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On Plausibility; mulling on the nature of criticism
Topic Started: Aug 19 2017, 03:37 PM (631 Views)
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Tartarus
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Aug 28 2017, 05:06 PM
I was thumbing through a book the other day (Extraterrestrials by Dickinson and Schaller) and I came across a page that made me think of this thread. The section detailed Dale Russell's Dinoman, a speculation on an evolution toward sapience for dinosaurs in a scenario where they avoided extinction.

Here it is...


This case has long been regarded as "bad speculation" for a number of reasons. When you look at how the troodon body is contorted and forced into an extremely (as we call it here) humanesque shape, complete with plantigrade feet and a belly button, it doesn't take much thought to see how far fetched of an end product you have here. Critiques for Russell's Dinoman are replete.

But does that make it impossible? The answer, when considering the myriad possibilities, has to be no, it's not impossible. Highly unlikely, and discussions about precisely what it has going against it can be productive, but not impossible. The same goes, I think, for any other project. A robust analysis of a creature's plausibility (or an ecology's) should take place, but it shouldn't be dismisses out of hand just because it's falling into a category people have deemed "too stupid to ever be real".

Well, a major issue with Dale Russel's dinosauroid is not just the implausibility of humanoid dinosaurs but also the fact that he based the evolution of this speculative being on depictions of Stenonychosaurus (now Troodon) that are now known to be false. For example, we now know Troodon had a full coating of feathers and that its arms were wings. It looked nothing like the naked leathery skinned version of it shown standing next to its speculative descendant. As such, even if one did come up with some way of getting a Troodon to evolve into a humanoid form it would almost certainly still not look like Dale Russel's dinoman.
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kusanagi
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In fairness ostriches are denuded excepting their tail and wings, as well as their dorsal surface. I don't know why this is but intuitively, it is maybe for thermoregulation - though I can't draw too close a parallel to elephants which use their micro-hairs to cool down. Long ago I concluded hairlessness is not so much under positive selection, as selectively neutral in certain environments. Think how otherwise similar the babirusas are to one another. I can't explain why that is, within one small genus. Nor why Sumatran rhinos are hairiest or why ostriches are near-naked.

So yes some naked skin is possible in a living dinosaur because ostriches come so close. As usual there is a difference between critique of broad claims, and nitpicking about details. As a broad idea its easy to snear at Russell; when nitpicking, its less black and white. Birds (and their nearest relatives) aren't mammals, but they can be very convergent regarding even unexpected evolutionary trends such as denudation, and primates are the most bird-like of mammals. All it takes is a shift to orthograde vertical clinging, and you have nearly everything except the belly button. ;)
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IIGSY
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kusanagi
Aug 28 2017, 06:47 PM
In fairness ostriches are denuded excepting their tail and wings, as well as their dorsal surface. I don't know why this is but intuitively, it is maybe for thermoregulation - though I can't draw too close a parallel to elephants which use their micro-hairs to cool down. Long ago I concluded hairlessness is not so much under positive selection, as selectively neutral in certain environments. Think how otherwise similar the babirusas are to one another. I can't explain why that is, within one small genus. Nor why Sumatran rhinos are hairiest or why ostriches are near-naked.

So yes some naked skin is possible in a living dinosaur because ostriches come so close. As usual there is a difference between critique of broad claims, and nitpicking about details. As a broad idea its easy to snear at Russell; when nitpicking, its less black and white. Birds (and their nearest relatives) aren't mammals, but they can be very convergent regarding even unexpected evolutionary trends such as denudation, and primates are the most bird-like of mammals. All it takes is a shift to orthograde vertical clinging, and you have nearly everything except the belly button. ;)
Birds aren't convergent with mammals, but rather dinosaurs in general. Right?
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Well, if we're coming at speculative evolution from not just a hard-science ("if it's too implausible it shouldn't be explored") viewpoint, but a more open and artistic viewpoint, I'd say the dinosauroid fails on the level of creativity. It's blatantly boring and unimaginative.

