tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8397350206066419382.post40142147976845007..comments2024-02-04T04:35:57.404-06:00Comments on Tyrannosauroidea central: THE MOR DIARIES, ENTRY #6Thomas Carrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16222089653141920186noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8397350206066419382.post-52947226496210732302015-02-28T11:23:16.540-06:002015-02-28T11:23:16.540-06:00Hi Mike,
Thank you for your positive comments, whi...Hi Mike,<br />Thank you for your positive comments, which are a welcome change from being asked pointedly about where I expect to publish such lengthy works (which I hope have been laid to rest by this post). We can pick many examples from recent decades on brief works that await full treatment, and I agree that is frustrating and unfortunate. In the long run, we can change the culture by example and action.Thomas Carrhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16222089653141920186noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8397350206066419382.post-22445176229391941942015-02-26T07:29:50.339-06:002015-02-26T07:29:50.339-06:00Tom,
Just want to say I think it's magnificen...Tom,<br /><br />Just want to say I think it's magnificent that you are giving a saurischian the level of detailed description that it merits. (Shame it's from the less interesting half of Saurischia, but you can't have everything.)<br /><br />You're dead on target when you say "we’re in an unfortunate historical moment where less information is seen as better than more". The extreme example of that idiot attitude is the Sereno et al. (1999) paper in Science, in which five pages are considered sufficient to describe not one but <i>two</i> new sauropods, both known from essentially complete skeletons, and to advance a novel (and subsequently discredited) stratigraphic hypothesis. Needless to say, the authors got far for Scholarly Credit Beans for this wiper than they would have got for doing actual scientific work, since it appeared in an IMG IMG HIGH IMPACT FACTOR OMG journal. Why would they, then, fritter away their time doing careful, competent, detailed descriptive work of actual scientific value? The result is that, 16 years on, all the world knows about spectacularly complete sauropod <i>Jobaria</i> is "there's a thing called <i>Jobaria</i>, it was in Science".<br /><br />All that is backdrop to say a big thank you for taking the time to do the job properly on your tyrannosaurs. In a century, the work you're producing will still be informing palaeontologists who are born long after we both die; whereas those "descriptions" in Science and Nature will be seen as what they are -- lightly illustrated abstracts.<br /><br />Keep up the good work!Mike Taylorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06039663158335543317noreply@blogger.com