Another question for paleofags. Why are dromeosaurs assumed to share more recent ancestry with birds than oviraptors, when oviraptors and birds share far more common traits than dromeosaurs and birds? Take your time
1. They often aren't considered less closely related to birds than dromeosaurs are
2. when they are found to be less closely related it's because of the level of derivation of traits, not the number
a trait that tells us the order animals evolved in without question is going to be weighted much heavier than one that's simply shared between animals.
we might say oviraptorosaurs are more closely related to birds than dromeosaurs are because they have a pygostyle while dromeosaurs don't.
the two main criticisms to that are that dromeosaurs may have had a pygostyle and lost it, or that birds gained the pygostyle convergently.
a third is that the structure in oviraptorosaurs isn't actually a pygostyle.
similarly we may say the foot in oviraptors is less fully fused than in dromeosaurs.
this one isn't as prone to criticism because we assume once the foot fuses it cannot go back to an earlier state. So the only real possible criticism is that perhaps the foot in dromeosaurs and birds fused convergently.
which is possible, but we get a bunch of irreversible traits we're going to know they didn't ALL arise convergently.
number of shared traits is not as important as how derived the traits are, if they're irreversible, and what they tell us about actual evolution rather than just what an animal looked like.
another question to ask is if the shared traits were apparently or obviously due to convergence.
again using the example of the pygostyle. It doesn't appear in all oviraptorosaurs, indicating it evolved in oviraptorosaurs. So if it's shared with birds that means birds evolved from oviraptorosaurs.
this is impossible since birds evolved almost a hundred million years before oviraptorosaurs evolved pygostyles. This indicates the shared trait is convergent and says nothing about relatedness to birds.
similarly we have things like secondary edentulousness and keratinous beaks in oviraptorosaurs
we think of these as bird traits but the simple fact is birds in the mesozoic for the most part had teeth and lacked beaks
so those are traits birds share with dromeosaurs, not oviraptors.
this judgment is tempered by the fact that most early birds are known only from teeth, so if there were birds or oviraptors that lacked teeth we wouldn't be likely to find them.
so it's not conclusive evidence, it is an assumption. All the early birds we know of had teeth, just as oviraptor ancestors had teeth. But we wouldn't be likely to find ones that didn't.
however we work with what we know, not what we suppose. And what we know is many birds had teeth while oviraptors generally didn't.
also bird teeth were significantly different from the presumed and known teeth of other maniraptorans.
I.e., by the time dromeosaurs and oviraptorosaurs show up in the fossil series, birds had already evolved much different teeth.
but the fact that dromeosaurs still had teeth indicates they're more closely related than oviraptorosaurs that lack them. It's not proof, just evidence.
ultimately neither dromeosaurs nor oviraptorosaurs are particularly closely related to birds since birds evolved well before they appear in fossils.
as to which is closer, a comparison of traits by weight rather than number to modern birds or by both weight and number to ancient birds indicates dromeosaurs, but that might be wrong.
but to give a technical answer to your question, we weight traits differently, so the number of traits may not matter.
for example, having a toothless beak is more than one trait. It involves completely losing teeth on 6 different bones and then evolving a beak on top of those same bones. So it's not just one trait and we don't count it as just one. We might count it as 4 or 10 or 12 traits depending on how we think it happened. It weighs heavier than a single trait.
Conversely, we know of lots of other dinosaurs that evolved beaks and lost teeth due to convergence rather than inheritance, so we might subtract some of the weight from the trait to recognize that it may be convergent rather than indicative of common descent.
every trait goes through this process, and is given a mathematical weight based on a judgment of how difficult or easy it is to evolve.
The number of shared traits doesn't matter in a weighted phylogenetic analysis. The weights matter, and reflect assumptions and knowledge about the evolution of each trait.
But dealing specifically with oviraptors and birds while ignoring other maniraptorans, there are only 2 possibilities:
1. Oviraptors and birds share a common ancestor that had a beak and no teeth
2. Oviraptors and birds share a common ancestor that had teeth and no beak
Option one means oviraptors are birds (Paul's hypothesis) but is seemingly contradicted by birds retaining teeth for almost 100 million years of their earliest evolution, and also oviraptors not having a fully fused cannon bone, which is found in early birds.
Option 2 is supported by birds having teeth while oviraptor didn't, and by a lack of early toothless beaked bird fossils
both options are possible, but only one of them is supported by fossil evidence. You can make a hypothesis without any evidence to prove it, as Paul has, but it's not a strong hypothesis until the evidence is found.
Paul predicts we'll find a toothless bird ancestor of oviraptors, proving that oviraptors are birds. This might happen, but until then the hypothesis is unsupported. More likely it won't ever happen because the hypothesis is false.
meaning Dollo's law indicates either oviraptors are birds or birds are more closely related to dromeosaurs.
so the idea of birds being more closely related to oviraptors than dromeosaurs is a bit misleading since it would mean oviraptors ARE birds. And you wouldn't say sparrows are more closely related to birds than birds are to elephants, because it's both tautological and demonstrably untrue.
if oviraptors are birds they are exactly as closely related to birds as any birds are, and just as closely related to dromeosaurs as birds are as well.
Greg Paul sidestepped all this debate by suggesting that both oviraptorosaurs and dromeosaurs are flightless birds.
in that case your question becomes impossible to answer since oviraptors have beaks and pygostyles while dromeosaurs have better fusion of the cannon bone,
essentially disproving Paul's idea.
there is no scenario where two irreversible derived traits would show up in two different lineages and then come together in the descendants of only one of those lineages.
that can't happen. hybridization doesn't work that way. horizontal gene transfer doesn't work that way, and evolution doesn't work that way.
loss of teeth and fusion of the cannon bone are both irreversible, so they tell us explicitly what order evolution happened in. It is impossible for an animal to lose all teeth and then have its descendants evolve them back again. Same goes with the loss of entire bones of the leg.
essentially this is 8th grade biology, a question we expect 16 year olds to be able to answer on their own without the help of some postgrad paleontologist on the internets.
I would start the average 16 year old off by asking them to google or wikisearch cladistics and phylogenetic analysis, including weighted characters.
after that I'd have them google the diagnoses for birds, dromaeosaurs, and oviraptorosaurs.
if they couldn't figure that out I'd flunk them and advise they take wood shop next year.
The idea that it takes a lot of time, or I need to prove to you how science works, is also indication you can't handle the thinking.
I know this stuff off the top of my head
I have it memorized even though I learned it 20 fucking years ago.
this is butt simple stuff.
if you can't figure it out, I can't explain it to you. You lack the capacity.
maybe do brain teasers or play chess until the ability to think rationally gets unlocked. I don't know. I was born with this understanding. I don't really relate to people that don't innately get it.
>I don't really relate to people that don't innately get it.
to be honest I don't even think of you as a person.
a person should understand this type of reasoning without explanation.
>a person should understand this type of reasoning without explanation.
like if you can do sudoku you can do systematic word puzzles. and if you can do systematic word puzzles you can do systematic paleontology
most people can do this stuff. Only on Wauf do we find literal retards trying to do this stuff and failing.
it's sad. But don't for a minute think you're normal if you can't understand systematics. you are a retard. Go pet your doggo or cat. Draw dinosaurs. Ignore xience because it's way out of your league.
This entire thread is appeal to authority after appeal to authority plus extremely cherry-picked applications of phylogenetic bracketing and convergence.
The other question is if retards are actually conscious. If they have human consciousness.
I mean they're genetically human, and they look human, but they seem to lack the critical components of mind that make people human.
hard to say. Personally I don't consider retards to be human. But then babies and really old people wouldn't be human either. But babies at least can grow into humans. Retards are just stuck in the animal phase.
It is an interesting philosophical question though.
Can you actually communicate with a retard?
Or is it like talking to a ham sandwich? Not really communication at all?
The other question is if retards are actually conscious. If they have human consciousness.
I mean they're genetically human, and they look human, but they seem to lack the critical components of mind that make people human.
hard to say. Personally I don't consider retards to be human. But then babies and really old people wouldn't be human either. But babies at least can grow into humans. Retards are just stuck in the animal phase.
either way trying to explain phylogenetics of paleospecies to a retard is just talking to myself.
but it's a fun exercise in trying to dumb down complex ideas for the consumption of retards.
Clearly chickens evolved from oviraptors
Ostriches came from Gallimimus.
Eagles evolved from velociraptors.
Penguins came from ichthyosaurs.
Hummingbirds evolved from dragonflies.
what else?
Nothing I've said in this thread matters though because you don't actually care about the topic or even like science.
You want the respect you think goes with using big words and big ideas without any of the actual work needed to use them right.
And the fact is you'll probably get it from people who don't know or don't care about the topics you're lecturing on. Which is in fact most people. The average person will probably think you're pretty bright and knowledgeable because you know more than they do.
>The experts will just laugh at you.
You have to realize that people like Greg Paul and Jack Horner and Bob Bakker and Peter Larson aren't respected for their crazy ideas. They're respected because they often produce good ideas as well.
If all you produce are crazy ideas, the experts simply won't talk to you. They'll send out a mass email asking everyone to stop talking to you until you start doing some serious work. Because whether it's auto repair or paleontology, it's a bit sad when a crazy person tries to do it and fucks up over and over.
>They'll send out a mass email asking everyone to stop talking to you until you start doing some serious work
I however will keep right on talking to you OP.
because I don't care about bird evolution or your views on science and scientists.
I care about how geniuses apply moderated apophenia in the creative process and how schizos overdo it.
I'm curious where the line between brilliant and insane sits.
And I suspect with several lifetimes of reading, you might actually shit out a genius idea one day. Because while this "hypothesis" is ill-informed shit, it is certainly full of interesting apophenia.
Obviously no real scientist has memorized the entirety of all anatomical, embryological, and genetic science on birds, let alone all animals ever. That's not the paleontologist's job. In fact lots of people spend their entire lives studying just one facet of one species or taxon. You have to focus. There's just far too much knowledge out there to ever know enough, and it's constantly being produced faster than you can read, understand, and memorize it.
So what we do is specialize in one particular area of interest. We probably memorize a lot of stuff about that particular area, and we read science, both old and new, in our very specific field.
I am not an "expert" on bird anatomy, genetics, or phylogeny, and I don't care to be. I'm an expert on extinct theropods and even then I mostly just focus on the theropods of the Morrison Formation.
But to become an expert on Jurassic theropods of the Western US, I had to learn a shitload about theropods, anatomy, zoology, ecology, evolution, geology, genetics, and phylogeny in general. Years and years of learning. I also had to study shit that seems barely related but gets used in science every day, such as methods, philosophy, maths, statistics, programming, and language.
The other thing we know is how to look stuff up. You think you're good at looking stuff up, but you've barely scratched the surface of what's available to you. Once you get to the point where you're not just googling your own ideas but also checking all the citations and reading those too, you'll be close to a first-year student's level of reading. If you want to get beyond that you're going to have to get a lot quicker at academic searches and reading.
