- Joined
- Sep 24, 2020
Paleontologist lolcows. Well, not full blown lolcows, and sensible, likeable people for the most part. But being in a profession mired in academia, they can have their moments. Here are a handful.
The authors of the blog SV-POW! Sauropod Vertebra Picture Of the Week Mike Taylor and Matt Wedel, let some of their lefty, marxist tendencies bleed through. I rarely check the blog anymore because they rant about open access in scientific publishing i.e. gibs as much as they rave about dinosaur bones. Otherwise it's pretty subtle. Here's one instance from Taylor where that wasn't the case.

svpow.com
"Muh brexit ruined my kids straight-A exam results."
I have a book coauthored by Wedel. Most examples of hypothetical paleontologists in it are refered to as 'she'. It's a small thing, but effective at throwing speedbumps in the flow of the narrative when your virtue signal bullshitometer has been finely calibrated.
There's Mark Witton, a paleontologist and a pretty good paleoartist. You might remember him from articles and images of giant pterosaurs compared to giraffes, years ago. When the George Floyd story and BLM came to prominence a couple of years ago, he broke down about the problem of racism in paleoart read it again: the problem of racism in dinosaur pictures distressed that some people who drew icthyosaurs hundreds of years ago had slaves, and vowing never to paint cavemen with black hair ever again. Not cavemen with dark skin, nothing to do with skin color, you understand. Just black hair.
I don't know what parts to screenshot or quote. It's all kind of deranged.
markwitton-com.blogspot.com
A little more recently, he reviewed Ammonite, a film about real life fossil hunting pioneer Mary Anning.
markwitton-com.blogspot.com
The film portrays her as entering a same-sex relationship with another real life figure, geologist Charlotte Murchison, which has no basis in reality. This review is as interesting for the cognitive dissonance created by that situation, as it is as an appraisal of the film. You can almost hear the gears grinding in Marks head and see the smoke pouring out of his ears, like a 1950s robot ordered to compute 'love', as his devotion to the scientific ideal of objective fact and the desperate need to be seen as a good ally go head to head.
It's a pity because his blog is usually quite informative and thunk-provoking if you're a dinosperg, and emphasised with his own art.
Greg Paul. Gregory S. Paul. GSP. Famous, infamous, secular saint and eccentric granpa of the paleontology world. Probably wishes he was a likeable nut like Bob Bakker instead of a get-off-my-lawn nut. He was a big figure in the dinosaur renaissance that began in the late 60s, that brought in the idea that dinosaurs were warm blooded and that modern birds are essentially small theropods. Drew dinosaurs with fuzzy feathers years before it was cool. I understand his reputation suffered a little when he became notorious as a 'lumper' and more recently a 'splitter' i.e. lumping lots of dinosaur species into one species or genus, or splitting them up. Probably why Michael Crichton and Steven Spielberg made 'velociraptor' a household word and not 'deinonychus' and turned towards euphoric atheist writing, but I'd have to dig a lot deeper to find out more.
His reputation suffered a bigger hit in 2011 when, among other things, he tried to claim ownership of a pose for skeletal drawings, one that he'd made popular in the 70s and 80s.

This kicked off a lot of discussion, mostly respectful and sympathetic about the problems of underpaid paleoart and getting ripped off by individuals and institutions, but always with a wry swipe along the lines of "good luck claiming royalties on a pose". This response is a good example of the 'tough cheese' reactions.

