Every Inaccuracy in the Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs 3rd Edition (part 1 of the theropods)

[@AntoniusTyas]

I have his Field Guide to Mesozoic Sea Reptiles. Whilst it's quite a fun book to read, I got a lot more insight and understanding about marine reptiles from Dr. Darren Naish's Ancient Sea Reptiles. I think this is going to be the first and the last book I'll buy from the series. Currently having Uncovering Dinosaur Behaviour in order as well as looking forward to preorder King Tyrant, probably a better book to learn about prehistoric life.

[@raymondminton6388]

Yes, Naish's book on sea reptiles is better and more detailed than Paul's. I'm going to get his book on predatory dinosaurs, but I'll take it with the obligatory grain of salt.

[@adamgrogory]

I knew Greg Paul was notorious for his questionable synonomies but I had no idea his general information giving was THIS BAD. It seems the times have really outran him

[@lucanigro7316]

its Peam also Holy shit the mic Quality is amazing

[@The_Dinosaur_Heretic]

There’s things here worth criticism and others that are a lost cause. In a metatextual sense, I’d like to point out the inaccuracies in your video. Print errors aren’t worth your time. To me, these include unreliable unit conversions, spelling errors, formatting errors, repeated entries, and so on. You can level this criticism at any author, regardless of their reputation. I find it unfair to do here. Similarly, I disagree with rejecting speculative behaviours as a whole; they’re speculative for a reason. To Greg’s credit, he does recognise the importance of ichnofossils in reasoning novel behaviours in dinosaurs in all of his books. This information is just not incorporated well. Moreover, Greg’s mass estimates arise from using his own skeletals as a reference, and as such they’re not inaccurate, just different to other literature. To add to this, I find the shrinkwrapping complaints to be mostly unfounded. The thesis of these Field Guides is to be used as a reference if one were to travel back in time and come across a dinosaur. As such, many of the dinosaurs seen in person may be rather skinny due to poor nutrition. In essence, this is the conservative approach to reconstructing dinosaurs. It would be just as misleading for Greg to reconstruct these animals with full stomach as it would be to reconstruct them as Ely Kish would. As such, Greg’s reconstructions are a perfect average. I think Greg’s rationale concerning the “four-fingered hands” comment is instead suggesting “four functional fingers per hand”, but even then, that’s inaccurate. It’s more than likely that the fourth and fifth digit was covered by soft tissues in life. “Four load-bearing toes” is inexcusable. While Caseosaurus crosbyensis is probably not Chindesaurus bryansmalli, in a review of early South American dinosaurs by Novas et al., 2021, they consider C. crosbyensis as dubious (a decision I agree with). Generally speaking, taxonomy of extinct animals is a matter of preference; sufficient evidence to some is not for others. That said, this assertion by Greg is pretty flippant to the current literature. Personally, I’d have just omitted mentioning C. crosbyensis altogether due to insufficient remains. Gnathovorax cabreirai is recovered in a polytomy with Herrerasaurus ischigualastensis and Sanjuansaurus gordilloi. Because higher resolution relationships between these animals is indeterminate, logic would dictate that G. cabreirai is not a species of Herrerasaurus. That said, I understand Greg’s approach here (again refer to the subjectivity of taxonomy), it’s just applied inconsistently, as he considers S. gordilloi as a separate taxon. If he considered both Sanjuansaurus and Gnathovorax species of Herrerasaurus, then he’d have a stronger argument. As it stands though, it’s pretty weak. I agree that Greg’s ancestor/descendent rhetoric is ridiculous. It communicates a misunderstanding of evolution. While anagenesis has been theorised for very select dinosaur taxa, in the case of G. cabrerai, this is a clear example of cladogenesis. I despise Greg’s persistent use of subgenera in his books. It doesn’t have a place in modern dinosaur palaeontology and should be avoided altogether. Instead, he should use parentheses after the generic name to insert synonymous names that readers may know the animal by. In the instance of Gnathovorax, the entry should be formatted as: Herrerasaurus (or Gnathovorax) cabrerai. This will be an ongoing issue moving forward. I find critiquing Greg’s skeletals to be worthwhile, especially in the case of Regaliceratops. But in relation to Staurikosaurus pricei, he’s just filled in the gaps with related animals, a practice performed by all anatomical illustrators. The simplified clades Greg uses when grouping dinosaurs is for the reader’s sake, so that they are not overwhelmed with jargon. Personally, I would have employed clades that are used in the literature, as well as highlighting high resolution relationships by denoting tribes where applicable. A fairly common occurrence in these books is that entries are seemingly random, in that there are no clear phylogenetic relationships between animals. For example, all of Centrosaurinae are seemingly jumbled together, with minimal care for phylogenetic relationships. Avepoda is a little dubious, but it’s occasionally more inclusive than Neotheropoda. This is due to Liliensternus and Tawa occasionally recovered outside of the Coelophysis+Passer clade (which is the definition for Neotheropoda). According to the ICZN, Podokesauroidea is absolutely still valid, as is Procompsognathoidea. Both are interchangeable for Coelophysoidea. “Syntarsus” kayentakatae has occasionally been referred to as Coelophysis kayentakayae in literature. On a side note, I’m all for resurrecting Syntarsus. It’s no longer used to refer to the beetle, so it should be ours. Some remains assigned to Procompsognathus triassicus are problematic though; the skull associated with P. triassicus may not have been coded in Ezcurra’s unpublished 2012 analysis. Other workers assign the skull to Theropoda indet. The horizon of many Coelophysis bauri specimens suggests they existed during the Early Rhaetian. Greg stating Rhaetian in general seems fine to me. While it’s non-specific, it’s not intrinsically inaccurate. Megapnosaurus as a genus is not universally accepted. Coelophysis rhodesiensis seems more parsimonious as the differences between it and C. bauri can be identified at the species level. A phylogenetic analysis by Mickey Mortimer suggests that C. rhodesiensis and C. bauri are quite closely related, contrary to Ezcurra et al., 2021. C. rhodesiensis remains are known from the Forest Sandstone Formation, which spans from the Hettangian-Sinemurian. It’s also hails from the Elliot Formation, which is the Pleinsbachian. Again, I don’t see an issue with stating Hettangian in general. It’s just non-specific. These formations dictate a time of increased aridity, so I don’t see an issue with listing its environment as a desert with dunes and oases. Panguraptor lufengensis is possibly a procompsognathine. A majority of the material assigned to Gojirasaurus quayi is actually shuvosaurid material or other various archosaurs. This makes the apomorphies for G. quayi invalid. The only known material of Liliensternus liliensterni hails from the Trossingen Formation which is dated to the Late Norian. The reason why Greg lists “insufficient information” for the profiles of some dinosaurs is because their anatomical features are not easily identifiable from a distance based on the available material. Remember, this functions as a field guide, so listing anatomical features like a dorsoventrally well-extended hyposphene of the last dorsal vertebrae does little to inform the supposed explorer of what the animal will look like at a distance. This does make the descriptions of dinosaurs generic. By the same token though, this is why life-drawings are included for well-sampled taxa. You cannot confidently say that an animal evolved in one epoch and went extinct in the following epoch. The time periods in the book are estimates based on the proposed age for the respective formation that the animal hails from. Sampling biases exist. You failed to mention that the reconstruction of Zupaysaurus rougieri is inaccurate; the crests may in fact be nasal bones that have been displaced during fossilisation. Dracovenator regenti is in fact known from the Pleinsbachian. Hope this helps, and I look forward to the next video.

