4 ms·

I threw the article on our local paleontologist in the team and he claims the food of trilobites have been know for like 20 years or so, but that the new thing

I threw the article on our local paleontologist in the team and he claims the food of trilobites have been know for like 20 years or so, but that the new thing here is that some team got funds to do a synchroton study, which apparently costs a lot and hence the results needs to be sold as impressive to motivate it.

zimpenfish 3y ago
From the article, "We've been able to infer what some of them were likely to have been dining on based on their appearance and the ecosystems they were found in". You could make a pretty good guess what I eat from the food in this flat but unless you found it in my stomach, you couldn't sure, no?
- tetris11 3y ago
  "As inferred from the items scattered around the specimen, we theorize that early post-agriculture hominids subsisted on a thin diet of mechanical keyboard letters and magnetic disks."
junon 3y ago
That explains why the article is bottom up. I'm so tired of "journalism" now being bait and switch. The interesting bait is at the top, then there's ten pages of stuff that has nothing to do with the bait - of course, filled with inline ads. Then finally comes two paragraphs of the stuff you actually wanted to know.
- lagniappe 3y ago
  >there's ten pages of stuff that has nothing to do with the bait Get the Germans in here, there has to be a word for this
  - tsunamifury 3y ago
    Adenfraude
dekhn 3y ago
The abstract directly states "Inferred trophic roles range from detritivores to predators, but all are based on indirect evidence such as body and gut morphology, modes of preservation and attributed feeding traces; no trilobite specimen with internal gut contents has been described [3,4]." Can your local paleontologist give you a single citation showing direct inspection of a trilobite gut? Because the way you wrote it, you just said "the food of trilobytes have been known for 20 years or so". That doesn't contradict what the authors say, but rather, ignores the fact that this is the first direct, physical evidence in the gut of a fossil. That kind of data is generally weighted much higher than any indirect evidence (which I think is what was available before). I don't argue that scientists juice their studies to get attention/justify the funding, but I think your criticism is probably missing the literal truth of the statement (and if you show me a single cite disproving their statement, I'm happy to change my mind).

zimpenfish 3y ago

From the article, "We've been able to infer what some of them were likely to have been dining on based on their appearance and the ecosystems they were found in". You could make a pretty good guess what I eat from the food in this flat but unless you found it in my stomach, you couldn't sure, no?

tetris11 3y ago
"As inferred from the items scattered around the specimen, we theorize that early post-agriculture hominids subsisted on a thin diet of mechanical keyboard letters and magnetic disks."

junon 3y ago

That explains why the article is bottom up. I'm so tired of "journalism" now being bait and switch. The interesting bait is at the top, then there's ten pages of stuff that has nothing to do with the bait - of course, filled with inline ads. Then finally comes two paragraphs of the stuff you actually wanted to know.

lagniappe 3y ago
>there's ten pages of stuff that has nothing to do with the bait Get the Germans in here, there has to be a word for this
- tsunamifury 3y ago
  Adenfraude

dekhn 3y ago

The abstract directly states "Inferred trophic roles range from detritivores to predators, but all are based on indirect evidence such as body and gut morphology, modes of preservation and attributed feeding traces; no trilobite specimen with internal gut contents has been described [3,4]." Can your local paleontologist give you a single citation showing direct inspection of a trilobite gut? Because the way you wrote it, you just said "the food of trilobytes have been known for 20 years or so". That doesn't contradict what the authors say, but rather, ignores the fact that this is the first direct, physical evidence in the gut of a fossil. That kind of data is generally weighted much higher than any indirect evidence (which I think is what was available before). I don't argue that scientists juice their studies to get attention/justify the funding, but I think your criticism is probably missing the literal truth of the statement (and if you show me a single cite disproving their statement, I'm happy to change my mind).