Hey there every peoples!
Long time, eh? My job has be on a bit of a weird schedule which doesn’t leave me with much down time. That means I have to prioritize what I’m going to do with it, and unfortunately this blog sits low on the list. Field work takes up a good amount of my time (I’d share it with you, but the Denver Museum doesn’t allow it). I have also been busy working on my book proposal, which has been slow going. I have a few posts I have been meaning to do for a long time, and after that I don’t know what I’ll do with it.
That whole fanboy incident four years ago still haunts me. Their words cut real deep (which is easy when you have my depression). It was naïve of me to think their response would be anything less. I forgot how horrible the internet can be and that social media brings out the worst in people. There are some things I regret about it. Like the whole thing with weapons (point went over their heads and just provided them ammunition). Or my crack on Brian Engh (have met him since then, nice guy. Though I did say in my follow up that his fake theropod did feel the most like Jurassic Park). But not the main tenant.
I stand by my argument that they were a bunch of fanboys. They seemed to think I was calling them fanboys for “supporting accurate reconstruction”. Not in the slightest. I said there are respectable ways to convey this opinion. They didn’t use these ways. No, instead they engaged in tribalism, name calling, and just all around toxic behavior. I didn’t think that’s how you “support accurate reconstruction”. They seemed to think that just because they were acting out over science that somehow meant they were justified in their behavior. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what you are fanboying over, be it science, religion, art, literature, or pop culture. If you act like a fanboy, I will call you a fanboy. End of story. When someone acts like a fascist, you call them a fascist. When someone acts like an asshole, you call them an asshole. When someone acts like a fanboy, you call them a fanboy.
Science is not an excuse to act like miserable douchenozzles. Science is my life, but never would I try to use it to deflect criticism. It clearly doesn’t automatically make you a better person based on what I encountered. Suffice to say, it’s a side of the science community I never want to see again.
Well since then they seem to have been busy. Dinosaur hype and worship is as strong as ever. For example, an article was published in Cleveland 19 News about how Velociraptor was much different then what we think. However, the scientist being cited uttered this confounding statement:
“Although it’s not a gigantic killing dinosaur like in Jurassic Park the animal could have climbed you like a tree, and tore you apart from the top down,” Lee Hall said
That’s right, folks! Velociraptor wasn’t the vicious killing machine portrayed by Hollywood but it was totally the vicious killing machine portrayed by Hollywood! Now to be fair he could have just said that to try and keep people interested in paleontology (a difficult, never ending battle). But given how impressionable people are and accept anything from something resembling an expert, you might want to choose your words more carefully. Although, such a proclaimation about Velociraptor kinda renders this cartoon pointless, doesn’t it:
Seriously, people became apoplectic over dinosaurs not being portrayed as real animals. But then you have stuff like that.
Remember when I talked about how dromaeosaurs don’t live up to the hype? Well I got a couple people taking issue with them likely not being pack hunters. It’s like dinosaurs aren’t allowed to be anything less than the fiercest, nastiest, bestest things ever! Even when downgraded people have to get in a big fat “but still…” Bobcats are about the size of Velociraptor, have sharp claws, and fierce teeth in strong jaws. Why isn’t anyone talking about how it can “climb you like a tree, and tear you apart from the top down.”? Oh right, because it isn’t a dinosaur. It took modern animals thousands of years to establish their deadly reputations. Dinosaurs don’t have to do anything. They just have to be dinosaurs. So if you’re going to complain about dinosaurs not being portrayed as real animals, you might want to start doing that yourself first.
But when it comes to dinosaur fanboyism, there is nothing quite like the old “dinosaurs rule, everything else sucks” routine. We will start with the most blatant example that I saw linked to on Facebook:
Seriously? Dinosaurs still rule over mammals because a chicken stole a mouse from a domestic house cat? And the guy never called it a chicken in the comments, he always referred to it as “the dinosaur”. Why is the go to for “feathered dinosaurs are scary/awesome” a chicken? No idea, but he stuck with it:
The cat showed the mouse whose boss. Then the dinosaur showed the mammal whose boss!
Someone rightly pointed out that the cat could no doubt kill the chicken if it wanted to. His response?
But the dinosaur would put up a fight!
Listen dude, it doesn’t matter how much of a fight you put up if you lose. Especially when your life is on the line. The guy is clearly getting off on this supposed role reversal. But let’s see how the “dinosaur” fares against things that actually kill for a living:
copyright Getty Images
Image from Chicken Digest.com
image belongs to Gallery user Linda Jones
copyright Alamy Stock Images
image belongs to Red Gate Farm
Don’t worry, I’m sure the “dinosaur” put up a fight. Photo from the Independent UK
A chicken wounded by a opossum. And they aren’t even serious predators. This chicken luckily survived thanks to medical attention from it’s owner. Image belongs to Backyard Chickens.com user willem82.
