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> As Brusatte notes, a lot of what we now know about dinosaurs has been naturally accumulative knowledge spanning decades of ongoing research. Yeah I've felt t

> As Brusatte notes, a lot of what we now know about dinosaurs has been naturally accumulative knowledge spanning decades of ongoing research. Yeah I've felt this. I'm old enough (41) that some of the things that I was taught as a child are no longer beloved to be true. Not sure if I should feel sad that it's happening so slowly, or happy that's happening at all. Or concerned that we have no first principles way of estimating whether our scientific progress is fast or slow.

dylan604 1y ago
Which is interesting in how I grew up "knowing" the asteroid/meteor killed the dinosaurs, but TFA suggests it was just a theory at the time of my learning. Or how I grew up with images of the planets, not knowing that they were only taken when I was a small kid. It is just a weird thing to think about how some knowledge we accept as known might not have been known by our grandparents or even our parents. It just seems like we would have known things for a lot longer.
- tshaddox 1y ago
  My memory is the opposite: I recall learning that an asteroid impact was the most likely explanation, and the K-T boundary was the biggest piece of evidence, and the only problem was that they hadn’t discovered a candidate impact crater. And it wasn’t until the first decade of the 2000s that consensus started to emerge that the big crater in the Yucatán is the likely cause.
- zdragnar 1y ago
  The pictures of the planets bit makes sense, as even with a telescope (through which we've seen the plants for a very long time) there's not really enough light for early film techniques to capture well. I do identify a bit with the dinosaur example, and to use another: plate tectonics wasn't a formalized and accepted theory until late in the 1960's. It spread to schools quickly, but by that point my parents had already graduated, and it was new for my parents when my older brother went to school.
  - dylan604 1y ago
    plate tectonics is a good one. I definitely remember my mom telling me as a kid how South America and Africa look like they fit together, and my dad talking about Pangea being the name when the pieces were fit together. it wasn't until much later that I realized that my parents were not taught this in school, but my dad just kept up with current events much more. It is weird to think that something is so new that even your parents were not taught it.
    - bruce511 1y ago
      Obviously it will vary by location and age. But I was in high school in the early 80s, and plate tectonics & Pangea were already in our text books. (And in my country it takes forever for stuff to make it into textbooks.) I don't recall there being any controversy about it - it was used as the basis for a number of topics in geography (Indian Subcontinent forming Himalayas, bio-diversity and gene relations in Biology etc.) I suspect the real lesson here us that education is far from consistent both regionally, nationally and historically.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
    - tzs 1y ago
      Is the coastlines of South America and Africa looking like they fit together actually because of plate tectonics, or is it just a coincidence? The shape we see for the coastlines of South America and Africa is affected by sea level. Depending on when you happened to look over the last say 140 million years sea level would have varied from around 135 meters below current sea level to around 75 meters above current sea level. That is a range of 210 meters. Surely over that range both costs would change quite a bit, and I can't think of any mechanism that would make those changes complimentary in a way to keep the two coasts looking like they fit together.
      - dylan604 1y ago
        are you playing devil's advocate? perhaps you're just not familiar with Pangea? here's a video to show plate movement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGdPqpzYD4o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGdPqpzYD4o
- blibble 1y ago
  it's still "just" a theory, in the same way gravitation is "just" a theory and always will be until it's dis-proven, or someone invents a time machine and we can go and see it for ourselves
  - dylan604 1y ago
    until it's dis-proven, or until it is proven. we have plenty of evidence of the movement of plates. we know where subduction zones are. what does it take to prove a theory if not repeatable tests/observations?
    - blibble 1y ago
      the large body of corroborating evidence (and ability to be dis-proven) is what makes it a theory but we can't "prove" plate tectonics, because we can't directly observe what's going on the earth's crust over a period of millions of years in scientific nomenclature, a theory is a very robust thing indeed vs. the vernacular, where it isn't, e.g. "I have a theory that my cat vomits behind the couch after I give him ice-cream"
      - mr_toad 1y ago
        > we can't directly observe what's going on the earth's crust over a period of millions of years Depends what you mean by “observe”. The parallel lines of reversing magnetic polarity that are embedded in the sea floor on either side of the great rifts are observations that demand explanation.
        blibble 1y ago
        well that's easy to explain the devil went over the seabed with a big magnet, to trick you just like he concocted the entire fossil record, planet-wide rock strata, carbon 14... (sarcasm, for the USians)
throaway5454 1y ago
The wierd things the latest JP movies still have the Dino's as being featherless
- croes 1y ago
  It’s lore
  - WorldMaker 1y ago
    Yup, the lore blames the frog/amphibian DNA and Doctor Wu's interference (military application side projects).
- Butthead69 1y ago
  Dominion had a feathered Pyroraptor
WorldMaker 1y ago
I think it is also interesting to think about how many things we learned about dinosaurs directly because of Jurassic Park. Jurassic Park spiked a huge amount of interest in the science. It's said that the 3D modeling of dinosaur skeleton kinematics for animating them in Jurassic Park was one of the biggest spurs into reevaluating the avian relationship with dinosaurs ("oh, yeah this skeleton would have to walk like a big chicken") and that in turn spurned deeper research into how many of them may have been feathered rather than scaled. We can see all the faults in the original Jurassic Park from everything that we've learned since Jurassic Park, but we still sort of owe a debt to JP for bringing a lot of those ideas into public consciousness in a fun way and throwing a lot of money at some of the earliest 3D studies of dinosaur motion.
taco_emoji 1y ago
Why does the pace of discovery matter at all? Fast or slow compared to what? What could you even do about it in any case?
- jxjnskkzxxhx 1y ago
  > Why does the pace of discovery matter at all? Because I'd rather not die from cancer than die from cancer. I can't comprehend you even ask.
  - taco_emoji 1y ago
    I notice you ignored the other questions.

