"Brontosaurus" Name Resurrected Thanks To New Dino Family Tree 68
sciencehabit writes In, the U.S. Postal Service issued colorful dinosaur stamps, including one for Brontosaurus. Paleontologists and educators loudly protested that the correct scientific name for the iconic beast was Apatosaurus—a fact that even lay dino aficionados and many 8-year-olds took pride in knowing. But now, a dinosaur-sized study of the family tree of the Diplodocidae, the group that includes such monstrous beasts as Apatosaurus, Diplodocus, and Barosaurus, finds that USPS got it right: The fossils originally called Brontosaurus show enough skeletal differences from other specimens of Apatosaurus that they rightfully belong to a different genus. The study, published online this week in the journal PeerJ, brings the long-banished name back into scientific respectability as a genus coequal with Apatosaurus.
No News (Score:1)
Slow news today
Re:No News (Score:4, Funny)
Slow news my @55! Speak for yourself, bozo! So my good friend Fred Flintstone will finally be able to dump that stupid name "apatoburger" and refer to his favorite food once again by its proper rightful name.
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I am so glad, myself. I got attached to the name Brontosaurus at age 4 and never let go. I've even been teaching my kids both variations on the name, JUST IN CASE. Vindication!
Now get Pluto designated a planet (Score:5, Funny)
Plutosaurus? (Score:2)
"Normal" depends who you ask. [staticflickr.com]
Re:Now get Pluto designated a planet (Score:5, Funny)
"Pluto" Reinstated as a Planet Thanks To New Grammar Analysis
In, the IAU created the "dwarf planet" category and put Pluto in it. Everyone thought this meant Pluto was no longer a planet. But now, an advanced analysis of English expressions which included "blue car" and "white cloud" came to the conclusion that a blue car is a car, and that a dwarf planet is a planet. The study, published this week, brings the long-banished planet back into scientific respectability.
Re:Now get Pluto designated a planet (Score:5, Funny)
Schoolchildren are bing taught there are eight planets
Home schooled kids are still learning about all nine. Obama's conspiracy to purge Pluto from the textbooks is not going to work. When Ted Cruz wins in 2016, both Pluto and the brontosaurus will be back. The Republicans aren't call the "dinosaur party" for nothing.
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Schoolchildren are bing taught there are eight planets
Actually, Bing-taught kids are learning that there are 13 ;P A search for "number of planets" returns the following quote from universetoday.com:
"For those of us who believe dwarf planets should be counted as a subclass of planets, the latest status is that our solar system now has 13 planets: four terrestrial planets, four jovian planets, and five dwarf planets."
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It's sad. It's time for me to give another donation to the fund to help the humor impaired.
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Maybe not normal but at least the stuff I learned as a kid will be right again.
Re:Now get Pluto designated a planet (Score:4, Interesting)
I learned a long time ago, the stuff I was taught in elementary school was nearly all wrong.
So when I hear that established fact has changed, it doesn't bug me so much. It is just part of the normal course.
Truth is the opposite of lying, Truth isn't absolute fact.
Scientific Truth, is the best guess on how things are based on evidence. As we get more evidence the nature of the scientific truth changes. The outdated scientific truth was truthful when it was new, as with the evidence it was the best case to follow. Then we find more and a better idea.... Sometimes we realize after we get even more the original idea was better.
Re:Now get Pluto designated a planet (Score:5, Funny)
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Yes, please, this!!! 1 down, 2 to go (I also want to see our National Anthem restored to its original version by having "under God" removed.
I would settle for seeing the Pledge of Allegiance not referred to as the National Anthem.
Makes me want to shout (Score:4, Funny)
Yabbadabba Doo!
When was that again? (Score:5, Funny)
In, the U.S. Postal Service issued colorful dinosaur stamps
That would be in 1989, according to 2 minutes of googlating. Good job, "editors"!