Oh yeah, dinosaurs “rule” over mammals alright. That’s why they are never preyed upon and killed by mammals. You know why chicken is used as an insult for someone who is cowardly? It’s because they will run when faced with an actual threat. They have no defense other than to run (though it must be pointed out they are hardly alone in this respect). So if you want people to respect feathered dinosaurs, stop using chickens as your example!
While not as eye-roll worthy, this next example (from a Facebook comment) is no less frustrating:
Cenozoic South America was awesome because for most of its history the top predators were giant maniraptorans.
So ancient South America isn’t fascinating because it was separated from the rest of the world for most of it’s history? Where groups of animals found nowhere else on earth paralleled more familiar creatures to an astonishing degree? And other groups considered primitive were able to thrive in the absence of their “superior” counterparts? Or how despite large predators rodents grew to enormous sizes over and over again? Where evolution of life and land took wild and unexpected turns, like steamy swamps and rainforests filled with giant reptiles or a grassland ecosystem that appeared 10 million years before it did in the rest of the world? No, apparently it’s only interesting because “dinosaurs were the top predators!”
But were they really? Despite the sensationalism often associated with terror birds (phorusrhacids to scientists), their designation as the (not “a’ but “the”) dominant predators is certainly up for debate. With two exceptions, there were never more than one or two terror birds in an ecosystem. According to Prevosti et al.2013, there were only 11 species since the Oligocene. Surely the almighty dinosaurs would dominate any time and any place they were in? They obviously didn’t yet once again mammals are being sacrificed on the altar of dinosaurs.
Because of its isolation, South America’s carnivorous mammals didn’t belong to any modern group (at least before the Great American Biotic Interchange during the Pliocene). They belonged to a completely different group called sparassodonts. These animals were once thought to be marsupials (which made them a lot easier to describe to people). But now they are believed to be a separate group within Metatheria (which includes marsupials). Despite being from a more primitive part of the mammal family tree, sparassodonts were a diverse and long-lived group. They range from small opposum-like animals to dog- and cat-like predators, to huge powerful forms resembling hyeanas or bears.
In any ecosystem, the diversity of sparassodonts always outnumbers that of the terror birds (save for those two exceptions mentioned earlier). Analysis suggests that the more dedicated carnivores of the group were powerful predators, with sharp teeth and strong jaws. Some even had the capacity to crush bone. Now, the biggest sparassodonts are before the Miocene, creating the impression that the terror birds edged them out as the landscape opened up (you’d think the new open habitat would favor terror bird’s cursorial mode of locomotion). But many Miocene and Pliocene taxa were still fairly big, weighing as much as a wolf, a couger, and even a jaguar. And that’s just the ones we have found. Not as much work has been done in South America compared to North America and Eurasia. Maybe there are more giant sparassodonts to be discovered?
Point is, terror birds, while apex predators, weren’t the dominant ones. I mean has anyone tried to figure out just how large a prey item could be taken by a terror bird? A great many of South America’s native mammals were quite hefty. Would the “flightless dinosaurs” have been able to wrangle with any of them? That is something that needs to be sussed out. In the end, this is much like the “reptilian domination” of Plio-Pleistocene Australia: they weren’t dominant but rather part of a unique carnivore guild seen nowhere else on earth. I don’t wish to demean the terror birds. But when you diminish other animals by elevating certain ones (especially because they are dinosaurs), we are going to have words.
That was a seemingly innocuous comment from social media. But what happens when a whole article published by a reputable institution tries to further the hegomony of dinosaurs? Well, we got one such article from the Houston Museum of Natural Science. It was titled “Diatryma: The Gasp of Dinosaur Rule in North America”.
Was it inevitable that mammals would rule the world after the dinosaurs went extinct? The rise of mammals is often depicted as a pretty smooth transition, but in reality things were a little more complicated. In the wake of the end Cretaceous extinction birds, reptiles and mammals all began to split and diversify to exploit ecological niches left open after the dinosaurs were gone. It was a race to see who could fill more open spots on the landscape the quickest. So, in the Paleogene era, after the Cretaceous extinction, anything was possible and Diatryma is a good example of that.
Ok, admittedly that isn’t so bad. It describes the evolutionary chaos that life found itself in after the K/Pg extinction (as it does after every mass extinction).
