Re: KT boundry event


John Harshman wrote:
uraniumcommittee@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

John Harshman wrote:
(snip)

Usually it's used to refer to any member of
Gnathostomata that's not a member of Tetrapoda, with a few ambiguous
cases near the origin of the clade (is Ichthyostega a fish? Tiktaalik?).

Tiktaalik is not a fish.

Because you say so? What's the rule, the one only you know, that tells
us what's a fish and what isn't?

It's clear that we don't know a whole lot about this creature, which
adorns my computer desktop right now. Is it too old to be an amphibian?
When is it believed that amphibians arose?

Age has nothing to do with it. When we believe amphibians arose has
nothing to do with it. Because age is not the criterion used to define
any group.

I am interested in knowing if this guy lived before the accepted rise
of amphibians.

The criteria used are the actual characters of the organism.
(Or, actually, it's phylogenetic relationships, as diagnosed by
characters; but operationally that's the same thing.) And offhand I
don't know the answer to your last question; the first question is of
course nonsensical.

He's quite an interesting case. Is he an
amphibian? Has anyone considered the possibility that he was adapting
to life in the water from a form that had already adapted for land?
Just asking.

Very unlikely and unparsimonious. It's always possible to imagine that,
but we have no evidence to suggest it.

He's an intermediate form of some kind. Close to, if not, an amphibian.
'Amphibian' is a word specifically coined to refer to frogs, newts,
salamander, toads, etc.

Again you are so confused about nested groups that your writing descends
to word salad. Yes, "amphibian" originally was coined for certain modern
species. Then, when fossils were found, it was used to any such fossil
inferred to have a non-amniotic egg. Later, when we got our acts
together, it was changed to refer to the crown group defined by frogs,
salamanders, and caecilians. What were once considered fossil amphibians
were divided among amphibians, non-amphibian, non-amniote tetrapods, and
non-tetrapod tetrapodomorpha. So in fact Tiktaalik is not an amphibian
(and not even by the old meaning, since it's not even a tetrapodomorph).

Tiktaalik is a fish.

That's not quite clear. He's well on his way to becoming something else
that's 'überfischish'.

You mean he's more closely related to tetrapods than are most fish you
see. But by your expressed criteria -- being aquatic, having gills --
he's a fish. If you had some different criteria, mention them.
Obviously, if you must say that tetrapods are not fish, the cutoff
between tetrapods and fish must be at some arbitrary point in their
evolution. Pick a character and put the cutoff there, if you want.

Amphibians have gills, then lungs. One at a time.

It had, as far as we can tell, no terrestrial
ancestors. It's a fish, in the classical sense, just as much as a
mud-skipper is, and it may have used its fins in the same way.

Interesting creature, whatever you call him.

Agreed.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=amphibian

There was probably no vernacular term for such animals as a set.

Once there wasn't. Now there is. You don't think "ambphibian" is vernacular?

I'd say so, after 300 years or so.

No problem then.

But I wouldn't say it's wrong, precisely, to call tetrapods "fish".


But it IS wrong, precisely, to call tetrapods 'fish'.

Only to a person who rejects any flexibility in language, as you do.

The vernacular language should be allowed to remain vernacular. It's
not designed to do the job of scientific language.

Words go back and forth between the vernacular and scientific language
all the time, and vernacular meanings are influenced by scientific
meanings all the time. Is there a problem?

Not everyone can keep up, and that causes problems. Language should
change as slowly as possible.

Well, at least you now agree that it should change at some rate greater
than zero.

It should change only when necessary. Slow or fast is irrelevant. It
should not be changed because of the inability of scientists to get
things straight. the knowledge of Latin is dying, and many scientists
are simply lazy or foreigners using English as a second or tertiary
language.

We're making progress. I think it should change at whatever
rate is convenient. And that it will change at whatever rate it changes
at, regardless of whether or not you take out your sword and slash at
the tide.

HALT thou foul demons of linguistic night! Cast not thine impertinent
words upon me!


It's
not in general usage, but the surprise value leads some people
(obviously not you) to think about their evolutionary history.

They can think about any time they like, but that does not give you the
right to abuse the English language. Men are not fish. Men WERE fish.

I really don't know why you make such a big deal out of this. Most
people know what I mean. It doesn't cause outrage or discomfort.

It does to me. It leads to chaos and misunderstandings.

