tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5821098719340852065.post3747925133836877984..comments2024-03-18T16:45:36.195+01:00Comments on Furahan Biology and Allied Matters: Future evolution in BrusselsSigmund Nastrazzurrohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16449461215427527447noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5821098719340852065.post-381102133767374862010-02-28T09:08:56.521+01:002010-02-28T09:08:56.521+01:00oh my god... those pelagornids are so gorgeous. On...oh my god... those pelagornids are so gorgeous. One of them looks suspiciously like a Hesperornith, though.<br /><br />And 4 meters! Heck yes! Why stop there, you know those things have got to get at least Mosasaur sized, when has "modest" been a trait applied to Dinosaurs?<br /><br />Never, that's when.Princess Malyssahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00029684678435620684noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5821098719340852065.post-44860360572598395762009-03-02T18:22:00.000+01:002009-03-02T18:22:00.000+01:00Oops!http://www.sivatherium.h12.ru/library/Dixon_2...Oops!<BR/><BR/>http://www.sivatherium.h12.ru/library/Dixon_2/00_en.htmAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5821098719340852065.post-45066418504305341682009-03-02T18:20:00.000+01:002009-03-02T18:20:00.000+01:00By the way:http://www.sivatherium.h12.ru/library/D...By the way:<BR/><BR/>http://www.sivatherium.h12.ru/library/Dixon_2/00_en.htm<BR/><BR/>Dixon's "The New Dinosaurs" on-line.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5821098719340852065.post-20555355170001901482009-02-21T17:24:00.000+01:002009-02-21T17:24:00.000+01:00You may have a point there, Pavel. I dug out my co...You may have a point there, Pavel. I dug out my copy of the 'New Dinosaurs' (1988) and checked up on the lark. The text states that dinosaurs were beaten to the grazing niche in the new grasslands by pterosaurs. By itself such a thing could happen, as long as the pterosaurs more or less had the place to themselves during the transition from flying to walking forms. You can envisage such a thing happening on a large island where the niches for grazers are not yet filled by more efficient grazers and where there are no rapid predators ready to take advantage of stumbling pterosaurs. <BR/><BR/>The lark lives in the Ethiopian realm however (Africa). While it may have been devoid of grass-eating herbivores in Dixon's scenario, but there does not seem to be any information on the absence of predators. With various types of predators around, I doubt the ancestral pterosaurs could have afforded the luxury of forgoing flight. By that logic, they would indeed stand very little chance. You are right that they are not the most logical group to evolve into that niche. <BR/><BR/>What bothers me a bit though is the ostrich; present-day ostriches have excellent sight and can run very fast, so now they gcan hold their own amidst lions, cheetahs, leopards, hyenas and wild dogs. But what about their evolution? How did they manage to get where they are now with all kinds of large cats around for their entire evolution?<BR/><BR/>On the whole I agree that the story could have benefited with some more fleshing out. Perhaps Dougal did think of all such things; I would not be surprised at all. For all we know he has lots of additional details lying around in an attic. What I do know is you should always keep your readers wanting more. It would be nice if he (Dougal) would comment, but I doubt he will.Sigmund Nastrazzurrohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16449461215427527447noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5821098719340852065.post-86240550841142154482009-02-18T23:49:00.000+01:002009-02-18T23:49:00.000+01:00No, I mean another thing. First of all, there are ...No, I mean another thing. First of all, there are many rules and principles in evolution - it is not developing of everything into everything. Cope's rule, Allen's rule, Marsh's rule and so on - there is a great set of such ones. Oh' I understand they are empirical and have some exclusions. But in our predicting of evolutional processes we must talk in terms of probability/improbability. These rules and principles are the rules of the game. The presence/extinction of mankind and the degree of its influence to the nature to the moment of extinction are also a part of problem specification. The initial appearance of flora and fauna is the material for further speculation. And then the probability of extinction/surviving of species is estimated, and possible ways of its evolution (according its anatomy and present day habit of life) are proposed.