Some things you learn are not found in any textbooks…yet.

No current discoveries are found in the latest textbooks. 
That’s because it takes time (years typically) for textbooks to be (in reverse order) assigned, accepted, distributed, printed, edited, written and illustrated, researched and concepted. Textbook publishers are out to sell the maximum number of books, so they write to the current consensus, which may be in flux on several points and hypotheses. The current consensus may also be wrong–but it remains the consensus.

There are no courses
at any colleges entitled, PTEROSAURS 101, 102 or 103. Who would attend? There are only two dozen people in the world who have an interest, who study them, or contribute to what we know about them. And where is the consensus? On some points, there is no consensus!! And all too often “the consensus” is holding on to outmoded, invalid and unverifiable paradigms (see below).

Every new fossil specimen is really a new chapter
in an ever expanding textbook on paleontology. And all paleontologists who publish are contributing authors to that future textbook.

Striiving for veracity
It is important for all workers to see things as they are in specimens, and not to reinterpret them to fit an established paradigm, no matter the temptation to do otherwise. For instance, narrow chord wing preservation in pterosaurs is not the result of ‘shrinkage’ as some workers report. Rather it is what it is, universal. All pterosaur specimens have narrow chord wings. If you know one that is different, please tell me. I know one that appears different, but that’s because part of its arm was ripped away and displaced. Look closely. That’s the way it is.

If Galileo
went to school as a teenager and found the following question on a test: “If object A at ten pounds and object B at 10 ounces both fall from 1000 feet at the precisely the same moment, how many seconds ahead of B will A strike the ground?” He’d would not have even had the opportunity to choose answer E. “zero seconds.” Common knowledge at the time, based on Aristotle, would not have allowed it, no matter the facts of this case, proven by experiment. This went on for centuries.

Similarly,
if you were in college today and were given the multiple choice question, “Which one of the following taxa is most closely related to pterosaurs? A. Dinosaurs. B. Scleromochlus. C. Proterochampsids (including Lagerpeton). D. Euparkeria. E. Erythrosucids. F. We don’t know.” You would have to pick “F” to get a good score, because that’s the current consensus… unless your professor had recently written a paper espousing one of the other answers (see below). “G. None of the above” is the better answer according to the large reptile tree where fenestrasaurs are more closely related to pterosaurs. But each one of the above (A-E) has been proposed by recent authors, not caring if they made sense or not.

Imagine the plight of the poor student in Paleontology 101 today
when he or she asks the professor about that website, “repitleevoluton.com” The professor is going to have to say, “If you want a good grade, you’ll ignore that website and provide the same answers that are in your textbook.” That’s what Dr. Darren Naish  reported online. Don’t consider, test or discuss other possibilities. Best to ignore them — if you want to advance in paleontology and get your Masters or PhD.

Take, as an example,
David Hone’s dissertation that was later published in two papers in which he proposed comparing two competing pterosaur origin hypotheses, one by Peters 2000 (Cosesaurus, Sharovipteryx, Longiasquama) and one by Bennett 1996 (Scleromochlus) using the supertree method of analysis (combining several published analyses without actually examining any fossil specimens). Aware that his professor, Michael Benton, had earlier written a paper (Benton 1999) celebrating Scleromochlus as the sister to pterosaurs, Hone decided to delete and diminish the taxa proposed by Peters. He somehow created several typos in the Peters data and then deleted the entire Peters dataset because of those typos (references and the full story here). Then Hone and Benton (2008) gave credit for both competing hypotheses to Bennett while deleting all reference to Peters 2000. As a result, Hone received his PhD, two associated papers (Hone and Benton 2007, 2008) were published and Hone gained the ability to referee pterosaur manuscripts (like mine) submitted to academic journals. I wrote to Dr. Benton about the inconsistencies and leaps of logic between the two parts of their two part paper. His reply was a sheepish, “whoops. :  )”

See how it works? 
That’s how you crush an opposing hypothesis. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of current readily solvable problems, as Pterosaur Heresies readers are well aware. No PhD wants to admit he/she was wrong. On some problems consensus will likely never be achieved — because in order to do so all invalid candidate hypothesis writers would have to admit they were wrong.

And that’s just not going to happen.
Not without a fight or a dismissal. Let me know if you know of any instances of someone admitting they were wrong (I know of one semi-wrong situation regarding Dr. Padian and his fight with pterosaur tracks). In the origin of snakes, pterosaurs, turtles and dinosaurs there are lots of ‘right’ answers out there, but few challenges to the weaker hypothesis and no one admits to being wrong.

As history tells us, in paleontology it takes decades to turn the boat around. And paleontologists don’t want anyone else, even other paleontologists, solving their mysteries for them… even when solutions are published in the literature.

Thanks for your interest.
I will continue to study and make informed comment on new fossil specimens, (many that haven’t made the textbooks yet). I will throw a spotlight on problems and celebrate solutions as they are verified or not in the large reptile tree. And I encourage you to do the same. If I can do it, anyone can do it.

There are too many paleontologists who
follow matrices, textbooks and papers blindly
and not enough paleontologists who have the balls to say, “Hey, there’s something wrong here.”

We’ll help fix the world of paleontology someday.
Unfortunately, it’s not going to happen this year. After four years of working with the large reptile tree, and improving it, and enlarging it year after year, it still has not been accepted for publication or gained intrigue among basal reptile workers. They don’t like it. It rocks the boat.

References
Bennett SC 1996. The phylogenetic position of the Pterosauria within the Archosauromorpha. Zoolological Journal of the Linnean Society 118: 261–308.
Benton MJ 1999. Scleromochlus taylori and the origin of the pterosaurs. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society London, Series B 354 1423-1446. Online pdf
Hone DWE and Benton MJ 2007. An evaluation of the phylogenetic relationships of the pterosaurs to the archosauromorph reptiles. Journal of Systematic Palaeontology 5:465–469.
Hone DWE and Benton MJ 2008. Contrasting supertree and total evidence methods: the origin of the pterosaurs. Zitteliana B28:35–60.
Peters D 2000. A Redescription of Four Prolacertiform Genera and Implications for Pterosaur Phylogenesis. Rivista Italiana di Paleontologia e Stratigrafia 106 (3): 293–336.

Source: https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/2015/09/25/some-things-you-learn-are-not-found-in-any-textbooksyet/