    into the bark of the tree, to steady itself, I suppose.

    It's in a 1979 book, a time when hypotheses about warm-blooded dinosaurs were quite new
    and avidly discussed:

    _Archosauria_: A New Look at the Old Dinosaur, by John C. McLoughlin, The Viking Press, p. 60.

    Diplodocus was one of the most gracile of the giant sauropods, so this is plausible, don't you agree?


    Peter Nyikos

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Peter Nyikos@21:1/5 to thesigh...@gmail.com on Tue Jun 14 17:10:19 2022
    On Tuesday, June 14, 2022 at 12:07:16 PM UTC-4, thesigh...@gmail.com wrote:
    On Monday, June 13, 2022 at 9:32:20 AM UTC-6, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:

    Hi! I'm an old-timer from sci.bio.paleontology, going all the way back to mid-90's, when this was still going strong, with several professional paleontologists.

    Yay!! Thank you SO much for the awesome information! The nickname I use is sight reader; these days it’s simply too dangerous to display much more than that.

    Here in sci.bio.paleontology, there are very few readers, so the danger is minimal. Even in the much higher volume talk.origins,
    where there is a great deal of acrimony, people's bark is usually infinitely worse than their bite. The worst that can happen
    is being banned from that group, in my nearly two decades of experience there.

    That said, I am quite happy to call you "sight reader."


    Is there a forum of some sort where I can find paleontology workers patient enough to help a layman?

    I'd like to know of one myself! I do have some ideas for finding out, but I don't know how long it will take me to succeed.


    [about how pterosaurs went about on the ground:]
    That's been conclusively settled in favor of quadrupedalism. It's only because Padian landed a faculty position
    at a prestigious university that his far-out bipedalism hypothesis was taken seriously.

    Thank you! I’ll have to watch it again, but I recall they showed Pterosaurs rearing up a lot and seemed to use their “hands” more like crutches rather than primary weight-bearing limbs of locomotion.

    A Pteranodon uropatagium was described by Chris Bennett in 1987. I have a copy of the superbly
    illustrated "bible" on pterosaurs, _The_Illustrated_Encyclopedia_of_Pterosaurs_, by Peter Wellnhofer,
    from which I can give you lots of details on almost anything you ask about pterosaurs.

    I’ll have to look that book up! So are we saying the only conclusive evidence is in FAVOR of uropatagium?

    Only on Pteranodon as of the time the book was published in 1991. Paleontologists specializing in pterosaurs
    would love to refer people to an up-to-date book even half as comprehensive as this "bible", but writing one is a huge undertaking.-


    I noticed that none the pterosaurs had uropatagia either in Prehistoric Planet or on Jurassic World Dominion, so I had assumed some sort of conclusive evidence had come up against them. I gotta say, not having uropatagia kinda made them look like they
    were split in two while flying, lol..

    Keep in mind that the preservation of flight membranes is something of a rarity, so the future may hold some surprises.

    <snip for focus>

    - How conclusive is the evidence of those inflating air sacs on the sauropods? I looked it up online and there appeared to some late 2021 paper about it, but didn’t know what to make of it.

    I haven't found it yet. Can you give me the reference?

    I think I found it but on second inspection it’s starting to sound more like it’s merely saying (big surprise) that the necks of sauropods were extensively pneumaticized.

    There seems to be no doubt about that much. But I don't think the bubbles of which you wrote next
    had anything to do with that. I can't fathom why they would be showing them.

    I had attempted to do a quick search on why they were showing all these bubbles popping out of sauropod necks while still watching the show, so naturally I was a bit distracted while reading and probably confirmation-biased my way to a conclusion:

    <snip for focus>


    I hope to watch it when again when I visit family in about a week and perhaps take better notes. Naturally, I was so overwhelmed and excited with the joy and beauty of simply SEEING these creatures visualized that I didn’t want to ruin it by being
    overly analytical, but there were still a lot of conjectures they visualized that seemed unnecessarily risky.

    I'm looking forward to hearing more from you about this, and anything else connected with paleontology.

    I think of sci.bio.paleontology as a "threatened species" in analogy with CIES classifications. There was a time
    in late 2010 when it was "critically endangered," and it took a lot of dedication and perseverance to get this far.
    We can always use new participants, and with your pleasant style, I think everyone here will be glad if you stick with us.


    Peter Nyikos

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  • From Sight Reader@21:1/5 to All on Wed Jun 15 08:43:58 2022
    On Jun 14, 2022, at 6:10 PM, Peter Nyikos <peter2ny…> wrote:
    Here in sci.bio.paleontology, there are very few readers, so the danger is minimal.