You have no idea how much you don't know. You could live a thousand years and probably still not catch up with most experts unless you figure out how to optimize your learning. Spend the next 20 years reading everything you can about bird evolution. That's how academic papers get started.
and again, all of this could've been avoided if you'd have just gone to college for 18 years like a normal scientist before trying to shit out "A Hypothesis."
As if scientists are all idiots and you're some sort of born genius.
We can also examine your "hypothesis" at multiple scales of resolution
We start with anatomic. Say the 2 lineages you have identified share a dozen major character states not found in the proposed ancestors. This by itself essentially refutes your hypothesis by itself. But each of those character states consists of multiple individual evolutionary events. The fusion of 3 bones into 1 requires at least 2 intermediate events. The fusion of 5 new bones to the synsacrum is at least 4 individual events. All of those character states together represent probably over 100 shared evolutionary events, basically irrefutable refutation of your hypothesis.
but we can go deeper. Next we look at embryology and find, say, birds have one unpaired sternum while their presumed ancestors in your plan have two. So we look at bird embryos and find that bird sternums are actually made from the 2 existing dinosaur sterna plus 5 new bones that aren't found in their ancestors. These 7 bones fuse into one to make the sternum, and it's the same 7 bones in each lineage of modern bird. We find the same developmental situation with each of the anatomical features, again providing thousands of new refutations to your plan.
Finally we can look at the genes that modulate each of these embryological developments and find that the same genes are used in both lineages. Over 2 or 3 lineages, over 100+ evolutionary events, over potentially thousands of genes, the odds of this occurring by chance are literally billions to one.
your "hypothesis" is completely raped by literally billions of data points standing against it. And all this was known well over a decade before you even came up with the idea. Like magic, you had an idea that had already been disproven billions of times over.
We can dig even deeper than this, examining how each of the associated loci evolved within the genome via addition, deletion, activation, deactivation, repetition, error, etc.
Providing additional thousands of data points refuting the "hypothesis." I don't personally cite that kind of information because I don't read genetic science often.
But only a fool would think it doesn't exist. In fact biology is trillions of times more complex than OP knows and I care to imagine.
But much of that information is not only known, but it's available to the public, generally for free with a simple google search.
You failed to understand the scientific method, display gross misunderstandings of evolution in general and the empirical basis of phylogenetics in particular, and forwarded an idea that even a superficial reading of the literature would disqualify.
I estimate your cognitive age around 12 years old, and that's being very generous. You certainly don't think like a normal adult and whoever takes care of you should probably get you off the internet before you hurt yourself or someone else.
1. Experts don't need to disprove your "hypothesis"
2. Nobody classifies animals on overall body shape
3. Your feeling that "it doesn't look right" is meaningless
4. You are required to try to disprove your own hypothesis
5. You should probably read up on the stuff you're hypothesizing about
6. Scientific method requires your hypothesis to make testable predictions
7. It's your job to design experiments to test those predictions
8. Just because you can't imagine an experiment to test your hypothesis doesn't mean nobody else can
9. Denying facts doesn't change them
10. Paleotaxa are available to phylogenetic debate, extant crown groups are not
11. Convergence might explain a few minor characters but not dozens of them
12. You should probably check if someone else has already had your idea
13. Geotemporal distribution is no indication of order of progression
14. You really need to read basically everything ever published on the topic you plan to hypothesize about so you don't make a bunch of very simple errors right off the bat.
Specifically your "hypothesis" is refuted by the fact that both paleognaths and neognaths possess:
1. beaks
2. fully fused tarsometatarsus (cannon bone)
3. fully fused sacral series/synsacrum
4. caudal series fully converted to pygostyle
5. functioning avian respiratory system powered by movement of the legs
6. secondary edentulousness
7. reduction of the cervical series
8. reduction of the caudal series
9. Ancestral coniform teeth lacking serrations with a narrow dental cervix and little recurvature.
10. several other smaller osteological traits I don't feel like arguing with you about
since all of these traits are shared between the two lineages, it is reasonable to assume that their MRCA had all or most of them. This assumption is confirmed by DNA comparisons of the two lineages showing that these traits- where identified with a particular locus- are coded by the same loci in both lineages.
Oviraptors have at most 3 of the 9 listed traits (1,5,6), other early maniraptorans have at best 1 of them and even that 1 is dubious (5).
Most of these traits cannot be reversed (not subject to secondary loss) and none of them can be reversed to their basal condition (Dollo)
This is proof that the MRCA of neognaths and paleognaths existed much more recently than the MRCA of oviraptors and other maniraptorans. It is also proof that all birds arose from a single maniraptoran.
only means they evolved after the other animal split off, not necessarily after the other animal appears in the fossil record.
The temporal location of paleospecies is NOT an indicator of their order of descent.
Just because oviraptor appears in the fossil record before modern birds DOES NOT indicate that oviraptor evolved before modern birds, or that either of them appeared at the time we first find them. The fossil record is not an indication of the order in which animals evolved.
This is OP's other major error, and one common to creationists in general.
They assume that animals evolved in the order they appear in the fossil record, and that a basal form cannot continue to exist alongside a derived form for potentially hundreds of millions of years.
Briefly, all fossil and DNA evidence indicates that essentially modern birds had ALREADY EVOLVED before oviraptors, velociraptors, or archaeopteryx show up in the fossil record.
All this means is the ancestral forms continued to exist for millions of years after their descendants had already evolved much more derived forms.
(if humans evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys? Checkmate atheists!)
If birds evolved from maniraptorans or avialans, why were there still maniraptorans and avialans when birds first appear in fossils?
The short answer is birds appear much earlier than OP is aware of, and the fossil record is far too incomplete to use as a guide for when animals evolved.
This is an extremely basic error, and no serious student of systematic paleontology should make it.
Anyways, thanks for making me a thread to explain exactly what went wrong in your thought process.
I didn't learn anything, but maybe you did.
Arguing with me is not a debate. You aren't teaching me anything. When we disagree it is invariably because you don't know something, or don't understand something.
Specifically your "hypothesis" says that any traits shared by ratites and passerines but not present in maniraptorans evolved by convergence rather than inheritance.
this is super easy to test genetically because convergent traits arise from different loci while inherited traits come for the same loci.
several of the traits in ratites and passerines you attribute to convergence are known to arise from exactly the same loci. So they were inherited, not evolved convergently.
so genetics disproves your "hypothesis."
very quickly and easily.
If you had read any of Horner's dinochicken stuff you'd already know this, but you don't read things.
>your "hypothesis" says that any traits shared by ratites and passerines but not present in maniraptorans evolved by convergence rather than inheritance.
What if the traits in maniraptorans are the derived traits, not the avian ones?
>What if the traits in maniraptorans are the derived traits, not the avian ones?
yes, that's Paul's hypothesis
the problem with that is none of the supposedly basal traits are found in any dinosaurs aside from birds, and all of the supposedly derived traits are found in dinosaurs.
This isn't a problem for Greg Paul because birds at that point had relatively few derived traits to lose. But for OP there's no possible way. It's like saying rats are just derived humans that evolved to be really smalll, have long tails, and run around on all fours. It's just not possible.
also some of the derived traits of birds are almost certainly irreversible. Dollo's law in full effect. As Horner has found in trying to reverse engineer birds back into dinosaurs.
once you lose a tail for example, it becomes impossible to get it back. The genes for the tail have become something else.
similar problems exist between the earliest birds and other maniraptorans. Once three bones fuse into one it becomes impossible for them to turn back into 3 again. Once teeth change shape completely it becomes impossible for them to go back. Stuff like that.
>Do you really think we can read the genome like a book and just translate genes to expression one-to-one?
No of course not.
each individual locus requires experimentation to see if it corresponds to a certain development.
That experimentation has already been done by people working on Jack Horner's dinochicken project, so OP is in particularly bad luck.
Not only can his hypothesis easily be disproven by DNA, but it has been for well over a decade now.
>That experimentation has already been done by people working on Jack Horner's dinochicken project,
this is a bit of an exaggeration, as most of the loci for the differences between birds and other maniraptorans had already been identified prior to Horner's dinochicken project.
But I don't read a lot of bird genetics papers and obviously nobody else here does either. I first became aware of the knowledge by reading dinosaur related genetics papers, i.e. the dinochicken work.
>That experimentation has already been done by people working on Jack Horner's dinochicken project,
this is a bit of an exaggeration, as most of the loci for the differences between birds and other maniraptorans had already been identified prior to Horner's dinochicken project.
But I don't read a lot of bird genetics papers and obviously nobody else here does either. I first became aware of the knowledge by reading dinosaur related genetics papers, i.e. the dinochicken work.
As to WHY geneticists went through and identified the loci resulting in the differences between birds and other maniraptorans, that's butt simple:
they were using DNA to trace how birds evolved, since DNA gives much greater resolution and clarity than the fossil record.
They did it to disprove crackpot theories of bird evolution like OP.
>They did it to disprove crackpot theories of bird evolution like OP.
25 years ago OP might have been taken seriously.
but with the advent of DNA sequencing and CRISPR we know for a fact how birds evolved after splitting off from other maniraptorans, and OP's "hypothesis" is not it.
>25 years ago OP might have been taken seriously.
Probably not though, because we haven't classified animals based solely on overall body shape since about the 1700's.
and we have never classified animals based on OP's feeling that "it just doesn't look right."
>we haven't classified animals based solely on overall body shape since about the 1700's.
This is one of OP's most profound and lasting errors in his misunderstanding of paleontology, though his individual errors are too numerous to catalog.
the reason we don't use overall body shape to classify animals is because convergence regularly produces animals with similar body shapes that aren't related by inheritance.
So for example, if an allosauroid evolved to look like a tyrannosaurid, OP would make the disastrous mistake of classifying it incorrectly.
To avoid that sort of stupidity, we classify animals based on much smaller features of the bones and teeth that are far less likely to be caused by convergence rather than "they look a lot alike." OP doesn't know this, and even after I've told him hundreds of times, he simply doesn't care. So he keeps right on making a massive fool of himself with dogshit ideas like this thread.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>we classify animals based on much smaller features of the bones and teeth that are far less likely to be caused by convergence
Unless of course the animal happens to still be alive, then we classify it with DNA.
which is OP's second mistake itt. We know exactly how birds are related to each other because they're still alive. We can just compare their DNA.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>convergence regularly produces animals with similar body shapes that aren't related by inheritance.
this is what happened with oviraptorosaurs and ratites, leading to OP's massive fuckup.
they share similar body shapes because of convergence, not inheritance. We know this from examination of bird DNA.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>the reason we don't use overall body shape to classify animals is because convergence regularly produces animals with similar body shapes that aren't related by inheritance.
