Well-known Dinosaur Expert: Many Known Dinosaur Species Have Never Existed

According to Jack Horner, there are much fewer dinosaur species than scientists had assumed.


Joel Kontinen


The scientific community knows more dinosaur species than there have actually been. To set things straight, palaeontologist Jack Horner wants to have more rigorous rules as to when a fossil is a new species, the journal Science reported last Thursday.

Horner, one of today’s best-known dinosaur experts, has previously said that one-third of all known dinosaur species have never existed.

Discovering a new dinosaur species often brings fame and dollars to its discoverer, so it is understandable that lots of species have been found.

Horner points out that dinosaurs of the same species look different at different ages, and this has often led researchers astray. More rigorous research guidelines will cause the demise of 50 species of dinosaurs in the near future.

Several other dinosaur experts agree with Horner.

It is easier to understood the inflation in the number of dinosaur species if one realises the power of belief in millions of years and Darwinian evolution, which would give more time for the evolution of new dinosaur species.

However, if dogmatism begins to guide research, one might well discover species that have never existed.

Source:

Margottini, Laura. 2011. Is It Time to Declutter the Dinosaur Roster? Science 332 (6031): 782.

Goodbye, Torosaurus!

New Scientist suggests that there were fewer dinosaur species than we thought.



Joel Kontinen

There were probably fewer dinosaur species than previously thought. This week New Scientist reported on the research of John Scannella and Jack Horner at the Museum of the Rockies. They compared the skulls of 29 Triceratops and 9 Torosaurus and noticed that no one had ever found the fossil of a young Torosaurus.

They suggest that as a species Torosaurus does not exist but it is instead an adult Triceratops.

Last October, National Geographic produced the documentary Dinosaurs Decoded that suggested that a third of assumed dinosaur species never existed.

Seen from a creation perspective, reducing the number of dinosaur species was expected. Evolutionists have all too often assumed that a new fossil find is a new species.

Source:

Lawton, Graham. 2010. Morph-osaurs: How shape-shifting dinosaurs deceived us. New Scientist 2771 (28 July)

National Geographic News: A Third of Dinosaur Species Never Existed

According to a National Geographic documentary there were far fewer dinosaur species than we thought. Image: dinosaurs at the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum in Kentucky.




Joel Kontinen

Dinosaurs Decoded is a new documentary that challenges our views of dinosaurs. The film, produced by the National Geographic Channel, claims that a third of dinosaur species never existed.

Young dinosaurs differed in many ways from their parents. However, researchers have not always taken this into account. Science thus ”knows” species that have never existed.

Mark Goodwin of the University of California, Berkeley, and Jack Horner of Montana State University, are prominent palaeontologists who present their discoveries in the documentary. They suggest, for instance, that the relatives of T. rex were often classified as distinct species although they actually were juveniles that lacked the traits that are characteristic of adult Tyrannosaurs.

Nowadays many researchers regard Nanotyrannus as a young T. rex. They know that dinosaurs changed as they got older just like many present species do. For instance, deer get their antlers when they are full-grown.

Dinosaurs Decoded has important ramifications for the reliability of fossil finds. It suggests that we should perhaps take a more skeptical approach to them – or at least to headlines that advertise a discovery as the fossil of the century.

Later research almost always brings to light features that refute the original claims of the importance of the discovery. Recently, we saw this happen in the case of the Ida fossil.

Finding a new species brings prestige and fame to its discoverer. Is it any wonder, then, that scientists habitually defend the importance of their fossil and discount the significance of rival discoveries? Richard Leakey, whose research team found Turkana Boy, the famous Homo erectus fossil, for instance, moved Lucy or Australopithecus afarensis to a side branch of the hominid tree.

Seen from a creation perspective, Dinosaurs Decoded is a welcome innovation. Noah did not have to take as many dinosaurs on board the ark as evolutionists assumed. In addition, it is good to keep in mind that the average dino was as small as a sheep or a calf.

Sources:

Barras, Colin. 2009. Richard Leakey: Passionate, prickly and principled. New Scientist 2730 (14 October) http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427301.000-richard-leakey-passionate-prickly-and-principled.html?full=true


Handwerk, Brian. 2009. A Third of Dinosaur Species Never Existed? National Geographic News (9 October)
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/091009-dinosaur-species-never-existed.html