Whichever way you look at it, the truths behind
dinosaur and bird evolution ARE strange!
The long tradition of our ideas about dinosaurs changing every thirty years or so continues. Find out here what the next big idea is going to be, and why...

'Interpreting dinosaur/bird fossils'

"Homoplasy - thy name is theropod!" It's pretty certain that the dino-bird family tree contained many deceptive bends; here's my view of the lines of descent with the cut-corners identified...

'My dinobird tree'

In November 2000 I visited the American Museum of Natural History in NY to see the "Fighting Dinosaurs" exhibition. They very kindly allowed me to show my photos here. Never expect to see a more dramatic fossil than the featured pair, nor a better dinosaur exhibition. Within the webpage are some other pics of my trip to the rather special Oxford university museum...

'Photos of Fighting Dinos Exhibition'

Palaeontologists are the best people to decide what fossils mean, right? 'Fraid not; that's like saying insurance salesmen are the best people to work out actuarial tables. The paradox (one of many actually) is that answers to our questions are seldom expected in palaeontology, therefore many lessons have to be learned from other fields where evaluations of theories are more readily available. As well as biology of course, philosophy and cognitive disciplines offer valuable guidance. This is usually spurned by palaeontologists, particularly advice from the latter two categories, but if you want to do the job properly you will have to face the issues addressed in these pages...

Leading philosopher of science Elliott Sober investigated in great depth the worth of parsimony, the principle often relied on by some to work out dinosaur family trees. Get a taste of his conclusions here...

Preface from Sober's "Reconstructing the past"


Early in 2001 I outlined on the Society of Vertebrate Paleontolgy emailing list (...though I am not now and never have been a member of SVP) a few issues involved in thinking about dino-bird relationships...

'Why dino theories should be innocent until proved guilty'

That page deals with Popper's ideas, some (no, let's be honest, the most significant from a philosophy of science point of view...) of which are outlined here...

Summary with comments of Popper's "Conjectures & Refutations"

Don't call yourself a scientist unless you're familiar with Popper's ideas. The above page really is an easy way of getting hold of them. The book itself is surprisingly pleasant and easy, but takes thirty times as long to read. Popper has been called the 'patron saint of cladistics' - but he isn't.




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