Perhaps more important, no attempt was made to explain it properly. Sure, you could probably come up with some whack explanation for it (the snout shortened for dietary reasons, eventually converging roughly with a human skull, leading to a need for grasping forelimbs, meaning the whole forearm needed to be completely re-invented, and it's legs, feet, and integument converged with ostriches, with a selection towards losing feathers perhaps being cultural, an upright posture evolved for some reason or another)... but he didn't. The only explanation, that humans look like this so other sapients should too, is decidedly a terrible argument, so the speculations of Dale Russel are distinctly a scientific and artistic failure.

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Stenonychosaurus (now Troodon)

Nope, it's actually Stenonychosaurus again.
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kusanagi
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Just about only avibrevicaudans have lost dependence upon the caufofemoralis like mammals (oviraptorosaurs and scansoriopterygids were getting there, though), and only birds advanced their brain development beyond the basal pennaraptor grade still seen in palaeognaths and galloanseres: it was only vegetation shifts that allowed increases in encephalisation, so the hypothesis goes, ergo the unquestionable and late trend for more intelligence and sociability in various bird and mammal clades. Birds with large telencephala are at least one of the following: highly social (driving intelligence), resource extractors targeting unseen food supplies (drives intelligence) or they are owls. So there is a spectrum from ratites and galliforms at the base up to highly encephalised parrots, corvids, tits, woodpeckers etc at the top as there is diversity in mammals with various euprimates at the top with odontocetes, elephants and hyenas within their upper range of intelligence and social behaviours. Yes parrots and corvids at least are cognitively close to simians.
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Here's my two cents: anything that can happen will happen, like some form of Murphy's Law. Somewhere out there in the universe is life so unimaginably different from us that we may not even be recognized as life. As long as it is possible and has a bit of plausibility, it can be included in a project.

A planet of lizard people could theoretically exist, with the right conditions and evolutionary accidents. Anyway, that's just my unsolicited opinion on all this. Speculative biology is all about finding a balance between realism and a suspension of disbelief.
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kusanagi
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No one is defending Russell's spurious scientific assumptions or lazy artistic vision. I do however keep hearing the animal is entirely implausible, which is untrue as the shortening of the avian tail removed the constraint that birds be horizontally inclined. Among other things, but this is the most obvious criticism made by Naish, Ramjet etc.

And yes, I agree more horizontal than Russel presented is more likely, and I doubt a dinosaur would be featherless just because it converges upon man in other ways such as cognition or posture (Russell drew on current just so stories about paleoanthropology) - but assume an arboreal theropod must have a similar evolutionary history to mans, for them to be cognitively and behaviourally manlike. They might then be at least as vertical as parrots or mousebirds in such an environment: the clambering arborealists among extant higher land birds tend toward a somewhat vertical posture. And in both euprimates and pennaraptors there is a repeated trend toward shortening the tail length which brings the legs from forming a pendulum at the hip, to the knee. Si?
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Not entirely relevant to the above post, but why does the Troodon have two fingers?

The angle of the hands makes it look two, but this one has a third opposite behind

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As such, even if one did come up with some way of getting a Troodon to evolve into a humanoid form it would almost certainly still not look like Dale Russel's dinoman.

That makes come to mind a little the sketches made by Mette Aumala (Omastar) about a possible dinosauroid from the carpos (Xenornithes) from specworld, called the "Terracarpo"
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Coming from a clade with characteristics very similar to primates, humanoid form with limbs more or less suitable for manipulation like ours, of course, with their avian characteristics.

I will always see in one way or another the interpretation of the original dinosauroid as unthought and biased, based on the fallacy that for an intelligent animal must evolve in a "humanoid" form, nevertheless the potential to appear with a better justification or a better evolutionary path in some project or timeline makes the concept potentially possible in one way or another.

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Nope, it's actually Stenonychosaurus again.

What?

