4 ms·

All Those New Dinosaurs May Not Be New Or Dinosaurs

14 points by Petiver 11y ago

zeveb 11y ago
> Scientists typically use the term “genera” as the plural of genus. We’re using “genuses” to make the connection between the singular and plural clearer to folks who don’t spend a lot of time reading up on taxonomy. Please direct all complaints to Merriam-Webster. That's a terrible cop-out. It's easy enough to type 'genera' (and it's shorter by one letter than 'genuses'!), and it's the proper word to use. It's obvious enough from context clews what it means. My goodness, what do they teach in the schools these days?
- dalke 11y ago
  Agreed. I see they use "matrices" as the plural of "matrix" (eg, "expectancy matrices" in http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/nine-managerial-decisions-that-helped-decide-game-2-of-the-nlcs/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/nine-managerial-decision... ) when those not familiar with mathematics would likely use "matrixes." Examples of matrixes include: VMWare - http://partnerweb.vmware.com/comp_guide2/sim/interop_matrix.php http://partnerweb.vmware.com/comp_guide2/sim/interop_matrix.... Reference to the movie "The Matrix" ("How many Matrixes were there?"; see also the comments) - http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/109115/how-many-matrixes-were-there http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/109115/how-many-mat... "Evaluation Planning: Models and Matrixes" - http://www.iste.org/docs/pdfs/evalplan http://www.iste.org/docs/pdfs/evalplan Of course, in math the plural is matrices. Then again, in biology the plural is genera. They also have no problem using "cacti" at http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/unlocking-the-mystery-of-the-chile-pepper-on-a-burrito-tour-of-new-mexico/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/unlocking-the-mystery-of... instead of "cactuses", even though both are acceptable. Compare the ngram distribution for genuses/genera at https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=genera%2Cgenuses&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cgenera%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cgenuses%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=genera%2Cgenus... with almost no hits for 'genuses' vs. cactuses/cacti at cactuses,cacti .
- viewer5 11y ago
  > what do they teach in the schools these days Not Latin or Greek.
- drivers99 11y ago
  I like Merriam-Webster's take on it. "Whenever a word from a foreign language enters English it becomes an English word and gets inflected just like other English words." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFyY2mK8pxk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFyY2mK8pxk In other words, "genuses" is not wrong. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/genus http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/genus
- bane 11y ago
  They teach English in most English speaking countries. It's nice to know that the plural of "octopus" is "octopodes" if we happen to know all the correct etymology for all the languages that we don't learn but still loan words from as well as all the pluralization rules for all of those languages. However, in English, the plural of something can be formed from the singular form by adding an 's' or an 'es' to the end and thus "octopuses" is completely fine and has the benefit of being correct for English. If you don't agree, and that pluralization in English should be etymologically dependent, quick, what's the correct pluralization for the following words? - Kimono - Kimchee - Dingo - Brolga - Dollar - Polka - Hula - Clock - Cosmonaut should I go on?
  - jonnathanson 11y ago
    You're right, but in the fields of biology, paleontology, etc., "genera" is the commonly used and technically correct pluralization of "genus." (For what it's worth, I'd make the same argument in strong support of "matrices" over "matrixes.") Since this is a term of art, I'd argue it deserves less leniency than, say, words like "octopus" or "cyclops," for which "octopodes" and "cyclopes" are necessary only to score smartypants points among likeminded friends, and for which "octopuses" (but not "octopi!") and "cyclopses" are perfectly correct and acceptable in English.