This is something most normal children realize at around age 8 when they learn why dolphins are mammals rather than fish, and why bats aren't birds.
OP doesn't understand this because he is literally, and severely retarded. He's a grown ass adult that fails to understand things any normal child understands
This is literally the definition of a severe learning impairment, i.e. mental retardation.
His ability to memorize useless names indicates his severe retardation arises from autism.
5 months ago
Anonymous
The alternative to OP being literally retarded is that he's a different sort of creature.
a creature that can memorize information easily, but cannot think rationally about that information.
a chat bot.
chat bots to my knowledge don't create graphics directly corresponding to what they're talking about though. So he's probably just retarded.
>(We aren't there yet)
you don't know if we are or not because you've never read any genetic science, let alone all of it.
and you won't.
we'll hit that point and you'll never know it because you don't care and you don't read. Every year we get closer. Every time we map out a human gene locus we wipe out a massive portion of the unknown genomes of other animals.
there are more people studying the genomes of animals than there are studying dinosaur fossils. A LOT more. And the work is much easier.
>you realized it can't be disproven by DNA?
I stated repeatedly that it HAS been disproven by DNA and explained how.
I then gave you useful tips on how to actually formulate a hypothesis since this is just a steaming pile of dogshit that wouldn't pass a 5th grade science fair.
honestly this doesn't seem that far-fetched. Just saying the common ancestor of all these groups was a flying animal unpreserved would be enough to make it even seem reasonable. And what would it hurt if Oviraptor and its ilk were birds proper? We wouldn't exactly glean much from that, honestly.
>Is there some other relevant information you think we can learn from it in this context?
well let's explore that, right?
you're proposing that several lineages of birds all evolved beaks, pygostyles, fully fused cannon bones, avian pumps, reduced pedal digits, etc convergently.
can you imagine a way DNA might be able to shed light on this? Would you guess that each lineage used the exact same "mutations" (i.e. loci) in each case, or would different genes be produced and activated in each case?
>Would you guess that each lineage used the exact same "mutations" (i.e. loci) in each case, or would different genes be produced and activated in each case?
didn't some of the early birds have them like that?
>didn't some of the early birds have them like that?
yes, all of them presumably did.
and now none of them do.
meaning they evolved a much different sort of pygostyle independently if OP is correct. All of them. For no obvious reason aside from flight. Despite at least one of his lineages being flightless.
basically if 2 or 3 different lineages of extant bird all evolved the exact same feature not found in non-avian dinosaurs, we would expect those features to be coded by different genes in each animal.
they are not, so OP is disproven easily. Birds are monophyletic, and they all evolved from the exact same lineage of dinosaurs.
>If on the other hand OP says that oviraptors and paravians are flightless birds, he is just repeating Gregory Paul's hypothesis.
I don't know Gregory Paul's hypothesis. My hypothesis is simply that Oviraptors and Ratites share a more recent common ancestor than Oviraptors and other modern birds. I have been convinced regarding fowl that the scientific consensus may be correct. I guess you could say that this theory implies that Oviraptors/paravians were birds, although I would think it's more nuanced than that.
>My hypothesis is simply that Oviraptors and Ratites share a more recent common ancestor than Oviraptors and other modern birds
yes, that's specifically the part disproven by DNA
if you remove that part, your idea agrees with DNA evidence, but no longer says anything about modern birds.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>if you remove that part, your idea agrees with DNA evidence, but no longer says anything about modern birds.
It does say something interesting about oviraptors and other maniraptorans
but someone else already said that thing decades ago and most people just ignore him because he has no evidence on his side and plenty of evidence against him.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>most people just ignore him because he has no evidence on his side and plenty of evidence against him.
though he was never as bad as OP, classifying animals based on how they look to him. That's retarded. Dolphins look like fish so they must be fish tier retarded.
5 months ago
Anonymous
OP brings no evidence to the table other than a vague feeling that things don't look right
and he thinks that's how science actually works. It's cute, funny, cringe, and sad all at the same time. Like a toddler decided to do some zoology.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>yes, that's specifically the part disproven by DNA
I still don't see how. I'm basically just saying that Oviraptors and Ratites are one branch, the paraves and neognaths are another. See image
5 months ago
Anonymous
Please note: fowl would be included in the "birds" section of that diagram, I have conceded that point. And apologies for the shitty drawing, phoneposting, from top to bottom in the diagram: >Oviraptors >Paleognaths >Paraves (excl. birds) >Neognaths
5 months ago
Anonymous
>I still don't see how
I know, and I'm not going to keep explaining it until you do.
5 months ago
Anonymous
We've talked about scientific method some in the past.
This would be an interesting exercise in using it if you like.
You have your hypothesis, the next step is testing it. How would you test your hypothesis?
what predictions does your hypothesis make, and how can we set up experiments to test those predictions?
I am being serious here, and I am not joking. I already know how to test your hypothesis, and know what predictions it makes. I want you to see if you can list some. Once you do that we can steer you towards some useful information. If we get that far. I'm guessing we won't.
5 months ago
Anonymous
The reason I don't expect you to make any predictions, let alone set up experiments to test them, is because you don't understand how science works. You believe it's simply memorizing a bunch of obscure terms and taxonomic names and then reciting them in a new and interesting order.
but scientists aren't going to be impressed just because you memorized some obscure terms. Lots of autistic kids can do that by the time they're 11. Actually understanding what to do with that knowledge is impressive, but that means knowing how to test it. Not based on "that just doesn't look right," or "my gut says that's wrong." Actually test it without regard to your gut or your feelings. Test it in a way that other people can also test it and see if you're right. You don't generally get this. You think science is a collection of vague ideas and half baked feelings. It is a system of testing ideas, and you haven't shown any indication you understand this.
5 months ago
Anonymous
the other problem with your hypothesis that you'll run into is it seems to be based on the idea that animals with similar body shapes must be more closely related.
this idea went out of style back in the 1700's when people started to notice that dolphins aren't fish and bats aren't birds.
but even this wrong idea makes predictions that can be tested. Can you think of a way to test if ratites are more closely related to oviraptors than passerines are because of body shape? There are actual ways to test this idea. Once you figure them out, you can read up on the various experiments already done to test it and maybe see why nobody uses overall body shape to classify animals. It simply doesn't matter to taxonomy and you're generally not going to find it in a character matrix for phylogenetic analysis.
5 months ago
Anonymous
The other problem you have is thinking you just come up with an idea and it's up to everyone else to disprove it. Nobody has time to disprove the potentially infinite number of wrong ideas a person could come up with.
How it actually works is:
1. You read up on your idea to see if someone else has done it.
2. you then read up on similar ideas to see if your idea is better than them or at least as good.
3. then you check to see if your idea is even possible.
4. next you figure out ways to test your idea by trying to disprove it
5. You test your idea and hopefully don't disprove it
6. Then you go to the experts and see if they can disprove it.
you went straight to step 6, and no expert is going to waste time disproving an idea when you never checked to see if it had been suggested before, if it solves any real problem, or even if it's possible.
that's not how science works, and it's certainly not how science starts. It is YOUR job to see if your idea can be disproven before you put it out there for other people to disprove. This usually means years of reading.
5 months ago
Anonymous
if this was a 5th grade science fair I'd ask you what predictions your hypothesis makes, how you intend to test them, and if anyone else had done this experiment before.
you failed on all counts.
this is not a hypothesis, it's just an autistic boy showing off the big words he memorized but doesn't understand.
5 months ago
Anonymous
and as usual I'd remind you that you have to be 18 to post here.
but I know you're over 18 which just makes your posts even more sad. Because you have the mind of a child, and not a very bright child at that.
can't wait for your next 20 threads though. I'm sure they'll be entertaining.
If on the other hand OP says that oviraptors and paravians are flightless birds, he is just repeating Gregory Paul's hypothesis.
this cannot be disproven by DNA, but doesn't agree well with the fossil record.
>this cannot be disproven by DNA, but doesn't agree well with the fossil record.
specifically the fact that all extant birds share a suite of characters not found in any ancient oviraptor or paravian, meaning they still share a more recent common ancestor with each other than they do with the rest of paraves and oviraptors.
Paul's hypothesis suggests that raptors were a type of bird, rather than birds being a type of raptor.
but this doesn't change the fact that all birds are more closely related to each other than they are to velociraptor. It just changes the order they initially evolved in.
It doesn't make them polyphyletic as OP proposes. That's not possible, DNA has disproven it.
I believe the truth that I see with my own eyes, and when that truth does not match what "experts" call truth, I naturally have questions, and it falls on them to provide the evidence (if it exists)
...Sooooooo "if I don't agree with it, it's wrong :*~~*~~"?
You are not orginal or funny, and nobody is really dumb enough to fall for this b8.
/thread
It's not my opinion, I believe that anybody with eyes should understand why this is a more natural phylogeny. I'm just asking for some evidence as to why it isn't the case. Surely there must be some evidence?
>Surely there must be some evidence?
Hold on, let me look up the several thousand relevant papers and condense them into a pap that's easily consumed by the mentally deficient before spoon feeding them to you repeatedly until you either understand them or give up.
That seems like far too much work. I would think there would be one or two easy anatomical traits to point to that would clear this whole thing up.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>I would think there would be one or two easy anatomical traits to point to that would clear this whole thing up.
it's called DNA
5 months ago
Anonymous
How could DNA prove this? Wouldn't it just prove that ratites/fowl are related, though rather distantly, to most other birds (which this hypothesis agrees with)
5 months ago
Anonymous
>Wouldn't it just prove that ratites/fowl are related, though rather distantly, to most other birds
kek'd
5 months ago
Anonymous
Please elaborate if you think I've said something incorrect.
5 months ago
Anonymous
How would DNA prove that you're related to your mother? Wouldn't it just prove that you're related, though rather distantly, to most other people (which this hypothesis agrees with)
and really if we're classifying birds on looks, why didn't you classify peacocks as butterflies and penguines as some sort of grumpy toad?
5 months ago
Anonymous
That example doesn't have much to do with anything. There's a difference between using DNA to relatedness across a couple generations and using it across a gap of millions of years.
DNA and fossil evidence puts the divergence of paleognaths from neognaths in the early cretaceous.
Fossil evidence puts the divergence of galliforms from non-galliforms in the early cretaceous.
Fossil evidence puts the divergence of oviraptors from other maniraptors in the early cretaceous.
Is it so crazy to suggest that we have the order of these things mixed up a bit, especially considering how imprecise it is to use DNA for this purpose over such long periods of time?
5 months ago
Anonymous
>DNA and fossil evidence puts the divergence of paleognaths from neognaths in the early cretaceous.
oops, you just disproved your 'hypothesis.'
5 months ago
Anonymous
Explain how this disproves anything. Did you read past that one line onto the following two?
5 months ago
Anonymous
>Explain how this disproves anything.
no
go publish your revolutionary new idea, it should do very well.
