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mineralsrocksandfossiltalks · 24 days

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Throwdown Thursday

As folks who traverse the internet on a regular basis we have all come across people who have somehow managed to miss every scientific advancement made in the last century (or more) and just refuse to accept they are on the losing end of their own arguments. So, how do you handle these people?

Well, the most important thing is to NOT try and convince them you are right and they are wrong. In the following screenshots, you will see bits of a conversation on a tiktok video of someone I follow meant to adress this comment made on another of his videos. I won't show the whole conversation because, frankly, it's ridiculously long and shouldn't be but the poor person trying to refute him didn't know how to just...well, let the guy live in oblivion. They tried the poor thing.

Anyway, let's dive in with his initial comment:

I bet you can see where this is going. The video was a brilliant explanation on taxonomy and how we classify animals now (we no longer use Linnean classification as genetics have proven it simply doesn't work).

Now, this same commenter turned up in the comments to the new video with more biting stubbornness and some poor soul tried to make him see reason but I could tell from the start this guy wasn't gonna budge. So, how do you deal with someone who won't accept the facts? Use their own methods against them. Here's how you would approach some of the statements and questions this person puts forth in this insanely long debate.

Let's start with his original comment: reptiles never turned into birds.

Where is your proof? How do you know that statement is false? Can you prove it's false? Or, you can use his own words:

Now, for his first comment on the new post, I think oblivion nailed it. Stating that his one and only example of what differences there are is not a solid defense of his statement. You would then ask if he had other, more irrefutable examples and go from there.

Again, use his own words: "Since you won't accept the evidence fibsh has already put forth, what do you consider 'real evidence'?" Or maybe "What real evidence is there that you are related to you 100th great grandfather besides some written word?"

This one we don't answer with a question, more of a statement. Something like "well, yeah, everything has been interpreted by 'some guy'. A well known example is the Bible.

There's lots that can be brought up here like a list of mesotherms (animals that are neither warm or cold blooded but somewhere in between) such as crocodiles, tegus (technically a warm blooded lizard but I am tossing it in for funsies), leatherback sea turtles, tuna, great white sharks, some species of bees, naked mole rats, hyraxes, echidnas. Notice none of these are all in one group. We have "reptiles", fish, insects and mammals all listed. This just goes to show that body temp is not a good way to classify animals.

However, a guy like this will probably use his favorite catch phrase in this conversation:

Reptiles also are not the only animals to have scales. What about fish? Butterflies? Pangolins?

He claims that you can't use scales as a grounds for relationship (even though he just said all reptiles exclusively had scales) so then ask him "what is a ground for a relationship then?" Make him explain his statement.

This one can be a bit tongue-and-cheek: hell yeah, we're both mammals so we are distantly related. Don't even acknowledge the rest. Agreeing with their statement will confuse the stubborn soul.

Two things I can say to this, one using his own arguments:

Fact: it is your opinion that evolution is an opinion. Give me evidence to back up your claim.

Again, what proves a relationship?

Three times he makes exceptions to this unspoken rule (we think he's using Linnean reasoning but it's a bit hard to tell as he kind of goes all over the place). So I would ask "How many exceptions can be made before the rule is considered invalid?"

Continuing on from his first exception he asks:

So, what do you do when they ask for an answer after arguing a bunch?

"Why? You've haven't accepted any of the other viable scientific evidence given why would this instance be any different?"

I mean, you look like your family, don't you? (And yes, I am including extended family and ancestors) Where is your evidence that you can't know something had offspring? We can only trace human DNA back 10 generations so how to we know they reproduced beyond that? Oh...right, we all exist. (Sarcastic line probably should be left out but I couldn't help myself).

By that logic, identical twins would be considered the same person.

You...you recognize this and don't see ANY connection...AT ALL? And to the second point:

Of course, when he does actually use this he doesn't give any evidence to back up any of his arguments so...bring that up as much as possible.

I thought evolution was pseudoscience. Or only when it doesn't support your opinion?

You weren't alive in the 1940's to collect data so did the Holocaust actually happen then?

What proof do you have? They aren't even attached to anything...(hint, he things they need them to mate).

Then explain why gharials looks so different from all the other crocs.

Do you know what an expert is? It is the opposite of an amateur...which is what you are.

Oh boy...wait till you find out about Mandarin Ducks (they can't breed with other ducks).

It keeps going so if you are interested in seeing the full conversation here is the link:

Anyway, good luck with the tough cookies and remember it's not about being right. It's about making them eat their words.

#paleontology #fossils #taxon #DNA #biol #birds are #birds are dinosaurs #opinion vs fact

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englishlistwords · 2 years

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Taxon

noun

A taxonomic category or group, such as a phylum, order, family, genus, or species.

a taxonomic group, or the name of a taxonomic grouping.

Any of the taxonomic categories such as phylum or subspecies

A specific taxonomic category above superfamily and below infraorder; a parvorder

animal or plant group having natural relations

#taxon #t

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five-of-cr · 6 months

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jesper: my boyfriend likes bugs so much, sometimes i think he'd love me MORE if i were a worm

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stargazing-zani · 2 months

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Fall of a Sparrow, a Wikipedia poem

#my stuff #environment #hamlet #rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead #idk I’ve loved the Wikipedia poem ever since I read Disaster Taxon #so here’s your sadder version

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fishyfishyfishtimes · 4 months

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Nothing better to start the fungi battles with than with a new profile picture!

