Thursday, August 11, 2011

The Senter Fundamental Insight

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1420-9101.2011.02349.x/abstract
"The results of this study indicate that transitional fossils linking at least four major dinosaurian groups to the rest of Dinosauria are yet to be found."(P. Senter, 2011)

I think this is the first time an evolutionist has told the simple truth.  There are no transitional fossils between actual dinosaurs (such as Compsognathus and Tyrannosaurus) and Maniraptors. 

32 comments:

  1. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1420-9101.2011.02349.x/abstract
    Senter's article that shows that dinos and maniraptors are not related (Senter 2011) was published in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology.

    http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/jeb_enhanced/
    Journal of Evolutionary Biology is a peer-reviewed, international journal that covers both micro- and macro-evolution of all organisms. The Journal integrates perspectives across molecular and microbial evolution, behaviour, genetics, ecology, life histories, development, palaeontology, systematics and morphology and gives preference to papers that bring together two or more fields.

    If folks here want to claim that Senter is wrong then you had better prove your case.

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  2. I think you have misread this abstract. The author is clearly not saying Maniraptora are not dinosaurs (in fact he refers to them as a "dinosaurian group") or that they are not related to other dinosaur groups, his own cladistic analysis (2007, 2010) and the previous paper on the same subject demonstrates that they are. He's just saying that so far there are still a few gaps in the fossil record for 4 main groups that hopefully will eventually be filled (just as he shows many have been in the last decade or so Senter 2010). If one were to infer by his above sentence that he was saying Maniraptors and not dinosaurs then one would have to draw the same conclusion for Stegosaurs or Hadrosaurs.

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  3. As I have said:

    I think this is the first time an evolutionist has told the simple truth. There are no transitional fossils between actual dinosaurs (such as Compsognathus and Tyrannosaurus) and Maniraptors.

    Until now people were pretending that there were transitionals. Now the truth is out and only because Senter inadvertently let it out.

    Why not be honest about it. Senter is not even admitting it now. I analyzed what he was saying in order to see what he inadvertently let out.

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  4. Not exactly - he is saying specifically there are still some gaps in the fossil record and if you read this in conjunction with his 2010 paper he traces back over several decades the history of such gaps being filled - why should that not continue to be the case? He is not saying that means they are not related - their relatedness is evident from the cladistic analysis which he clearly has not abandoned (n fact he refined it in the 2010 paper). And as I said, if you would infer from his statement that maniraptors are not dinosaurs you should do the same for stegosaurs and several other groups for which there are also such gaps. It is not a logical inference to make and moreover it is not correct to attribute such an inference to the author when it is clearly your own misinterpretation or misrepresentation of what he wrote.

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  5. "He is not saying that means they are not related - their relatedness is evident from the cladistic analysis which he clearly has not abandoned (in fact he refined it in the 2010 paper).

    Please provide a link for your claim that he refined it in the 2010 paper. And copy and paste the part that you think supports what you are saying.

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  6. As I have said:
    I think this is the first time an evolutionist has told the simple truth. There are no transitional fossils between actual dinosaurs (such as Compsognathus and Tyrannosaurus) and Maniraptors.
    Until now people were pretending that there were transitionals.

    If people think that somebody had previously admitted there were no transitionals between dinosaurs and maniraptors then please give us a link where that was previously admitted.

    I am saying that Senter inadvertently let the cat out of the bag!

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  7. Anonymous said...
    Have you not read it yourself? It's mentioned right at the start of the paper and several times throughout the study as he uses this analysis . Here is where he introduces his updated phylogenetic analysis "which builds on the 2007 study but adds more recent data):

    "The character matrix that I chose for CMDS (Appendices S1 and S2 in the Supporting Information) is a modified version of one from a recent phylogenetic analysis of Coelurosauria (Senter, 2007). After that analysis was published, new personal observations of museum specimens engendered substantial changes to the data for several OTUs (operational taxonomic units),
    and I added newly discovered taxa and made other improvements and updates to the matrix. These are described and justified in Appendix S3 in the Supporting Information. Because of the large number of changes and the addition of new taxa, I reran the phylogenetic analysis for this study. The present version of the matrix includes 89 OTUs and 364 characters."

