[0459] Velociraptor
└ posted on Thursday, 28 February 2013, by Novil
- Sandra: It makes me so mad when velociraptors are still depicted as three meter high monsters with leathery skin.
- Sandra: Spreading misinformation out of ignorance and laziness is just as bad as a deliberate lie.
- Larisa: Did you know that Newton got such bad grades in school because he rejected the church’s doctrine that you can only taste the earth’s sphericity with the tip of your tongue?
- Sandra: Nice try, but not nearly as ridiculous as the article about video games I read yesterday.
i still prefer spileberg raptors
As always, relevant XKCD
http://xkcd.com/1104/
what was the article that you read?
I’m sure Larisa favours the more-easily-ignitable feathered dinos as well. >:=)>
Hold on, if the Velociraptor is depicted with feathers, then shouldn’t the Parasaurolophus in the background have filamentous plumage?
Do I even need to say it? Yes I do: clever girl.
I think Jurassic Park, especially the first one, can be justified since it was produced before small and feathered can be verified. Plus, genetic engineering and “follow the leader” counts too.
To tell the real history, the church didn’t suppress science as much as fundamentalist did.
– Corpenicus was a polish monk who managed to not only prove the sun is in center of solar system, but also used calculations for it.
– Father Mendel, a church pastor who discovered Mendelian traits.
– Sir Francis Bacon, a Franciscan Monk who introduced gunpowder to europe and discovered light is made of rainbow before newton (But his order didn’t approve of it).
– Various monastery who preserved old texts during Dark Ages.
For Gailileo, he decided to insult the pope in his publication, who was actually supporting his idea and church were leading astronomer who need a bit time to verify his theory.
Maybe Platypus is also part of ancient animals too….
T.Chicken wrote:
Feathers, yes. Small, no. They’ve always known how big raptors were, since that’s figured out by the bones, which is also how they know the species even existed.
They just didn’t think 3 foot tall raptors made intimidating villains, so they sized them up a bit. There are a few related species at around the right size, but the book had Velociraptors, so there you go.
@ T.Chicken: The fact that somebodies last name is bacon
Honestly, Michael Crichton is a “What Has Science Done!?” hack, the worst sort of sci-fi writer possible, but the film was still enjoyable and worthwhile. Besides, “Utahraptor” just doesn’t convey speed and cunning like “Velociraptor” does…
@ DJ Mouthwash:
Raptors are always relevant to xkcd
Bad grades in school? Wasn’t that about Einstein?
Trimutius wrote:
Yes, this is a mashup of 5 separate facts that aren’t.
Newton and the apple. (Or possibly his probably non-existent dog, Diamond.)
Einstein’s bad grades.
Galileo’s problems with the Church. (As T. Chicken noted, he actually had the Pope’s ear, until he went and insulted him. It was Galileo’s failure of politics, not the Pope’s failure of science that did him in.)
Columbus and the flat Earth. (Everybody who cared (such as sailors, and the people who financed them) knew the Earth was round in Columbus’ time. Columbus’ error was significantly underestimating the SIZE of the planet. He was just lucky there was another continent around where he figured Asia would be.)
The ‘taste regions’ on the tongue. (The whole tongue (and non-tongue parts of the mouth) can taste all 5 ‘flavours’.)
@ T.Chicken:
Not quite. The actual dinosaurs JP featured were based on the genus Deinonychus. The thought behind what happened was this: “‘Velociraptor’ is a cool name, but the actual creature is not very impressive. Deinonychus would actually live up to that it, but they’re different species. Screw scientific accuracy! I’m going with the coolest option!”
IIRC, he didn’t go so far as to insult the pope in his publications. He did, however, insist rather annoyingly that everyone accept his theories as true even when there were still issues with it.
Uh, expectations of accuracy in media? Sandra, you should know better! Sadly, the power of thinking is not widely used… and acting in ignorance is all too common. When 90%+ of the population will never know the difference, it is unlikely hollywood is going to care.
Rex Vivat wrote:
He presented his theories in the form of a dialogue between characters named Salviati and Simplicio.