5 months ago
Anonymous
I still am struggling to understand how (if I understand you correctly) DNA evidence alone can definitively say that ratites/fowl diverged from other birds BEFORE oviraptors diverged from other maniraptors when we have no DNA samples from two of those four groups.
Surely all it can really say is that ratites diverged from neognaths, which then diverged into fowl and non-fowl, and that this all happened roughly some time in the early cretaceous.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>I still am struggling to understand
I know buddy, I know.
look at your tree and see if you can spot why ratites diverging from neognaths disproves your tree.
5 months ago
Anonymous
You're correct I overlooked that. I have reformulated my hypothesis to correct the error
5 months ago
Anonymous
very good
no correct the problem with neognaths diverging from paleognaths and we should be all fixed up on the bird side
then we can deal with your misunderstandings about dinosaurs.
5 months ago
Anonymous
What are the misunderstandings about dinosaurs that you believe I have? The above diagram should preserve all necessary relationships that we have DNA evidence for
5 months ago
Anonymous
>The above diagram should preserve all necessary relationships that we have DNA evidence for
except the divergence of paleognaths and neognaths. Which we have DNA evidence for.
where is that on your tree?
5 months ago
Anonymous
>where is that on your tree?
right here
5 months ago
Anonymous
or here rather, my mistake
5 months ago
Anonymous
lol
are you saying Paraves=Neognathae?
5 months ago
Anonymous
We are a bit limited by terminology here, really in this context "neognathae" simply means the last common ancestor of galliforms and neoaves
5 months ago
Anonymous
*and its descendants
5 months ago
Anonymous
*and its descendants
yes, that's what I'm getting at.
you've now defined most of maniraptora as birds. Was it Greg Paul that already did this?
5 months ago
Anonymous
I don't really care about the definitions and drawing up trees, my main hypothesis is that >A) Ratites and Oviraptors share a more recent common ancestor than Ratites and Neoaves >B) Galliforms are also descended from a primitive ovirator-like maniraptor
5 months ago
Anonymous
yes, you're suggesting a polyphyletic Aves
which DNA disproved before you were born.
5 months ago
Anonymous
How does DNA disprove this?
5 months ago
Anonymous
yes indeed.
I'd love to give you a couple years of molecular biology in a single post, but I've got some chores I need to do instead.
Perhaps you could go read up on how DNA disproves this and check back with me in a year or two with what you've learned.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Lol DNA isn't magic with these sorts of things. I believe that it can tell us with a decent degree of certainly that galliforms and neoaves share a more recent common ancestor than neoaves and ratites, and it can give a very rough timeframe of each of those divergences. Is there some other relevant information you think we can learn from it in this context?
5 months ago
Anonymous
>Is there some other relevant information you think we can learn from it in this context?
well let's explore that, right?
you're proposing that several lineages of birds all evolved beaks, pygostyles, fully fused cannon bones, avian pumps, reduced pedal digits, etc convergently.
can you imagine a way DNA might be able to shed light on this? Would you guess that each lineage used the exact same "mutations" (i.e. loci) in each case, or would different genes be produced and activated in each case?
5 months ago
Anonymous
If you want to talk anatomy, talk anatomy. That's what I've been asking from the start. Don't pretend it's DNA evidence though, I have my doubts about how fully we've decoded the avian genome across multiple species and deduced which genre encode specific features (please let me know if I'm wrong about that though). Could you point to some features which modern birds and ratites share, but which oviraptors lack?
5 months ago
Anonymous
>(please let me know if I'm wrong about that though)
you're wrong about that.
How many ways would you like me to say it? I've said it at least a dozen times already. >Could you point to some features which modern birds and ratites share, but which oviraptors lack?
kek
I just did.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>pygostyle
Oviraptor relatives have them >beaks
Clearly very different between ratites and other birds, also oviraptors have beaks >toes
vary even among ratites and extinct relatives >Fused bones
I'd like to look into this, do you have any images to compare? >Avian pumps
Googling that phrase gives zero results, is this a skeletal feature or something we would have any evidence of in oviraptors? How developed is it in ratites?
5 months ago
Anonymous
>Oviraptor relatives have them
do you know of any modern bird that has their pygostyle on the tip of a big long tail?
5 months ago
Anonymous
didn't some of the early birds have them like that?
5 months ago
Anonymous
>I'd like to look into this, do you have any images to compare?
yes >Googling that phrase gives zero results, is this a skeletal feature or something we would have any evidence of in oviraptors? How developed is it in ratites?
gosh if there was only a way to learn about this stuff somewhere. Maybe they could make a building where several people could get together and learn about it. Get some experts in there to help people learn. Somebody should do that.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>gosh if there was only a way to learn about this stuff somewhere. Maybe they could make a building where several people could get together and learn about it. Get some experts in there to help people learn. Somebody should do that.
all that sounds like it might cost money though. Probably lots of money.
and if someone's going to spend that kind of money just to learn how birds work, they probably need to have some chance of expanding our knowledge.
and to expand our knowledge, they'd first have to learn and understand everything there is to know.
but lots of people aren't smart enough for that, so we'd need a test or two to make sure dumb people weren't wasting time and money trying to learn stuff they're not capable of understanding. Maybe steer those people towards auto body repair or janitorial services or business administration.
I don't know. Information should be free to everyone, but the simple fact is most people have no use for almost all of it and can't understand it anyways. Paleornithology is particularly useless and difficult to understand.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Your mistake is mixing paleotaxa with crown groups.
paleotaxa, yeah we don't have DNA for those guys so there can be some debate about how they're related. We're just going off anatomy and that can be misleading.
Crown groups if we want to know how they're related we just sequence their DNA and plug it into a computer to compare. Essentially no question of how they're related. And yes, I expect every single species of extant bird has been sequenced and compared by now. You can look it up and see.
So where we see schizos forwarding ideas of bird evolution THAT CAN'T BE DISPROVEN BY DNA, it's always with paleospecies and never with crown groups. The Feduccias, Chatterjees, Pauls, etc. have ideas that linger because DNA can't disprove them.
your idea is cute, but DNA disproved it ages ago. If you adjust it for DNA evidence you just get Paul's hypothesis, which is interesting but not likely to be true. Far better than yours though.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Once you get that published we should move on the problem of scientists claiming dolphins are mammals when they're very clearly fish.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Mammals are fishes anyway.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>fucking kek
5 months ago
Anonymous
Yep, the joke is ratites aren't closely related to oviraptor or gallimimus.
they look similar because of convergence.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>ratites aren't closely related to oviraptor
Source? They would seem to be very closely related
5 months ago
Anonymous
read the thread again.
unless you want me to type it all out for you one more time. I'll do it, but I can only really type one post per day so it'll take several months.
5 months ago
Anonymous
If you want the short answer, birds evolved about 85,000,000 years before oviraptor existed.
5 months ago
Anonymous
birds also evolved 85 million years before velociraptor, and 35 million years before microraptor and other chinese feathered theropods. They evolved about 35 million years before archaeopteryx existed.
it goes back to this thread:
[...]
all those dinosaurs are SIMILAR to the ancestor of birds, but none of them are ACTUALLY the ancestors of birds. The ancestor of birds hasn't been found and there's no reason to think it will be.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Basically, finding proto-birds as far apart as china and germany means not only had birds evolved much earlier than that, but they had spread at least half way around the world at that point.
the extreme levels of derivation in both groups indicates by that point in time they had already been evolving for tens of millions of years away from the lines that produced velociraptor and oviraptor.
5 months ago
Anonymous
The fact that bird teeth show up on every continent of the world by the beginning of the cretaceous is proof that they aren't closely related to velociraptor and oviraptor which came almost 40 million years AFTER birds had colonized the entire planet.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>Explain how this disproves anything.
When we say taxa diverged we're saying they're sister taxa that diverged directly from each other.
there aren't any intermediate taxa between them. Paleognaths diverged neognaths,
NOT paleognaths diverged from oviraptors diverged from paravians diverged from neognaths.
see the difference? If X diverged from Y, it diverged DIRECTLY FROM Y WITH NO STEPS IN BETWEEN.
we don't talk about when apes diverged from turtles because there's steps in between.
5 months ago
Anonymous
basically the statement >DNA and fossil evidence puts the divergence of paleognaths from neognaths in the early cretaceous.
is the opposite of what your tree shows. You said they didn't diverge from each other.
Your explanation indicated that you don't understand how trees work.
or you're saying that oviraptors and paravians are paleognaths or neognaths which is Paul's hypothesis but requires reversing the fusion of the tarsometatarsus, synsacrum, pygostyle, and sternum, which are all impossible.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>oviraptors and paravians are paleognaths or neognaths which is Paul's hypothesis
this is a corruption of Paul's suggestion however.
He never said maniraptorans are paleognaths or neognaths. He simply suggested that flight evolved before the fusion of the cannon bone, synsacrum, pygostyle, and sternum. Which is possible but also unlikely.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>clear this whole thing up.
also
this is not a "thing" and it's certainly not a "whole thing."
nothing you think matters. Nobody cares what you think. It's not a thing.
What is delusional about it? Why is it so unbelievable?
5 months ago
Anonymous
1. Experts aren't wrong just because you didn't bother to listen to or understand what they're saying
2. nobody has an obligation to prove anything to you
3. you're retarded, so nobody CAN prove anything to you
4. how about you don't bring us every bit of trash that crosses your trash mind.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>1. Experts aren't wrong just because you didn't bother to listen to or understand what they're saying
I'm open to listen. Nobody has addressed my views yet in this thread, they have only taken issue with my reasons for holding those views. >2. nobody has an obligation to prove anything to you
True, but I'm asking nicely >3. you're retarded, so nobody CAN prove anything to you
What makes you believe this? >4. how about you don't bring us every bit of trash that crosses your trash mind.
This is how academic papers are born, though
5 months ago
Anonymous
>This is how academic papers are born, though
kek'd again
>I believe that anybody with eyes should understand why this is a more natural phylogeny. I'm just asking for some evidence as to why it isn't the case. Surely there must be some evidence?
Hopefully by now you begin to see how retarded you look to even a moderately informed normal person, let alone the "experts" you think you're better than.
you're so far beneath "expert" that it's laughable when you pretend to even the most basic of knowledge. We've got children that know far more than you do. It's embarrassing and frankly I'm embarrassed for you almost every time you post.
>and it falls on them to provide the evidence (if it exists)
I'm going to venture a guess that so far in life you're not getting a lot of experts offering you evidence in order to keep you believing what they have to say?
you might be somewhat mistake regarding the obligations of each party.
Dibosaurs were reptiles. Aby resemblabce to birds is purely superficial. Stop perpetuatibg busciebce idiocy.