Other paleoartists grumbled but for the most part kowtowed:

www.skeletaldrawing.com
If anyone feels autistic enough to read through the back and forth, start at March 3rd here:
It took up most of the Dinosaur Mailing List, and random, orbiting dinosaur blogs, for the next couple of weeks.
Greg was back this year, 2022, with a new coauthored paper that split Tyrannosaurus rex into three species: T. rex, T. regina and T. imperator.
I have to switch to my own inbox here because the old DML archive chugged to a halt last year, and the subscription address for the new, locked archive at USC apparently doesn't exist on their servers. If anyone here can test it or figure out what I'm doing wrong, I'd be grateful.
He already goes off a bit about the initial disagreements over the paper Steve Brusatte, Tom Carr and Tom Holtz are also highly regarded paleontologists dismissing their doubts while admitting part of his motivation for this is so that his dubious species end up with 'cool names'. Not too cowish. His follow up, though. Hang on, this is a big un.
Congratulations if you made it through all that. Here are a couple of points I'd like to highlight.
After berating one of his peers for being rhetorical, flippant, and unscientific for using too small sample sizes in his species evaluation, Greg then declares the fault of too small sample sizes rests at the feet of ignorant republican christian ranchers who think they have a right to things that exist on their property.
This man is almost 70.
This is his butthurt in a nutshell. He thinks fellow paleontologists question and sometimes reject his assertions because they're part of a moribund, dogmatic system that he's valiantly fighting. But in this case the lack of amazement and accolades that bewilders him is due to the fact that this isn't the first, or even second time that someone's proposed breaking up Tyrannosaurus rex, and the idea's been found wanting every time. Citations when I can be bothered to look for them
You have to accept his T. rex splitting paper, otherwise how are the museumgoing children of the world even going to know what they're looking at? They'll lose faith in The Science and the creationist chuds will win!
The authors of the blog SV-POW! Sauropod Vertebra Picture Of the Week Mike Taylor and Matt Wedel, let some of their lefty, marxist tendencies bleed through. I rarely check the blog anymore because they rant about open access in scientific publishing i.e. gibs as much as they rave about dinosaur bones. Otherwise it's pretty subtle. Here's one instance from Taylor where that wasn't the case.


I’ve been an idiot for three years; or, goodbye Brexit, hello Open Access!
If you check out the Shiny Digital Future page on this site, where we write about scholarly publishing, open access, open data and other such matters, you will see the following: 2009: 9 posts 2010…
Here’s another funny thing. My eldest son was taking his A-levels in the summer of 2016. He had got so good at the Core 4 paper in maths that he was reliably scoring 95–100% on every past paper. He took the actual exam on the morning of 24th June, and scored 65% — a mark so low that it prevented him getting an A* grade.
Well, we all know what happened on the 23rd of June 2016: the Brexit referendum. I know that opinions differ on the desirability of Brexit, but for our family it was emotionally devastating. It’s the reason Dan was so knocked sideways that he botched his Core 4 paper. It’s hung over us all to a greater or lesser extent ever since, and it’s only with the recent triumph of the “Conservative” Party1 in the 2019 General Election that I’ve finally attained the ability to think of it as Somebody Else’s Problem. There is something gloriously liberating about being so comprehensively beaten that you can just give up.
"Muh brexit ruined my kids straight-A exam results."
I have a book coauthored by Wedel. Most examples of hypothetical paleontologists in it are refered to as 'she'. It's a small thing, but effective at throwing speedbumps in the flow of the narrative when your virtue signal bullshitometer has been finely calibrated.
There's Mark Witton, a paleontologist and a pretty good paleoartist. You might remember him from articles and images of giant pterosaurs compared to giraffes, years ago. When the George Floyd story and BLM came to prominence a couple of years ago, he broke down about the problem of racism in paleoart read it again: the problem of racism in dinosaur pictures distressed that some people who drew icthyosaurs hundreds of years ago had slaves, and vowing never to paint cavemen with black hair ever again. Not cavemen with dark skin, nothing to do with skin color, you understand. Just black hair.
I don't know what parts to screenshot or quote. It's all kind of deranged.
Racism in palaeoart and #BlackLivesMatter
The recent Black Lives Matter protests resulting from the cruel murder of George Floyd at the hands of US police officers have once again dr...
A little more recently, he reviewed Ammonite, a film about real life fossil hunting pioneer Mary Anning.
Film review: <i>Ammonite</i> (2021)
After a long wait and much online discussion, the Mary Anning-inspired historic drama Ammonite is finally on general release. As goes the p...
The film portrays her as entering a same-sex relationship with another real life figure, geologist Charlotte Murchison, which has no basis in reality. This review is as interesting for the cognitive dissonance created by that situation, as it is as an appraisal of the film. You can almost hear the gears grinding in Marks head and see the smoke pouring out of his ears, like a 1950s robot ordered to compute 'love', as his devotion to the scientific ideal of objective fact and the desperate need to be seen as a good ally go head to head.
It's a pity because his blog is usually quite informative and thunk-provoking if you're a dinosperg, and emphasised with his own art.
Greg Paul. Gregory S. Paul. GSP. Famous, infamous, secular saint and eccentric granpa of the paleontology world. Probably wishes he was a likeable nut like Bob Bakker instead of a get-off-my-lawn nut. He was a big figure in the dinosaur renaissance that began in the late 60s, that brought in the idea that dinosaurs were warm blooded and that modern birds are essentially small theropods. Drew dinosaurs with fuzzy feathers years before it was cool. I understand his reputation suffered a little when he became notorious as a 'lumper' and more recently a 'splitter' i.e. lumping lots of dinosaur species into one species or genus, or splitting them up. Probably why Michael Crichton and Steven Spielberg made 'velociraptor' a household word and not 'deinonychus' and turned towards euphoric atheist writing, but I'd have to dig a lot deeper to find out more.
His reputation suffered a bigger hit in 2011 when, among other things, he tried to claim ownership of a pose for skeletal drawings, one that he'd made popular in the 70s and 80s.