<BR/>So, Dixon goes another way. Now I look at his ideas from "New Dinosaurs". He takes the animal and asks himself: "what may be an appearance of a browser (grazer, predator, filter-feeder, etc.) evolved from this one?" And he "sculps" giraffe from pterosaur (it's his lank), the hummingbird from dinosaur (gimp), elephant from squid (megasquid from "The Future is Wild"). And in all these cases he does not think: is the way of evolution in such direction probable for this group of animals? Till millions years of existing on the Earth cephalopods hadn't develop even fresh water, and he "banishes" them to the land of awful freshwater rain!<BR/>That's the reason of my scepsis.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5821098719340852065.post-47043445988265681512009-02-18T19:20:00.000+01:002009-02-18T19:20:00.000+01:00Hi Pavel,I am not entirely sure what your question...Hi Pavel,<BR/><BR/>I am not entirely sure what your question is, but I will make an attempt at an answer regardless. Some of Dougal's creations may seem farfetched, but I find it difficult to say which features may or may not evolve. Some things in fictional evolution are intuitively quite possible such as longer legs or bigger teeth, while others are so improbable that no one will accept them. For instance, I have a DVD documentary on dragons with nice computer graphics, and a nice metabolic 'explanation' for fire breathing. The dragons were supposed to have evolved from dinosaurs, but had four legs AND two wings. If I remember correctly, some sort of mutation affecting body scheme was invoked to explain that little detail...<BR/> <BR/>But I doubt anyone complained. I like to think that that was because everyone with any knowledge of biology took the dragon's 'evolution' as it was intended: a tongue-in-cheek joke, a game if you will. I admit that I do not know how many people took the explanations seriously, which would be a real pity, as it would make it more difficult for them in the future to understand biology correctly. Does that mean that the DVD should not be made, or sold with a list stating which items are not unambiguously scientifically correct? Every Hollywood film, particularly the science fiction ones, would need a list the size of a telephone book!<BR/><BR/>I am not certain if this reasoning covers your point, so let me try again: if people question the truth of evolutionary biology because they object to bits of fictional biology, they are getting two things wrong. The first is that they are confusing science with fiction, and that is an utterly invalid comparison. Do they same people argue that astronomy is all wrong because the spaceships in Star Wars make a sound as they travel through space? The second problem is that they apparently have no sense of humour or irony. Pity them.Sigmund Nastrazzurrohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16449461215427527447noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5821098719340852065.post-29267782223738703922009-02-18T06:28:00.000+01:002009-02-18T06:28:00.000+01:00I just want to know one thing. I respect D. Dixon ...I just want to know one thing. I respect D. Dixon for his epochal step - futuristic and alternative biology. But his ideas sometimes (in at least 2/3 cases) are imbrobable from the point of view of the theory of evolution. Sometimes they contradict the principles of evolution, and because of it they turn to the subject of jokes ond laugh of biologists and simply people studying the theory of evolution for themselves. I had seen some much more interesting and correct Internet projects like Spec. But, alas, money do their job very successfully.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5821098719340852065.post-74056698539033246072009-02-17T19:28:00.000+01:002009-02-17T19:28:00.000+01:00Hi Pavel,Not that much, in fact, if you are referr...Hi Pavel,<BR/><BR/>Not that much, in fact, if you are referring to the exposition itself. I have not (yet) found more images etc on the internet; only the ones that you see on the sites I supplied. The article is three pages, and does not contain other images of the animals than I showed you (well, the same ones but a bit bigger). The text goes into continental drift in the future, the choice for ecosu=ystems and why the animals that are actuallu shown were depicted. There is mention of a snake they designed: it hides the largest part of its body under the ground, apparently catching prey with the part above ground. The animal hanging from its tail is a large marsupial, aand the large tetrapod is a Corticochaeris, a descendent of the capibara, but 2 m in length. That's largely it. <BR/><BR/>Then again, I will probably be writing another blog entry on the design team behind the exposition. I wil also put up a very short message with a link you may find interesting.Sigmund Nastrazzurrohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16449461215427527447noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5821098719340852065.post-64358208090496135512009-02-17T06:20:00.000+01:002009-02-17T06:20:00.000+01:00Gert, can you tell more about it?Gert, can you tell more about it?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com