Ta-da! The new profile picture for @battle-of-the-taxons is here! Like I said, the more we figure out Tumblr's favourite organism, the more specific the profile picture will get :3 Get ready to see the fungi phyla polls in the near future!!!

#these two are a mycelium network and yeast cells #with some creative liberties of course. cells dont have eyes!#the battle of the taxons #art #my art #biology #fungi

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alphynix · 2 years

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It Came From The Wastebasket #05: The Trouble With Troodon

Troodontids were small bird-like theropod dinosaurs, lightly built with slender legs and sickle-shaped "raptor" claws on the second toes of their feet. They had fairly big brains proportional to their body size, rather like modern birds, and their large forward-facing eyes had good depth perception. Owl-like asymmetrical ears in some species gave them a very keen sense of hearing, suggesting they may have been nocturnal hunters using sound to pinpoint the location of small prey.

The original specimen of the namesake of the group, Troodon formosus, was a serrated tooth discovered in the 1850s, about 77 million years old and originating from the Late Cretaceous Judith River Formation fossil beds in Montana, USA. It was so little to work with that it was initially mistaken for a lizard tooth, then during the 20th century it was recognized as belonging to a dinosaur and spent time classified as a megalosaurid, then a pachycephalosaur, then finally as a small theropod similar to the Mongolian Saurornithoides.

In the late 1980s it was merged together with multiple other troodontids (including Stenonychosaurus of speculative "dinosauroid" fame), and since Troodon had been the first of all of them to be named it took priority as the genus name.

And then for a while every single Late Cretaceous troodontid specimen from North America was also lumped into Troodon, turning it into a wastebasket taxon.

The problem was that all these troodontids came from locations separated by thousands of kilometers and millions of years of time, and it's unlikely that they all actually represented just one single species. But they were only known from rare fragmentary remains, making distinguishing them from each other difficult, and the original Troodon tooth didn't really have any distinctive features either – it turns out most troodontid teeth all look exactly the same!

It was becmoning increasingly dubious whether Troodon was even a valid name at all, and during the 2010s several paleontologists began trying to sort the mess out. The old names Pectinodon and Stenonychosaurus were revived, and some 'Troodon' fossils were also split off and given completely new names, becoming Albertavenator and Latenivenatrix*.

* Although Latenivenatrix might not actually be distinct enough from Stenonychosaurus to justify having a separate name.

As of 2022, Troodon itself is now in a sort of taxonomic limbo, with some paleontologists abandoning it as a dubious name while others are still arguing in favor of continuing to use it. The name could potentially be properly rescued if the original tooth can be clearly linked to better fossil material, letting Troodon take over priority again from one of the other better-established troodontids, or by defining a new type species similar to what happened with Iguanodon.

…But with how incredibly generic that tooth is, both of those options would be very difficult.

———

Nix Illustration | Tumblr | Twitter | Patreon

#it came from the wastebasket #wastebasket taxon #taxonomy #troodon #stenonychosaurus #pectinodon #albertavenator #latenivenatrix #troodontid #maniraptora #theropod #dinosaur #paleontology #art #science illustration #paleoart #palaeoblr

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victusinveritas · 2 days

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A photographer took the first ever photograph of a living coelacanth. https://bbc.in/4b5oX5q

#marine biology #lazarus taxon #coelacanth #fishblr #bioblr #bbc #underwater photography

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knuppitalism-with-ue · 1 year

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Another sketch brought to you by #paleostream

Rolfodon is a giant relative of the modern frilled shark, large enough to eat small or juvenile mosasaurs.

#paleoart #sciart #paleostream #rolfodon #shark #cretaceous #tooth taxon #mosasaur

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mrpsychokiller · 4 months

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my gender is cartoon cat. i'm a cat but not like a real life cat, or really a "furry" cat, i'd like to be a cat character in a cartoon or anime or children's book illustration, or a 2009 deviantart oc. not a cat but an artistic representation of a cat, an abstraction. cute and small, friendly and kind, cat-like but with endless possibilities of looking any way and doing anything, living in an abstraction of reality where my existence is as fluid as art is. i'm also a boy

#🧃#this is a joke but also not #i have a hard time putting in words my affinity for identifying as a cat and specifically cartoon and furry cats #as in its less about cats (specially the real ones) and more about my desire to be a character. to somehow *be* art #something about abstract identity against absolute reality #about wanting to be something thats not real and doesnt exist #wanting to escape my painful body and painful reality by having no body and no reality at all #other of the momentaneous bliss of a drawing where my body floats in a void of bright colors and nothing else really matters #thats why im a furry probably. patricia taxon had something to do with this

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madame-mongoose · 7 months

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Wait have people not known Troodon has been an invalid species for a while now

#i thought everyone agreed it was a wastebasket taxon like months ago #i just saw people shocked on the paleo pines post on twitter #surprised they kept it in game honestly #monnie rambles