But only to you. Why should we change our speech, if you are the only
one for which this chaos and misunderstanding happens?

I'm not the only one. A majority of Americans don't believe in
evolution, partly because of the miserably inept way that it's
presented by scientists. Saying things like 'men are fish' does nothing
for your image.

So you claim. I don't think that has anything to do with the poor
reception of evolution among the public.

You cannot be serious.

I also don't think scientists
are at fault at all, except to the extent that they don't stop to
explain things to the public. The biggest problem is with our
educational system. And the creationists, of course. And, unfortunately,
the Republican Party, currently acting as the secular arm of creationism.

How ironic. many of them are just transplanted southern Democrats.

You don't understand how politics works, given that an overwhelming
majority of the US population does not accept evolution.

I'm a Republican and an atheist and a Darwinist. My regard for
academics is very low. The soft scientces are the worst, but even the
hard sciences are filled with inept, illiterate individuals who could
not argue their way out of a paper bag.

Are you familiar with the Sokal hoax paper?

http://www.sablesys.com/sokal.html

http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/weinberg.html

He's a liberal (old-school) and even HE is disgusted with academe. He
wrote this garbage paper and got it published as a test.

It's not part of
the vernacular language.

Right. That;'s my argument.

Then you're right about that little point.

That's my point. Stay away from the vernacular.

Why? What harm is done? You must be really fun at poetry discussions.
"No, your love is NOT a red, red rose. A rose is a flower, not a woman."

Poetry? Of course poetry. I love poetry. What has that to do with using
verncular language as scientific language?

It has to do with flexibility of communication.

HUH? What in the world is 'flexibility of communication'?

It's what you show none of. Perhaps I should have said "in" instead of
"of". Language is a flexible thing, not easily captured by dictionaries
or snapshots in time. Most people seem to understand that, and new
usages spread freely. Some people long for the usages of their
childhoods, when everything was right with the world.

I read a lot of material written over the last 200 years. Writing today
has never been so bad. I read a book by a leading philosopher, and felt
compelled to write to him and chastise him for his atrocious style.

Apparently you think language should be frozen at the point you learned
to speak it.

Nope, I never said that, and do not believe that.

Sure you do. You don't want "dinosaur" to change meaning, but you are
happy for "coelacanth" to have changed before you were born.

It did not change in meaning. The species discovered alive are
different, and are NOT 'living fossils'.

Wouldn't it be better for your position if they were living fossils?

No.

Otherwise, how is this a relevant difference between coelacanths and
dinosaurs?

Change before that point is OK, or you would be speaking
PIE. Language purists are foolish.

All of us?

Yes. You're like Knut ordering the tide to stand still. OK, I'll admit I
fight the occasional losing battle too. I'm one of the few people who
still insist that "data" is plural.

Data ARE plural!!

I'm afraid not. Not any more.

Or were you trying to correct my grammar? That's called
hypercorrectness, because what I wrote was proper grammer even if "data"
is plural.

I was making a jest.

Watch: "hogsheads" is plural. Nobody would say this:
"hogsheads" are plural. In the quotes, "hogsheads" is a single word, the
singular subject of that clause. See?

Ja, mein Herr.


You do understand, don't you, that there is lots of evolutionary change
within both fish and mammals?

Really? I had not heard that!

The point is that you can't just say "evolutionary change" to justify
your need to have these disjunct groups.



Whether something is a "different thing"
after some particular amount of change is arbitrary.

RIGHT! Ring the bell! Shout it from the rooftops: "Whether something is
a "different thing" after some particular amount of change is
arbitrary.

What do you think I have been arguing all this time?

No idea. If it's arbitrary, then why do you care so much?

Because there are limits to how far you can stretch the language. A
'man' is not a 'fish'.

Perhaps you are not the arbiter of stretching. Perhaps the language will
stretch further than you think.

Have you read any really good writing lately? Have you read the kind of
crap that passes for English these days?

Yes, both. But we may not agree on specific examples. Perhaps you think
the last good English prose was written in 1927; or 1627; I have no idea.

I just read a paperback novel written in 1948. It was superbly written.
Quite droll.

Malcolm-Smith, George: "The Grass is Always Greener"

Gems like: "the palliative effect of United States currency is well
established" (not sure about the exact wording).

And becoming a new
thing doesn't prevent you from still being the old thing too.

