I was pretty dino crazy (as most kids are, I suppose), and to me, Brontosaurus denotes the animal with the short, massive head that the camarasaurus skull implies, rather than the slender head that the actual Apatosaurus had.
One of the points of the article is the head/skull usually associated with the Brontosaurus was incorrect, as well as the body being a duplicate.
So with the usual headline sensationalism, it is fair to say "it never existed". More accurately, one could say something like "the dinosaur popularly known as brontosaurus, is actually a aptosaurus with a different head..." But as a headline, it lacks punch.
Heh, I remember learning about it and thinking, oh, I wonder when they figured this out.
I was pretty ticked off when I learned it was the 70's, and yet I still was taught about the brontosaurus in school a decade later. Makes me wonder if kids today still get taught about the ninth planet Pluto.
"pop culture has really improved in science coverage since the 70s"
Increased the amount, but has the quality really improved that much? We've still got the latest free-energy, supplement/alt-med, cancer cure, and diet quacks making the rounds under the guise of "science" reporting.
IMO, while this is old news, the outcome is something I think we can showcase as why science is awesome. A mistake was found, and even though there was some huge investment in the idea, it was corrected. It took time, sure, but it was still corrected.
Had this been a religious idea, I'm afraid the new evidence would have been buried and we'd still have the old, wrong idea.
Except that the main "mistake" had to do with naming conventions, as opposed to actual science.
We've refined our view of other dinos over the years, but we don't say that T-Rex never existed just because we know he stood differently than we first imagined.
It wasn't really just naming conventions. Having a second name for something that already existed - not to mention having the 'brontosaurus' being made from some bogus parts, eg. a skull of another dinosaur - is more than a simple naming error.
It's not intolerance, it's an airgap. Religion is a supernatural matter, not a tool by which one can gather objective evidence. To judge one by the standards of the other would be unfair (no matter whether a theist or atheist is trying to conflate one with the other.)
Regardless, religion wasn't part of the article, and it's completely irrelevant to the conversation. These two guys brought it up for no other reason than open mocking. That's not tolerance, that's Reddit.
Sadly, at least for Americans it's not irrelevant. In the USA paleontology, especially dinosaur paleontology, plays a huge role in the continuing political struggle over whether evolution should be taught in science classes. As a result the sources from which people learn about paleontology can often be quite partisan. A very large number of Americans learn their paleontology from sources whose approach to the subject is markedly different, which does play a part in the perpetuation of scientifically discredited ideas such as this one.
So while many of us would agree that the comparison ideally shouldn't be relevant, certain cultural realities mean that it is. Though it's definitely still tangential in this case.
The Catholic church is a pragmatic institution. You can be sure that if the tide of public opinion started flowing against evolution they'd drop their support in a heart-beat.
>Had this been a religious idea, I'm afraid the new evidence would have been buried and we'd still have the old, wrong idea.
Historically, religions have been found to be very adapting, incorporating new and existing ideas, and even elements from other religions. Christianity, for one, has incorporated many foreign elements and have changed over the years adapting to every era.
Sure, people have also been burned as a consequence of religion. Then again, people have been killed as a consequence of science too. 240.000 men, women, children and elderly died in Hiroshima and Nagashaki from the direct results of several years of work by the top physicists of the time. Or the people had followed psychiatric treatments such as lobotomy we now consider BS. Or the tens of thousands sterilised (in Western Europe) by eugenics programs that run until the '70s. Those are consequences of science too -- one cannot separate it from politics arbitrarily, else we can say the same about religion "oh, but a TRUE believer would never harm anyone", etc. Well, many very true scientists are working on biological weapons and other scary things, and a lot of true scientists amongst them hate other people or nations with a passion.
"Historically, religions have been found to be very adapting"
You're talking about syncretism. As new religions are generated, they draw from previous ritual and myth. This is not the sort of adaptation to eliminate falsehoods referenced here. The bible includes elements cribbed from other religions, it is not rewritten to be factual.
>This is not the sort of adaptation to eliminate falsehoods referenced here. The bible includes elements cribbed from other religions, it is not rewritten to be factual.
Both things happen.