[@stubonk6346]

Firstly, thank you for taking the time to write this. Secondly, you did bring up quite a few fair points and I do want to explain my rationale for some of the points you brought up. You do have a valid point when it comes to GSP's methods of mass estimation though I personally find the scientific literature (and external literature referenced in scientific literature) to be more reliable. When it comes to shrinkwrapping, it's not necessarily that the specimen in question is too skinny (though that is often the case), it has more to do with the fenestrae in the skull being fully visible without any covering up. I would not be complaining about shrinkwrapping if the fenestrae were fully covered and there was a bit more musculature. I also dislike the use of subgenera by GSP in his books and in fact, I dislike the concept of subgenera as a whole. Though I will say that I personally would have formatted it as Gnathovorax cabrerai and then mention the possibility of it being a species of Herrerasaurus in the notes section. The point of me critiquing the Staurikosaurus skeletal was that he left the skeletal incomplete. This gives the impression that what he is showing is what we have of Staurikosaurus which is deceptive (intentionally or not). Regarding my critiques of the age sections, I will say that since he does provide age ranges for species in some cases and as such I believe I can judge him for not including the proper age range of some species. Though when it comes to me saying that a species evolved at one point and went extinct at another, I'm just trying to state the range though I'll admit that I probably could've phrased it better. While I can agree that he shouldn't be putting jargon heavy anatomical characteristics in the anatomical characteristics section, I think he can manage to state at least one notable characteristic in a way that laymen can understand (for instance, there is a portion in the book where the only noted anatomical trait is "snout not shallow" which is extremely simplistic). Once again, I appreciate you writing this comment and I'm grateful for your insight.

[@The_Dinosaur_Heretic]

@@stubonk6346 Absolutely, these are all perfectly valid and I fully agree with each point here. I think it would be interesting to put together a companion piece to GSP's Princeton Field Guides that is up-to-date on the literature and presented more accurately

[@achicken5422]

GSP deserves to be nitpicked, his whole shtick is fake rigor so hitting him back with it is totally valid