Yes, it does. It prevents whales from breathing underwater, for
instance. It also prevents turtles and other reptiles from laying eggs
in the ocean.

Sigh. Nested groups, yadda yadda.

Nope, irrelevant. Part of what it means to be a mammal means that the
creature is no longer a fish. Breathing air, endothermy, milk, etc. do
not occur in fishes. That makes mammals no longer fish.

That's circular reasoning again.

No, it's not. Mammals as a GROUP are identified by being unable to
breathe water, for one thing, which is something that all fish can do
or else they're not considered fish.

Notice that's a different charateristic from the ones you listed before.
There are fish (some lungfish) that will die if they are not allowed
access to the air. They can't get all the oxygen they need from their
gills alone. Are they still fish?

Maybe not.

If mammals were fish, then all those
characters would indeed occur in fish.

Do you know what a differentiating character is?

Yes. But in biology, they delimit groups within groups. A new character
can create a new group, but it doesn't end an old one.

The only reason you can say they
don't is that you exclude mammals from being fish. By the way, there are
traditional fish that breathe air, and some that are endothermic.

But none that cannot breathe water.

So why mention the others. Anyway, you're not quite right. There are a
few that can't survive without air.

OK, but there are always a few bordeline cases in any field.

No
"milk", exactly, but there are equivalent forms of parentally-produced
nutrition, I'm sure.

Not good enough. All mammals, even monotremes, produce milk of some
kind.

Define "milk".

You don't have a dictionary?

And evolutionary innovations don't remove group membership either. If
making milk required that a species be removed from its old group,
pigeons would not be birds.

Not the same sort of thing. Close, but no cigar.

Why not? How is pigeon milk less defining of a new group than is mammal
milk?

The way it is produced and the nature of the 'milk'.

You didn't see the link, or you didn't see the animal because you didn't
look at the link?

I did not see the link at first.

Try it now. Mammal or not?


I have no idea. Mammoid?

Correct. You have no idea. So how do you manage to make the same
judgment about birds and non-birds?

I have no idea what to call primitive mammals other than 'primitive
mammals'. We have to come up with a good scientific name.

No, we don't. Because "primitive mammals" are not a group. They're
merely what you have left once you remove "derived mammals" (whatever
group you consider that to be) from mammals. The word for that in
systematics is "wastebasket taxon" or "paraphyletic group". We don't use
them, because they aren't real.


That's not what I was taught.'Homo' is the root in 'homonid' to
distinguish them from simians.

How long ago were you taught?


1970's.

Need I point out that that was a long time ago? And words change?
Scientific terms are no exception.

Yes, and I checked that. It still is current. 'Hominoids' is the
current term that includes both ancestors of humans and apes.

I imagine you can still find it around in an old definition. But please
don't confuse "hominoid" with "hominid". The first refers to Hominoidea,
a superfamily, and the second to Hominidae, a family.

I understand.

Here's an explanation of the modern definitions of both:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hominoidea


Simians, primates, hominids, hominins, homo, all are differentiated to
a much higher degree in language than avians are.


No idea what that means.


Not all primates are simians.
Not all simians are hominids.
Not all hominids are homo.

'Ape', 'man', 'simian', 'monkey', etc. are vernacular terms that apply
to living creatures. They should not be used to characterize ancient
animals, which have evolved considerably to become the modern forms.

If we believed that, then there would be no fossils under those names.

Under what names?

"Ape", "man", "simian", "monkey", etc. The term "fossil ape" or "fossil
man", etc., would not be found. But you try it and tell me what you get.

I don't understand what you are driving at.

Yet there are. Apparently everyone other than you is, once more, wrong.
What does this have to do with birds, by the way?

?

(snip)

The term 'avians' is probably best. 'Earlybirds' is another possibility
(not, I emphasize 'early birds').

You are inventing a new word to no purpose.

It was just a joke.

But "avians" wasn't. Same thing.

'Avians' is already in use.

Apparently, as a synonym for "bird".


Its application is different.

As it happens, no. What makes you think so, other than your personal
definition?

As it happens, yes it is.

Have you notice that you never justify your pronouncements? Find me a
place where "avian" means something other than "bird".

Again, 'meaning' is a different thing from 'range of application'.

Find me a place where "avian" has a different range of application from
"bird".

I already did that a few days ago.

We distinguish between 'men' (modern species) from
ancient species which we do not call 'men'.