Religions also take things out of their "canon" as the society evolves, precisely to take out old mistakes.
The way the Catholic church does not endorse slavery or the "Spanish Inquisition" as it once did, for example.
This story is also more consistent with saying the Brontosaurus "never existed", since it was the Brontosaurus that got given the wrong head. (Though one could well argue that Brontosaurus was just another name for Apatosaurus with the whole head thing just being an error in the visual representation of the dinosaur referred to by Brontosaurus.)
Related: There's apparently a similar thing happening with the triceratops/toroceratops. It's likely that the former is just an young version of the latter, not a different species.
My entire childhood is being retconned out of existence. First brontosaurs, then Pluto, now Triceratops - what's next, Count Chocula will turn out to have been a miscategorized lemur?
"It was missing a skull, so in 1883 when Marsh published a reconstruction of his Apatosaurus, Lamanna says he used the head of another dinosaur — thought to be a Camarasaurus — to complete the skeleton."
Since the first Apatosaurus featured the skull of another dinosaur, meaning Marsh named a non-existent animal, couldn't you argue that the Brontosaurus was the right name since it was applied to a more accurate reconstruction?
38 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 99.5 ms ] threadThat chimera certainly never existed.
So with the usual headline sensationalism, it is fair to say "it never existed". More accurately, one could say something like "the dinosaur popularly known as brontosaurus, is actually a aptosaurus with a different head..." But as a headline, it lacks punch.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bully_for_Brontosaurus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfMYw33jph0
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/b7bcd9b6-9ab1-11df-87e6-00144...
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/b7bcd9b6-9ab1-11df-87e6-00144...
I was pretty ticked off when I learned it was the 70's, and yet I still was taught about the brontosaurus in school a decade later. Makes me wonder if kids today still get taught about the ninth planet Pluto.
Increased the amount, but has the quality really improved that much? We've still got the latest free-energy, supplement/alt-med, cancer cure, and diet quacks making the rounds under the guise of "science" reporting.
Had this been a religious idea, I'm afraid the new evidence would have been buried and we'd still have the old, wrong idea.
We've refined our view of other dinos over the years, but we don't say that T-Rex never existed just because we know he stood differently than we first imagined.
So while many of us would agree that the comparison ideally shouldn't be relevant, certain cultural realities mean that it is. Though it's definitely still tangential in this case.
(on a side note: Do you make something the dogma? I never really used the word in that sense before)
Historically, religions have been found to be very adapting, incorporating new and existing ideas, and even elements from other religions. Christianity, for one, has incorporated many foreign elements and have changed over the years adapting to every era.
Sure, people have also been burned as a consequence of religion. Then again, people have been killed as a consequence of science too. 240.000 men, women, children and elderly died in Hiroshima and Nagashaki from the direct results of several years of work by the top physicists of the time. Or the people had followed psychiatric treatments such as lobotomy we now consider BS. Or the tens of thousands sterilised (in Western Europe) by eugenics programs that run until the '70s. Those are consequences of science too -- one cannot separate it from politics arbitrarily, else we can say the same about religion "oh, but a TRUE believer would never harm anyone", etc. Well, many very true scientists are working on biological weapons and other scary things, and a lot of true scientists amongst them hate other people or nations with a passion.
You're talking about syncretism. As new religions are generated, they draw from previous ritual and myth. This is not the sort of adaptation to eliminate falsehoods referenced here. The bible includes elements cribbed from other religions, it is not rewritten to be factual.
Both things happen.
Religions also take things out of their "canon" as the society evolves, precisely to take out old mistakes.
The way the Catholic church does not endorse slavery or the "Spanish Inquisition" as it once did, for example.
This story is also more consistent with saying the Brontosaurus "never existed", since it was the Brontosaurus that got given the wrong head. (Though one could well argue that Brontosaurus was just another name for Apatosaurus with the whole head thing just being an error in the visual representation of the dinosaur referred to by Brontosaurus.)
http://www.newser.com/story/97112/triceratops-never-existed....
Since the first Apatosaurus featured the skull of another dinosaur, meaning Marsh named a non-existent animal, couldn't you argue that the Brontosaurus was the right name since it was applied to a more accurate reconstruction?