Diatryma was a bird about 7 feet tall, with a massive head and beak. It live in North America during the Paleocene and Eocene Epochs of the Paleogene era, 56 – 45 million years ago. Its fossils have been discovered in New Jersey, New Mexico and Wyoming and possible Diatryma tracks have been discovered in Washington State. Plus, paleontologists now agree that Diatryma and Gastornis, discovered in Europe, are most likely the same species, thus extending the bird’s stomping grounds to Spain, France and Germany. Diatryma/Gastornis was a widely dispersed and very successful species during a time when mammals were just beginning to diversify and fill ecological niches left open by the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Again, nothing harmful. Just the facts about Gastornis (which seemsto be the taxonomy now, even though he keeps calling it “Diatryma”).
The Paleocene and Eocene are when the ancestors of whales, ungulates, primates and many other mammals that dominate the world today first show up in the fossil record.
Seriously, you’d think I was overreacting. But I can assure you that this I where any sense of normalcy ends. Get ready for the drooling praise.
Paleontologists often describe Diatryma as a nightmare from the past for these mammals, a holdover from the dark days when dinosaurs ruled the earth, but I see Diatryma as a dinosaur comeback. It was competing pretty successfully with early mammals for place in the environment.
If it was a comeback then it was a pretty weak one, given that mammals continued to diversify, increase in size, and fill more niches as time went on. The earliest Gastornis fossils are from Europe, which was an archipelago (group of islands) during the Paleocene. That means it evolved in isolation. It only dispersed after that time. As we will see, there is a connection between big birds and isolation. And it deflates your whole “comeback” idea.
And it wasn’t just Diatryma competing for bird dominance. There were large bird species in South America, North America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia.
Yes there were. But if you look at all the places you mention, these large ground birds are the exception, not the rule. There is rarely more than one or two species in any ecosystem. The exceptions are New Zealand and Madagascar, isolated islands where mammals ether never made it (New Zealand) or contained only a few primitive groups. But even with Madagascar, birds didn’t rule the roost. They had to share space with hippos, tortoises, and a plethora of giant lemurs. Again, if this was supposed to be some “dinosaur comeback”, they didn’t do a very good job.
The infamous terror birds were the dominant predators in South America, where few large carnivorous mammals existed.
Patently false, as I have already demonstrated. And many of those predators could be considered large for mammals. Plus, they may not have been as big, but they still packed a punch. Several studies have shown that many metatherian predators had bites proportionately stronger then similar sized placentals. And if terror birds were the dominant predators, large mammalian predators would not have evolved. But they did, with the terror birds around. Let’s go down the list, shall we?
Plesiofelis schlosseri, 38.5kg (84.88lbs), mid-late Eocene
Armengiheringia auceta, 31.5kg (69.4lbs), mid Eocene
Armeniheringia cultrata, 24.85kg (54.8lbs), mid Eocene
Calistoe vincei, 23kg (50.7), mid Eocene
Paraborhyaena boliviana, 31.5kg (69.4 lbs), late Oligocene
Proborhyaena gigntea, 200kg (440.9lbs), late Oligocene
Pharsophorus lacerans, 27kg (59.5lbs), late Oligocene
Australohyaena antiquua, 67kg (147.7lbs), late Oligocene
Freszalaya hunteri, 31.8kg (70.1lbs), late Oligocene
Arctodictis munizi, 43.87kg (96.7lbs), early Miocene
Arctodictis sinclairi, 40kg (88.2lbs), early Miocene
Acrocyon sectorius, 22.48kg (49.6lbs), early Miocene
Borhyaena macrodonta, 32.97kg (88.1lbs), early Miocene
Borhyaena tuberata 36.4kg (80.2), early-mid Miocene
Prothylacinus patagonicus, 31.8kg (70.1lbs), early-mid Mocene
Dukecynus magnus, 45kg (99.2lbs), mid Miocene
Pseudolycopsis cabrerai, 19.2kg (42.3lbs), late Miocene
Thylacosmilus atrox, 117.4kg (258.8lbs), late Miocene-early Pliocene.
And these are just the ones found so far. Also most are known from few and fragmentary remains. There could be other, larger predators just waiting to be discovered.
Team dinosaur was going pretty strong and Diatryma was one of the larger players.
“Team dinosaur”? This is nature, not a sports league!
