https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140605082950.htm

On 6/15/23 3:23 AM, Popping Mad wrote:
> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140605082950.htm
>
Paleontologists don't use mathematics? Never heard of morphometrics, for
example? And can we really be sure that a single character in a single
bone is diagnostic, never subject to homoplasy? This smells of
university press release hype. You should check out the actual paper to
see what actually happened.

On Thu, 15 Jun 2023 06:25:43 -0700, John Harshman
<john.harshman@gmail.com> wrote:

>On 6/15/23 3:23 AM, Popping Mad wrote:
>> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140605082950.htm
>>
>Paleontologists don't use mathematics?

Yeah right, never heard of the nonparametric difficulty measure?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-35784-3

On 6/15/23 9:56 AM, Pandora wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Jun 2023 06:25:43 -0700, John Harshman
> <john.harshman@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 6/15/23 3:23 AM, Popping Mad wrote:
>>> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140605082950.htm
>>>
>> Paleontologists don't use mathematics?
>
> Yeah right, never heard of the nonparametric difficulty measure?
> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-35784-3

I wonder what S. J. Gould, Dave Raup, Jack Sepkoski, etc., would say
about this if they were still around? Or plenty of paleontologists who
are actually with us, like Mike Foote, John Alroy, etc., etc.

Maybe this is just another example of university press release hype.

On Thu, 15 Jun 2023 18:15:15 -0700, John Harshman
<john.harshman@gmail.com> wrote:

>On 6/15/23 9:56 AM, Pandora wrote:
>> On Thu, 15 Jun 2023 06:25:43 -0700, John Harshman
>> <john.harshman@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 6/15/23 3:23 AM, Popping Mad wrote:
>>>> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140605082950.htm
>>>>
>>> Paleontologists don't use mathematics?
>>
>> Yeah right, never heard of the nonparametric difficulty measure?
>> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-35784-3
>
>I wonder what S. J. Gould, Dave Raup, Jack Sepkoski, etc., would say
>about this if they were still around?

Those were the days when you could generate every possible shellshape,
from gastropod and bivalve to ammonoid, with a circular generating
curve and just three parameters (W, D, T).
But those were also the days of Sokal and Sneath (Numerical Taxonomy)
and the translation of Willi Hennig in English.

>Or plenty of paleontologists who
>are actually with us, like Mike Foote, John Alroy, etc., etc.
>
>Maybe this is just another example of university press release hype.

We used to think that every science is ultimately a branch of physics,
but Galileo was right, every science is ultimately a branch of
mathematics, ever more sophisticated.