dylan604 1y ago

Which is interesting in how I grew up "knowing" the asteroid/meteor killed the dinosaurs, but TFA suggests it was just a theory at the time of my learning. Or how I grew up with images of the planets, not knowing that they were only taken when I was a small kid. It is just a weird thing to think about how some knowledge we accept as known might not have been known by our grandparents or even our parents. It just seems like we would have known things for a lot longer.

tshaddox 1y ago
My memory is the opposite: I recall learning that an asteroid impact was the most likely explanation, and the K-T boundary was the biggest piece of evidence, and the only problem was that they hadn’t discovered a candidate impact crater. And it wasn’t until the first decade of the 2000s that consensus started to emerge that the big crater in the Yucatán is the likely cause.
zdragnar 1y ago
The pictures of the planets bit makes sense, as even with a telescope (through which we've seen the plants for a very long time) there's not really enough light for early film techniques to capture well. I do identify a bit with the dinosaur example, and to use another: plate tectonics wasn't a formalized and accepted theory until late in the 1960's. It spread to schools quickly, but by that point my parents had already graduated, and it was new for my parents when my older brother went to school.
- dylan604 1y ago
  plate tectonics is a good one. I definitely remember my mom telling me as a kid how South America and Africa look like they fit together, and my dad talking about Pangea being the name when the pieces were fit together. it wasn't until much later that I realized that my parents were not taught this in school, but my dad just kept up with current events much more. It is weird to think that something is so new that even your parents were not taught it.
  - bruce511 1y ago
    Obviously it will vary by location and age. But I was in high school in the early 80s, and plate tectonics & Pangea were already in our text books. (And in my country it takes forever for stuff to make it into textbooks.) I don't recall there being any controversy about it - it was used as the basis for a number of topics in geography (Indian Subcontinent forming Himalayas, bio-diversity and gene relations in Biology etc.) I suspect the real lesson here us that education is far from consistent both regionally, nationally and historically.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - tzs 1y ago
    Is the coastlines of South America and Africa looking like they fit together actually because of plate tectonics, or is it just a coincidence? The shape we see for the coastlines of South America and Africa is affected by sea level. Depending on when you happened to look over the last say 140 million years sea level would have varied from around 135 meters below current sea level to around 75 meters above current sea level. That is a range of 210 meters. Surely over that range both costs would change quite a bit, and I can't think of any mechanism that would make those changes complimentary in a way to keep the two coasts looking like they fit together.
    - dylan604 1y ago
      are you playing devil's advocate? perhaps you're just not familiar with Pangea? here's a video to show plate movement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGdPqpzYD4o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGdPqpzYD4o
blibble 1y ago
it's still "just" a theory, in the same way gravitation is "just" a theory and always will be until it's dis-proven, or someone invents a time machine and we can go and see it for ourselves
- dylan604 1y ago
  until it's dis-proven, or until it is proven. we have plenty of evidence of the movement of plates. we know where subduction zones are. what does it take to prove a theory if not repeatable tests/observations?
  - blibble 1y ago
    the large body of corroborating evidence (and ability to be dis-proven) is what makes it a theory but we can't "prove" plate tectonics, because we can't directly observe what's going on the earth's crust over a period of millions of years in scientific nomenclature, a theory is a very robust thing indeed vs. the vernacular, where it isn't, e.g. "I have a theory that my cat vomits behind the couch after I give him ice-cream"
    - mr_toad 1y ago
      > we can't directly observe what's going on the earth's crust over a period of millions of years Depends what you mean by “observe”. The parallel lines of reversing magnetic polarity that are embedded in the sea floor on either side of the great rifts are observations that demand explanation.
      - blibble 1y ago
        well that's easy to explain the devil went over the seabed with a big magnet, to trick you just like he concocted the entire fossil record, planet-wide rock strata, carbon 14... (sarcasm, for the USians)

throaway5454 1y ago

The wierd things the latest JP movies still have the Dino's as being featherless

croes 1y ago
It’s lore
- WorldMaker 1y ago
  Yup, the lore blames the frog/amphibian DNA and Doctor Wu's interference (military application side projects).
Butthead69 1y ago
Dominion had a feathered Pyroraptor

WorldMaker 1y ago

I think it is also interesting to think about how many things we learned about dinosaurs directly because of Jurassic Park. Jurassic Park spiked a huge amount of interest in the science. It's said that the 3D modeling of dinosaur skeleton kinematics for animating them in Jurassic Park was one of the biggest spurs into reevaluating the avian relationship with dinosaurs ("oh, yeah this skeleton would have to walk like a big chicken") and that in turn spurned deeper research into how many of them may have been feathered rather than scaled. We can see all the faults in the original Jurassic Park from everything that we've learned since Jurassic Park, but we still sort of owe a debt to JP for bringing a lot of those ideas into public consciousness in a fun way and throwing a lot of money at some of the earliest 3D studies of dinosaur motion.

taco_emoji 1y ago

Why does the pace of discovery matter at all? Fast or slow compared to what? What could you even do about it in any case?

jxjnskkzxxhx 1y ago
> Why does the pace of discovery matter at all? Because I'd rather not die from cancer than die from cancer. I can't comprehend you even ask.
- taco_emoji 1y ago
  I notice you ignored the other questions.