tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-629061224332673795.post6508910271492984949..comments2023-07-15T05:32:20.508-07:00Comments on Frontiers of Zoology: Some More From the Mailbag IIUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-629061224332673795.post-79797448362296587402013-07-10T06:24:45.710-07:002013-07-10T06:24:45.710-07:00All right, let's leave it at that.All right, let's leave it at that.<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-629061224332673795.post-71128570634058755902013-07-09T15:32:24.870-07:002013-07-09T15:32:24.870-07:00I did a bad job of wording my above comment; I mea...I did a bad job of wording my above comment; I meant to say "studies done on plesiosaur necks as quoted in L. Sprague De Camp's Day of the Dinosaur" (which I plan to read soon.) Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03904394883991936726noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-629061224332673795.post-11305623647950685092013-07-09T13:00:55.697-07:002013-07-09T13:00:55.697-07:00OK, you must surely see why am getting a mite peev...OK, you must surely see why am getting a mite peeved at what you are saying? I have told you repeatedly that DeCamp is quoting others when he makes these statements (And adding his own observations, of course) but you repeatedly ignore my references to other experts DeCamp is quoting and you speak as if DeCamp was all there was to the matter. At the time I was writing the review article for the SITU which forms the foundation for this line of inquiry, there was a new edition of The Day of the Dinosaur out and I bought a copy: it counted as a contemporary source at the time, not at all outdated. And I find it annoying that you cannot find a listing on a clearly-posted index on Tyler Stone's blog and then you ask me to look it up for you. Repeatedly. Do you have some thing about making me do the work for you? What is that all about anyway? besides, the index on this blog is just as prominently displayed, only it has more entries. I do not know why you find it so difficult to use the indexes and I do not know why you cannot read the blog entry before you and then go ahead and ask me to tell you directly what you could easily have gotten by reading the blog.<br /><br />It does not seem to do any good to explain anything to you, cite you any sources, or to tell you any additional information which might prove to be helpful, because for one thing you are not paying any attention and for another, you expect me to do all of your work for you.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-629061224332673795.post-29873307712161788242013-07-09T12:00:33.424-07:002013-07-09T12:00:33.424-07:00You are mistaken, I do NOT consider the opinion of...You are mistaken, I do NOT consider the opinion of higher authorities on this matter to represent the end of this particular debate and for this reason plan to read about the studies done on plesiosaur necks in L. Sprague Camp's Day of the Dinosaur to learn more.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03904394883991936726noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-629061224332673795.post-68516411898764750692013-07-09T07:37:32.861-07:002013-07-09T07:37:32.861-07:00You also do not know enough to recognize "Ple...You also do not know enough to recognize "Plesiosaurology" is not even a word. This information on Plesiosaur osteology is not suppressed, you obviously lack the basic tools for recognizing the meaning of the anatomy when you see it. Once again, simply appealing to a higher authority is the mark of the Pseudoscientist. If you do not really know what you are talking about, you are not making any kind of a valid argument, are you? <br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-629061224332673795.post-12755242611521513782013-07-08T19:40:38.042-07:002013-07-08T19:40:38.042-07:00You are right, Dale. I have no training (yet) in c...You are right, Dale. I have no training (yet) in comparitive anatomy and because of that I was just passing along the conclusions of the "top authorities" on plesiosaurology when discussing their osteology. Also, thanks for sharing this interesting information about plesiosaur osteology that is usually suppressed by plesiosaurologists.<br /> P.S: I can't wait to read more on this subject in Day of the Dinosaur by L. Sprague De Camp; it sounds like a good read.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03904394883991936726noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-629061224332673795.post-84377295045930547192013-07-07T16:19:34.091-07:002013-07-07T16:19:34.091-07:00It becomes very clear that you have little backgro...It becomes very clear that you have little background training in comparative anatomy and that you are merely passing along the judgements of others without attempting to do any independent research or evaluating any of these statements. For your information the neural spines in some cetaceans are also very tall and subrectangular and this does not inhibit the flexibility of the spine, and that sometimes Plesiosaur and cetacean (dolphin) vertebrae are close enough in form to be mistaken for one another, even by experts. Furthermore the denser parts of a Plesiosaur's anatomy (the part that would seem to want to stay submerged) are the underparts, the back and the tops of the ribs having a much less compacted structure. As to the sensory equipment not working in the air, I would say that you are speaking of speculation which certainly cannot be demonstrated authoritively without a living specimen to study, and that such studies have been done on a few individual specimens only rather than on a wide spectrum of different Plesiosaurian genera. Your statement assumes a weight of authority which it cannot have the backing it needs to carry through in all unexplored possible cases. At any rate we do have some evidence that Plesiosaurs' eyes worked perfectly well above as well as below the water, and that the neck itself was sensitive to vibrations, both above and below the water. And the passage above does mention a pterosaur found in a Plesiosaur's fossilized stomach contents. You missed that. The passage quoted above cites an authority DeCamp specified while making the discussion. You missed that, too. You seem to be reading the material set before you vey poorly and your arguments are not directed at what was specifically stated in the text because of that.