Stenonychosaurus is valid again.
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kusanagi
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A good experiment in plausibility would be - entirely using known amniote precedents - getting a human-like psychology meaning cognition and behaviour, from an ancestral stock dissimilar to that of primates. Thus not only primates but convergent higher land birds are excluded from consideration. You are left with comparisons such as elephants, cetaceans and spotted hyenas as well as odds and sods such as honey badgers and crested porcupines that show unpredicted smartness such as entheobotany and the use of levers.

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kusanagi
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Will no one try and create a cognitive/behavioural Homo analog, only by reference to amniote clades excluding 1) primates or 2) higher land birds?

Hint: this thought experiment will make you realise how easy it is to evolve very intelligent mammals and birds, but also why that doesn't lead to anything familiarly human.

Start with a generalised mammal, if you will. Choose one without grasping organs - exclude forms like squirrels, raccoons or brushtail possums with adaptations to arboreal lifestyles, and then see where you can get without reference to just-so stories.
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Aug 28 2017, 05:06 PM
But does that make it impossible? The answer, when considering the myriad possibilities, has to be no, it's not impossible. Highly unlikely, and discussions about precisely what it has going against it can be productive, but not impossible. The same goes, I think, for any other project. A robust analysis of a creature's plausibility (or an ecology's) should take place, but it shouldn't be dismisses out of hand just because it's falling into a category people have deemed "too stupid to ever be real".

This (the dinoman specifically) actually has a chunk of a chapter in the recent book on whether parallel evolution is the norm or not - Improbable Destinies...and the rest of the discussion here is touched upon.

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kusanagi
Aug 28 2017, 09:26 PM
Will no one try and create a cognitive/behavioural Homo analog, only by reference to amniote clades excluding 1) primates or 2) higher land birds?

Hint: this thought experiment will make you realise how easy it is to evolve very intelligent mammals and birds, but also why that doesn't lead to anything familiarly human.

Start with a generalised mammal, if you will. Choose one without grasping organs - exclude forms like squirrels, raccoons or brushtail possums with adaptations to arboreal lifestyles, and then see where you can get without reference to just-so stories.
So, make a sophont species?
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kusanagi
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Surprised no one mentioned Le Demains in depth here. Considering as each creature is pretty much a test of plausibility of corcumventing evolutionary constraints.

Or maybe let's think about the plausibility of the TFIW's spink: improbable maybe, but not so improbable. The quadropedalism is of a kind seen in nestlings as they crawl, and which uses motions similar to swimming scolopacid chicks. Its a neotenous bird with a herbivorous diet and an advanced degree of social behaviours unknown in birds but evolved twice in subterranean rodents. Burrowing is known in tinamous, petrels and such, but not to such a degree suggesting some constraint is at work, but this might just be competitive exclusion by burrowing mammals, such as moles and pocket gophers. Some strisores are known to rely on echolocation when they are in the dark, although lile burrowing it is less common among birds than it is among small mammals.
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Aug 28 2017, 10:42 PM
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Aug 28 2017, 09:58 PM
Multiple diagnostic and distinct taxa share the same tooth morphology as Troodon, so it has no distinguishing traits. That's what being a nomen dubium means. Nothing can be assigned to it.
That means nothing can be assigned to stenonychosaurus either.
Seriously, stay on topic, If you want to discuss about it just go the topic where it corresponds, the link about these new troodontids is there.

Quote:
 
Surprised no one mentioned Le Demains in depth here. Considering as each creature is pretty much a test of plausibility of corcumventing evolutionary constraints

I guess its because the point of the conversation is about going in depth about the meaning and use of plausibility in speculative evolution, not to what extent certain works are or not, right?
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Wonder what is the big of the big on speculative evolution? no problem, here is the answer

Coming one day
Age of Mankind
Humanity fate and its possible finals.

The Long Cosmic Journey
The history outside our world.

The alternative paths
The multiverse, the final frontier...

Holocene park: Welcome to the biggest adventure of the last 215 million years, where the age of mammals comes to life again!
Cambrian mars: An interesting experiment on an unprecedented scale, the life of a particular and important period in the history of our planet, the cambric life, has been transported to a terraformed and habitable mars in an alternative past.
Two different paths, two different worlds, but same life and same weirdness.




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