As a creationist I note that conclusions in origins of biological beings starts with the presumptions of how biology is classified in all its divisions. They do not start clean when begibning investigation but start from presumptions already settled. Al these from small numbers of men in ancient Greece or almost ancient europe.
Even if they were accurate, which they are not, it still would nullify scientific investigation into origins for biology. Its not a pure embracing of raw facts but they are skewed a already settled system or relationships.
So they start with divisions like Animals, insects, plants. Then mammals, reptiles, marsupials monotremes, birds, and finally dinosaurs and others.
Yet all these divisions are not proven before one begins investigations. However received they are hypothesis only. so hypothesis are presumed to be true before more hypothesis are made. I insist this corrupts/nullifies all biological conclusions on origins . its unscientific and has led, this creationist says, to gross error .
Yes i am saying god never created mammals, reptiles, marsupials, dinosaurs, at all. Yes he created plants animals, insects, birds.
Yet this is not my point here. its that classification systems are a first place to start in understanding why biological origin ideas has been so enduring false.
I’m talking about scientific methodology. Classification broke the rules. I’m very intersted to see why I’m wrong or how others suspect this also. True science must be neutral out of the gate.
First, let me note how amusing it is that you make a call to “kill the classification concepts” and then to “start to figure out better KINDS of creatures “, which is ALSO a classification concept.
You are a frequent visitor of TSZ, so you must have read at some point how groups of organisms are nested in a hierarchical tree. Birds nest (heh) within theropods and theropods nest within dinosaurs and dinosaurs nest within reptiles. Your inability to grasp this concept explains why you are so confused about non-avian theropods. They belong neither to modern birds, nor to modern groups of reptiles. It’s funny to see you struggle fitting them into one or the other, and then cursing all “classification concepts” when that doesn’t work out.
But I love playing the naming game, so let me confront you with the consequences of your choice to group all theropods with birds.
Here is a reconstruction of Megalosaurus. Is this a birdie according to you? No beak? Teeth? Arms instead of wings? A bony tail? really? Then what’s to stop us moving all birds into reptiles?
From here
I understand the concepts. i’m correcting them or think I am.
Yes KInds is classification but the right ones.
This is a artists rendition. What you say about it is not making it a reptile nor denying its a bird. THey talk about these all the time on youtube dino programs about birds/dinosaurs. lots there to chech out.
Birds then did have teeth, easily birds now can have teeh.
The famous Jake Horner is trying to tease teeth out of chickens.
The arms are really just atrophied wings. The head is big but the famous TERROR birds had big fused skulls too.
You must remember modern dino scholars insist the theropds were very bird like. HOWEVER they use this to say our birds are close relatives of. so birds were/are dinosaurs.
This is wrong. The dinosaurs never existed. they are errors of classification. These “dinos’ were just giant flightless birds.
Its the classification concepts that is interfering with true science here.
A presumption is wronly at the start of thoughtful investigation.
Ah, this is an example of your neutral true science, is it?
So birds can have teeth, arms, and a bony tail? Could you please tell me if we should not stop using the term “birds” for this inclusive group and simply adopt the term “theropods”? You know what? We could still use the term “birds” for the sub-group of theropods that look similar to “classical” birds. Good idea, huh?
I am a bit concerned about dissolving dinosaurs. For example, what are we are going to call sauropods then? We know they are closely related to theropods (they are both members of Saurischia). Did you know sauropods had pneumatized bones just like birds do now? Very bird-like, your average sauropod. Wait, I guess we should call them birds as well, right?
Look at them birdies. Can you imagine they weren’t classified as big flightless birds STRAIGHT AWAY?
image from here
Modern flightless birds have atrophied wings. yet are birds.
These old birds had atrophied wings and some adaptation for claws on better arms.
There were birds back then with teeth who they call birds and don’t mean theropods by the way.
I’m saying the classification is the dumb interference into scientific study of these creatures.
They thought they were dealing with reptiles, called them dinosaurs, saw some were bird like and then/now said AHA our birds are living dinos.
Nope.
There was no dinosaurs. These were dumb old birds in a spectrum of diversity. The other dinos likewise can be put into some other KIND.
Corneel,
These sauropod critters wre not likely birds.
Tghey would fit into some other kind of group of creatures. having like traits, as i bang a gong about, is not the evidence of being like creatures.
I’m not just saying the creatures are wrongly classified, but the concept of grouping things is wrong. Like grouping marsupials together based on a few minor details but ignoring they are copys of diverse creatures elsewhere.
It isn’t , in this case, sauropods have a type of bone like birds but that birds and sauropods have this type of bone..