Another question for paleofags. Why are dromeosaurs assumed to share more recent ancestry with birds than oviraptors, when oviraptors and birds share far more common traits than dromeosaurs and birds? Take your time
1. They often aren't considered less closely related to birds than dromeosaurs are
2. when they are found to be less closely related it's because of the level of derivation of traits, not the number
a trait that tells us the order animals evolved in without question is going to be weighted much heavier than one that's simply shared between animals.
so for example,
we might say oviraptorosaurs are more closely related to birds than dromeosaurs are because they have a pygostyle while dromeosaurs don't.
the two main criticisms to that are that dromeosaurs may have had a pygostyle and lost it, or that birds gained the pygostyle convergently.
a third is that the structure in oviraptorosaurs isn't actually a pygostyle.
similarly we may say the foot in oviraptors is less fully fused than in dromeosaurs.
this one isn't as prone to criticism because we assume once the foot fuses it cannot go back to an earlier state. So the only real possible criticism is that perhaps the foot in dromeosaurs and birds fused convergently.
which is possible, but we get a bunch of irreversible traits we're going to know they didn't ALL arise convergently.
number of shared traits is not as important as how derived the traits are, if they're irreversible, and what they tell us about actual evolution rather than just what an animal looked like.
another question to ask is if the shared traits were apparently or obviously due to convergence.
again using the example of the pygostyle. It doesn't appear in all oviraptorosaurs, indicating it evolved in oviraptorosaurs. So if it's shared with birds that means birds evolved from oviraptorosaurs.
this is impossible since birds evolved almost a hundred million years before oviraptorosaurs evolved pygostyles. This indicates the shared trait is convergent and says nothing about relatedness to birds.
similarly we have things like secondary edentulousness and keratinous beaks in oviraptorosaurs
we think of these as bird traits but the simple fact is birds in the mesozoic for the most part had teeth and lacked beaks
so those are traits birds share with dromeosaurs, not oviraptors.
this judgment is tempered by the fact that most early birds are known only from teeth, so if there were birds or oviraptors that lacked teeth we wouldn't be likely to find them.
so it's not conclusive evidence, it is an assumption. All the early birds we know of had teeth, just as oviraptor ancestors had teeth. But we wouldn't be likely to find ones that didn't.
however we work with what we know, not what we suppose. And what we know is many birds had teeth while oviraptors generally didn't.
also bird teeth were significantly different from the presumed and known teeth of other maniraptorans.
I.e., by the time dromeosaurs and oviraptorosaurs show up in the fossil series, birds had already evolved much different teeth.
but the fact that dromeosaurs still had teeth indicates they're more closely related than oviraptorosaurs that lack them. It's not proof, just evidence.
the alternative is that some birds had evolved edentulous beaks, and oviraptors are examples of those birds. As Paul and others have suggested.
though again that's generally disproven by other traits such as fusion of the canon bone and pygostyle. Possibly by the sternum.
ultimately neither dromeosaurs nor oviraptorosaurs are particularly closely related to birds since birds evolved well before they appear in fossils.
as to which is closer, a comparison of traits by weight rather than number to modern birds or by both weight and number to ancient birds indicates dromeosaurs, but that might be wrong.
but to give a technical answer to your question, we weight traits differently, so the number of traits may not matter.
for example, having a toothless beak is more than one trait. It involves completely losing teeth on 6 different bones and then evolving a beak on top of those same bones. So it's not just one trait and we don't count it as just one. We might count it as 4 or 10 or 12 traits depending on how we think it happened. It weighs heavier than a single trait.
Conversely, we know of lots of other dinosaurs that evolved beaks and lost teeth due to convergence rather than inheritance, so we might subtract some of the weight from the trait to recognize that it may be convergent rather than indicative of common descent.
every trait goes through this process, and is given a mathematical weight based on a judgment of how difficult or easy it is to evolve.
The number of shared traits doesn't matter in a weighted phylogenetic analysis. The weights matter, and reflect assumptions and knowledge about the evolution of each trait.
But dealing specifically with oviraptors and birds while ignoring other maniraptorans, there are only 2 possibilities:
1. Oviraptors and birds share a common ancestor that had a beak and no teeth
2. Oviraptors and birds share a common ancestor that had teeth and no beak
Option one means oviraptors are birds (Paul's hypothesis) but is seemingly contradicted by birds retaining teeth for almost 100 million years of their earliest evolution, and also oviraptors not having a fully fused cannon bone, which is found in early birds.
Option 2 is supported by birds having teeth while oviraptor didn't, and by a lack of early toothless beaked bird fossils
both options are possible, but only one of them is supported by fossil evidence. You can make a hypothesis without any evidence to prove it, as Paul has, but it's not a strong hypothesis until the evidence is found.
Paul predicts we'll find a toothless bird ancestor of oviraptors, proving that oviraptors are birds. This might happen, but until then the hypothesis is unsupported. More likely it won't ever happen because the hypothesis is false.
if option 2 is true, oviraptors and birds evolved beaks separately, and it is not a shared trait between them.
meaning birds were closer to dromeosaurs than to oviraptors.
meaning Dollo's law indicates either oviraptors are birds or birds are more closely related to dromeosaurs.
so the idea of birds being more closely related to oviraptors than dromeosaurs is a bit misleading since it would mean oviraptors ARE birds. And you wouldn't say sparrows are more closely related to birds than birds are to elephants, because it's both tautological and demonstrably untrue.
if oviraptors are birds they are exactly as closely related to birds as any birds are, and just as closely related to dromeosaurs as birds are as well.
Greg Paul sidestepped all this debate by suggesting that both oviraptorosaurs and dromeosaurs are flightless birds.
in that case your question becomes impossible to answer since oviraptors have beaks and pygostyles while dromeosaurs have better fusion of the cannon bone,
essentially disproving Paul's idea.
there is no scenario where two irreversible derived traits would show up in two different lineages and then come together in the descendants of only one of those lineages.
that can't happen. hybridization doesn't work that way. horizontal gene transfer doesn't work that way, and evolution doesn't work that way.
If dromaeosaurs split from birds after oviraptors, they would have beaks
If oviraptors split from birds after dromaeosaurs, they would have better fusion of the cannon bone.
this is essentially disproof by contradiction of Paul's hypothesis.
loss of teeth and fusion of the cannon bone are both irreversible, so they tell us explicitly what order evolution happened in. It is impossible for an animal to lose all teeth and then have its descendants evolve them back again. Same goes with the loss of entire bones of the leg.
The one possiblity I haven't explored itt is that the MRCA of birds and oviraptors and of birds and dromaeosaurs IS THE SAME ANIMAL.
i.e. birds diverged from maniraptorans BEFORE either dromaeosaurs and oviraptors evolved. I leave this idea as an exercise for the reader.
a thought experiment if you will.
to weed the retards out of the genius garden.
essentially this is 8th grade biology, a question we expect 16 year olds to be able to answer on their own without the help of some postgrad paleontologist on the internets.
I would start the average 16 year old off by asking them to google or wikisearch cladistics and phylogenetic analysis, including weighted characters.
after that I'd have them google the diagnoses for birds, dromaeosaurs, and oviraptorosaurs.
if they couldn't figure that out I'd flunk them and advise they take wood shop next year.
The idea that it takes a lot of time, or I need to prove to you how science works, is also indication you can't handle the thinking.
I know this stuff off the top of my head
I have it memorized even though I learned it 20 fucking years ago.
this is butt simple stuff.
if you can't figure it out, I can't explain it to you. You lack the capacity.
maybe do brain teasers or play chess until the ability to think rationally gets unlocked. I don't know. I was born with this understanding. I don't really relate to people that don't innately get it.
>I don't really relate to people that don't innately get it.
to be honest I don't even think of you as a person.
a person should understand this type of reasoning without explanation.
>a person should understand this type of reasoning without explanation.
like if you can do sudoku you can do systematic word puzzles. and if you can do systematic word puzzles you can do systematic paleontology
most people can do this stuff. Only on Wauf do we find literal retards trying to do this stuff and failing.
it's sad. But don't for a minute think you're normal if you can't understand systematics. you are a retard. Go pet your doggo or cat. Draw dinosaurs. Ignore xience because it's way out of your league.
ultimately it's not the job of a scientist to prove retards wrong
if we do that, it's probably just for fun.
No, you are right.
This entire thread is appeal to authority after appeal to authority plus extremely cherry-picked applications of phylogenetic bracketing and convergence.
based retard can't ID fallacies
thinks anyone is fooled by his schizo sock puppets
>paleofags still have not refuted this
sad!
It is an interesting philosophical question though.
Can you actually communicate with a retard?
Or is it like talking to a ham sandwich? Not really communication at all?
The other question is if retards are actually conscious. If they have human consciousness.
I mean they're genetically human, and they look human, but they seem to lack the critical components of mind that make people human.
hard to say. Personally I don't consider retards to be human. But then babies and really old people wouldn't be human either. But babies at least can grow into humans. Retards are just stuck in the animal phase.
either way trying to explain phylogenetics of paleospecies to a retard is just talking to myself.
but it's a fun exercise in trying to dumb down complex ideas for the consumption of retards.
I’ve never seen someone swallow bait so willingly as you and cope by saying “It’s a fun exercise”
hang out every day for 10 years.
you'll see OP isn't pretending to be retarded.
I disagree, but I respect your opinion and also your interest in rattites and fowl. Thank you for posting this epic thread.
Clearly chickens evolved from oviraptors
Ostriches came from Gallimimus.
Eagles evolved from velociraptors.
Penguins came from ichthyosaurs.
Hummingbirds evolved from dragonflies.
what else?
How about it OP, was it refuted?
you stupid fuck.
Do you ever get the feeling you've spent most of your adult life criticizing things you don't even slightly understand?
bad thread
Nothing I've said in this thread matters though because you don't actually care about the topic or even like science.
You want the respect you think goes with using big words and big ideas without any of the actual work needed to use them right.
And the fact is you'll probably get it from people who don't know or don't care about the topics you're lecturing on. Which is in fact most people. The average person will probably think you're pretty bright and knowledgeable because you know more than they do.
The experts will just laugh at you.
>The experts will just laugh at you.
You have to realize that people like Greg Paul and Jack Horner and Bob Bakker and Peter Larson aren't respected for their crazy ideas. They're respected because they often produce good ideas as well.
If all you produce are crazy ideas, the experts simply won't talk to you. They'll send out a mass email asking everyone to stop talking to you until you start doing some serious work. Because whether it's auto repair or paleontology, it's a bit sad when a crazy person tries to do it and fucks up over and over.
>They'll send out a mass email asking everyone to stop talking to you until you start doing some serious work
I however will keep right on talking to you OP.
because I don't care about bird evolution or your views on science and scientists.
I care about how geniuses apply moderated apophenia in the creative process and how schizos overdo it.
I'm curious where the line between brilliant and insane sits.
And I suspect with several lifetimes of reading, you might actually shit out a genius idea one day. Because while this "hypothesis" is ill-informed shit, it is certainly full of interesting apophenia.
