Paleontology and Previous Life on Earth Sperging Thread

[7.62x38mmR]

Thoughts on this from people who know more about paleontology? Are we too quick to classify something as a new discovery? Are we classifying baby dinos as different animals? Am I crazy?

bro lemme fucking tell you you have no fucking idea
I have run in so much nomenclature sludge and classification issues i would have probably hanged myself if i didn't like palaeontology. For example, horsetails today are classified in the genus Equisetum. And, a while ago, some schmuck found a fossil horsetail that looked somewhat similar, and he named that horsetail Equisetites. Simple, right ?
Well the issue is Equisetites got a whole buncha species added to it. Cool. But these species are really really different from each other and now the genus is widely considered paraphyletic (made up of unrelated species that do not form a biological/evolutionnary group), containing both very primitive stuff and things that look like present day forms. Buuuut since it's old shit and very complex no one ever really bothered sorting it out because it seems way too complex. It gets complicated when you get to later species, since a lot of them are basically the same kind of stuff as the modern-day Equisetum. And with the current generic diagnosis (=what defines a genus) of Equisetites being essentially the same, you end up with a problem : which genus do they belong to ?
And that's were opinions "DIFFER". It's a shitshow, and no one seems to be able to actually sort it out, so you have a shit ton of species that have 2 names and are never classified properly or get assembled into a single monophyletic group but belong to 2 different species. I can essentially boil it down to 2 arguments :
"X species is basically indistinguishable from the modern day genus"
against
"X species is too old to belong to the modern day genus

I said fuck off you niggers and chose Equisetum for modern-looking species because i'm done dealing with that shit

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

Tiny elephants used to roam the Earth. One of the smallest was the Maltese pygmy elephant. Imagine a world where tiny elephants were domesticated.

 

[7.62x38mmR]

Similarily, in paleobotany, you have a shit ton of issues with FORM-TAXA.
Basically, genuses that are named not to represent a single natural group but just based on morphology alone, with generally a VERY broad diagnosis. Making these genuses essentially fucking worthless because they don't truly represent anything. For example, the conifer foliage genus Brachyphyllum encompasses natural plants from both the Cheirolepidiaceae and the Araucariaceae, two very different families of conifers. Plenty of genuses have this issue in very different fashions, from Ashicaulis (various fossil trunks, all belonging to the Osmundaceae) to Cladophlebis (mostly Osmundaceae but plenty of other shit) or even Sphenopteris (RANDOM BULLSHIT, GO !!!!).
But form-taxa also occur for plenty of other shit !
Like microplankton, dinosaurs eggs, fruits, seed, pollen, flowers, pollen organs, leaves, fossil wood, fossil FUCKING TWIGS, footprints, your mother, etc...

It's insanely annoying when reading about the ecology of certain plants or attempting to classify them properly because some are so unnaturally large you just cannot even pretend to attempt coherency while classifying them
There's 2 big options on the matter :

• Either you decide to attempt to make something as coherent as possible and try to assemble associated parts at certain localities or try to name genuses in a precise fashion with as many parts as possible in order to help represent true species
• Or you are a neobotanist and decide that everything is worthless so you keep naming more and more separate form taxa even if they obviously belonged to the same plant
  
  
  
  Neobotanists are cringe NIGGERS

 

[Haramburger]

Tiny elephants used to roam the Earth. One of the smallest was the Maltese pygmy elephant. Imagine a world where tiny elephants were domesticated.

The Annunaki tamed sasquatch who in turn used the pygmy elephant as a beast of burden to assist them in mining gold for their space overlords:

 

[Sexual Chocolate]

Dinosaurs never existed.
Evolution doesn't exist.
Birds are not Dinosaurs.
And your trilobites

ARE

ALL

JUST

DIFFERENT

BREEDS

OF

HORSE SHOE CRAB

If dinosaurs aren't real, explain Fred Flintstone, motherfucker.

 

[Astro Loafo]

Allow me to introduce you to Milo. He recently graduated and got really big on TikTok debunking archeology facts.
He is also on Youtube where he has a series called Awful Archaeology. Episode 6 was on the Baghdad Battery.
Having Milo in my playlist lead me to seeing a video by Artifactually Speaking watching Milo's Baghdad battery video. And he rips apart everything Milo got wrong seeing as he's a professor and this is his area of expertise. But so respectfully..