Nobody has a copywrite on biology parts.
actually one will find in these heavy “dinos” in the bones spacing in order to make them light. Yet heavy mammals, now extinct, also had this.
You keep saying that. Did you ever in your life see a theropod skeleton? Did you ever take a moment to study the front limbs?
Here is the pair of front-limbs of Deinocheirus (that is the entirety of the holotype specimen incidentally). It had the longest arms of any known theropod.
Look closely. Do these look like atrophied wings to you?
Ah, we seem to have hit the Robert-says-they’re-birds boundary. Interesting that you seem to have no problem regarding huge carnivorous theropod dinosaurs as birds, but draw the line at sauropods.
Can you explain why Megalosaurus is a bird and Diplodocus is not? Could you also explain why we seem to be able to distinguish theropods from sauropods when there is no such things as “theropods” and “sauropods”?
This bizarre claim you fall back on whenever you run into trouble. Yet you yourself are reluctant to let go of groups you believe to be clear-cut, like birds. This why you attempt to redefine theropods as birds: it is such a nice isolated group.
You can’t have it both ways Robert: can we make groupings, or should we view all species as part of a “spectrum of diversity”? Is there such as thing as birds, or felids? What about Hominidae?
Make a choice!
I have the bird group because the bible does. On the ark was the dove and crow. they were not one kind. Yet clearly birds and so this bird division must exist.
The long armed theropods simply is a extension of a adaptation of a flightless birds atrophied wings. They were using them and so a wee bit longer/better is just within the spectrum.
it is about anatomy/morphology/ so these lumbering four footed creaures are unrelated to theropods. or any other so called dinosaurs.
the traits they connect creatures together is a human construction. not natures.
its my hypothesis that these bird like theropods are birds. not reptiles/dinos.
its been a grand illusion to say they were dinos. THen one can jettison the whole dino group. just fit everyone into existing/extinct groups.
Then its a bigger error of classification that there are big groups. no mammals, reptiles etc.
Then for this thread i point out classification led by the nose the investigation and so error came. Thus its not a true scientific investigation by the rules.
So you desperately need those inconveniently bird-like dinosaurs to go but you cannot bring yourself to lose the bird group? I am sorry Robert. That’s not the way it works. If you dream up a new set of rules others should abide, then you need to play by them yourself as well. If you say: “You are not allowed to classify those animals, but I get to call them birds” that’s not really fair, is it? And it is definitely not neutral science.
*Somebody* on this thread said that “Evolutionism can’t live without its classification presumptions. creationism can.” Can I suggest it is exactly the other way around?
Evolution can’t. possibly creationism can’t but its different.
Evolutionism can’y make its conclusions on a pure observation of nature.
They must create groups to show groups evolved because whats evolving is traits while keeping traits.
The bible mentions certain kinds of birds and so birds must be a bigger group.
They look alike but still were several on the ark. So kinds was under this bigger look alike group.
Yes dinosaurs are unwelcome to this creationist.
yes one can put them into already existing kinds or groups without the lizard/dino/bird concept.
Reductionism in science works. these bird like dinos are to be reduced to birds. not birds to dinos/lizards. Thats my hypothesis and time keeps showing how these theropods are so alike to birds.
Why did they ever say they were not birds? It will be said classificatiomn was the problem. The excuse.
Robert Byers,
By what process were wings turned into the stubby arms of Tyrannosaurs, or beaks into a gobful of teeth?
How I wish there was a way to explain to you. Hint: It is not classification that is the problem. Perhaps it is your understanding of classification that is.
It pleases me that you seem to realize that dinosaurs have some affiliations with birds. That also goes for those “lumbering four footed” sauropods, I am afraid to say; birds are the closest thing alive today. But as long as you are locked into your creation fable, you will forever be puzzling trying to sort ancient extinct animals into modern groups.
I admire Robert’s honesty.
True that. Roberts writing doesn’t require a lot of reading between the lines.
I have land kinds, sea kinds, and air kinds.
Bats are birds, whales are fish.
Bats and Birds are in the Air kind. Fish and Whales are in the Sea kind.
by what process did humans change from one colour into all the colours we now have? Mechanism in biology is a fact but its not a fact of how.
Birds wings atrophied all the time and everywhere. how? Everyone has ideas.
Yet these theropods/even t-rex are always wondered as to why such short limbs.
Easy. they were never limbs. they were wings that atrophied and then in some ways became more usefull as arms/claws.
yet dinosaur researchers always insist the arms of theropods and bird wings are very alike and one of the reasons for why thy say our birds come from dinos.