In fact we do call some ancient species "men". H. neanderthalensis, H.
heidelbergensis, etc.

But there IS a point where we refuse to call them 'men', is there not?
Australopithecines are very recent, yet we do not call them 'men'.

True but irrelevant.

It's quite relevant. It could hardly be more relevant.

See, here is the part where you're supposed to explain why it's relevant.

I did already.

Sadly, I couldn't find that explanation above. Help me out.

And these guys lived only a scant few millionm years ago:

True but irrelevant. It's not their age but their physical
characteristics that lead us to that decision.

Why are we so critical about our own lineage that we distinguish such
slight differences?

Who says we don't do that with other groups too? It's just that you are
entirely ignorant of the other groups. I assure you, there are plenty of
names for extinct birds too.


"Australopithecus africanus (Fossils)

A. africanus existed between 3 and 2 million years ago. It is similar
to afarensis, and was also bipedal, but body size was slightly greater.
Brain size may also have been slightly larger, ranging between 420 and
500 cc. This is a little larger than chimp brains (despite a similar
body size), but still not advanced in the areas necessary for speech.
The back teeth were a little bigger than in afarensis. Although the
teeth and jaws of africanus are much larger than those of humans, they
are far more similar to human teeth than to those of apes (Johanson and
Edey 1981). The shape of the jaw is now fully parabolic, like that of
humans, and the size of the canine teeth is further reduced compared to
afarensis. "


Here's the dope on 'hominid' from a page on this site:

"The word "hominid" refers to members of the family of humans,
Hominidae, which consists of all species on our side of the last common
ancestor of humans and living apes. Hominids are included in the
superfamily of all apes, the Hominoidea, the members of which are
called hominoids."


(snip)


Nope. Ancient members of equus are not 'horses' either. 'Horse' is a
vernacular word that refers to the modern animals. Use terms such as
Cormohipparion, Sinohippus, Astrohippus, but not 'horse'.

Everyone other than you calls these "horses". Even Hyracotherium is a
horse.

They're wrong.

Once again, everyone but you is wrong, and yet you claim to appeal to
common usage. Do you see the contradiction?

There is no 'common usage' for Cormohipparion, Sinohippus, etc. These
extinct animals were not known during the formation of English. 'Horse'
is an old English word that long predates the concept of
Cormohipparion, Sinohippus, etc.

True.

Draft horse, race horse, etc. are kinds of horses. Cormohipparion,
Sinohippus, etc. are not kinds of horses.

Why? Because you say so? Everyone else disagrees with you. Look up
"fossil horse" and see what you find.

But interestingly, the English word "horse" is used by everyone
except you to apply to all those fossils. Cormohipparion doesn't have
its own vernacular word,

Right!

but it shares that word -- horse -- with other
genera of horses, including Equus.

They are not 'horses'.

Why? Because you say so? Can we agree, at least, that everyone except
you calls them horses?

I have no idea. People do all kinds of crazy things. Some people like
Wayne newton and Barry Manilow.

Likewise, there are modern genera of
birds that have no English common names, just the names of their genera
(Parotia, for example). But they are still birds.


Are you saying you cannot read the book and make up your own mind?

I have no great interest in reading the book right now, and perhaps
ever. At any rate, you're just hiding behind it.

No. I am tring to get you to understand the relationship between
language and the formation of concepts.

Oddly, "read the book" doesn't help me understnd anything.

It's too sophisticated, perhaps, for paleontologists.

I'm not a paleontologist. I'm an ornithologist or, if you like, a
dinosaur neontologist. But "read the book" isn't sophisticated at all,
though the book itself might be.

It certainly is.

Plesiosaurs had to come onto land to lay eggs, right?

Nobody knows that I am aware. But what does that have to do with
dinosaurs anyway? Surely you're not under the impression that
plesiosuars were dinosaurs.

Close enough for our purposes here.

If our purpose were to remove all meanings from words, perhaps. Even
your dictionary is no help to you here. What exactly is a dinosaur, if
plesiosaurs are dinosaurs?

I said "close enough for our purposes here" which means that they are
no longer fish and cannot breed in water.

We were supposedly talking about dinosaurs. Are you claiming that
anything that's not a fish and can't breed in water is a dinosaur for
our purposes?

No, I was claiming that they are not fish.