So anyway that all leads up to Milo, reacting to the professor reacting him and it's just all so wholesome. Milo trying not to be a fanboy and seriously being humble. I think this kid is going to go far, honestly. He is the Indiana Jones version of Gen Z and younger for sure! (It'll make more sense once you watch the video.)

If this is the wrong place I apologize, but to be fair I don't know what Milo's specialty is?
Edit 2: I retract the apology, we are life on earth too.

I hate Milo. He pops up on my algorithm. Starts debunking. I think oh cool maybe he ll talk about some rustic shit I haven't heard of. No, just dunking on tiktok fags who are clearly on a spectrum below chris. It's like watching a nigger go full contact on basketball on a 5 yr old. Then glory screech.

 

[Big Miss Steak]

bro lemme fucking tell you you have no fucking idea
I have run in so much nomenclature sludge and classification issues i would have probably hanged myself if i didn't like palaeontology. For example, horsetails today are classified in the genus Equisetum. And, a while ago, some schmuck found a fossil horsetail that looked somewhat similar, and he named that horsetail Equisetites. Simple, right ?
Well the issue is Equisetites got a whole buncha species added to it. Cool. But these species are really really different from each other and now the genus is widely considered paraphyletic (made up of unrelated species that do not form a biological/evolutionnary group), containing both very primitive stuff and things that look like present day forms. Buuuut since it's old shit and very complex no one ever really bothered sorting it out because it seems way too complex. It gets complicated when you get to later species, since a lot of them are basically the same kind of stuff as the modern-day Equisetum. And with the current generic diagnosis (=what defines a genus) of Equisetites being essentially the same, you end up with a problem : which genus do they belong to ?
And that's were opinions "DIFFER". It's a shitshow, and no one seems to be able to actually sort it out, so you have a shit ton of species that have 2 names and are never classified properly or get assembled into a single monophyletic group but belong to 2 different species. I can essentially boil it down to 2 arguments :
"X species is basically indistinguishable from the modern day genus"
against
"X species is too old to belong to the modern day genus

I said fuck off you niggers and chose Equisetum for modern-looking species because i'm done dealing with that shit

God bless my mom for sitting 8 year old me down and explaining that paleontology is a lot of academic bickering and stroking rocks with a toothbrush.

 

[Toolbox]

Do we have a paleontology community watch thread to go with this? There's sperging going back decades not to mention just the autism from the armchair crowd on Youtube.

 

[7.62x38mmR]

I hate Milo. He pops up on my algorithm. Starts debunking. I think oh cool maybe he ll talk about some rustic shit I haven't heard of. No, just dunking on tiktok fags who are clearly on a spectrum below chris. It's like watching a nigger go full contact on basketball on a 5 yr old. Then glory screech.

Yeah if you wanna dunk on some retards go for Retallack or the "Prototaxites is acchrutually a rolled up mat of plants okayyyyy"cels, not some tiktok tards

 

[12345]

I hate Milo. He pops up on my algorithm. Starts debunking. I think oh cool maybe he ll talk about some rustic shit I haven't heard of. No, just dunking on tiktok fags who are clearly on a spectrum below chris. It's like watching a nigger go full contact on basketball on a 5 yr old. Then glory screech.

If you are on the computer and you click on the 3 little dots at the end of the title, you can choose "Don't show me this content." and you won't.

 

[Crex Crex]

Do we have a paleontology community watch thread to go with this? There's sperging going back decades not to mention just the autism from the armchair crowd on Youtube.

There is so much untapped milk in the crowd of YouTube/Tumblr armchair paleontologists. It's either retards who think they're experts because they bingewatched Trey the Explainer or manchildren who cry whenever dinosaurs aren't depicted brutally mauling eachother.

 

[Astro Loafo]

If you are on the computer and you click on the 3 little dots at the end of the title, you can choose "Don't show me this content." and you won't.

I DID!

I DO THAT TO EVERY VID BUT THEY KEEP CUMMING BACK!!!!

THE ALGORERYTHEM IS OUT TO GET ME!!!!

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

I DID!

I DO THAT TO EVERY VID BUT THEY KEEP CUMMING BACK!!!!

THE ALGORERYTHEM IS OUT TO GET ME!!!!

Do what I do when the algo decides to be a bitch. Start watching more of something you actually enjoy. My Youtube recommendations are mostly computers, history, cooking, hey hey people game reviews, prehistory, cute animals, random technology stuff, video games, shitposts about said games, industrial music, and metal. Give Tiktok a really good idea what you're into and it'll probably work the same as Youtube's castrated algo.

