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I've been following dinosaurs for 45 years and learned a lot about science. Too much that ended up in 70s dinosaur children books was wrong, but was presented a

I've been following dinosaurs for 45 years and learned a lot about science. Too much that ended up in 70s dinosaur children books was wrong, but was presented as scientific facts.

ghaff 3y ago
There was a very well-established orthodoxy that you even see in a lot of dinosaur names; they were "lizards." It's hard to step back from that sort of orthodoxy and look at things in a fresh light. It's also professionally difficult to go basically "Umm. I think everyone's been largely wrong for the last 100 years." Arguably relatively and quantum did this in physics but they were arguably refinements on existing knowledge that worked perfectly well to explain and predict most things in everyday life.
- Jensson 3y ago
  T-Rex with feathers looks just like a giant chicken. Chickens aren't exactly awe inspiring so I think that is part of it. Chickens do ruthlessly hunt mice and other small things so a giant chicken would be really scary, just that our minds don't see them that way. But I can easily see raptors and t-rexes being just giant versions of our chickens with similar feathers, they are so similar in all other aspects.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    Although there were larger raptors, velociraptor was about the size of a turkey--which is indeed one of its closest modern relatives. It got super-sized for Jurassic Park. And I know dinosaur in the general public's eyes conjures up T-Rex and Brontosaurus. But scientists were well aware that the majority of dinosaurs were a lot smaller. But I don't disagree in general that there were a lot of factors that set the orthodoxy in place. Including that there were large (and flying) reptiles.
    - sarchertech 3y ago
      The velociraptor in Jurassic Park was a deinonychus, but Michael Crichton thought velociraptor sounded better.
      - KingOfCoders 3y ago
        My first thought watching it the first time, then annoying everyone with that fact.
      - Xenoamorphous 3y ago
        IIRC it’s even explained in the book. And I think they haven’t used the largest known dromaeosaurid, the Utahraptor, in any Jurassic Park/World movie, have they? A 7 meter long “velociraptor” sounds terryfing, but I guess at that point they rather go with the larger theropods.
    - Loughla 3y ago
      Honestly if you've ever been in the middle of a group of wild Tom turkeys in the spring, I don't think that's any less scary. Turkeys are dumb as hell. So they're not really a threat. But they're super aggressive (or can be) and if they had teeth and larger claws and especially if they were pack hunters, it wouldn't be great
  - sarchertech 3y ago
    The most recent consensus is that T. Rex probably wasn’t covered in feathers. Based on an analysis of skin impressions and the likelihood that feathers would have caused such a large animal to overheat in the climate they lived in.
ionwake 3y ago
still pretty based tho. featherless little armed bright orange and purple spotted raptors eating Triceratops the size of double decker buses running around recking stuff
alberth 3y ago
Would you mind sharing some examples. I’m genuinely curious to learn true facts. (Would this be like dinosaurs might have actually had feathers/fur, and not just look reptilian)
- monkeydreams 3y ago
  Not OP but... Dinosaurs were slow, lumbering beasts. Dinsoaurs were cold-blooded. Large dinosaurs, like Brontosaurus (huh!), could not have lived outside of water and spent all of their lives at least partially submerged. Dinosaurs were stupid because their brains were so small. Dinosaurs were an evolutionary dead-end.
  - KingOfCoders 3y ago
    Exactly these.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Wasn't it the brontosaurus that was a dinosaur, and then was just a rename of another dinosaur, and then became a dinosaur again? Imagine if Pluto kept changing between planet and planetoid every few decades.
sgt101 3y ago
Scientific knowledge is contingent, things should be presented as our best theories to fit to the known evidence. When the evidence changes, so should the theories. I am only ever critical of the process when the above does not happen, or when people refuse to look for new evidence when it's reasonable for them to do so.
- ghaff 3y ago
  That's certainly true. In the case of dinosaurs though, there was probably a lot of evidence going back a long way that might have led someone to reasonably conclude "This is a fossil of a turkey, not a lizard." (Obviously a lot more than just looking at a fossil but, as I understand it, the rethinking of dinosaurs wasn't driven solely by new evidence.) I also read the original comment more in the vein of: "Just because something thee the scientific consensus today, doesn't make it necessarily correct." (Though of course some things are more unlikely than others to radically change.)
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Even today you'll have detailed descriptions and explanations of some dinosaur, and it turns out we have half of one bone and part of a head, and that's basically it. Without spending years studying the stuff, it's really hard to figure out what is "this is absolutely known" (as in, we have a full fossil found in one location and in one piece) and what is "this is our current educated best guess".
jmull 3y ago
I don't think children's books are a good source of facts. Probably a bunch of reasons for this... They necessarily have to be greatly simplified. There may be a bit of an urge to jazz it up to better capture the imaginations of children, which may lead to include and overemphasizing some of the more fanciful ideas... It would take a lot of effort to rewrite these books as the science evolves... it's possibly seen as unnecessary to be all that scientifically rigorous for an audience that, e.g., largely believes in the tooth fairy and easter bunny. We all have to be willing to let go of the BS we were taught as children (and in high-school and as an undergraduate, and in our careers, and on through to today for that matter).
- jasinjames 3y ago
  I was an intern at a large museum in NYC in 2017. When I visited the gift shop, I found a book which was published when Pluto was still a planet. It was the same book I was given when I was little, ~15 years ago!
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
    But Pluto being demoted is/was a great injustice and a big mistake. It was thought that we would find a huge number of dwarf planets shortly which would make list of planets untenable. However, in the years following, we really haven’t expanded the list significantly. It probably would have just been better to have added these “dwarf” planets to the list of planets rather than come up with a convoluted reasoning about clearing their environments, which isn’t even technically true for Earth.
mauvia 3y ago
I really recommend the youtuber "Your Dinosaurs are Wrong". It's an amateur team going through paleontology history/literature as sources to criticize classic children's toys of dinosaurs. It's really cool and you learn a lot. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmVa-cbCpkd5Cd9Fr_4tCWg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmVa-cbCpkd5Cd9Fr_4tCWg [original channel] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaCDmykyjVw_B983AQ2iGuZOA3ZLJ8Sry https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaCDmykyjVw_B983AQ2iG... [spinosaurus] https://youtu.be/6oCqSqY7FiI https://youtu.be/6oCqSqY7FiI (This was, I believe before they found or reported the tail)