This kicked off a lot of discussion, mostly respectful and sympathetic about the problems of underpaid paleoart and getting ripped off by individuals and institutions, but always with a wry swipe along the lines of "good luck claiming royalties on a pose". This response is a good example of the 'tough cheese' reactions.

Other paleoartists grumbled but for the most part kowtowed:

The Great Skeletal Repose of 2011Dr. Scott Hartman's Skeletal Drawing.com
As many of you are no doubt aware, earlier this year paleontologist and scientific illustrator Greg Paul made a fairly public hubbub when (among other demands) he requested that all other illustrators stop using the skeletal poses he p
If anyone feels autistic enough to read through the back and forth, start at March 3rd here:
It took up most of the Dinosaur Mailing List, and random, orbiting dinosaur blogs, for the next couple of weeks.
Greg was back this year, 2022, with a new coauthored paper that split Tyrannosaurus rex into three species: T. rex, T. regina and T. imperator.
I have to switch to my own inbox here because the old DML archive chugged to a halt last year, and the subscription address for the new, locked archive at USC apparently doesn't exist on their servers. If anyone here can test it or figure out what I'm doing wrong, I'd be grateful.
He already goes off a bit about the initial disagreements over the paper Steve Brusatte, Tom Carr and Tom Holtz are also highly regarded paleontologists dismissing their doubts while admitting part of his motivation for this is so that his dubious species end up with 'cool names'. Not too cowish. His follow up, though. Hang on, this is a big un.
Congratulations if you made it through all that. Here are a couple of points I'd like to highlight.
After berating one of his peers for being rhetorical, flippant, and unscientific for using too small sample sizes in his species evaluation, Greg then declares the fault of too small sample sizes rests at the feet of ignorant republican christian ranchers who think they have a right to things that exist on their property.
This man is almost 70.
This is his butthurt in a nutshell. He thinks fellow paleontologists question and sometimes reject his assertions because they're part of a moribund, dogmatic system that he's valiantly fighting. But in this case the lack of amazement and accolades that bewilders him is due to the fact that this isn't the first, or even second time that someone's proposed breaking up Tyrannosaurus rex, and the idea's been found wanting every time. Citations when I can be bothered to look for them
You have to accept his T. rex splitting paper, otherwise how are the museumgoing children of the world even going to know what they're looking at? They'll lose faith in The Science and the creationist chuds will win!
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