Nature cover article questioned "smallest dinosaur" Jackie Chan?

March 12, a paper by Chinese and American scientists entitled "Myanmar Cretaceous Hummingbird-sized hummingbird-sized dinosaur" appeared on the cover of the current issue of Nature.
But just 24 hours after the article was published, a number of academic colleagues in China jointly published the questioning article "The smallest dinosaur ever in amber", perhaps the largest oolong ever, arguing that the paper concluded that the new species found in amber, Oculudentavis khaungraae, was insufficient evidence that it probably belonged to some kind of lizard.
the fossil is not a bird or a dinosaur, then all the conclusions of this study, as well as the extension, importance and scientific significance of the conclusions, will not be possible," he said. Academic peers questioned.In response to the question,
the paper's first author, Yu Lida, an associate professor at china University of Geosciences, said he had contacted other authors for the first time and was prepared to respond to the article in the journal after receiving a formal question from Nature.
li Gang, a researcher at the
Institute of High Energy Physics, one of the authors of the paper, replied that high-resolution CT scan data had been handed over to the authors of the questioning article that day and welcomed their own interpretation. If foreign counterparts wish to double-check the data, the team will also provide.This amber fossil is from the Hugang Valley in Kachin State in northern Myanmar, and geologists determined the geological age by isotopes to believe that the amber of the Hugang Valley formed about 100 million years ago and belonged to the middle of the Cretaceous period.
in amber is only about 14 mm long, with sharp gills, dense teeth and huge eyes, and only 7.1 mm in length.
The authors believe that the narrow, pointed kiss, the rear-shifting nostrils, the enlargement and clear contour of the eye socket, the shortened post-shring area, and the dome-shaped head, the skull as a whole shows the shape of the bird's skull, so the animal belongs to the bird.
, the smallest living bird is a hummingbird, of which the bee-sucking bird weighs about 1.95 grams and is 5.5 centimeters long, the smallest bird in the world. As a result, in terms of skull size, the eye-toothed bird is shorter than the hummingbird, the smallest ancient bird ever found, and the smallest dinosaur in history (broadly, including birds).habitat restoration picture: Han Zhixin
"Dinosaur"
"miniaturization" phenomenon unprecedented!
is a remarkable specimen," Amy Baranov, an evolutionary biologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, told the media. If the authors' explanations are correct, she says, there is evidence that the ecological and morphological diversity we see in modern birds dates back a long time.
Roger B. J. Benson, of the Department of Geosciences at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, commented that research into the small vertebrates preserved in amber, their ecosystems and the evolutionary relationship between them is still in its infancy, and that the discovery of the new amber suggests that there is great potential for continued discovery of smaller animals.
"This is the strangest fossil I've ever had the privilege of studying," said Jingmai K. O'Connor, a foreign researcher at
Paleontum Spine Institute and author of the paper.is strange not only because of its small size, but also because the authors detail a series of anatomical features of the specimen in their paper, and find that many of the features are only those of lizards and are difficult to find in known dinosaurs/birds.
Intriguingly, the team also acknowledged that no specific skull features have been found to accurately classify the animal as a bird, non-bird dinosaur, or other main dragon, or even to completely rule out that the skull belongs to another animal.
There is still some uncertainty in the author's explicit statement that the classification of the species, but in interpreting the importance and scientific significance of the specimen, still completely only consider the specimen belongs to the dinosaur / bird assertion, the whole article does not mention the possibility that the specimen belongs to a lizard, which is why academic peers have questioned.
article issued by The People's Court in the "Back to Park" public name put forward ten doubts about the conclusion of the study, including:
system development analysis is unreasonable;
Birds and dinosaurs have a very stable and distinguishing feature on the skull - the front pores, not on the amber skull;
the teeth on the upper jaw of the amber skull are lateral teeth, a method common in lizards, but unprecedented in dinosaurs and birds;
there is no square bone at the lower back of the eye socket, another big difference between lizards and dinosaur/bird skulls, but the author mentions only;
The sclerine bone of the amber skull has only been found in lizards and has not been seen in dinosaurs or birds;
amber skulls have unusually many teeth, more than all known birds, which are common in lizards; and the size of
specimens is unusual, at least extremely rare, for dinosaurs or birds. If it's a lizard, it makes perfect sense, the living lizard has a smaller one, and so on.
fact, in the paper, these supporting specimens are more likely evidence of lizards, which the authors see as a "bright spot" for a particular bird. Tao, director of the Institute of Paleontbra spines, said the paper's importance and scientific significance would be greatly diminished once it was proved that the specimen was not a bird but a lizard. in the field of palaeontology, scientists believe in one sentence: extraordinary conclusions must have extraordinary evidence!