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spiderh0rse · 3 months

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once saw gordon freeman referred to as "the resistance's pet missile." and yeah, that's spot on, isn't it? maybe not in every sense but it's pretty damn close.

point him at something and watch him destroy it. give him a little space to work with and he'll break anything. of course, that's just how the games are designed, but it is very interesting.

in half life one, you go and kill the nihilianth because you're the only one that might be able to do it, and if you don't, the world will end. everything until being sent there is small fetch quest after fetch quest, going from once place to another and lead by a variety of people who all just want to make it out alive.

half life two. gordon freeman is employed. he's not doing this because he had the opportunity, he's doing this because a man in a suit stuck him on a train and expected, correctly, that he'd know what to do from there. point and shoot.

makes the episodes feel interesting. you aren't destroying anything huge, there. you're going home. the opportunity to be free and you spend it protecting instead of blatantly destroying something. no power trip through the citadel, no death throes of the nihilianth, but saving a friend's life. protecting home. no longer doing what you were hired for. it's nice.

#the place i saw him called that was ''lazarus taxons and other things gordon freeman cannot kill''#or something along those lines. ao3.#amazing work. would highly recommend #half life #gordon freeman #meta

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hakunonon · 20 days

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come on man, how do you correctly identify the pterosaur as a flying reptile distinct from dinosaurs, but in the same sentence call plesiosaurus and ichthyosaurus 'dinosaurs'

#calling a pterosaur a dinosaur almost makes more sense! at least they're the dinosaurs' sister taxon #hakunonon vs the gacha

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arthistoryanimalia · 1 year

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Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer was born #OTD (South Africa, 24 February 1907 – 17 May 2004). She is best known for her key role in the 1938 rediscovery of the Coelacanth, a fish with a fossil record going back over 400 million years which was thought to have gone extinct during the K-Pg extinction event of 66 millions years ago.

Below are her original sketch and desciption of the specimen she recovered from a South African fishing boat's catch and did her best to preserve until the ichthyologist she was writing to, J. L. B. Smith (South African, 1897 - 1968) could arrive to identify it. He was indeed able to confirm it was the long-lost Coelacanth, and give the genus the scientific name Latimeria in her honor.

Here is a four-stamp set issued by South Africa in 1989 commemorating the event, designed by Sheila Nowers:

PS - the 1938 one is now known as the West Indian Ocean Coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae), as there was a SECOND living species confirmed in 1999, named the Indonesian Coelacanth (L. menadoensis). Its find was commemorated by Indonesia with this 2000 souvenir stamp sheet:

Here is a cool video about this amazing "Lazarus taxon" and Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer's key role in finding and perserving her now-famous specimen for science:

Animated Life: The Living Fossil Fish | HHMI BioInteractive Video

youtube

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a-dinosaur-a-day · 8 months

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Thots on Nanotyrannus?

juvenile tyrannosaurus' version of an emo phase

#nanotyrannus #nanotyrannus is not a valid taxon #tyrannosaurus #t. rex #dinosaurs

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patricia-taxxon · 1 year

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Hey, someone who recently found you through "Art, Furries, God" and loved your work so much that I then binged your video essays. I've been trying out some of your music but don't know where to start. I usually just listen to songs released separately when I find a new artist, and in doing that, I've already found and loved "Spartacus," "Try the Wine," and "Cilantro". I know it's up to me to enjoy the songs/albums as I see fit, but I was wondering if you have any suggestions on where/how to start?

Partially out of interest of making my discography as intuitively navigable as possible, I am *very* particular about making the music embody the vibe of the album art. It's like the reverse of artists drawing while listening to music, I look at art while I music. You'll have a good idea of what you're getting into just from looking at the cover, so follow whatever you resonate with.

But also, definitely start with the flowers of robert mapplethorpe.

#patricia taxxon ask #patty taxon self analysis #cilantromixture

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fishyfishyfishtimes · 4 months

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You know, I’m actually quite happy that fungi won the kingdom rounds in the Battle of the Taxons. It showed two things: One, that no, people on here would not just vote for the kitties and doggies or whatever else “basic” thing we deem bad because it is popular. Animalia was close but now we’re in the phylum that contains no fluffy furry animals at all (fluffy organisms, though? That’s a different story)! In fact, no animals at all!! Isn’t that awesome? I don’t think that would happen on any other social media! Had Animalia won I have zero doubt that arthropods and mollusks would’ve taken a quick lead right next to the chordates, and had they won, well… there’s ray-finned fishes, cartilaginous fishes, birds, reptiles, so on! I suppose animal showdown will show us the hypothetical scenario…

Two, the poll was very very even for a long while, but after fungi took lead, the animalia fans really activated to show why they love animals. Before that, most of the animalia propaganda was essentially “fungi wouldn’t be very fun” but people really came around at the end with showing off all their favourite animals and animal facts, weird and wonderful! It was a wonderful development and in my opinion that’s the very best part, showing why you love something!

#the battle of the taxons #perhaps i shouldve made my tags into actual reblogs back then. oh well…

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