From Jurassic Park terror to flyer

As I continue to read the site as mentioned in my last post, they make the point that Dr. J.H. Ostrom's work lead to modern theories of Dino to Bird Evolution. Specifically, http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/saurischia/maniraptora.html . Now if some of you don't already know, raptors in Jurassic Park we're alot larger then their real life counterparts. Although they might still be as deadly, they certainly were not as tall. What gets me about this is that, at the earliest, I head about the Dino to Bird connection during 1997. Which, knowing me, broke the media about 5 years earlier (since I get all my info about 5 years too late >.>). Which means, we had an idea of Dino to Bird Evolution for 22 years before the general populous got wind of it.

That forces me to beg the question, how much info on dinosaurs I got via word of mouth/media vs respectable academic institutions.  The Answer: alot if not, all of it.


So now I ask, how much info do I not know because I don't have subscriptions to academic journals reserved for people with doctorates? This means that a lot of my current info is sorely misinformed, outdated, or just plain wrong.

I remember that for years I believed that the T-Rex, just as in Jurassic Park, could not see objects that we're not moving, until Wikipedia stated that there was major debate, and now it is accepted that T-Rexs could probably see the world really really well. (yeah go ahead and laugh at my attempts to learn using Wikipedia)

Point I am trying to make is, I might be the most uninformed person when it comes to paleontology.

Okay, so based on the first few paragraphs of http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/avians.html that birds are just dinosaurs that have changed over time due to the needs and demands of the environment to their species. In fact one could say that dinosaurs are still alive.....which is kinda optimistic in a desperate sort of way. Yes you can call it "technically" and of course a good chunk of science supports it, but I just don't feel it. Its kinda like giving a child a cat and calling it a lion because it is extremely close to being a lion vs it's relation to a dog or a chimp. But it probably is my own cynical attitude toward the entire affair.

First Day here...

So I'm making this blog with one thing in mind, sharing my exploration of Pleontology with all those who even care. I'm a Undergrad in Math and its hard to find the time to find new and intersting infomation on dinosaurs. With this blog I will attempt to learn somthing new every few days, and relay it back to you all. Today I found out that, no so much in the dino relm, but in the genetics relm, the importance of parts of our DNA called switches, the parts of the DNA that tell the protine sythisizing parts, when, where, and how long to sythinzie something. If I understand correcty, at conception, if we were to adjust the switch genes just right, we can turn a human embryol into somthing more primitive (MANIMAL!)