    Hello again and thank you!

    Actually, I’m more worried about bots combing news servers for anything that looks like an email than automatically distributing them. Obviously, the volume of traffic would not concern such adversaries.

    Only on Pteranodon as of the time the book was published in 1991. Paleontologists specializing in pterosaurs
    would love to refer people to an up-to-date book even half as comprehensive as this "bible", but writing one is a huge undertaking.-

    I can’t even imagine how much work it is. All my knowledge - such as it is - comes from Witton’s “Pterosaur” book. However, based on nothing more than the somewhat outspoken tone he sometimes adopts, I became a bit concerned that some of what I
    was reading might not necessarily represent a mainstream opinion. With that being noted, I do seem to recall him describing the lack of evidence for uropatagia making debate difficult.

    I did find this amusing video of a vampire bat running on a treadmill. Although I’m sure there are differences in their joints, wing attachment style and so forth, I still found myself wondering if this sort of weight-forward, “vaulting” type gait
    might be more similar to pterosaur locomotion then the more “crutch” oriented gait shown in the film:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWOUZAa5vlQ


    We can always use new participants, and with your pleasant style, I think everyone here will be glad if you stick with us.

    Peter Nyikos

    Aww, thank you! I was bracing myself for an avalanche of eye-rolls and impatience from harried workers frustrated with fielding questions from an obvious “newbie”, so thank you VERY much!

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  • From John Harshman@21:1/5 to Sight Reader on Wed Jun 15 10:09:53 2022
    On 6/15/22 8:43 AM, Sight Reader wrote:

    On Jun 14, 2022, at 6:10 PM, Peter Nyikos <peter2ny…> wrote:
    Here in sci.bio.paleontology, there are very few readers, so the danger is minimal.

    Hello again and thank you!

    Actually, I’m more worried about bots combing news servers for anything that looks like an email than automatically distributing them. Obviously, the volume of traffic would not concern such adversaries.

    Only on Pteranodon as of the time the book was published in 1991. Paleontologists specializing in pterosaurs
    would love to refer people to an up-to-date book even half as comprehensive as this "bible", but writing one is a huge undertaking.-

    I can’t even imagine how much work it is. All my knowledge - such as it is - comes from Witton’s “Pterosaur” book. However, based on nothing more than the somewhat outspoken tone he sometimes adopts, I became a bit concerned that some of what I
    was reading might not necessarily represent a mainstream opinion. With that being noted, I do seem to recall him describing the lack of evidence for uropatagia making debate difficult.

    I did find this amusing video of a vampire bat running on a treadmill. Although I’m sure there are differences in their joints, wing attachment style and so forth, I still found myself wondering if this sort of weight-forward, “vaulting” type
    gait might be more similar to pterosaur locomotion then the more “crutch” oriented gait shown in the film:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWOUZAa5vlQ


    We can always use new participants, and with your pleasant style, I think everyone here will be glad if you stick with us.

    Peter Nyikos

    Aww, thank you! I was bracing myself for an avalanche of eye-rolls and impatience from harried workers frustrated with fielding questions from an obvious “newbie”, so thank you VERY much!

    Another source of pterosaur lore (and much else besides) is Darren
    Naish's web site Tetrapod Zoology. He's particularly interested in
    azhdarchids.

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  • From Sight Reader@21:1/5 to John Harshman on Thu Jun 16 09:46:48 2022
    On Wednesday, June 15, 2022 at 11:10:00 AM UTC-6, John Harshman wrote:
    Another source of pterosaur lore (and much else besides) is Darren
    Naish's web site Tetrapod Zoology. He's particularly interested in azhdarchids.

    Awesome, thanks! I’ve added it to my desktop and will hopefully get a chance to get lost in its world soon.

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  • From Sight Reader@21:1/5 to peter2...@gmail.com on Fri Jun 17 10:06:45 2022
    On Monday, June 13, 2022 at 9:32:20 AM UTC-6, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
    There does seem to be quite a lot of literature on air sacs on sauropods. Have you seen this one?

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3628838/

    Not much detail on them there, but a very nice discussion on long necked vertebrates in general, and references to
    two older studies.

    Interesting survey article on long necks in general and all those breathing issues. I recall a friend of mine was explaining to a Muslim all these theories on how giraffes evolved long necks, to which the Muslim shut him down by simply saying, “I think
    giraffes have long necks because Allah wills it.”

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