Wikijunior talk:Dinosaurs/Introduction

Poorly Written
I wrote it, and I realize this. Something needs to be done to it, and it needs to be expanded in some way. I was thinking of including a short little story making it fun while being informative, but I didn't have time, I will return though. Like it says on the cover discusion page, nothing is sacred rip, tear, rewrite, and edit the heck out of everything. We don't even have a rough draft done right now! The book is just a collection of thoughts, and the research isn't done. So, if anyone has any Ideas for the introduction, may you edit in peace.

After several rewrites
Still poorly written, but I believe its better. I stole a section of it out of Wikijunior's Big Cats, but just because I like the forward alot. Still, I don't think it shows enough...of something, but I am lost for what it needs, if anyone out there see the missing link, please fill it in.

Bias
This module appears highly biased. Educational material should at least inform the reader that a controversy exists. I'm talking mostly about the origin of life and how old it is.

How would someone counter an argument from the "opposition" if they don't even know the view point exists?


 * Note that not only is this wikibook not complete, it is also not all inclusive. If you feel that the book needs a bit of information or another section, create it, or discus it in a friendly mannor on the discussion page.  Please note that no one and no group of people will ever enjoy being called biased, no matter wether or not how true it might be.  Secondly, your comment seems to sugest that the science comunity is torn apart by this issue, which is plainly not true.  Few scientists agree with the intelligent design, and most with evolution and the idea that the earth is very old.  No matter what you say, that is true.  One of the great things about the spirit of free knowledge and free inquiry that wikipedia and wikibooks provides you however is that it does not require that you agree with the majority.  I think if enough people are going to be offended by the lack of an alternitive mentioned in this book, then write a section, let future readers of this book know of an alternative that exists in this world to the facts and information they are being given.  You must face the cold hard reality of the magority, and the cold hard reality presented by the facts.  If one day scientists prove that an intelligent being created the world, I will be happy, for science would have triumphed and our knowledge of the world would be one bit more complete.  Until that day, I will stick with that which seems moost likely, and has had the most evidence, and the most backing.--Pampaeditor 22:42, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I think the anyonamous author above is reffering to the creation-darwin "contoversy" which has mostly vanished in the last century. This is not valid here. The scientific facts here are what must be accepted. WikiMedia is not a religious institution and therefore the views of a certain group must not be represented over those as another. Creationisim can be discussed in another book, but here, where the dinosaurs are the subject matter, one must assume that they existed if one wishes to write about them.

--Basejumper123 00:15, 7 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Anonymous poster, the only "controversy" is entirely generated by religious hacks, 99% of whom don't have any formal education in biology, geology, or paleontology. Their ignorance does not constitute evidence, nor does it make for a very good argument. 68.127.123.197 (talk) 22:30, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

TO ALL CONTRIBUTORS: Please Sign your Talk!

Another bias I noticed is in the statement, "Dinosaurs were the greatest beings to ever walk this Earth." Saying "greatest" violates the NPOV policy. Could we please be more specific? --Gray Porpoise 01:07, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
 * "Dinosaurs were the largest creatures known to have walked the earth"? I think that might be what the author meant, but it doesn't convey the fact that dinosaurs varied greatly in size. 68.127.123.197 (talk) 22:30, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Editing
I am making some small edits to make the flow of the Intro more real, sincere, and less chopy. The content included is good and it states all the right ideas, but it is in need of a non-author editor. I would encourage each and every person on the project to take a look themselves! P.S. The spelling in this article is completely correct as of my edit at the time below

--Basejumper123 01:24, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

You hear a twig snap
Sure it's a nice line, grabs attention. But it also reinforces the myth that humans and dinosaurs have coexisted. I've added a bit about "it could only happen in your imagination" to counter that. 203.22.236.14 09:23, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Or write it explicitly from the POV of another dinosaur. 68.127.123.197 (talk) 22:31, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Some ideas
Eugh! I know what you mean! Paleontology can't be an easy topic to discuss with juniors in a meaningful way. I have a dreadful book aimed at kids which starts off "Dinosaurs were a group of really successful, land-dwelling creatures that dominated Earth bewteen X million and Y million years ago." Really! It must be hard for a paleontologist to talk to children. I have just typed in what I told my five-year-old, 8 lines. Hope it's religiously inclusive enough for you all (heh heh). I'm NOT going to change a word of what you put in your introduction because my description is aimed at younger people, but if you see anything you like cut and paste - it's my own work, you can have it.

"For thousands of years - since before the first history books - people have been digging things up out of the ground.

Here are some of the things we dig up: amber, for jewellery, flint, for arrows; clay, for making pots; Slate for roof tiles; chalk for drawing; peat, which burns easily in fires and so on.

Now, some rocks come from volcanoes when they spit out globs of molten rock, which cools down and goes hard. No volcanic rocks contain bones (but they might have diamonds in them!). Another way rocks are made is by being built up over time --  by layer upon layer of mud and sand from a river that floods from time to time. The lower levels can be very hard. Slate, for example, is a type of stone made from compressed mud. With these rocks, the deeper you dig, the older the mud that you are digging up. These types of rock sometimes contain the skeleton of an animal that has been buried in the mud.

From time to time people would dig up big - and I mean REALLY big bones. When this happened, it caused a bit of a problem for the people that wanted to know what animal the bone came from, because we know about all the animals that live in the world today and there aren't any with bones that big. Judging by how deep they were, they must have been from a long time ago.

People came up with ideas to explain how it could be that you can a) have bones and b) not have any animals with those bones. Here are some explanations people came up with: that there was an enormous flood that drowned nearly all the creatures on Earth, and all the creatures alive today have descended from the ones that escaped the flood. Another idea was they are the bones of dragons - gigantic and powerful reptiles[1].

As time went on, more and more of the bones have been unearthed and we have now got a lot of skeletons. We have also learned how to tell exactly how old they are, and when we arrange them in date order we have a fossil record that shows how 'modern' dinosaurs evolved from 'primitive' dinosaurs. We have also found winged, feathered dinosaurs, which look like they could have been distant relatives of birds today.

One day, about sixty-five million years ago, something happened and now the dinosaurs are all dead. Nobody is quite sure what happened, but the rock at that depth has a lot of soot in it. You can find dinosaur bones below that line, but you never see any above the line. Most people think that there was a huge disaster that caused a lot of fires and changed the Earth's climate so the dinosaurs died out. Nobody really knows for sure, but it could have been caused by an asteroid hitting the Earth. We do know that very large asteroid hit the Earth around the time the dinosaurs died out and the crater it left behind is 180 km or 112 Miles across[2].

We also sometimes find the bones of people (human remains). The oldest human remains are about 100,000 years old[3], which is much less than 65 million years, so at no time has a human ever met a dinosaur."

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon#Speculation_on_the_origin_of_dragons

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-t_boundary

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human#Origin

PS. Tend to agree with the comment about the twig snapping - you'll need a time machine if you want to keep it with a person in it. -- M-streeter97