    - bane 11y ago
      So they definitely acknowledge that, but also are targeting an audience that probably isn't familiar with the jargon^H^H^H^H^H terms of art of this specific field. Audience matters and when writing for a general English speaking audience, terms of art need to be either explained (boring) or translated. This author chose translation. If fivethirtyeight.com was a life sciences blog, then this is definitely wrong. I definitely am not on the side of proscribing one perfect kind of English, there are lots of beautiful variations of the language. But this use (and the footnote) are completely appropriate given the audience.
      - jonnathanson 11y ago
        "Audience matters and when writing for a general English speaking audience, terms of art need to be either explained (boring) or translated. This author chose translation." I agree that audience matters, but I'm not sure how using the proper term and footnoting an explanation would be onerously "boring." Different strokes for different folks, I suppose. At the end of the day, I'm not overly bothered by it, one way or the other. These sorts of things always come down to prescriptivism vs. descriptivism, and that battle can become a holy war in certain circles. Not so much for me. Just chiming into an existing thread about the subject.
marcus_holmes 11y ago
I'm always amazed that we find even a single second example of a dinosaur. It seems absurd mathematically. The dinosaurs were around for millions of years, evolving all that time. Unless there's a good reason to think the biosphere was less populous or diverse, we have to assume that there were billions of individual animals alive at any one time, split over millions of species. The number of species over the whole period has got to be up into the tens of millions at least. We discover tens-of-thousands of sizable fossils, total, from that whole period. It's like a one-in-a-thousand chance that any new fossil discovery will match an existing species, yet it appears that most do. I don't get it... anyone want to enlighten me?
- beeboop 11y ago
  If I had to guess, the types of conditions that collect and preserve fossils well enough for us to discover them are transient in nature (as in, it became suddenly covered by something like a landslide/water) or very geographically specific. This means there would be a bias towards whole-skeleton fossils during very specific time periods or very specific locations, rather than bits and pieces from thousands of different types all over the place. Could be totally wrong though.
  - marcus_holmes 11y ago
    That makes sense. So we're not seeing a cross-section of the entire dinosaur era, we're just seeing a cross-section of the dinosaurs caught in the Burgess Shale, or whatever other specific circumstances caught the other examples. This would make sense if all the examples of any given species came from the same site. Is that true?
mchahn 11y ago
Haven't they been able to get some dna from dinosaur bones recently? That would really help. When genotyping first appeared many genus/species had to be recategorized.
- jghn 11y ago
  DNA would be completely destroyed after less than 7 million years, sadly Jurassic Park will never happen
  - mchahn 11y ago
    I went back and found the article from a few weeks ago. It was less convincing than I remembered. They found a pregnant dinosaur and they think there is new hope for finding DNA. They haven't actually found any. http://news.discovery.com/animals/dinosaurs/pregnant-t-rex-found-may-contain-dna-160316.htm http://news.discovery.com/animals/dinosaurs/pregnant-t-rex-f...
- kjs3 11y ago
  They've got a few scattered bits of DNA, but it's exceedingly rare (a handful of bones) and wouldn't be generally useful to categorize many dinos.