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-629061224332673795.post-32158966583781165292013-07-07T15:24:51.361-07:002013-07-07T15:24:51.361-07:00Is it also faulse that ALL plesiosaurs had ear and...Is it also faulse that ALL plesiosaurs had ear and narial anatomy suggesting they were incapable of picking up sensory cues in the air (and that they were better at doing this underwater),and that ALL plesiosaurs had tightly packed skeletons indicating they were trying to stay submerged in the water?<br /> I also am also curious to know if some plesiosaurs (such as elasmosaurs)had taller neural spines than others (and if all of them had neural spines that were sub-rectangular.<br /><br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03904394883991936726noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-629061224332673795.post-89253935219755189082013-07-06T13:52:19.612-07:002013-07-06T13:52:19.612-07:00Actually, no, that contention had been bouncing ar...Actually, no, that contention had been bouncing around since the beginning of the century. The vertebral spines are not that all and the cross sections of the vertebrae are like those of human vertebrae. The scientists who say the plesiosaur necks were inflexible are ignoring the interstitial cartilages which must have been there (while at the same time they insist on the importance of such discs in the flexibility of mammalian necks.The scientists who say that plesiosaur's vertebrae were stiff and the necks inflexible are in fact concentrating on only a few genera when obviously there was a wide variation between different plesiosaurs in different genera, or otherwise they would all have the same necks. The point is that the matter was controversial and remains controversial: De Camp was by no means the only source but it was the most easily accessible of the popular sources at my library that discussed the idea when I was doing the research: he mentioned that his own observations tended to agree with the idea but he was quoting the research of others. Therefore it is a major mistake on your part to assume the research and the theory were his alone. The fact that the current fad (and it cannot be called anything other than that) among paleontologists is to favour the stiff-necked Plesiosaur theory in no ways eliminates the statements of the opposition who state otherwise. And may I remind you once again, we are speaking of a new genus of Plesiosaurs when ewe speak of the purported Post-Cretaceous Plesiosaur remains: they are of a different structure with a different cross section which indicates greater flexibility. That part was most especially mentioned in that discussion. And frankly I get a little tired of you people getting to some point where you sense a victory in the debate and stage a little victory dance to your own cleverness. In this matter you have misstated the case, mistaken the anatomy involved. misquoted authorities and made several misstatements of facts. Many Plesiosaurs have eyes which were directed laterally or even forwards, for one example. And some Plesiosaurs had to have been snatching pterosaurs, the remains of the pterosaurs are found in their fossilized stomach contents. On top of that, as has been noted on previous occasions when this argument had been presented, some of the Plesiosaur fossils still have their necks articulated into flexible curves, so such curves HAD to have been possible for the animal during its lifetime originally.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-629061224332673795.post-53931301695661934632013-07-06T13:31:07.893-07:002013-07-06T13:31:07.893-07:00Wasn't L. Sprague DeCamp's book Day of the...Wasn't L. Sprague DeCamp's book Day of the dinosaur written way back in the 1960's (before it was decided by scientists who studied plesiosaur fossils decided that plesiosaurs had stiff necks?)In those days paleontologists who studied plesiosaur fossils believed that it was possible that plesiosaurs fished by lifting their long necks out of the water vertically and plunged the neck back into the water when they saw a fish (or that they lifted their necks out of the water vertically to snatch pterosaurs flying above the water's surface.) Adam S. Smith's plesiosaur directory tells us that 21st century scientists abandoned the idea that plesiosaurs did this because they had tall neural spines which would have made swan-like AND stretched "S" curves impossible. The fact that plesiosaurs had eyes and nostrils which faced upward is also pointed out by plesiosaurologists (yes, that's a technical term)as another strong indicator that plesiosaurs looked up at the water's surface, not down at it. <br /> I still think that L. Sprague Decamp's theories on plesiosaur osteolgy make excellent science fiction, even if 21st century studies on plesiosaur osteology (such as Zammit et. al's 2008 study) have refuted them.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03904394883991936726noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-629061224332673795.post-57125104707505739242013-04-21T21:27:22.897-07:002013-04-21T21:27:22.897-07:00And to the contrary, by the same token, the vast m...And to the contrary, by the same token, the vast majority of reports speak of the creatures as being reptilian, including by the OTHER witness in the Valhalla sighting. One should not then assume the creature was mammalian. In the case of the Valhalla creature, as indeed is the case oin allof the Longneck reports, there is not ebnough brain space in the head to quialify as a mammal. the proportions of brain to body are typically "Dinosaurian" and not what would be expected of a mammal.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-629061224332673795.post-25760360185429897442013-04-21T20:12:38.802-07:002013-04-21T20:12:38.802-07:00One problem with labeling long-neck reports made b...One problem with labeling long-neck reports made by experienced observers as plesiosaurs is the fact that many of the witnesses themselves have said that the creature they saw was mammalian (as in the case of the Valhalla sighting; the witnesses were very experienced, they saw the creature close up, and said they realized the head as that of a mammal.)kellys4boyshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04073673701514824671noreply@blogger.com