I've been following dinosaurs for 45 years and learned a lot about science. Too much that ended up in 70s dinosaur children books was wrong, but was presented as scientific facts.

ghaff 3y ago

There was a very well-established orthodoxy that you even see in a lot of dinosaur names; they were "lizards." It's hard to step back from that sort of orthodoxy and look at things in a fresh light. It's also professionally difficult to go basically "Umm. I think everyone's been largely wrong for the last 100 years." Arguably relatively and quantum did this in physics but they were arguably refinements on existing knowledge that worked perfectly well to explain and predict most things in everyday life.

Jensson 3y ago
T-Rex with feathers looks just like a giant chicken. Chickens aren't exactly awe inspiring so I think that is part of it. Chickens do ruthlessly hunt mice and other small things so a giant chicken would be really scary, just that our minds don't see them that way. But I can easily see raptors and t-rexes being just giant versions of our chickens with similar feathers, they are so similar in all other aspects.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Although there were larger raptors, velociraptor was about the size of a turkey--which is indeed one of its closest modern relatives. It got super-sized for Jurassic Park. And I know dinosaur in the general public's eyes conjures up T-Rex and Brontosaurus. But scientists were well aware that the majority of dinosaurs were a lot smaller. But I don't disagree in general that there were a lot of factors that set the orthodoxy in place. Including that there were large (and flying) reptiles.
  - sarchertech 3y ago
    The velociraptor in Jurassic Park was a deinonychus, but Michael Crichton thought velociraptor sounded better.
    - KingOfCoders 3y ago
      My first thought watching it the first time, then annoying everyone with that fact.
    - Xenoamorphous 3y ago
      IIRC it’s even explained in the book. And I think they haven’t used the largest known dromaeosaurid, the Utahraptor, in any Jurassic Park/World movie, have they? A 7 meter long “velociraptor” sounds terryfing, but I guess at that point they rather go with the larger theropods.
  - Loughla 3y ago
    Honestly if you've ever been in the middle of a group of wild Tom turkeys in the spring, I don't think that's any less scary. Turkeys are dumb as hell. So they're not really a threat. But they're super aggressive (or can be) and if they had teeth and larger claws and especially if they were pack hunters, it wouldn't be great
- sarchertech 3y ago
  The most recent consensus is that T. Rex probably wasn’t covered in feathers. Based on an analysis of skin impressions and the likelihood that feathers would have caused such a large animal to overheat in the climate they lived in.

