Coming up

I am currently gathering notes for the more exhaustive post on the philosophical strengths and limitations of the sicentific method I promised a while ago. The debates I have fought since the first, stubby, provocative post showed me that not as many as I expected are familiar with the basics of logical reasoning and the fundamental so-called Ways of Knowing (a concept of ToK, a subject unique to the International Baccalaurate, described briefly in an earlier post), so I think it is essential to make a thorough introduction to those first; I will also need quite some time to recap and organise what has been discussed since, and to try to give an organised, all-encompassing account of the topic... What I am saying is that I expect that this will take a long time to complete. (Luckily, it is rather calm on the schoolwork front at the moment.)

Until then, have a think about what makes paleontology a 'science'. (This is another topic of interest of mine, and I might challenge it sometime later.)

PalQuiz 2

First the answers to the first quiz.

1. Actually, only Spinosaurus is a dinosaur among those alternatives. Mosasaurus is a mosasaur, a marine reptile descended from a separate lineage of lizards; no dinosaurs lived in the seas. Brontosaurus is the informal name of Apatosaurus (since it is informal, it should actually be written “Brontosaurus”, as is the formal custom, but I chose not to here, because it would look odd/suspicious), which indeed is a dinosaur (a sauropod); “Brontosaurus”, however, is not.

2. This question was not intended to be ambiguous, but a friend pointed it out: remains of a dinosaur that resembles Tyrannosaurus rex very closely has been found in Asia, but there is disagreement about whether it belongs to the same species, or is a different species of the same genus (Tyrannosaurus bataar), or is a different species of a different genus (Tarbosaurus bataar). Depending on how you classify it, the answer includes Asia or not. What is undisputed is that Tyrannosaurus rex has been found in North America and not in South America or Asia (yet!).  

3. The picture shows the teeth of a conodont, an enigmatic group of invertebrates mostly known only from their fossil teeth!

(The picture was taken from http://www.google.com/imgres?hl=en&tbo=d&biw=1256&bih=756&tbm=isch&tbnid=P94MOrpg58FvRM:&imgrefurl=http://archives.datapages.com/data/mgs/mt/data/0038/0133/figs/fg1.html&docid=HQ6eoCPTnqU_2M&imgurl=http://archives.datapages.com/data/mgs/mt/data/0038/0133/figs/fg1.jpg&w=1177&h=826&ei=uFX8ULfLF6jT0QXZ-YHoDA&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=385&sig=105019455141539793878&page=2&tbnh=142&tbnw=202&start=30&ndsp=36&ved=1t:429,r:46,s:0,i:226&tx=174&ty=99)

4. Another trick question! The typical textbook answer is five mass extinction events, but there is disagreement among experts about two of these (the Late Devonian and end-Triassic mass extinction events). They were not quite as massive as the others (less destruction over longer time), and therefore do not qualify to stand among the other three. Thus, depending on your view, the answer can be either five, four or three.

5. This is the last trick question, I swear! (I just can’t help it sometimes… haha!) Dinosaurs are not birds! Birds may be dinosaurs, so some dinosaurs were birds, but all dinosaurs were not birds. Also, as my friend pointed out to me, penguins, which are dinosaurs, are semi-aquatic, and thus not “strictly” land-living. There is also an extinct bird group called Hesperornithes, which is thought to have been at least semi-aquatic as well.

To make this even more buggy, since B and C are false, so is D, by definition!

Now to the second quiz! I promise, these questions will be (a little bit) cleaner… Only one option is correct in these five. (Or, such is my intention.)

1. Gallimimus is a(n)…

A. Theropod dinosaur

B. Ornithopod dinosaur

C. Neornithine bird

D. Informal name for Gallicusaurus

2. The ‘mammal-like reptiles’ are formally known as

A. Cynodonts

B. Diapsids

C. Mammoreptilians

D. Synapsids

3. What type of fossil is this?

A. Tabulate coral

B. Bryozoan

C. Regular echinoid

D. Irregular sea urchin

4. When did the first land plants appear?

A. Devonian

B. Ordovician

C. Carboniferous

D. Silurian

5. What is another word for the shell of an invertebrate?

A. Tectum

B. Test

C. Urca

D. Carapace

PalQuiz 1

Why have I never thought of this before?

Multiple choice quiz with four options, in honour of the IB Science Paper 1s (the one exam type I genuinely enjoyed)!

Hopefully, I will manage to give at least five to ten new questions every or every second week.

Of course, many of these will be for beginners, others for those who are more well-read on paleontological topics. Maybe, a lot of these names will be completely unfamiliar to you, but you can usually work something out by just thinking of what they might mean! Most scientific terms are made to give an idea of what it means just by the word; a minority, however, seem to be made to do the exact opposite (‘solid solution’ in geology comes readily to mind…).