14 points by Petiver 11y ago

zeveb 11y ago

> Scientists typically use the term “genera” as the plural of genus. We’re using “genuses” to make the connection between the singular and plural clearer to folks who don’t spend a lot of time reading up on taxonomy. Please direct all complaints to Merriam-Webster. That's a terrible cop-out. It's easy enough to type 'genera' (and it's shorter by one letter than 'genuses'!), and it's the proper word to use. It's obvious enough from context clews what it means. My goodness, what do they teach in the schools these days?

dalke 11y ago
Agreed. I see they use "matrices" as the plural of "matrix" (eg, "expectancy matrices" in http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/nine-managerial-decisions-that-helped-decide-game-2-of-the-nlcs/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/nine-managerial-decision... ) when those not familiar with mathematics would likely use "matrixes." Examples of matrixes include: VMWare - http://partnerweb.vmware.com/comp_guide2/sim/interop_matrix.php http://partnerweb.vmware.com/comp_guide2/sim/interop_matrix.... Reference to the movie "The Matrix" ("How many Matrixes were there?"; see also the comments) - http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/109115/how-many-matrixes-were-there http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/109115/how-many-mat... "Evaluation Planning: Models and Matrixes" - http://www.iste.org/docs/pdfs/evalplan http://www.iste.org/docs/pdfs/evalplan Of course, in math the plural is matrices. Then again, in biology the plural is genera. They also have no problem using "cacti" at http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/unlocking-the-mystery-of-the-chile-pepper-on-a-burrito-tour-of-new-mexico/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/unlocking-the-mystery-of... instead of "cactuses", even though both are acceptable. Compare the ngram distribution for genuses/genera at https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=genera%2Cgenuses&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cgenera%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cgenuses%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=genera%2Cgenus... with almost no hits for 'genuses' vs. cactuses/cacti at cactuses,cacti .
viewer5 11y ago
> what do they teach in the schools these days Not Latin or Greek.
drivers99 11y ago
I like Merriam-Webster's take on it. "Whenever a word from a foreign language enters English it becomes an English word and gets inflected just like other English words." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFyY2mK8pxk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFyY2mK8pxk In other words, "genuses" is not wrong. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/genus http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/genus
bane 11y ago
They teach English in most English speaking countries. It's nice to know that the plural of "octopus" is "octopodes" if we happen to know all the correct etymology for all the languages that we don't learn but still loan words from as well as all the pluralization rules for all of those languages. However, in English, the plural of something can be formed from the singular form by adding an 's' or an 'es' to the end and thus "octopuses" is completely fine and has the benefit of being correct for English. If you don't agree, and that pluralization in English should be etymologically dependent, quick, what's the correct pluralization for the following words? - Kimono - Kimchee - Dingo - Brolga - Dollar - Polka - Hula - Clock - Cosmonaut should I go on?
- jonnathanson 11y ago
  You're right, but in the fields of biology, paleontology, etc., "genera" is the commonly used and technically correct pluralization of "genus." (For what it's worth, I'd make the same argument in strong support of "matrices" over "matrixes.") Since this is a term of art, I'd argue it deserves less leniency than, say, words like "octopus" or "cyclops," for which "octopodes" and "cyclopes" are necessary only to score smartypants points among likeminded friends, and for which "octopuses" (but not "octopi!") and "cyclopses" are perfectly correct and acceptable in English.
  - bane 11y ago
    So they definitely acknowledge that, but also are targeting an audience that probably isn't familiar with the jargon^H^H^H^H^H terms of art of this specific field. Audience matters and when writing for a general English speaking audience, terms of art need to be either explained (boring) or translated. This author chose translation. If fivethirtyeight.com was a life sciences blog, then this is definitely wrong. I definitely am not on the side of proscribing one perfect kind of English, there are lots of beautiful variations of the language. But this use (and the footnote) are completely appropriate given the audience.
    - jonnathanson 11y ago
      "Audience matters and when writing for a general English speaking audience, terms of art need to be either explained (boring) or translated. This author chose translation." I agree that audience matters, but I'm not sure how using the proper term and footnoting an explanation would be onerously "boring." Different strokes for different folks, I suppose. At the end of the day, I'm not overly bothered by it, one way or the other. These sorts of things always come down to prescriptivism vs. descriptivism, and that battle can become a holy war in certain circles. Not so much for me. Just chiming into an existing thread about the subject.

marcus_holmes 11y ago

I'm always amazed that we find even a single second example of a dinosaur. It seems absurd mathematically. The dinosaurs were around for millions of years, evolving all that time. Unless there's a good reason to think the biosphere was less populous or diverse, we have to assume that there were billions of individual animals alive at any one time, split over millions of species. The number of species over the whole period has got to be up into the tens of millions at least. We discover tens-of-thousands of sizable fossils, total, from that whole period. It's like a one-in-a-thousand chance that any new fossil discovery will match an existing species, yet it appears that most do. I don't get it... anyone want to enlighten me?

beeboop 11y ago
If I had to guess, the types of conditions that collect and preserve fossils well enough for us to discover them are transient in nature (as in, it became suddenly covered by something like a landslide/water) or very geographically specific. This means there would be a bias towards whole-skeleton fossils during very specific time periods or very specific locations, rather than bits and pieces from thousands of different types all over the place. Could be totally wrong though.
- marcus_holmes 11y ago
  That makes sense. So we're not seeing a cross-section of the entire dinosaur era, we're just seeing a cross-section of the dinosaurs caught in the Burgess Shale, or whatever other specific circumstances caught the other examples. This would make sense if all the examples of any given species came from the same site. Is that true?

mchahn 11y ago

Haven't they been able to get some dna from dinosaur bones recently? That would really help. When genotyping first appeared many genus/species had to be recategorized.

jghn 11y ago
DNA would be completely destroyed after less than 7 million years, sadly Jurassic Park will never happen
- mchahn 11y ago
  I went back and found the article from a few weeks ago. It was less convincing than I remembered. They found a pregnant dinosaur and they think there is new hope for finding DNA. They haven't actually found any. http://news.discovery.com/animals/dinosaurs/pregnant-t-rex-found-may-contain-dna-160316.htm http://news.discovery.com/animals/dinosaurs/pregnant-t-rex-f...
kjs3 11y ago
They've got a few scattered bits of DNA, but it's exceedingly rare (a handful of bones) and wouldn't be generally useful to categorize many dinos.