For example, how do we know velociraptors we’re family and pack oriented? How do we know some were passive, and some were very aggressive predators? How do we know what foods they ate?
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It’s just educated guesses, and honestly I find a lot of the paleontology field quite disingenuous.
There are constantly new discoveries that contradict old assumptions and lead to new understandings – which is all fine and good, that’s science!
But what irks me is how confidently they speak about their guesswork as if it is some kind of concrete understanding that has been observed firsthand. Those kinds of assertions make for entertaining media, but it’s not very scientific. Seems more like people trying to justify their jobs and titles rather than making honest strides in the pursuit of knowledge and science.
I guess I should go ahead and say that probably most paleontologists are ethical and scientific, but the media dramatizes the findings and makes it seem like paleontologists can magically see into the past, which is not true.
It’s the same mess that pisses me off about anthropology – don’t get me wrong, I very much believe humans evolved from primates and all that, but the “evidence” presented to me in my college anthropology class left me shaken… I had never been in greater doubt than when I saw the supposed “hard evidence” firsthand. These people would find a single fragment of a primate knuckle fossil (I’m talking literally a shard the size of a fingernail) and claim *that* was undisputable evidence of a missing link between early hominids and modern humans. It is baffling how unfounded a lot of supposedly scientific claims actually turn out to be.
Again, I’m not a creationist or anything, I believe we evolved – but I find the anatomical evidence to be a thousand times more relevant and convincing than the archeological bone fragments of some unidentifiable creature from 15,000 years ago.
Kind of got off topic, but thanks for reading!
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