The same with beaks with teeth. There were birds in thopse days with teeth. Actually called birds who flew. They had teeth too. Researchers point out modern birds , in uteral, show teeth evidence.
Growing teeth is not a big deal to biology.
As someone having had three impacted wisdom teeth extractions, I beg to disagree. 😀
its a evolution made made fable or rather error in investigation based on limited information and back in the dumber days.
Researchers demonstrate clearly the similairity of birds with these types of dinos. not the four legged ones.
these so called theropods are just giant/small flightless birds in a spectrum of diversity in a richer past.
The dinosaurs never existed. they were misclassified creatures unrelated to each other.
Robert Byers,
I think the word you are grasping for is ‘evolution’.
What about Pachycephalosaurus? It looks rather similar to theropod dinosaurs, don’t you think? Alas, it was not classified as such.
Was it misclassified? Was it a bird?
Image from here
actually, I had them too, the wisdom teeth thing would be seen as evidence of mankind originally not having the same diet as before the flood.
Only after the flood did people eat meat according to genesis. SO the mouth/jaw/teeth in striving to change did a poor job of it.
The list is great of what these so called dinos are in relation to birds.
i just watched, another, great video on this subject. from yale i think. Not a creationist.
ITSRichard Pruim. Evolution of birds:Why birds are dinosaurs. IT HITS so many of the topics we talked about. its really worth listening too.
t-res and his wishbone. Feathers on T-rex. Correction on old dumb ideas.
in fact this video would do it. I have seen many but this sums it up.
I do like the famous Jake Horner chicken into dinosaur video however.
Robert Byers,
Link?
Also, I don’t believe my question was answered.
Pachycephalosaurus and theropod dinosaurs are good examples of convergence towards bipedalism as I would expect, (see my diagram from here.)
We see in dinosaurs a good example of the progression from quadrupedalism to bipedalism and from ectothery to endothermy. Birds are a prime example of the level of bipedalism that has been attained by the animal kngdom.
But they don’t exactly fall into the line leading to mankind.
Because they are not on that line. They have diversified in a one-sided way and they have been very successful at it.
They have attained bipedalism which meant that their forelimbs had the potential to become free of supporting them against gravity. But because their forelimbs became so specialised they have lost the potential to develop in a more creative way.
Linhenykus monodactylus is an example of a creature that had taken things to the extreme even more than birds have. It made very little use of its stunted forelimbs.
I don’t know about this critter. it changes nothing. I don’t know how to link. Don’t want to know either.
CharlieM,
Invoking convergence is just a excuse. Its possible for like features but evolutionists have lost credibility on this.
the simple redunctionist answer is usually the right one.
theropods are just flightless ground birds fossilized 4500 years in the great flood as the great bible says.
As you wish.
As I would expect, you have things backward again. Bipedalism is most likely the ancestral state for the dinosaur lineage. So some groups, like sauropods, reverted to quadrupedalism.
But… but… the archetype is dynamic, you know
I believe that this is the video you were referring to.
The amount of convergence we see is good evidence that evolution is moving in a certain direction and is not just a random walk in all possible directions.
Sorry but I don’t agree with your timescale and the way that you interpret the Bible..
Do you agree that dinosaurs had quadrupedal ancestors?
You do bring up a very interesting point. The fact that we see a trend where creatures gain bipedalism and then there descendants revert back to quadrupedalism is a regression and as we all know it ended in extinction. From that line of evolution only the bipeds survived. And birds have attained endothermy of which one feature is their covering of feathers, while all other extant archosaurs have remained at reptile stage of evolution.
It is interesting too that the forelimbs of birds are much more specialised than the forelimbs of theropods. This line of evolution goes from the general to the specific in this respect. The human ancestral line has retained the more general features of the pentadactyl limb.
I don’t know if you will have noticed, but everything about life is dynamic.
Yes, that looks like the one Robert meant, thanks for that. But I fail to see how it supports his case. Rather the opposite, in fact.
Sure thing.
Channeling Dennis Nedry, eh?
Corneel,
it establishes great foundations. Then its easy to turn it around. like Einsteins elevator in space thing.
They provide the great evidence that theropod etc dinosaurs are fantastic like birds and this creationist says THEY are ground flightless birrs. they are indeed not reptile, like, of dinosaur, like.
they are just birds. Then i add all so called dinos can fit within kinds and there is no dino division. Then add there is no reptile or mammal division.
Then , in this thread, point out how classification distorts the investigation and nulllify’s it as science because iots so distorted.
You do that. You can start with Pachycephalosaurus above. Give us a notice when you are done not-classifying them into biblical kinds.