"It's hard to imagine a bird that grows like this. Xu
, deputy director of the Institute of Paleontary Spine, believes that it is in a huge contrast to conventional cognition, and that our interpretation of the evidence must be more rigorous.
his analysis, specifically to this study, the researchers found that the fossils first have a basic prejudgment, from their own research areas, think it may be birds, it is not wrong. Crucially, the author's presets were too strong, preconsitively identifying the specimen as a bird and adding other characteristics similar to lizards to this particular "bird".
never even tried to prove strictly that this was a bird, nor did they explore the possibility of lizards. Xu
that such research design and demonstration ideas are flawed.
" Normally, if a specimen has some evidence of birds, some evidence of more evidence like lizards, or even lizards, then it is necessary to adjust the prejudgment in time, to do a larger scale analysis, birds and lizards should be considered in the direction, and ultimately look closer to who.
for example, when calculating the system position of an eye-toothed bird, it should not be placed in a data matrix where the sample is selected to be all birds, but in a larger range, and the sample should include representatives of other reptiles such as dinosaurs and lizards. But the authors didn't, so the evidence of systemic development that should have been important failed.
" judgment of the conclusion can not go dark, should be adjusted with the depth of evidence analysis at any time. Xu Xing stressed that especially when the conclusion is subversive of the conventional, the evidence supporting the conclusion must be excellent, the logic of the argument must be rigorous. It also depends on how much time researchers spend looking for and validating enough evidence. At present, the author's research is relatively indisteth, the degree of evidence verification is not sufficient.
Deng Tao added that because of the uniqueness of fossil specimens, some collaborators are often sought, and the winner of the specimen may not be academic enough, academic judgment is not enough, there will be mistakes. a top-level journal cover article is clearly inadequate, peer-reviewed participation in the "control mechanism" failed?
, an anonymous paleontologist, said in an interview that good journals must not lack reviewers, but in practice, it is difficult for reviewers to be absolutely rigorous. Sometimes, the quality of a paper, the influence of the reviewer is indeed not to be underestimated. Review experts should usually be small peers, but sometimes not necessarily. Sometimes, the magazine also looks for ph.D.s to review papers later.
Xu Xing, Nature has at least 2 peer reviews and up to 5, depending on the size of the area covered by the article. The research direction of this article is relatively narrow, perhaps found two bird experts, just as they are also caught in the "bird thinking."
how to choose a review expert, how to view the review opinion, each magazine's specific operation is different. Anonymous experts mentioned that the nature review rules make it clear that the magazine does not have a senior scientist editorial board, editor-in-chief and editor-in-chief
is relatively large.
Said that the selected reviewers, the review style is also very different, the results will be flexible. Some have a strong tendency to be critical, and some are more "merciful". Some reviewers are familiar with the author and are more likely to trust the author.
back to this paper, is it possible to identify and correct its problems in advance? Xu Xing's view is that it should be easy to be aware of these problems if the author or reviewer, at least, knows something about reptiles. "The field of research is now so subdivided that every scientist studies only what he is familiar with, and the review experts are no exception."
of course, even if the publication of the paper strictly adhere to the review process, there are always some fish leakage, which is inevitable. Deng Tao said that the reviewer's main responsibility is not to repeat the experiment and analysis process. The author of the thesis is the first person responsible for a study, to make rational judgment and choice, which also reflects the academic attitude of scientists. "I am very much opposed to the current one-sided cognition, see a good magazine said is a good article, good results." "Anonymous experts say that good magazines don't mean they're all good articles. Even the published top-level journal papers have to go through the test of time to see if the academic community really endorses them.
, not to mention magazines with commercial attributes like Nature, have business interests to consider. Its purpose is not the same as that of pure academic journals, it not only promotes scientific progress, but also hopes to attract the attention of the public and the market. This is also reflected in its choice of cover articles.
Xu Xing explained that ordinary readers are easy to misunderstand, "Nature" cover article is the current issue of all the papers of the highest academic value, in fact, it is not. Academic achievements in different fields can not simply compare the value of high and low, therefore, the choice of cover articles is generally for two reasons, one is to study whether the topic is of public and media interest, and the other is whether the visual display of the results is strong enough.
" But for scholars, the ultimate goal of scientific research is to bring out the results that really drive scientific progress, and we should focus more on science itself than on what magazines it is published in and where it is. ”