    Then on P 1735

    "Phylogenetic analysis yielded 216 most parsimonious trees with 1285 steps. The strict consensus tree is shown in Fig. 1. For these trees, the consistency index (ci) is 0.35, the homoplasy index (hi) is 0.65, the retention index (rc) is 0.77, and the rescaled consistency index is 0.27. The topology of the consensus tree produced here (Fig. 1) is identical to that produced by the previous version of the matrix (Senter, 2007) except in three spots".

    which he then details (but too much to post here, you should read the paper)

    The link you have already to the right (Senter 2010) but I have the full paper, not just the abstract

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  8. I should not have asked you that question, since the data is available in the supporting material, which I have studied at some length.

    Since you have also studied Senter's research we should be able to work together.
    Here is the interesting question:

    How do we reconcile what the cladistic analysis shows, with what the baraminological analysis shows.

    It is clear to me that the baraminological analysis is valid and significant - Senter's analysis in both the 2010 and the 2011 articles.

    The cladistic analysis is of no value.
    This opens up the whole question as to why cladistic analysis is of no value.

    I have said much earlier in the blog that I am not interested in showing how cladistics is of no value.

    But since this is of interest to you perhaps we can together determine that cladistic analysis is on no value.
    But I must say that I am not optimistic that that effort will be fruitful since you are only interested in showing that cladistics that you have been programmed in is the holy grail.

    In the case we are dealing with we already know from the baraminological analysis that the clusters are separate and not connected. In other words we alraedy know that maniraptors are not related to dinosaurs.
    So all that can be achieved in reviewing the cladistic analysis is to determine why it presents an incorrect picture.

    The bottom line is that the best way to settle all this is to do a baraminiolgical analysis including pterosaurs.
    I have not made that effort yet because it would involve a lot of slug work.

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  9. It seems you now acknowledge that Senter updated his cladistic analysis and want to discount it for other reasons of your own. That is your prerogative. However you should at least retract your statements that "Senter's article that shows that dinos and maniraptors are not related" and that "Senter shows that Maniraptors are not related to dinosaurs" - he does nothing of the sort and it is unscientific and unethical to put such words in his mouth. This is your interpretation (or misinterpretation in fact), apparently based solely on his abstract and some supporting material and not even a full reading of his papers, and yet on that very limited basis you choose to attribute false statements to him. You do not seem to be arguing in good faith

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  10. "However you should at least retract your statements that
    'Senter's article that shows that dinos and maniraptors are not related" and that "Senter shows that Maniraptors are not related to dinosaurs'".

    That is exactly what he has done.

    You may not want to acknowledge it, but that is exactly what he has done. And as I mentioned he did it inadvertently.

    And it is the first time that I know of that anyone has admitted that there are no transitionals between dinos and maniraptors. Let me ask you. Have you ever seen anyone else admit that?
    That would be a good place to start.

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  11. Here is where folks who are enamoured of cladistics can help. Cladistic charts do not show transitionals anyway.
    The charts are always designed not to show transitionals.

    Discussing this may help us all to see that cladistic charts are of no value in regards to ancestor/descendant relationships.

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  12. No it is not "exactly what he has done" and claiming he has is highly misleading to say the least. He states explicitly that the gap in the fossil record is likely to be a temporary thing, nowhere does he suggest that maniraptors are not dinosaurs, and in fact he shows that the gaps are not large ones anyway.

    Re cladistics, I suggest you read some basic textbooks on it.

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  13. I know more about cladistics and the problems with it than anyone who has commented here.

    That Senter says that this is "likely to be a temporary thing" is as unscientific as if I said that any gaps between pterosaurs and birds is "temporary". That is a copout and I do not use copouts.

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  14. Even though I am not interested in using up space showing the problems with cladistics in the mainline of the site I m willing to discuss that here.

    Let's start here:

    Here is where folks who are enamoured of cladistics can help. Cladistic charts do not show transitionals anyway.
    The charts are always designed not to show transitionals.
    Discussing this may help us all to see that cladistic charts are of no value in regards to ancestor/descendant relationships.

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  15. Evolutionary systematics is more scientific and credible than cladistics.