Just remember that this is all for fun, and what you did not know already, you will learn!

Answers will be published together with the next quiz…

So… test yourself, and enjoy!

1. Which is the most awesome dinosaur ever?

A. Spinosaurus

B. Mosasaurus

C. Brontosaurus

D. All of the above

2. Where did Tyrannosaurus rex live?

A. South America

B. North America

C. Asia

D. Antarctica

3. To which type of animal do these teeth belong?

-->

(I will give the picture credit with the answers next time!)

A. Theropods

B. Sharks

C. Conodonts

D. Placoderms

4. How many major mass extinction events have there been in the last 500 million years?

A. 2

B. 3

C. 4

D. 5

5. Which of the following statements is false?

A. Dinosaurs replaced their teeth continuously throughout their entire lives

B. Dinosaurs were strictly land-living

C. Dinosaurs are birds

D. None of the above

Science

“All generalisations are false, including this one.”

                                                                                       – Mark Twain

I really felt like writing something new for this blog today, and I also have been feeling philosophical of late. I particularly enjoy harassing science with critical philosophy. So, this post will be about some of the general shortcomings of the scientific method.

Correction, it will only be about one: everything in science is fundamentally based on generalisation.

There you go!

(That sounds a bit harsh and radical, don’t you think? Agreed! Science is indeed fundamentally not-true, but that is only because science is only concerned with things that cannot be proven beyond questioning. This is because the only things we can know are absolutely true are things that are true per se (in themselves), e.g. things that are true by definition – a classical example being that ‘all bachelors are unmarried men’: this is always true because if it is not a man and not unmarried, then it is not a bachelor – and such truths, albeit true, are not particularly useful to us! So, science takes on the tough job of approaching the truths we never can be 100 % sure of – not until we have screened the entire universe for every single example of the thing we are examining, and that is just not feasible.

In time, hopefully within a week or so, I hope to have time to prepare a proper account for the scientific method and its philosophical value. What I wrote here was mostly just to introduce the topic, and hopefully stir your minds a bit. The purpose of sharing these thoughts is: first, because I resent how so many blindly accept scientific ‘facts’ as fully true, when they, at best, may be true in most cases, or true beyond reasonable doubt, such as the theory of evolution by natural selection; second, because I keep being told about the scientific method in university lectures, but no one has really approached the subject of what it really means – what are they really doing? what is good about it? what is lacking? – all we have been given are descriptions, no critical thinking, so I wish to illustrate some of the philosophical pits of science.)

 
Ps. I angled this post to one point of view only: the one emphasising science's weaknesses. I did this maninly to provoke any kind of response, and indeed, it sparked a long debate on FaceBook, so now I am satisfied! The rest of you, rest assured, that I will present the strengths of science as well in the follow-up post! Because, regardless of the undeniable (when you understand them) problems with the scientific method, it is not all that off after all, and it is the best we've got! (so far...)

You know you were meant to be a paleontologist when...

... you find 11 fish vertebrae in your canned salmon and get excited about it!

Any sane person would take them out, although they were so soft you could turn them to dust by sneezing...

... but only a lunatic would clean them and keep them in a jam jar!

Yep... that's me: nerdy to the bones! The frail arches (the thingies sticking out at the top and bottom) were all broken except for two when I cleaned away the flesh. What keeps stunning me is how uncomplicated the fish vertebrae are – just like a round tree stub with concave faces without any odd protuberances or projections sticking out here and there as in advanced land animals.

I will sadly not make an elaborate post out of this odd event – I have a geology exam to prepare for – but I might just pick them out any day soon and have a little fun... hehehe...

Looking back – a short evaluation of 2012

This blog has been for nearly a year (the first posts were published the 18^th of April 2012), but since it is a new calendar year now, and I have had a taste of a little bit of most things that I think await in the near future, I might as well do some reflection over this blog so far. This will only be a quick, superficial review, since many of the texts have been quite sporadic and spontaneous (not to say arbitrary) in nature, so there is little sense in doing some sort of in-depth scrutiny of values and limitations (and, frankly, because that seems pretty dull to do on a blog…).

The fieldtrips dominated the early months, and they were great fun and useful to write about. There will be a few more fieldtrips in the future, including one in late March to early April, so if you enjoyed these posts, more are to come, rest assured. Next came more of a mix between random factual texts, stories from my voluntary work as the museum and picture galleries from my forest ‘self-trips’. The sporadic factual texts were partly to fill some spaces, and also to allow me to write on whims and urges, so I will definitely keep those up. I do not work a the museum any longer, but I am intending to search for some part-time work the next term, and hope to have some interesting insights to bring from there too!