ionwake 3y ago

still pretty based tho. featherless little armed bright orange and purple spotted raptors eating Triceratops the size of double decker buses running around recking stuff

alberth 3y ago

Would you mind sharing some examples. I’m genuinely curious to learn true facts. (Would this be like dinosaurs might have actually had feathers/fur, and not just look reptilian)

monkeydreams 3y ago
Not OP but... Dinosaurs were slow, lumbering beasts. Dinsoaurs were cold-blooded. Large dinosaurs, like Brontosaurus (huh!), could not have lived outside of water and spent all of their lives at least partially submerged. Dinosaurs were stupid because their brains were so small. Dinosaurs were an evolutionary dead-end.
- KingOfCoders 3y ago
  Exactly these.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Wasn't it the brontosaurus that was a dinosaur, and then was just a rename of another dinosaur, and then became a dinosaur again? Imagine if Pluto kept changing between planet and planetoid every few decades.

sgt101 3y ago

Scientific knowledge is contingent, things should be presented as our best theories to fit to the known evidence. When the evidence changes, so should the theories. I am only ever critical of the process when the above does not happen, or when people refuse to look for new evidence when it's reasonable for them to do so.

ghaff 3y ago
That's certainly true. In the case of dinosaurs though, there was probably a lot of evidence going back a long way that might have led someone to reasonably conclude "This is a fossil of a turkey, not a lizard." (Obviously a lot more than just looking at a fossil but, as I understand it, the rethinking of dinosaurs wasn't driven solely by new evidence.) I also read the original comment more in the vein of: "Just because something thee the scientific consensus today, doesn't make it necessarily correct." (Though of course some things are more unlikely than others to radically change.)
- bombcar 3y ago
  Even today you'll have detailed descriptions and explanations of some dinosaur, and it turns out we have half of one bone and part of a head, and that's basically it. Without spending years studying the stuff, it's really hard to figure out what is "this is absolutely known" (as in, we have a full fossil found in one location and in one piece) and what is "this is our current educated best guess".

jmull 3y ago

I don't think children's books are a good source of facts. Probably a bunch of reasons for this... They necessarily have to be greatly simplified. There may be a bit of an urge to jazz it up to better capture the imaginations of children, which may lead to include and overemphasizing some of the more fanciful ideas... It would take a lot of effort to rewrite these books as the science evolves... it's possibly seen as unnecessary to be all that scientifically rigorous for an audience that, e.g., largely believes in the tooth fairy and easter bunny. We all have to be willing to let go of the BS we were taught as children (and in high-school and as an undergraduate, and in our careers, and on through to today for that matter).

jasinjames 3y ago
I was an intern at a large museum in NYC in 2017. When I visited the gift shop, I found a book which was published when Pluto was still a planet. It was the same book I was given when I was little, ~15 years ago!
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
  But Pluto being demoted is/was a great injustice and a big mistake. It was thought that we would find a huge number of dwarf planets shortly which would make list of planets untenable. However, in the years following, we really haven’t expanded the list significantly. It probably would have just been better to have added these “dwarf” planets to the list of planets rather than come up with a convoluted reasoning about clearing their environments, which isn’t even technically true for Earth.

mauvia 3y ago

I really recommend the youtuber "Your Dinosaurs are Wrong". It's an amateur team going through paleontology history/literature as sources to criticize classic children's toys of dinosaurs. It's really cool and you learn a lot. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmVa-cbCpkd5Cd9Fr_4tCWg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmVa-cbCpkd5Cd9Fr_4tCWg [original channel] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaCDmykyjVw_B983AQ2iGuZOA3ZLJ8Sry https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaCDmykyjVw_B983AQ2iG... [spinosaurus] https://youtu.be/6oCqSqY7FiI https://youtu.be/6oCqSqY7FiI (This was, I believe before they found or reported the tail)