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

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  16. "The results of this study indicate that transitional fossils linking at least four major dinosaurian groups [Maniraptora is one of them] to the rest of Dinosauria are yet to be found."(P. Senter, 2011)

    Actually Maniraptora is not one of these 4 - Senter is referring to Eusauropoda + Tazoudasaurus , Hadrosauriformes, Stegosauria and Ankylosauridae. If you had read his discussion this would be clear. You need to correct your statement attributing this falsely to Senter.

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  17. Here is Senter:
    "Morphological gaps in the known fossil record separate only seven groups from the rest of Dinosauria. Those groups are Therizinosauroidea + Oviraptorosauria + Paraves, [all of which are Maniraptors] Tazoudasaurus + Eusauropoda, Ankylosauridae, Stegosauria, Neoceratopsia, basal Hadrosauriformes and Hadrosauridae.

    Seven groups:

    Therizinosauroidea + Oviraptorosauria + Paraves, [all of which are Maniraptors]

    Tazoudasaurus + Eusauropoda,

    Ankylosauridae,

    Stegosauria,

    Neoceratopsia,

    basal Hadrosauriformes

    and Hadrosauridae.

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  18. That's 7 groups. So why does he refer to only 4 "major groups" then in his abstract, and why are you assuming one of those 4 is Maniraptora

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  19. Rather than parse all his words, let's look at what Senter found.
    He found those seven groups and he said there are "morphological gaps in the known fossil record" between them.
    And one of those groups is Maniraptors (Therizinosauroidea + Oviraptorosauria + Paraves).

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  20. I see you're not getting it. Your quote above "The results of this study indicate that transitional fossils linking at least four major dinosaurian groups [Maniraptora is one of them] to the rest of Dinosauria are yet to be found" which is from the study conclusion refers to 4 groups, not 7. So out of the 7 you have listed which he refers to in his abstract, what does he end up with in his conclusions? I can't see any credible basis for you inserting the statement "Maniraptora is one of them" - i.e. one of those 4 - it is distorting what his conclusions are, however it is stated in the abstract (generally it is not a good idea to just go by abstracts)

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  21. Let's see if we can come to an agreement.
    Senter says:

    "Morphological gaps in the known fossil record separate only seven groups from the rest of Dinosauria. Those groups are Therizinosauroidea + Oviraptorosauria + Paraves, [all of which are Maniraptors] Tazoudasaurus + Eusauropoda, Ankylosauridae, Stegosauria, Neoceratopsia, basal Hadrosauriformes and Hadrosauridae.

    According to this, there are morphological gaps in the known fossil record between maniraptors and the other dinosaur groups.
    Are we in agreement on that?
    Or do you want to ignore that and argue about the wording?

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  22. It's not a case of "wording" - I see you're trying as usual to play down any criticism by making it seem like "nit picking" The problem is you're still focusing on the abstract because you are making bold and unsupported claims from a paper you have not even read. In the paper itself he shows that for 3 of those groups "positive correlation was found" such as "between therizinosauroids and Paraves + oviraptorosauria and also between therizinosauroids and the more basal coelurosaurian taxa Compsognathidae, Ornitholestes and Haplocheirus" From this he suggests "One could therefore reasonably argue that therizinosauroids bridge the morphological gap between the more birdlike theropods and the rest of Theropoda" He does the same for 2 other groups out of the 7 leaving a total of 4 groups with outstanding morphological gaps, hence the quote just containing those 4 in his conclusion - and maniraptora is not one of them (contrary to your statement above)

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  23. Science is not based on ideas like "one could reasonably argue". That is how a high school student talks.
    Let's work with the actual evidence he presents.

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  24. It is based on the actual evidence that there is positive correlation between these taxa (as the quote I supplied indicates). That is using the baraminological methodology. I was not aware that science did not involve making "reasonable arguments" - perhaps I should consult a scientist next time.

    Besides this is irrelevant to the actual issue I raised which is that your statement that the 4 groups in the quoted conclusion includes maniraptora is untrue

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  25. I suspect you are Monad from another discussion group and I have already documented there your use of SPIN. I am not wasting time on your spin - having to correct every sly misconception you try to slip in.