What point are you trying to make here? (And as far as I
know, it's unknown whether plesiosaurs could breed in water.)

I really doubt it.

But 'dinosaur' is not like 'mammal'. That's the rub!

Why? Because you say so? You really need to stop making naked assertions
and offer some justification for your claims. In what way is "dinosaur"
not like "mammal"?

Asked and answered.

Not that I can find. Can you help?

Ichthyornis, Hesperornis, Sinornis, Archaeopteryx, just to start. Show
me someone who says that any of the first three isn't a bird. (You can
find creationists who say that Archaeopteryx isn't a bird, so I omit
that one.)

Did these beasts pre-date the KT event?

Yes.


If so, they're just avians.

Only because you, just last week, redefined the words to be so. Nobody
else uses them that way. I thought you claimed to be going by
established usage. But everyone except you calls them birds. Where's
your established usage now?

I'm talking about what establishes vernacular usage.

As far as I can tell, what establishes vernacular usage is vernacular
usage itself. It's an empirically investigatable phenomenon. If everyone
calls something a bird, that's vernacular usage. It just so happens that
everyone (except you and a few creationists) calls Archaeopteryx a bird.

No, only scientists do. There is no vernacular term for such animals.
Scientists ahve adopted the vernacular usage without justification.

Doesn't that mean that the vernacular usage of "bird" includes
Archaeopteryx?

No, it does not.

'Cause they're cute!

When you get facetious, it's generally because you have no real response.


But Microraptor gui is a
dinosaur, and so is Caudipteryx. Look them up.

Did you look them up yet?

Nope.

OK, just believe me then. They're non-avian dinosaurs with wings.

OK.

Therefore wings is not a defining criterion of birds, at least not by
itself.

Duh. What did I say?

Part 3 is irrelevant because most non-avian dinosaurs were bipedal too.

Many were not.

But most were. So it isn't a distinquishing feature of birds.

Relatively small, toothless, winged, bidpedal, warm-blooded,
hard-shelled-egg-laying, feathered.

That's nice.

What 'dinosaurs' could be described like that?

Most enantiornithines would fit. But they're birds by my definition, and
you were probably asking for a non-bird by my definition, right? I can't
offhand think of one that is both winged and toothless. All the winged
ones I think of had at least a few teeth (though Caudipteryx comes quite
close) and all the toothless ones I think of didn't have wings as far as
we can tell. I say "as far as we can tell" because the difference
between wings and just plain forelimbs is the presence of large
feathers, and those don't preserve as a rule. So Struthiomimus might fit
the bill, but we don't know whether it had big feathers on its arms or not.

So, you don't really have an example for me.

Somebody else suggested Oviraptor. How about that one? It's clearly
toothless, and based on its position in the phylogenetic tree we can
infer that it had wings, though the integument was not preserved in any
fossil.

I don't know about him. Anybody want to give me a source?

I understand what you mean, but I claim that it is false because the
English vernacular language does not work the same was as the
scientific language.

To the extent this is true, you have a point with fish; people seldom
use the word to refer to anything other than a traditional fish. You
have a point that's fast disappearing with dinosaurs, since inclusion of
birds is becoming common, as scientific discoveries filter out to the
public.

It's being mentioned a lot. At the vernacular level, it's false.

I think the better way to put it is that the meaning is currently in the
process of changing, and you don't like meanings to change.

There is no justification for any change.

Except when
you do the changing, as below.

And you are just plain, glaringly, screamingly wrong with birds,
since Archaeopteryx and other Mesozoic "avians" have always been called
birds by everyone who has ever said anything about them.

Thay're not birds. Sorry.

What happened to vernacular usage? Does anyone except you say they
aren't birds? If so, give an example.

http://www.psjournals.org/paleoonline/?request=get-document&issn=0094-8373&volume=027&issue=01&page=0001

http://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/(z03bjeu3vzko4l45xehpl045)/app/home/contribution.asp?referrer=parent&backto=issue,11,14;journal,11,45;linkingpublicationresults,1:102493,1

And even with fish, it's not wrong to say that mammals are fish.

It's wrong on several levels.

That's a measure of your linguistic inflexibility, nothing more.

It's
just unusual use of language, not misuse. Loosen up a little. You could
consider it poetic language if that will help you.

What about that poetic language? Didn't it help?


.

Relevant Pages

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  • Re: KT boundry event
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