But now that we’ve discussed the perilous position of mammals at the time…
No you didn’t. You didn’t give any details. Nowhere did you say mammals were in a “perilous” position. You just said their transition after the K-Pg extinction was more complicated. Recently a bounty of fossils from Colorado shows that right after the K-Pg extinction mammals were already rebounding successfully. A few species of giant bird scattered across the globe does not mean mammals were in any kind of trouble. If you knew anything about the Paleocene you’d know that mammals were doing pretty good. By the time Gastornis appeared (56 million years ago), Mesonychids were already wolf sized; arctocyonids were sheep sized; pantodonts were bear sized; and the first bronotheres were cow sized! Mammals were already highly diverse by this time, with all kinds of different body plans and ecologies. They may not have been as impressive as what came before or after, but they most certainly were not in a “perilous position”.
…and placed Diatryma the right context, it’s time to reveal a potentially disappointing fact about Diatryma: it was most likely an herbivore.
I have a feeling this won’t affect your delusions, will it?
For a long time paleontologist have argued about whether Diatryma was a carnivore or not. The size of the bird, along with its massive beak featuring attachments for large, immensely strong muscles suggested to many that this animal would ambush prey and break their necks with a powerful bite. That was always the dominant theory, but the hang up was that Diatryma lacked the hooked beak that modern birds of prey and even terror birds from the same time period possessed. They also lacked talons on their feet. For decades the carnivore status of Diatryma was questioned until finally in 2013 a study was published suggesting that the bird was most likely a plant eater. The study looked at the calcium isotope composition of preserved Gastornis (i.e. European version of Diatryma) fossils. Basically the calcium isotopic composition of bone becomes lighter the higher on the food chain you get. Levels found in Gastornis are similar to fossilized animals that are known to be herbivores. Additional studies of the levels of carbon 13 preserved in Gastornis fossils and also anatomical studies of the bird’s beak structure also suggest an herbivorous diet.
So it wasn’t the nightmarish predator we thought it was. So what? Science is about what is true, not what we want it to be. Right? Right?
Whether or not Diatryma was an herbivore, the big bird serves as a great example of how narrowly we mammals won our dominance of earth.
No, it doesn’t! One species spread across the northern hemisphere does not mean mammals “narrowly won”. Before Gastornis went extinct, mammals had already achieved a great deal of diversity, occupying a plethora of niches and attaining their largest size yet. Hell, when Gastornis appeared mammals already had a commanding presence on Earth.
For 200 million years our ancestors had been getting stepped on by dinosaurs and just when we thought it was safe…
That is a myth, one that needs to die pronto. The last 25 years has seen the discovery of scores of Mesozoic mammals that show they were not the disadvantaged pipsqueaks people think they were. They evolved diggers, swimmers, and even flyers. There were even a couple of sizeable species that preyed on baby dinosaurs. A primitive offshoot of the mammalian line grew to the size of an elephant at a time when most dinosaurs were small. One study shows that two of the three great radiations in mammal evolution happened during the Mesozoic. They remained on the sidelines, yes, but in terms of evolution they were every bit as successful as dinosaurs or as birds are today. You might know that if you pulled your head out of the dinosaur’s ass.
…team dino…
There’s that “team” crap again.
…pushed back with their numerous giant bird species that not only ate some of our ancestors, but also competed with our herbivorous ancestors for food.
And what a wussie push it was. Again, in most ecosystems on earth throughout the Cenozoic, rarely were there ever more than one or two species of giant bird around. Most of the large animal fauna was composed of mammals. The only place where they made up all of the large animal fauna was places like New Zealand, Hawaii, and other islands because of their isolation. They were dominant because they lived where mammals couldn’t (or didn’t) get to. And given that mammals outnumbered birds immensely in most ecosystems in terms of megafauna, they must have offered some pretty weak competition.
In the end, mammals gained the upper hand on land and now cling to the title of most successful animal group. But their success lies mostly in the fact that the largest animals in most environments are mammals. As far as sheer numbers are concerned, birds numerically outnumber mammals.
Ok, so which is it? Does size or diversity/numbers define who is “ruling the earth”? You just spent an entire article arguing that large birds meant dinosaurs were challenging mammals for domination. But then you say that birds outnumber them, implying they are the dominant ones. Way to move the goal posts. So no matter what, you’ll just change the definition to ensure that birds- sorry, dinosaurs- always come out on top? Just wow.
So did Diatryma really represent a Cretaceous relic in the age of mammals, or did it and other large bird species roaming the earth millions of years ago represent an incursion from a group that was already taming the frontier of the sky, and almost took the land as well?
