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Post by thetyrantlizard on Jan 3, 2008 23:16:36 GMT -5
I recall a special feature in Discover magazine on the significance of this purported discovery. The media swallowed all of Horner, Schweitzer, et al's claims, usually without troubling to mention that some of those proteins were known even last year to be more anuran than avian. Yet that is not the impression one got from the headlines blazing about tyrannosaurs being chickens. Heck, these 'proteins' don't even show dinosaurs are reptiles! In fact, based on the diagram above the closest relative to the tyrannosaurus is-- the platypus!
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Post by thetyrantlizard on Jan 3, 2008 23:28:54 GMT -5
Unlike the media hubbub during the 2006 announcement of the supposed (and, as it turns out, nonexistent) sequencing of purported tyrannosaur proteins that Horner, Schweitzer, et al. claimed "proved" that tyrannosaurs were overgrown chickens, this time there seems to be a deathlike silence in the popular press. Storrs Olson was absolutely correct.
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Post by tomhet on Jan 3, 2008 23:32:44 GMT -5
^^^ *expels a big sigh of relief*
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Post by thetyrantlizard on Jan 4, 2008 0:53:39 GMT -5
Let us be thankful that the 'findings' of the 'chicken-like' 'tyrannosaur' 'soft' 'tissue' did not result in the widespread slicing into and dismembering of dinosaur fossils merely to look for such purported 'organic' 'dinosaurian' 'tissue'
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Post by thetyrantlizard on Jan 4, 2008 2:43:11 GMT -5
I found it hilarious that in their defense of their flawed study Schweitzer et al referred to a chicken as a mammal ;D And they insist that 5 out of the 6 protein sequences are referrable to chickens. But their own chart shows that the proteins can also be referred to opossums and newts as well! They don't explain how the frog proteins ended up in the supposed 'bird-like' 'tyrannosaur' 'soft' 'organic' 'tissue' 'samples'.
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Post by thetyrantlizard on Jan 4, 2008 3:45:09 GMT -5
Sorry for the multiple posts but now I'm mad : I compared the original protein sequences that Asara, Schweitzer, Horner, et al compiled for their first published study, which is now under question, with their latest response to their critics, and I noticed that in "clarifying" the protein sequences in their new, revised table Horner & company eliminated, with no justification, some of the protein sequences that were referrable only to the lissamphibia, and "reinterpreted" the rest of the sequences by shifting a letter or two and turning them into chicken proteins or "unique" t-rex proteins, just so they can bolster the purported t-rex-chicken connection
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Post by thetyrantlizard on Jan 7, 2008 18:03:15 GMT -5
Typical -- the absurd proposition that dinosaurs became extinct due to insect bites has received the usual feverish and uncritical amount of media coverage. Death by mosquito bite is apparently 'hot'. The level of ignorance displayed even by 'science' writers and editors is staggering and depressing.
On the other hand, the study disparaging the claim of the tyrannosaur-chicken protein link has been totally ignored. Literally not a single story has appeared in the mainstream press--though when the purported protein sequences were announced hundreds of newspapers propagated the claim.
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Post by richard on Jan 7, 2008 23:32:09 GMT -5
insect bites??? hahaha, since when everybody can be a scientist?
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Post by Thorondor 33 on Jan 8, 2008 14:14:48 GMT -5
I LOLed pretty good at the insect bite theory. ;D
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Post by thetyrantlizard on Jan 9, 2008 2:53:43 GMT -5
Psittacosaurus did NOT have hair/bristles/fuzz/proto-feathers on its tail, contrary to just about every dinosaur book written in the past 5 years. They were just decomposing fibres. www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/01/09/scidino109.xmlMisinterpreted Chinese "dinosaurs" again. Me, I decided a very long time ago that any supposedly fuzzy dinosaur "find" from Liaoning is either the product of a hyperactive imagination or a work of pure fraud. No one believed me then, but the evidence is mounting. Fearless prediction: regardless of whether birds are one day proven to be descended from the maniraptorans or not, the Liaoning proto-feathered 'dinosaurs' will eventually ALL be exposed as the greatest embarrassment to science since Piltdown Man.
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Post by thetyrantlizard on Jan 9, 2008 5:07:47 GMT -5
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Post by Thorondor 33 on Jan 9, 2008 10:50:08 GMT -5
Let the reign of scaly dinosaurs beging again!
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Post by richard on Jan 9, 2008 13:40:29 GMT -5
Psittacosaurus did NOT have hair/bristles/fuzz/proto-feathers on its tail, contrary to just about every dinosaur book written in the past 5 years. They were just decomposing fibres. www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/01/09/scidino109.xmlMisinterpreted Chinese "dinosaurs" again. Me, I decided a very long time ago that any supposedly fuzzy dinosaur "find" from Liaoning is either the product of a hyperactive imagination or a work of pure fraud. No one believed me then, but the evidence is mounting. Fearless prediction: regardless of whether birds are one day proven to be descended from the maniraptorans or not, the Liaoning proto-feathered 'dinosaurs' will eventually ALL be exposed as the greatest embarrassment to science since Piltdown Man. yay!! Scientist are going back to science PS: I can tolerate dromaesaurids with feathers, but others not!, how can hadrosaurids have feathers!!!
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Post by thetyrantlizard on Jan 11, 2008 0:53:13 GMT -5
Now I'm disgusted--the "insects killed the dinosaurs" theory, far from dying down, is spreading like--well--a swarm of bugs through the mainstream media. Everyone seems to have abandoned common sense and embraced this cockamamie theory. The authors of the book even claim that the dinosaurs were locked into a life-or-death struggle with the insects! So are we, but I doubt humans or mammals are going to go extinct anytime soon
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Post by richard on Jan 11, 2008 16:11:58 GMT -5
lol life or death fight against insects! lol! Fortunately I have never heard or seen that on the media
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