    In both Senter studies, he shows that maniraptors are not related to dinosaurs (not related to non-maniraptor coelurosaurs). He calls them the "tyrannosaur cluster" and the "bird-like cluster".
    That is the bottom line.
    I am not wasting more time on your sly attempts to distract from that basic fact.

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  26. The Senter study quite clearly says, and I quote,

    "One could therefore reasonably argue that therizinosauroids bridge the morphological gap between the more birdlike theropods and the rest of Theropoda. Also, taxon correlation with the basal Theropoda matrix found significant, positive correlation between Paraves and basal coelurosaurs such as Ornitholestes and tyrannosaurs".

    "Significant, positive connection between paraves and basal coelurosaurs". EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what you say the study shows.

    As for the '4 groups', as Senter says:

    "If the apparent morphological gaps within Theropoda, Hadrosauriformes and Ceratopsia are truly bridged, then only four dinosaurian taxa are set apart from the rest of Dinosauria by morphological gaps: Eusauropoda + Tazoudasaurus , Hadrosauriformes, Stegosauria and Ankylosauridae"

    Notice that Maniraptora are NOT among those final 4 groups, your claims otherwise notwithstanding.

    Senter, in his study, shows the EXACT OPPOSITE of what you claim he does.

    In conclusion, either you never read the actual paper past the abstract, or you are deliberately disingenuous.

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  27. Therizinosaurs are maniraptors.

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

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  28. I would like people to note a pattern that I have mentioned before. People will latch on to some small point and argue it till the cows come home. Ever time they present it as VERY important. As if the whole topic hangs on it. Then when it is answered they go on to another tiny point and repeat the pattern.
    If people are serious about this topic as I am, please note the over 200 posts on a huge number of characteristics of pterosaurs and aspects of this topic.

    My interest is not primarily in showing that birds did not evolve from dinosaurs. Clearly they did not. The really interesting aspect is showing that they developed from pterosaurs.

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  29. Dr, Pterosaur, you say:

    "My interest is not primarily in showing that birds did not evolve from dinosaurs. Clearly they did not. The really interesting aspect is showing that they developed from pterosaurs".

    That is understandable. Yet the Senter study, which you made so much of and reviewed in more than one posts, does not deal with pterosaurs at all, but with the relationship of birds to dinosaurs. You certainly argued that subject thoroughly enough to display your interest to that as well. You repeatedly stressed the importance of the Senter study to the failure of the conventional "dinosaurs-to-birds" model.

    Now that it has become apparent that you simply misunderstood the results of the study, confusing the four groups and believing maniraptors were included, the last thing you want to do is to say "it's not the most important issue anyway" and try to change the subject. It would make you look unable to admit your mistakes, and that is not a good thing for someone who has the courage to try and overthrow such monolithic paradigms in science. I, for one, will lose much respect for you if that happens.
    Hopefully you will reconsider and simply admit your (not so important) error.

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  30. I am not concerned with your "respect".
    You are not the judge or arbiter of this subject.

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  31. By the way I am familiar with every trick. Like Anonymous pretending to be so solicitous.
    There were tipoffs within the comment for those who are familiar with these tricks.

    And notice this:
    "..the last thing you want to do is to say "it's not the most important issue anyway"

    Notice the quote marks. But of course I did not say that. This is a false, made-up quote. This is the kind of trick this person (who is probably someone who goes by the handle "Monad") uses and that he has been called out repeatedly on elsewhere.

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  32. The genius of this individual (Monad) is his slyness. He has the ability to subtly spin the topic in such a way that it is almost impossible to see the trick that is being played.
    Here the trick is the implication that I meant that this is "not the most important issue anyway". But I did not say that idea.

    Here is what I said:
    "My interest is not primarily in showing that birds did not evolve from dinosaurs. Clearly they did not. The really interesting aspect is showing that they developed from pterosaurs."

    Do people see that what I actually said has been subtly modified?
    Even now that I have pointed out the trick it may still be difficult for some people to see it.

    Here is what would have been honest:
    the last thing you want to do is to say - it's not what I am primarily interested in showing.
    That would have been honest.

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