Obviously no real scientist has memorized the entirety of all anatomical, embryological, and genetic science on birds, let alone all animals ever. That's not the paleontologist's job. In fact lots of people spend their entire lives studying just one facet of one species or taxon. You have to focus. There's just far too much knowledge out there to ever know enough, and it's constantly being produced faster than you can read, understand, and memorize it.
So what we do is specialize in one particular area of interest. We probably memorize a lot of stuff about that particular area, and we read science, both old and new, in our very specific field.
I am not an "expert" on bird anatomy, genetics, or phylogeny, and I don't care to be. I'm an expert on extinct theropods and even then I mostly just focus on the theropods of the Morrison Formation.
But to become an expert on Jurassic theropods of the Western US, I had to learn a shitload about theropods, anatomy, zoology, ecology, evolution, geology, genetics, and phylogeny in general. Years and years of learning. I also had to study shit that seems barely related but gets used in science every day, such as methods, philosophy, maths, statistics, programming, and language.
The other thing we know is how to look stuff up. You think you're good at looking stuff up, but you've barely scratched the surface of what's available to you. Once you get to the point where you're not just googling your own ideas but also checking all the citations and reading those too, you'll be close to a first-year student's level of reading. If you want to get beyond that you're going to have to get a lot quicker at academic searches and reading.
You have no idea how much you don't know. You could live a thousand years and probably still not catch up with most experts unless you figure out how to optimize your learning. Spend the next 20 years reading everything you can about bird evolution. That's how academic papers get started.
and again, all of this could've been avoided if you'd have just gone to college for 18 years like a normal scientist before trying to shit out "A Hypothesis."
As if scientists are all idiots and you're some sort of born genius.
We can also examine your "hypothesis" at multiple scales of resolution
We start with anatomic. Say the 2 lineages you have identified share a dozen major character states not found in the proposed ancestors. This by itself essentially refutes your hypothesis by itself. But each of those character states consists of multiple individual evolutionary events. The fusion of 3 bones into 1 requires at least 2 intermediate events. The fusion of 5 new bones to the synsacrum is at least 4 individual events. All of those character states together represent probably over 100 shared evolutionary events, basically irrefutable refutation of your hypothesis.
but we can go deeper. Next we look at embryology and find, say, birds have one unpaired sternum while their presumed ancestors in your plan have two. So we look at bird embryos and find that bird sternums are actually made from the 2 existing dinosaur sterna plus 5 new bones that aren't found in their ancestors. These 7 bones fuse into one to make the sternum, and it's the same 7 bones in each lineage of modern bird. We find the same developmental situation with each of the anatomical features, again providing thousands of new refutations to your plan.
Finally we can look at the genes that modulate each of these embryological developments and find that the same genes are used in both lineages. Over 2 or 3 lineages, over 100+ evolutionary events, over potentially thousands of genes, the odds of this occurring by chance are literally billions to one.
your "hypothesis" is completely raped by literally billions of data points standing against it. And all this was known well over a decade before you even came up with the idea. Like magic, you had an idea that had already been disproven billions of times over.
We can dig even deeper than this, examining how each of the associated loci evolved within the genome via addition, deletion, activation, deactivation, repetition, error, etc.
Providing additional thousands of data points refuting the "hypothesis." I don't personally cite that kind of information because I don't read genetic science often.
But only a fool would think it doesn't exist. In fact biology is trillions of times more complex than OP knows and I care to imagine.
But much of that information is not only known, but it's available to the public, generally for free with a simple google search.
Overall I give you an F
You failed to understand the scientific method, display gross misunderstandings of evolution in general and the empirical basis of phylogenetics in particular, and forwarded an idea that even a superficial reading of the literature would disqualify.
I estimate your cognitive age around 12 years old, and that's being very generous. You certainly don't think like a normal adult and whoever takes care of you should probably get you off the internet before you hurt yourself or someone else.
I hope this helps.
So basically,
1. Experts don't need to disprove your "hypothesis"
2. Nobody classifies animals on overall body shape
3. Your feeling that "it doesn't look right" is meaningless
4. You are required to try to disprove your own hypothesis
5. You should probably read up on the stuff you're hypothesizing about
6. Scientific method requires your hypothesis to make testable predictions
7. It's your job to design experiments to test those predictions
8. Just because you can't imagine an experiment to test your hypothesis doesn't mean nobody else can
9. Denying facts doesn't change them
10. Paleotaxa are available to phylogenetic debate, extant crown groups are not
11. Convergence might explain a few minor characters but not dozens of them
12. You should probably check if someone else has already had your idea
13. Geotemporal distribution is no indication of order of progression
14. You really need to read basically everything ever published on the topic you plan to hypothesize about so you don't make a bunch of very simple errors right off the bat.
Specifically your "hypothesis" is refuted by the fact that both paleognaths and neognaths possess:
1. beaks
2. fully fused tarsometatarsus (cannon bone)
3. fully fused sacral series/synsacrum
4. caudal series fully converted to pygostyle
5. functioning avian respiratory system powered by movement of the legs
6. secondary edentulousness
7. reduction of the cervical series
8. reduction of the caudal series
9. Ancestral coniform teeth lacking serrations with a narrow dental cervix and little recurvature.
10. several other smaller osteological traits I don't feel like arguing with you about
since all of these traits are shared between the two lineages, it is reasonable to assume that their MRCA had all or most of them. This assumption is confirmed by DNA comparisons of the two lineages showing that these traits- where identified with a particular locus- are coded by the same loci in both lineages.
Oviraptors have at most 3 of the 9 listed traits (1,5,6), other early maniraptorans have at best 1 of them and even that 1 is dubious (5).
Most of these traits cannot be reversed (not subject to secondary loss) and none of them can be reversed to their basal condition (Dollo)
This is proof that the MRCA of neognaths and paleognaths existed much more recently than the MRCA of oviraptors and other maniraptorans. It is also proof that all birds arose from a single maniraptoran.
It's also of note that early Avialans such as Archaeopteryx only have 4 of the 9 listed traits at best.
meaning the split between neognaths and paleognaths also occured well AFTER Archaeopteryx evolved.
But this
only means they evolved after the other animal split off, not necessarily after the other animal appears in the fossil record.
The temporal location of paleospecies is NOT an indicator of their order of descent.
Just because oviraptor appears in the fossil record before modern birds DOES NOT indicate that oviraptor evolved before modern birds, or that either of them appeared at the time we first find them. The fossil record is not an indication of the order in which animals evolved.
This is OP's other major error, and one common to creationists in general.
They assume that animals evolved in the order they appear in the fossil record, and that a basal form cannot continue to exist alongside a derived form for potentially hundreds of millions of years.
Briefly, all fossil and DNA evidence indicates that essentially modern birds had ALREADY EVOLVED before oviraptors, velociraptors, or archaeopteryx show up in the fossil record.
All this means is the ancestral forms continued to exist for millions of years after their descendants had already evolved much more derived forms.
(if humans evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys? Checkmate atheists!)
If birds evolved from maniraptorans or avialans, why were there still maniraptorans and avialans when birds first appear in fossils?
The short answer is birds appear much earlier than OP is aware of, and the fossil record is far too incomplete to use as a guide for when animals evolved.
This is an extremely basic error, and no serious student of systematic paleontology should make it.
How'd it go OP? Were any paleofags able to refute it?
Anyways, thanks for making me a thread to explain exactly what went wrong in your thought process.
I didn't learn anything, but maybe you did.
Arguing with me is not a debate. You aren't teaching me anything. When we disagree it is invariably because you don't know something, or don't understand something.
Specifically your "hypothesis" says that any traits shared by ratites and passerines but not present in maniraptorans evolved by convergence rather than inheritance.
this is super easy to test genetically because convergent traits arise from different loci while inherited traits come for the same loci.
several of the traits in ratites and passerines you attribute to convergence are known to arise from exactly the same loci. So they were inherited, not evolved convergently.
so genetics disproves your "hypothesis."
very quickly and easily.
If you had read any of Horner's dinochicken stuff you'd already know this, but you don't read things.
>your "hypothesis" says that any traits shared by ratites and passerines but not present in maniraptorans evolved by convergence rather than inheritance.
What if the traits in maniraptorans are the derived traits, not the avian ones?
>What if the traits in maniraptorans are the derived traits, not the avian ones?
yes, that's Paul's hypothesis
the problem with that is none of the supposedly basal traits are found in any dinosaurs aside from birds, and all of the supposedly derived traits are found in dinosaurs.
This isn't a problem for Greg Paul because birds at that point had relatively few derived traits to lose. But for OP there's no possible way. It's like saying rats are just derived humans that evolved to be really smalll, have long tails, and run around on all fours. It's just not possible.
Ah I see. Thanks for responding.
yeah no problem, it's an insightful question.
also some of the derived traits of birds are almost certainly irreversible. Dollo's law in full effect. As Horner has found in trying to reverse engineer birds back into dinosaurs.
once you lose a tail for example, it becomes impossible to get it back. The genes for the tail have become something else.
similar problems exist between the earliest birds and other maniraptorans. Once three bones fuse into one it becomes impossible for them to turn back into 3 again. Once teeth change shape completely it becomes impossible for them to go back. Stuff like that.
Do you really think we can read the genome like a book and just translate genes to expression one-to-one? (We aren't there yet)
>Do you really think we can read the genome like a book and just translate genes to expression one-to-one?
No of course not.
each individual locus requires experimentation to see if it corresponds to a certain development.
That experimentation has already been done by people working on Jack Horner's dinochicken project, so OP is in particularly bad luck.
Not only can his hypothesis easily be disproven by DNA, but it has been for well over a decade now.
>That experimentation has already been done by people working on Jack Horner's dinochicken project,
this is a bit of an exaggeration, as most of the loci for the differences between birds and other maniraptorans had already been identified prior to Horner's dinochicken project.
But I don't read a lot of bird genetics papers and obviously nobody else here does either. I first became aware of the knowledge by reading dinosaur related genetics papers, i.e. the dinochicken work.
As to WHY geneticists went through and identified the loci resulting in the differences between birds and other maniraptorans, that's butt simple:
they were using DNA to trace how birds evolved, since DNA gives much greater resolution and clarity than the fossil record.
They did it to disprove crackpot theories of bird evolution like OP.
>They did it to disprove crackpot theories of bird evolution like OP.
25 years ago OP might have been taken seriously.
but with the advent of DNA sequencing and CRISPR we know for a fact how birds evolved after splitting off from other maniraptorans, and OP's "hypothesis" is not it.
>25 years ago OP might have been taken seriously.
Probably not though, because we haven't classified animals based solely on overall body shape since about the 1700's.
and we have never classified animals based on OP's feeling that "it just doesn't look right."
>we haven't classified animals based solely on overall body shape since about the 1700's.