And then mammals conquered that frontier as well. And for the last time, they did not almost take the land. The fact that mammals proliferated and diversified through time suggests birds failed to compete with them on the ground. Dear god, this was hard to sit through. It makes nature out to be some kind of contest where no matter what dinosaurs “win”. Nature has a great deal of competition, yes, but nothing resembling our concept of it. Like what this guy is bloviating here. Dear god, this was the most fawning bit of dino drivel I have ever read.
See, whenever I complain about people putting down mammals or other “dinosaurs rule, mammals drool” shit, I always get told “They’re just joking, they respect all aspects of paleontology”. But that’s always the excuse, isn’t it? Say something stupid or offensive and when someone takes issue with it just spout “I’m just joking”. What about the author of that article? Was he joking? Sounded pretty serious to me. What about when I said “mammals rule” on Facebook and some responded “but only for the last 66 million years”? His follow up made him sound pretty serious too. And when does it stop being a joke? At what point does it become so ingrained in the discourse that it’s hard to find funny (like I ever did in the first place)? People are impressionable. How are they supposed to know when shit like that article are “just joking”? I don’t shit on dinosaurs. I don’t give people shit for liking them. I give them shit for saying stupid things about them but not for just liking them. “Just joking” is a lame excuse used to cover one’s ass when they misspoke. And it’s hard to find it funny when the majority of society seems to agree.
You people make it really hard to like dinosaurs. Despite all appearances, I don’t hate them. I don’t like them as much as mammals but I still have an interest in them. I am deeply passionate about fossils, and they are fossils, so I am passionate about them too. I’m the kind of guy where hype ruins something for me. If you go on and on about how great something is then i am less likely to like or take an interest in it. Especially when you make it into a stupid competition.
Here is a fun fact. I don’t refer to the Cenozoic as the “age of mammals”. Even though mammals are the dominant group, reptiles and birds still did pretty good for themselves and produced many outstanding members of their respective kinds. But when you call birds dinosaurs (I know they are) it grates on my nerves. I think birds are pretty cool on their own. There are so many different species with almost as many marvelous adaptations that make the world a more fascinating place. But apparently none of that means anything unless it’s pointed out to you a hundred million times that they are modern day dinosaurs. Listening to these people you’d think that was their crowning evolutionary achievement. And ultimately it just makes things about dinosaurs again.
Not everything has to be about dinosaurs. There is already a perception that prehistory revolves around dinosaurs. I’ve heard people call mammoth and sloth skeletons dinosaurs. Places that deal with Cenozoic fossils, like the La Brea Tar Pits and Anza Borrego, constantly have to answer people asking “where are the dinosaurs?” Dinosaurs are the center of anything having to do with the distant past, from movies and video games to books and museum displays. They don’t need any help. They don’t need to be the focus of everything.
Or is that just part of being on “team dino” ? Your team is the best there ever was, and it is your mission to make everyone their fans. Nature isn’t some demented contest over whose team is better. It is a vastly complex system of interconnected phenomena where trends ebb and flow and twist and turn due to a variety of factors. Even when one thing seems better, it may not be elsewhere. And everything is at the mercy of the universe.
People often say mammals got lucky because if the asteroid didn’t hit 66 mya then dinosaurs would continue to rule the earth and mammals would never take over. I hope those people realize that by that logic, dinosaurs are lucky that all those pseudosuchians, protomammals, and labrynthodont amphibians went extinct at the end of the Triassic. If not then the “age of dinosaurs” would have been extremely different. Or was “team dino’s” ascent to world domination inevitable? But the end-Cretaceous asteroid isn’t a sure thing. What about the Deccan Traps in India? You know, the gigantic volcanic eruptions that many scientists think was already grinding things into extinction and the asteroid just finished it off. If the asteroid hadn’t hit, you think this would still be a planet of dinosaurs? You can’t say for certain, even if some people think they can.
The fossil record tells the most incredible story ever: the story of life on earth. Whether it’s the largest dinosaur or the smallest invertebrate, every part is vital to that story. Trying to focus everything on just one chapter, just one cast of characters, does that story a disservice and does nothing but insult its legacy. What these people are doing is taking a breathtaking and beautiful drama and turning it into a sports bar during Monday Night Football. It achieves nothing and adds nothing to the conversation. What is even the point?
So there you have it, folks. What happens when people forget what science is all about or even how it functions. If we are to help people understand prehistory and get them interested in it the whole “vs” paradigm needs to be waylaid. People are impressionable and credulous. They rely on us to get the story straight. And they usually can’t tell when you’re “just joking”. Try to tell them how the world really was. Not the half-baked gladiatorial death match you want it to be.
Till next time!