Then there was the fell hiking trip. Epic. I truly hope there will be another this summer.  Finally, was the time when I moved to Bristol, and there was a lot of things going on, not all related to paleontology and/or worth writing about, so I had to fill the vacuum with some old texts and stuff… I hope that has not been disturbing or devaluating – I just wanted to keep you entertained while I could not produce new, fresh material. Although, one unusual discussion did come up: the one about the dragonsand hippogriffs! I am sure more of those odd, on-the-verge-of-silly things will come in the future.

The January exams are only multiple choice, as I explained in an earlier post, so there has not been any ‘point’ in thinking outside and about the box; this is what I need to do for the end-of-year exams, though, and I find it good practice to write down your musings in a blog or blog-like fashion, since it makes you really think about your idea, and to check that you have thought carefully about it, from as many angles as possible, and, finally taking the essences out and explaining it to people less familiar with the subject. Hopefully, you will see some original posts in short. Also, I hope this could spark some discussions with fantastic ideas from your side!

Overall, it has been really great to run this blog, which has encouraged me not only to keep this going, but also to start the new blog The Bluest Ice about global issues. Something I might add is that I was pleasantly surprised by how (arbitrarily) well the content managed to relate to the title of the blog!

Anatomical directions (land vertebrates)

 Another of my old articles from my previous website. This one is about the names of the basic anatomical directions. Albeit confusing at first, this jargon is actually pretty useful once you get the hang of it! 

(I introduced the topic with a silly short poem...)

Right is wrong. 

It should be left. 

Left right there. 

Hehe, no, seriously...

There are four main contrasting pairs of terms of directions in anatomy. Note that these apply mainly to tetrapods, or four-limbed vertebrates, to which dinosaurs do belong, but many animals such as molluscs, insects and spiders do not. However, since this site is about dinosaurs, these are the most relevant ones. 

These terms rely on the fact that tetrapods have a distinct head, trunk and tail, four limbs, and clear up and down sides. 

Dorsal means toward and beyond the animal’s back, and ventral means toward and beyond the animal’s belly. Note, however, that most tetrapods have their trunk lying horizontally, unlike in humans (and kangaroos!), meaning that their back faces upward, and their belly downward. Therefore, dorsal and ventral may loosely refer to up and down. So, the ribs would be located ventrally to the spinal column. We could apply this to the skull too, for example by saying that the upper jaw is dorsal to the lower jaw, or that the tooth sockets lie ventrally to the eye sockets. Moreover, stegosaurs are characterised by large plates on their backs, which we could call dorsal plates (in this case, maybe the word dorsal refers more to the fact that the plates sit on the actual back of the animal, but they are nevertheless the most dorsal part of the stegosaur).  

Anterior refers to structures toward the tip of the snout, while posterior is used for things toward the tip of the tail. In simple terms, this means forward and backward, since most tetrapods have their snout facing forward, and so on. Thus, the forelimbs are located anteriorly to the hindlimbs, and the hip region lies posteriorly to the rib cage. Ceratopsians, including Triceratops, have a special beak-like bone (called the rostral bone) attached anteriorly to their upper jaw. Stegosaurs had formidable spikes on the posterior end of their tails. 

Proximal and distal apply chiefly to the limbs (and sometimes to the tail). Proximal means closer to the trunk, while distal means further away from the trunk. Thus, the fingertips are the distal ends of the forelimb, and the femur (thigh bone) is proximal to the knee cap. Many theropods had the distal end of their pubis (a bone in the hip region facing ventrally, or downward) formed like a boot.

Tetrapods, like many other animals, have a clear midline that separates the body from top to bottom into two identical but mirror-imaged halves (the line of symmetry). Referring to this so-called sagittal plane, we use the terms lateral, meaning away from the midline, and medial, meaning toward the middle. The shoulders are generally lateral to the skull, while the tail would be medial to the shoulders. Some nodosaurs (a type of ankylosaur), eg. Edmontonia, had enormous spikes extending forward and laterally from their shoulders. 

These terms can of course be combined. The two subgroups within Dinosauria, Saurischia and Ornithischia, are usually distinguished by the former having the pubis facing anterioventrally (i.e. forward and downward) and the latter having it oriented posterioventrally (i.e. backward and downward). The characteristic neck frill of the ceratopsians can be said to be facing posteriodorsally (backward and upward), while it is also expanded laterally (broadened). In addition, one can refer to structures running along a bone or an axis: theropod teeth had serrations running proximodistally along the edge – that is, they extend from the proximal to the distal part of the tooth. 

How would you describe the direction of Edmontonia's shoulder spikes, using the combined formal terms? 

This system is rather useful, being fundamentally simple (although the words may be confusing if you are not used to them) and concise, and understanding these will surely help you understand more formal texts, especially descriptions. Trust me: once you get the hang of it, you will find it very convenient!