Salviati presented Galileo’s side. Simplicio presented the Church’s side.
Guess which one of the two names translates to ‘simpleton’.
@ Frozenwolf150:
No, hadrosaurines have not been found with any pennaceous or filamentous feathers or any kind of fuzzy down
@ Frozenwolf150:
actually we have skin impressions of hadrosaur skin, they had a sort of pebbly scales.
while it looks more and more that all dinosaria descended from feathered ancestors, at least some of them were secondarily featherless.. (meaning the species had lost its feathers somewhere along the line.)
Hadrosaurs and sauropods have left multiple skin impressions, so we know that at least some of the species lacked feathers.
it likely that all the really large species were featherless, though they may have had feathers or down as infants and lost them as they grew.
The problem with ignorant people spreading misinformation, is that they don’t realize they’re doing it. Nor do does an ignorant person usually realize they are ignorant.
Heck, some of the things I was taught in school have been disproven or changed in the years since I graduated, and I never find out until I after I open my mouth and someone corrects me.
There were actually 3m high raptors (according to wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_raptor). They are not the VELOCIraptors though, but as far as I got it they are closely related.
Wow…
So many comments on dinosaurs, religious institutions vs. science, and science as portrayed by Hollywood and the media. But nobody seems willing to correct Sandra…
I get the joke: Sandra’s just peeved at some article badmouthing video games.
But spreading misinformation through ignorance or even laziness is in no way, shape or form as bad as INTENTIONAL misinformation. Both are bad, but to equate them is to downplay an intention to deceive, regardless of the consequences.
@ mithril:
Have a cite for feathers being basal to all dinosaurs? Last I saw (and a quick check doesn’t indicate any recent change), feathers were restricted to the theropods, not even the other saurischians, let alone the ornithischians.
@ Feneris:
I agree that person who unknowingly spreads misinformation is not entirely to blame. As such, they deserve a certain amount of slack. But it boils down to how lazy they are to research their facts before opening their mouth or pressing that “submit” button. In front of a computer, it takes mere seconds or minutes to do a search on Google, an online encyclopedia, etc.
And, yes, it has been shown that school textbooks and teachers can get facts wrong sometimes – more often that most would suspect. Often, this seems due to a problem of staying current. But that’s not always the case.
Kamino Neko wrote:
Later they discovered fossils in South America, of raptors three times that size.
To be more precise about velociraptor vs. deinonychus, in the late 1980s, when Crichton was writing the JP book, there was a proposal for classifying deinonychus in the same genus as velociraptor. Crichton went with that and called the dinosaurs velociraptors, which would’ve been an acceptable generic name. That classification was soon busted and they were already classified as separate genera by the time the movie came out, but the name stuck. Raptors are scary. Deinonychi are unpronounceable.
Leave the videogame industry alone. I like it just the way it is. 😉
@ Alon Levy:
Deinonychi is pronounceable, just not by english-speaking people, who can’t read the latin alphabet phonetically as they should. Here is how it reads in english syllabs:
Deinonychus (singular)
Deh-ee-noh-nee-kuhs
Deinonychi (plural)
Deh-ee-noh-nee-kee
Tonic accent goes on the first and penultimate syllabs.
I cant be 100% sure, but I THINK the video game she might be referencing is Aliens Colonial Marines. It came out a few weeks ago, but its been a media circus since it came out. Apparently Gearbox only allowed favorable reviews to be posted by testers and reviewers while slapping everyone else with NDA’s.
The mess has just kept growing and growing.
If anyone wants a good read and a good laugh, look up ‘Aliens: Colonial Marines’ More conspericy, action and intrigue revolving around the game itself than is actually in it lol
@ Kamino Neko:
Feather quills or other similar filamentous structures have been found on basal ceratopsians which are ornithiscians
@ xpacetrue:
Unintentional misinformation can cause just as much damage as intentional misinformation.
What? Of course you sense the Earth’s spherity with the tip of you tongue, it’s obviously the only part of the tongue that can do it!