 

[cactus]

I DID!

I DO THAT TO EVERY VID BUT THEY KEEP CUMMING BACK!!!!

THE ALGORERYTHEM IS OUT TO GET ME!!!!

If it's in the sidebar, I know you can click "do not recommend channel" or something like that.

I like his debunking, but he has traces of being woke, he refuses to hear arguments against climate change even if the evidence he presents contradicts the global consensus.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

A new species of plesiosaur was discovered and it's making paleontologists lose their minds.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

I like the big bus-sized centipedes.

One of my friends is convinced that paleontologists are motivated to make new "discoveries" on little to no evidence to justify funding

That is literally every academic field.
But in biology specifically people label new "species" with very spurious standards. Find something that looks different from something else? Species. Even though we call all humans one species despite tons of differences between them.

You know how they quantify the rate of species extinction?
They go in the jungle, spray pesticides on stuff. Count up the dead bugs. See how many unique dead bugs they can find in each block of land. See how that number changes over time. Then assume that that's reflective of how many unique species "should" exist, then make up some bullshit number of how many went extinct.

 

[Crysocyan]

That is literally every academic field.
But in biology specifically people label new "species" with very spurious standards. Find something that looks different from something else? Species. Even though we call all humans one species despite tons of differences between them.

Yes, taxonomists are retarded (wolves, dogs, coyotes are all technically different species despite being able to interbreed). But humans are still one species, because we can all interbreed between eachother. Maybe several human subspecies exist, but this is pedantic and ultimately impossible to determine. Because it's a gradient game, being unable to determine what truly separates the American red foxes from the European red foxes.

There is neither coyote nor wolf, there is neither large nor small, there are neither pointed ears nor rounded ears: for ye are all one in Canis Genus.
Galatians 3:28

 

[NoReturn]

Yes, taxonomists are retarded (wolves, dogs, coyotes are all technically different species despite being able to interbreed). But humans are still one species, because we can all interbreed between eachother. Maybe several human subspecies exist, but this is pedantic and ultimately impossible to determine. Because it's a gradient game, being unable to determine what truly separates the American red foxes from the European red foxes.

Source of this weird quote: https://theconversation.com/how-the...hat-race-has-no-place-in-human-ancestry-53594

 

[Toolbox]

Yes, taxonomists are retarded (wolves, dogs, coyotes are all technically different species despite being able to interbreed). But humans are still one species, because we can all interbreed between eachother. Maybe several human subspecies exist, but this is pedantic and ultimately impossible to determine. Because it's a gradient game, being unable to determine what truly separates the American red foxes from the European red foxes.

There is neither coyote nor wolf, there is neither large nor small, there are neither pointed ears nor rounded ears: for ye are all one in Canis Genus.
Galatians 3:28
View attachment 3740980

Taxonomy is the most autistic field in the world and it's made me not want to pursue anything surrounding it because of the latent sperging. You have constant fights over classification over the stupidest shit, names being changed because someone doesn't think the latin is accurate enough, or more recently and stupidly because clown world, 'offensive' names being subtly or obviously changed. The most retarded of these I stumbled on recently is the attempt to change wandering jew to wandering dude, the dumbest, softest attempt at a joke I've seen and dumb in general because it depends on what version of a myth you're using as the historical precedent, and either way it's dumb. Yeah in this case not scientific name, and it's a plant, but my point applies to anything with nigro/negro in it in the latin name terms for one.

View attachment 3741093
Source of this weird quote: https://theconversation.com/how-the...hat-race-has-no-place-in-human-ancestry-53594

It really just feels like massive semantics just because they want to walk on eggshells. Somehow two different insects that act the same, look the same, are the same size, and are even located within the same area and can interbreed count as two different species because one has a slightly differently bent shape on the thorax that you have to use a microscope to see, yet humans with different skulls, hair, genetic composition, facial structure in general, endurance, immune systems, etc don't count. It flies in the face of all of the other shit in taxonomy and it makes the whole field look even weaker scientifically.

 

[JJLiautaud]

Me when people say the Nastapoka arc isn't an impact crater.
View attachment 3728516View attachment 3728514
At least the one in Greenland is being taken seriously:
View attachment 3728519

Nigger do we have the shocked quartz or the microdiamonds to test this hypothesis? Economic Geology is my favorite field of geology, heres a good presentation on the topic, not the guy's voice is a little dull but he can deliver a really well organized lecture.