This is one of OP's most profound and lasting errors in his misunderstanding of paleontology, though his individual errors are too numerous to catalog.
the reason we don't use overall body shape to classify animals is because convergence regularly produces animals with similar body shapes that aren't related by inheritance.
So for example, if an allosauroid evolved to look like a tyrannosaurid, OP would make the disastrous mistake of classifying it incorrectly.
To avoid that sort of stupidity, we classify animals based on much smaller features of the bones and teeth that are far less likely to be caused by convergence rather than "they look a lot alike." OP doesn't know this, and even after I've told him hundreds of times, he simply doesn't care. So he keeps right on making a massive fool of himself with dogshit ideas like this thread.
>we classify animals based on much smaller features of the bones and teeth that are far less likely to be caused by convergence
Unless of course the animal happens to still be alive, then we classify it with DNA.
which is OP's second mistake itt. We know exactly how birds are related to each other because they're still alive. We can just compare their DNA.
>convergence regularly produces animals with similar body shapes that aren't related by inheritance.
this is what happened with oviraptorosaurs and ratites, leading to OP's massive fuckup.
they share similar body shapes because of convergence, not inheritance. We know this from examination of bird DNA.
>the reason we don't use overall body shape to classify animals is because convergence regularly produces animals with similar body shapes that aren't related by inheritance.
This is something most normal children realize at around age 8 when they learn why dolphins are mammals rather than fish, and why bats aren't birds.
OP doesn't understand this because he is literally, and severely retarded. He's a grown ass adult that fails to understand things any normal child understands
This is literally the definition of a severe learning impairment, i.e. mental retardation.
His ability to memorize useless names indicates his severe retardation arises from autism.
The alternative to OP being literally retarded is that he's a different sort of creature.
a creature that can memorize information easily, but cannot think rationally about that information.
a chat bot.
chat bots to my knowledge don't create graphics directly corresponding to what they're talking about though. So he's probably just retarded.
>(We aren't there yet)
you don't know if we are or not because you've never read any genetic science, let alone all of it.
and you won't.
we'll hit that point and you'll never know it because you don't care and you don't read. Every year we get closer. Every time we map out a human gene locus we wipe out a massive portion of the unknown genomes of other animals.
there are more people studying the genomes of animals than there are studying dinosaur fossils. A LOT more. And the work is much easier.
>you realized it can't be disproven by DNA?
I stated repeatedly that it HAS been disproven by DNA and explained how.
I then gave you useful tips on how to actually formulate a hypothesis since this is just a steaming pile of dogshit that wouldn't pass a 5th grade science fair.
Put Galliformes with the other birds and I could maybe believe this.
honestly this doesn't seem that far-fetched. Just saying the common ancestor of all these groups was a flying animal unpreserved would be enough to make it even seem reasonable. And what would it hurt if Oviraptor and its ilk were birds proper? We wouldn't exactly glean much from that, honestly.
yeah, if DNA hadn't been invented someone would likely agree with the anon.
Why does dna disprove it? Not like we can sequence when a split occured or the ovirpators etc that would disprove it.
>Why does dna disprove it?
>Would you guess that each lineage used the exact same "mutations" (i.e. loci) in each case, or would different genes be produced and activated in each case?
>didn't some of the early birds have them like that?
yes, all of them presumably did.
and now none of them do.
meaning they evolved a much different sort of pygostyle independently if OP is correct. All of them. For no obvious reason aside from flight. Despite at least one of his lineages being flightless.
basically if 2 or 3 different lineages of extant bird all evolved the exact same feature not found in non-avian dinosaurs, we would expect those features to be coded by different genes in each animal.
they are not, so OP is disproven easily. Birds are monophyletic, and they all evolved from the exact same lineage of dinosaurs.
If on the other hand OP says that oviraptors and paravians are flightless birds, he is just repeating Gregory Paul's hypothesis.
this cannot be disproven by DNA, but doesn't agree well with the fossil record.
>If on the other hand OP says that oviraptors and paravians are flightless birds, he is just repeating Gregory Paul's hypothesis.
I don't know Gregory Paul's hypothesis. My hypothesis is simply that Oviraptors and Ratites share a more recent common ancestor than Oviraptors and other modern birds. I have been convinced regarding fowl that the scientific consensus may be correct. I guess you could say that this theory implies that Oviraptors/paravians were birds, although I would think it's more nuanced than that.
>My hypothesis is simply that Oviraptors and Ratites share a more recent common ancestor than Oviraptors and other modern birds
yes, that's specifically the part disproven by DNA
if you remove that part, your idea agrees with DNA evidence, but no longer says anything about modern birds.
>if you remove that part, your idea agrees with DNA evidence, but no longer says anything about modern birds.
It does say something interesting about oviraptors and other maniraptorans
but someone else already said that thing decades ago and most people just ignore him because he has no evidence on his side and plenty of evidence against him.
>most people just ignore him because he has no evidence on his side and plenty of evidence against him.
though he was never as bad as OP, classifying animals based on how they look to him. That's retarded. Dolphins look like fish so they must be fish tier retarded.
OP brings no evidence to the table other than a vague feeling that things don't look right
and he thinks that's how science actually works. It's cute, funny, cringe, and sad all at the same time. Like a toddler decided to do some zoology.
>yes, that's specifically the part disproven by DNA
I still don't see how. I'm basically just saying that Oviraptors and Ratites are one branch, the paraves and neognaths are another. See image
Please note: fowl would be included in the "birds" section of that diagram, I have conceded that point. And apologies for the shitty drawing, phoneposting, from top to bottom in the diagram:
>Oviraptors
>Paleognaths
>Paraves (excl. birds)
>Neognaths
>I still don't see how
I know, and I'm not going to keep explaining it until you do.
We've talked about scientific method some in the past.
This would be an interesting exercise in using it if you like.
You have your hypothesis, the next step is testing it. How would you test your hypothesis?
what predictions does your hypothesis make, and how can we set up experiments to test those predictions?
I am being serious here, and I am not joking. I already know how to test your hypothesis, and know what predictions it makes. I want you to see if you can list some. Once you do that we can steer you towards some useful information. If we get that far. I'm guessing we won't.
The reason I don't expect you to make any predictions, let alone set up experiments to test them, is because you don't understand how science works. You believe it's simply memorizing a bunch of obscure terms and taxonomic names and then reciting them in a new and interesting order.
but scientists aren't going to be impressed just because you memorized some obscure terms. Lots of autistic kids can do that by the time they're 11. Actually understanding what to do with that knowledge is impressive, but that means knowing how to test it. Not based on "that just doesn't look right," or "my gut says that's wrong." Actually test it without regard to your gut or your feelings. Test it in a way that other people can also test it and see if you're right. You don't generally get this. You think science is a collection of vague ideas and half baked feelings. It is a system of testing ideas, and you haven't shown any indication you understand this.
the other problem with your hypothesis that you'll run into is it seems to be based on the idea that animals with similar body shapes must be more closely related.
this idea went out of style back in the 1700's when people started to notice that dolphins aren't fish and bats aren't birds.
but even this wrong idea makes predictions that can be tested. Can you think of a way to test if ratites are more closely related to oviraptors than passerines are because of body shape? There are actual ways to test this idea. Once you figure them out, you can read up on the various experiments already done to test it and maybe see why nobody uses overall body shape to classify animals. It simply doesn't matter to taxonomy and you're generally not going to find it in a character matrix for phylogenetic analysis.
The other problem you have is thinking you just come up with an idea and it's up to everyone else to disprove it. Nobody has time to disprove the potentially infinite number of wrong ideas a person could come up with.
How it actually works is:
1. You read up on your idea to see if someone else has done it.
2. you then read up on similar ideas to see if your idea is better than them or at least as good.
3. then you check to see if your idea is even possible.
4. next you figure out ways to test your idea by trying to disprove it
5. You test your idea and hopefully don't disprove it
6. Then you go to the experts and see if they can disprove it.
you went straight to step 6, and no expert is going to waste time disproving an idea when you never checked to see if it had been suggested before, if it solves any real problem, or even if it's possible.
that's not how science works, and it's certainly not how science starts. It is YOUR job to see if your idea can be disproven before you put it out there for other people to disprove. This usually means years of reading.
if this was a 5th grade science fair I'd ask you what predictions your hypothesis makes, how you intend to test them, and if anyone else had done this experiment before.
you failed on all counts.
this is not a hypothesis, it's just an autistic boy showing off the big words he memorized but doesn't understand.
and as usual I'd remind you that you have to be 18 to post here.
but I know you're over 18 which just makes your posts even more sad. Because you have the mind of a child, and not a very bright child at that.
can't wait for your next 20 threads though. I'm sure they'll be entertaining.
>this cannot be disproven by DNA, but doesn't agree well with the fossil record.
specifically the fact that all extant birds share a suite of characters not found in any ancient oviraptor or paravian, meaning they still share a more recent common ancestor with each other than they do with the rest of paraves and oviraptors.
Paul's hypothesis suggests that raptors were a type of bird, rather than birds being a type of raptor.
but this doesn't change the fact that all birds are more closely related to each other than they are to velociraptor. It just changes the order they initially evolved in.
It doesn't make them polyphyletic as OP proposes. That's not possible, DNA has disproven it.
maybe that's why fowl and ratites taste good while other types of birds don't taste good
Actually the only non-autistic post in the thread.
ahahahahah
>can you refute this?
you've given no evidence to support it, so none is needed to refute it
tada, it is refuted.
I believe the truth that I see with my own eyes, and when that truth does not match what "experts" call truth, I naturally have questions, and it falls on them to provide the evidence (if it exists)
...Sooooooo "if I don't agree with it, it's wrong :*~~*~~"?
You are not orginal or funny, and nobody is really dumb enough to fall for this b8.
/thread
It's not my opinion, I believe that anybody with eyes should understand why this is a more natural phylogeny. I'm just asking for some evidence as to why it isn't the case. Surely there must be some evidence?
>Surely there must be some evidence?
Hold on, let me look up the several thousand relevant papers and condense them into a pap that's easily consumed by the mentally deficient before spoon feeding them to you repeatedly until you either understand them or give up.
Be right back.
That seems like far too much work. I would think there would be one or two easy anatomical traits to point to that would clear this whole thing up.
>I would think there would be one or two easy anatomical traits to point to that would clear this whole thing up.
it's called DNA
How could DNA prove this? Wouldn't it just prove that ratites/fowl are related, though rather distantly, to most other birds (which this hypothesis agrees with)
>Wouldn't it just prove that ratites/fowl are related, though rather distantly, to most other birds
kek'd
Please elaborate if you think I've said something incorrect.
How would DNA prove that you're related to your mother? Wouldn't it just prove that you're related, though rather distantly, to most other people (which this hypothesis agrees with)
and really if we're classifying birds on looks, why didn't you classify peacocks as butterflies and penguines as some sort of grumpy toad?