This comic brings me back to my not-so-distant childhood, when I absolutely loved dinosaurs. They’re some of the coolest creatures ever, I think we can all agree on that.
Anyway, Velociraptor is a cool name, and one of the most pronounceable, therefore just make it bigger and scarier and you’ve got yourself a movie monster. Who cares about scientific accuracy, it’s from a film where THEY’RE BRINGING BACK DINOSAURS using scientifically doubtable methods.
Plus, if the ignorant masses bothered to reasearch stuff, how would we feel intellectually superior?
Hey, you can’t blame a girl for trying.
It’s not ignorance or laziness. I just prefer the cool version.
Is it odd that the things I have heard about dinosaurs haven’t changed since I was a child, and I simply lost interest in them as I grew older? XD
It’s easy to pass off incorrect information as accurate. I mean, the average person only uses 10% of their brain, eats 7 spiders a year, can see the Great Wall of China from space, and evolved from monkeys.
everything iv seen so far is about dinosaurs… what about how right sandra is about how people try to express video games to other people.*SIGH*
If the article was about “PlayStation evolution”, you’re right, sister!, that article is a joke.
Quoth the Lovely Larisa:
Hfar wrote:
Actually, you can! A charge of “Attempted Murder” is precisely blaming a person for trying! 🙂
@ noelwiz:
I don’t have to know to guess. Something like “video games lead to Satanism” or some just as ridiculous.
@ Kamino Neko:
Wow, I didn’t know about the taste regions being a myth. And I used it in a story I published… I feel pretty embarrassed now…
Spreading misinformation through laziness is hard to avoid. Ideally you should look up dubious facts before spreading them… but our minds are so very full of things we’ve been taught, and many of them we’ve “known” for so long that it never occurs to us to question them.
How long would it take you to write an article, paint a picture, or make a movie, if you had to research every bit of information that you didn’t know beyond doubt from personal experience?
@ BobisOnlyBob:
Not to nitpick too much, but since I liked his books a bit myself so: Michael Crichton >WAS< "a “What Has Science Done!?” "etc. Died in 2008.
Not saying you should love him. Or not speak ill of the dead…<_<
Even at my young age, (when I was at the "dinosaur" stage and could recite more dino info than I ever could now with all the new discoveries and what not), I always wondered why he did not choose the deinonychus. While still only half as tall as the movie raptors, the name was just cooler to my child mind. Still is.(As in cool and my mind is still childish.)
Considering that paleontologists have been studying dinosaurs for a very long time, and every ten years or so, they come up with a discovery that makes all previous scientific illustrations obsolete, I think we can give the movie industry some slack. When I was a kid, they had just discovered that dinosaurs didn’t walk with their tails dragging on the ground. What happened apparently was that Spielberg was talking to a paleontologist about this movie he was making, and the Utahraptor had just been discovered. The paleontologist described it to him as “an eight foot tall Velociraptor”, and there you go. People who care about dinosaurs already know that the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park aren’t accurate, why bother nitpicking the people who barely have a casual interest in dinosaurs for being less educated?
Now if it was the theriznosaurus that she was describing, panel 2 would be accurate. Freakin nightmarish edward-scissorshnds of the cretaceous period.
part of me’s surprised that Sandy’s into video-games
but then again, you have to be if you’re dateing Cloud
Jurassic Park’s Velociraptors are forgivable for one very simple reason:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dromie_scale.png
The family Dromaeosauridae had quite a bit of size variety.
How many things were mistakenly labelled as “Velociraptor” before they finished growing one and perhaps realised they’d got the wrong Dromaeosaur… or otherwise made imperceptible manglings to its DNA so it ended up the wrong size (after the first thousand or so failed to come to term)?
It’s metre, not meter. A meter is something you use to measure things with. A metre is a unit of length. Americans, sigh.
@ Mikee:
I’ll give you the result of two seconds of Googling
“The metre (meter in American English),…”
So unless you’re one of those Britfags that sighs at Americunts for using “color”, you’re spreading misinformation out of ignorance and laziness.
On-topic woo!
I’m with Isaac Newton!
He was the Hero of Modern Day Science!