Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/09/27/this-crazy-dinosaur-was-earth.html
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“A giant thunderclap at dawn.”
It’s how we know your momma just got up.
Seriously though, dinosaurs are cool, and this is awesome!
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Dinosaurs are cool. I miss reading about new dinosaur discoveries. As a kid it was Star Wars, dinosaurs and Pac-man.
Anyway i don’t like the name.
Why does it break the “…saurus” naming convention? 
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It always amazes me how much people can deduce about a whole animal from a few bone fragments.
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Aren’t all species “transitional”?
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Not the ones that go extinct without leaving any surviving progeny. Dodos were only a “transitional” species if you count the transition to dead dodos.
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I dont agree with that, but assuming i did; doesnt that then eliminate "thunderclap at dawn? It is extinct now, therefore not transitional?
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I believe “transitional” is usually used to convey “a species that bridges a gap between two other known species.” So if this dinosaur was descended from Species A and its own descendants later evolved into Species B then it would be the “transitional” species between those two.
Similarly, we are descended from now-extinct hominids that could be described “transitional” species between early apes and modern humans. But it’s too early to describe us as a transitional species because we might yet go extinct before our descendants have chance to evolve into something else.
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Ok, but that just gets straight back to “everything is transitional”. The early apes didnt spring fully formed from Eve’s rib, and we are in the process of evolving into several other things.
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Again, not if you go with the definition “a species that bridges a gap between two other known species.”
Dodos don’t bridge a gap between an earlier species of birds and a later species of birds because there weren’t any species of birds that evolved from dodos.
Yeah, but only because we ate them all. Left to their own devices they would have, and indeed they were until we interrupted them.
Let me try another way: isnt evolution a continuois continuum, rather than a series of punctuated end points.
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Fine, then just substitute any other species that went extinct without leaving surviving progeny.
T. Rex isn’t considered a “transitional” species because it’s believed they all died in the K-T mass extinction without leaving behind any direct descendants.
… which were in the middle of trasitioning, until they were rudely interrupted by that comet.
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Look, if you want to take issue with the definition of “transitional” species then maybe you should take it up with the entire field of paleontology. I feel silly arguing about a concept that’s been an accepted term in evolutionary science since Darwin’s day. Peace.
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@Brainspore @JonS
I think what you’re both missing here is that “transitional fossil” is not a fundamental statement about the biology of the specimen: the clue is in the fact that it is applied to the fossil, not the species. The term is used to describe the newly discovered fossil’s relationship to our understanding of evolution. It’s transitional because we had A and C, and now this provides us with B.
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I just want the full size display model at my local history museum with some fossil replica bones for scale.
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So B is the transitional? And when we subsequently find D, then C becomes the transitional between B and D? And so on.
This is basically the point I’ve been making; everything is transitional. Take any two points on a branch of the tree of life, the stuff in between is transitional. Change the points you’re interested in, and the transitional group changes with it.
Until you reach the end of a branch, yes.
Every species has the POTENTIAL to be a transitional species. Not every species gets the opportunity to meet that potential.
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Ok, although that’s a semantic rounding error. Of all the species that have ever existed, the number which have gone catastrophically extinct ( rather than merely evolved into other things) must be a tiny proportion?
I don’t have the answer to that question but I wouldn’t think it’s a safe assumption, especially when you count all the mass extinctions in Earth’s history. Or even when you look at the species facing extinction today. If the California Condor or the North Atlantic Right Whale or the Javan Rhinoceros go extinct in the next few years they certainly won’t be looked back on as “transitional” species.
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