That example doesn't have much to do with anything. There's a difference between using DNA to relatedness across a couple generations and using it across a gap of millions of years.
DNA and fossil evidence puts the divergence of paleognaths from neognaths in the early cretaceous.
Fossil evidence puts the divergence of galliforms from non-galliforms in the early cretaceous.
Fossil evidence puts the divergence of oviraptors from other maniraptors in the early cretaceous.
Is it so crazy to suggest that we have the order of these things mixed up a bit, especially considering how imprecise it is to use DNA for this purpose over such long periods of time?
>DNA and fossil evidence puts the divergence of paleognaths from neognaths in the early cretaceous.
oops, you just disproved your 'hypothesis.'
Explain how this disproves anything. Did you read past that one line onto the following two?
>Explain how this disproves anything.
no
go publish your revolutionary new idea, it should do very well.
I still am struggling to understand how (if I understand you correctly) DNA evidence alone can definitively say that ratites/fowl diverged from other birds BEFORE oviraptors diverged from other maniraptors when we have no DNA samples from two of those four groups.
Surely all it can really say is that ratites diverged from neognaths, which then diverged into fowl and non-fowl, and that this all happened roughly some time in the early cretaceous.
>I still am struggling to understand
I know buddy, I know.
look at your tree and see if you can spot why ratites diverging from neognaths disproves your tree.
You're correct I overlooked that. I have reformulated my hypothesis to correct the error
very good
no correct the problem with neognaths diverging from paleognaths and we should be all fixed up on the bird side
then we can deal with your misunderstandings about dinosaurs.
What are the misunderstandings about dinosaurs that you believe I have? The above diagram should preserve all necessary relationships that we have DNA evidence for
>The above diagram should preserve all necessary relationships that we have DNA evidence for
except the divergence of paleognaths and neognaths. Which we have DNA evidence for.
where is that on your tree?
>where is that on your tree?
right here
or here rather, my mistake
lol
are you saying Paraves=Neognathae?
We are a bit limited by terminology here, really in this context "neognathae" simply means the last common ancestor of galliforms and neoaves
*and its descendants
yes, that's what I'm getting at.
you've now defined most of maniraptora as birds. Was it Greg Paul that already did this?
I don't really care about the definitions and drawing up trees, my main hypothesis is that
>A) Ratites and Oviraptors share a more recent common ancestor than Ratites and Neoaves
>B) Galliforms are also descended from a primitive ovirator-like maniraptor
yes, you're suggesting a polyphyletic Aves
which DNA disproved before you were born.
How does DNA disprove this?
yes indeed.
I'd love to give you a couple years of molecular biology in a single post, but I've got some chores I need to do instead.
Perhaps you could go read up on how DNA disproves this and check back with me in a year or two with what you've learned.
Lol DNA isn't magic with these sorts of things. I believe that it can tell us with a decent degree of certainly that galliforms and neoaves share a more recent common ancestor than neoaves and ratites, and it can give a very rough timeframe of each of those divergences. Is there some other relevant information you think we can learn from it in this context?
>Is there some other relevant information you think we can learn from it in this context?
well let's explore that, right?
you're proposing that several lineages of birds all evolved beaks, pygostyles, fully fused cannon bones, avian pumps, reduced pedal digits, etc convergently.
can you imagine a way DNA might be able to shed light on this? Would you guess that each lineage used the exact same "mutations" (i.e. loci) in each case, or would different genes be produced and activated in each case?
If you want to talk anatomy, talk anatomy. That's what I've been asking from the start. Don't pretend it's DNA evidence though, I have my doubts about how fully we've decoded the avian genome across multiple species and deduced which genre encode specific features (please let me know if I'm wrong about that though). Could you point to some features which modern birds and ratites share, but which oviraptors lack?
>(please let me know if I'm wrong about that though)
you're wrong about that.
How many ways would you like me to say it? I've said it at least a dozen times already.
>Could you point to some features which modern birds and ratites share, but which oviraptors lack?
kek
I just did.
>pygostyle
Oviraptor relatives have them
>beaks
Clearly very different between ratites and other birds, also oviraptors have beaks
>toes
vary even among ratites and extinct relatives
>Fused bones
I'd like to look into this, do you have any images to compare?
>Avian pumps
Googling that phrase gives zero results, is this a skeletal feature or something we would have any evidence of in oviraptors? How developed is it in ratites?
>Oviraptor relatives have them
do you know of any modern bird that has their pygostyle on the tip of a big long tail?
didn't some of the early birds have them like that?
>I'd like to look into this, do you have any images to compare?
yes
>Googling that phrase gives zero results, is this a skeletal feature or something we would have any evidence of in oviraptors? How developed is it in ratites?
gosh if there was only a way to learn about this stuff somewhere. Maybe they could make a building where several people could get together and learn about it. Get some experts in there to help people learn. Somebody should do that.
>gosh if there was only a way to learn about this stuff somewhere. Maybe they could make a building where several people could get together and learn about it. Get some experts in there to help people learn. Somebody should do that.
all that sounds like it might cost money though. Probably lots of money.
and if someone's going to spend that kind of money just to learn how birds work, they probably need to have some chance of expanding our knowledge.
and to expand our knowledge, they'd first have to learn and understand everything there is to know.
but lots of people aren't smart enough for that, so we'd need a test or two to make sure dumb people weren't wasting time and money trying to learn stuff they're not capable of understanding. Maybe steer those people towards auto body repair or janitorial services or business administration.
I don't know. Information should be free to everyone, but the simple fact is most people have no use for almost all of it and can't understand it anyways. Paleornithology is particularly useless and difficult to understand.
Your mistake is mixing paleotaxa with crown groups.
paleotaxa, yeah we don't have DNA for those guys so there can be some debate about how they're related. We're just going off anatomy and that can be misleading.
Crown groups if we want to know how they're related we just sequence their DNA and plug it into a computer to compare. Essentially no question of how they're related. And yes, I expect every single species of extant bird has been sequenced and compared by now. You can look it up and see.
So where we see schizos forwarding ideas of bird evolution THAT CAN'T BE DISPROVEN BY DNA, it's always with paleospecies and never with crown groups. The Feduccias, Chatterjees, Pauls, etc. have ideas that linger because DNA can't disprove them.
your idea is cute, but DNA disproved it ages ago. If you adjust it for DNA evidence you just get Paul's hypothesis, which is interesting but not likely to be true. Far better than yours though.
Once you get that published we should move on the problem of scientists claiming dolphins are mammals when they're very clearly fish.
Mammals are fishes anyway.
>fucking kek
Yep, the joke is ratites aren't closely related to oviraptor or gallimimus.
they look similar because of convergence.
>ratites aren't closely related to oviraptor
Source? They would seem to be very closely related
read the thread again.
unless you want me to type it all out for you one more time. I'll do it, but I can only really type one post per day so it'll take several months.
If you want the short answer, birds evolved about 85,000,000 years before oviraptor existed.
birds also evolved 85 million years before velociraptor, and 35 million years before microraptor and other chinese feathered theropods. They evolved about 35 million years before archaeopteryx existed.
it goes back to this thread:
all those dinosaurs are SIMILAR to the ancestor of birds, but none of them are ACTUALLY the ancestors of birds. The ancestor of birds hasn't been found and there's no reason to think it will be.
Basically, finding proto-birds as far apart as china and germany means not only had birds evolved much earlier than that, but they had spread at least half way around the world at that point.
the extreme levels of derivation in both groups indicates by that point in time they had already been evolving for tens of millions of years away from the lines that produced velociraptor and oviraptor.
The fact that bird teeth show up on every continent of the world by the beginning of the cretaceous is proof that they aren't closely related to velociraptor and oviraptor which came almost 40 million years AFTER birds had colonized the entire planet.
>Explain how this disproves anything.
When we say taxa diverged we're saying they're sister taxa that diverged directly from each other.
there aren't any intermediate taxa between them. Paleognaths diverged neognaths,
NOT paleognaths diverged from oviraptors diverged from paravians diverged from neognaths.
see the difference? If X diverged from Y, it diverged DIRECTLY FROM Y WITH NO STEPS IN BETWEEN.
we don't talk about when apes diverged from turtles because there's steps in between.
basically the statement
>DNA and fossil evidence puts the divergence of paleognaths from neognaths in the early cretaceous.
is the opposite of what your tree shows. You said they didn't diverge from each other.
Your explanation indicated that you don't understand how trees work.
or you're saying that oviraptors and paravians are paleognaths or neognaths which is Paul's hypothesis but requires reversing the fusion of the tarsometatarsus, synsacrum, pygostyle, and sternum, which are all impossible.
>oviraptors and paravians are paleognaths or neognaths which is Paul's hypothesis
this is a corruption of Paul's suggestion however.
He never said maniraptorans are paleognaths or neognaths. He simply suggested that flight evolved before the fusion of the cannon bone, synsacrum, pygostyle, and sternum. Which is possible but also unlikely.
>clear this whole thing up.
also
this is not a "thing" and it's certainly not a "whole thing."
nothing you think matters. Nobody cares what you think. It's not a thing.
>anatomical traits
Phylogenetic bracketing lesgoooo
not relevant
Almost as irrelevant as your delusional take.
What is delusional about it? Why is it so unbelievable?
1. Experts aren't wrong just because you didn't bother to listen to or understand what they're saying
2. nobody has an obligation to prove anything to you
3. you're retarded, so nobody CAN prove anything to you
4. how about you don't bring us every bit of trash that crosses your trash mind.
>1. Experts aren't wrong just because you didn't bother to listen to or understand what they're saying
I'm open to listen. Nobody has addressed my views yet in this thread, they have only taken issue with my reasons for holding those views.
>2. nobody has an obligation to prove anything to you
True, but I'm asking nicely
>3. you're retarded, so nobody CAN prove anything to you
What makes you believe this?
>4. how about you don't bring us every bit of trash that crosses your trash mind.
This is how academic papers are born, though
>This is how academic papers are born, though
kek'd again
>I believe that anybody with eyes should understand why this is a more natural phylogeny. I'm just asking for some evidence as to why it isn't the case. Surely there must be some evidence?
Hopefully by now you begin to see how retarded you look to even a moderately informed normal person, let alone the "experts" you think you're better than.
you're so far beneath "expert" that it's laughable when you pretend to even the most basic of knowledge. We've got children that know far more than you do. It's embarrassing and frankly I'm embarrassed for you almost every time you post.
>they're related because they look alike
>and it falls on them to provide the evidence (if it exists)
I'm going to venture a guess that so far in life you're not getting a lot of experts offering you evidence in order to keep you believing what they have to say?
you might be somewhat mistake regarding the obligations of each party.
There's no evidence to support evolution either, and yet everyone believes in it anyway.
congratulations, you have refuted evolution entirely. Now run along and tell mommy about your epic win.
we can even induce evolution, you should remove yourself from the gene pool