Re:When was that again? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Look, we're talking about dinosaurs here. Things that haven't been seen on this planet for hundreds of millions of years (well, except for the three digit UID guys). Twenty years is just pocket change.
Re:When was that again? (Score:5, Informative)
What are you talking about? Every self-respecting nerd [xkcd.com] should know [bioone.org] that they're still here.
People need to stop picturing all dinosaurs as looking like some kind of leathery reptiles. I mean, we not only know now that velociraptor was feathered, but even how many secondary wing feathers it had [sciencemag.org] (14). Jurassic park would have maybe not been as scary had their "raptors" looked like this [wikimedia.org]. ;)
Meanwhile, some of their descendants today look [nationalgeographic.com] like [telegraph.co.uk] this [deviantart.net] and attack like this [amazingaustralia.com.au].
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Jurassic park would have maybe not been as scary had their "raptors" looked like this [wikimedia.org]. ;)
Regardless, velociraptors still hate goto statements [xkcd.com] ...
Re: (Score:2)
Or rather... [xkcdsw.com]
The original Birdemic (Score:2)
Jurassic park would have maybe not been as scary had their "raptors" looked like this
Are you trying to imply Hitchcock's The Birds [wikipedia.org] wasn't scary?
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Large birds of prey used to dine on humans regularly. In fact, the largest of their modern cousins are still dangerous to infants and small children today (and I'm not talking about that fake video).
Just because it looks more like a bird than a lizard doesn't make it any less scarier. In fact, because a part of our psyche is attuned towards the danger of very large birds of prey, it may make it more.
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In, the U.S. Postal Service issued colorful dinosaur stamps
That would be in 1989, according to 2 minutes of googlating. Good job, "editors"!
I thought that perhaps the date was so far in the past that the slashcode had some sort of overflow or wraparound error. Something like "Dates before -6000 are invalid". I guess 1989 predates the creation of slashdot?
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A.K.A. the "comma era", because commas resemble mullets.
USPS? I credit The Flintstones. (Score:1)
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Ah, they just taste like chicken.
Neat (Score:3)
Paging Dr. McCoy. (Score:5, Funny)
Uh oh. Sounds... like... wemayhavea... case... of.
...
Shatner's Disease.
Get... thismanto.. sick. Bay. Now!
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Damnit, Jim. Bones died years ago.
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A thesaurus!
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Probably in this manner. [xkcd.com]
Yep, XKCD has a comic-form response for everything - even itself. ;)
F key necklace (Score:2)
Not to mention people have already defictionalized the the title text from that strip, making and selling F key necklaces [etsy.com].
Finally (Score:1)
They should use the ACTUAL name for all dinos: (Score:1)
Jack Horner's TEDx talk (Score:5, Interesting)
Jack Horner put on an TEDx talk a while back discussing research that asks an interesting question: where are the babies? [youtube.com]
Jack's research indicates many of these similar species may in fact be the same, but merely at different levels of development -- an adolescent thought to be a difference species from one fully developed.
The crux of it is that in the early days of our rediscovering dinosaurs, these guys would find a visual few differences in the dinos and name it as a new species, turning a blind eye to many similarities that might suggest otherwise.
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Yeah, I don't trust Horner. He also said T.Rex was a scavenger, and that has been proven false:
http://phenomena.nationalgeogr... [nationalgeographic.com]
He also wants a dino-chicken. Basically, I don't like Jack Horner a terrible amount. It seems to me he very much wants dinosaurs to be different than what other paleontologists find them to be. I guess he is good for stirring up publicity at least.
Bronto burgers not just vernacular, I knew it! (Score:1)
So, yeah! And Pluto's a planet, too, you bastards!
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That's because the resurrected "Pluto" for a new planet they just discovered...
Now the egg-heads need to acknowledge Triceroptos! (Score:1)
Oh, wait,... http://www.smithsonianmag.com/... [smithsonianmag.com]
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Horner was behind that stunt as well, eh? Apparently that was disproven as well according to wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... [wikipedia.org]