Obviously paleontologists have always been aware that animals change appearance when they grow up. What I was specifically referring to was Horner's revelation of how significant morphology variation has been automatically assumed to be representing different animal groups. This wouldn't even be a big deal except for the fact that evolutionists use the same morphological variation as evidence of animals "evolving" via mutation and selection of novel traits. (an assumption that, in general, has turned out to be woefully in error regarding modern observation of animal variation)
I know how much you want this to be a big deal, but please pay attention. Horner is not making a "revelation". As I said previously, there are sources of intraspecific variation that can be confused for different species and paleontologists have known this for a long time. Let's go through it one more time: intraspecific variation being mistaken for different species
is not news! I know it's news to you, but paleontologists have been well aware of the issue for decades. Your ignorance of the literature dealing with this doesn't mean paleontologists didn't realize it could happen. You're also ignoring the response I gave to your question of how Horner could know that such drastic ontogenetic variation was rare in non-dinosaurian groups. I pointed out to you that a quick google reveals a great deal of research into the ontogeny of many different groups. This is the basis for the conclusion that this issue is much more prevalent in dinosaurs than in other groups.
Yet evolutionists have no problem bucking stratigraphic position if they feel it will better harmonize a "transitional" sequence. e.g. Dino-Bird, Fish-Tetrapod, where you have more 'advanced' fossil character states appearing underneath more 'primitive' ones. Likewise, fossil bone fragments may be found in different stratigraphic and geographic locations and still be associated with each other.
Nice try, but this evasion doesn't address the point I made about stratigraphy. The point you should address is that stratigraphic separation is one of the non-morphological means of assessing whether two morphotypes are distinct species. If morph A is always found in at one level and morph B always found at another, then they are likely different species. They certainly can't be different sexual or ontogenetic morphs. And, as I discuss below, there are ways of detecting phenotypic plasticity.
Actually it could indicate that they are the same species being subject to significantly different environmental conditions. (i.e. phenotypic plasticity)
All sorts of morphology begins observably changing on lizards by simply exposing them to different environments, such as increased length in limbs, changes in skull and dentition, and gut anatomy.
Would he be aware of potential plastic adaptive changes? Does he know what a T. horridus looks like if it grows up in significantly different climates and with a different diet?
The short answer is yes, he would be aware of this issue. Why? Because he is a professional paleontologist and as such is familiar with the literature. If you possessed a similar familiarity you would know that this subject too has been studied for years. Take
this paper on
Plateosaurus, for example. From the abstract:
Individual life histories of P. engelhardti were influenced by environmental factors, as in modern ectothermic reptiles, but not in mammals, birds, or other dinosaurs.
So these researches have demonstrated that it is indeed possible to detect the presence of phenotypic plasticity. Furthermore, you will note that this phenomenon is not seen in most dinosaurs. This conclusion is based on histological studies, i.e. cutting up bones which, despite what you seem to think, is not a new development. Plasticity can be detected by looking at the type of bone being deposited and dinosaur bones do not in general bear the signs of plasticity:
Ornithodirans (pterosaurs and dinosaurs), on the other hand, had lost developmental plasticity, as indicated by the predominance of the fibrolamellar complex.
I assume that when you refer to phenotypic plasticity in lizards you are probably referring to studies of
Anolis lizards. The conclusions of studies like
this one would be hard to extrapolate to the kind of gradual morphological changes described in
Triceratops. The changes seen in the lizards were directly related to the substrate on which they were raised and had obvious functional correlations. Or, as they summarize it in the abstract:
...this plasticity leads to the production of phenotypes appropriate to particular environments.
In contrast, the morphological shifts in
Triceratops described by Horner cannot be similarly ascribed to particular environmental factors. The morphological gradation seen from the bottom to the top of the HCF (from longer orbital horns to shorter ones, from small nasal horn to a longer one, from a protuberance produced by the contact between the nasal and epinasal to the reduction and disappearance of that protuberance) do not lend themselves to being interpreted as and adaptation to a different substrate or climate. Plus geological study indicates that the HCF in which the animals are preserved represents roughly the same environmental setting throughout, so phenotypic plasticity is not a great explanation of the obvious morphological disparity observed between the top and bottom (see quote below). Plus any changes seem to be cyclical, meaning that we should presumably see a cyclical pattern in the variation, not a smooth gradation from
T. horridus to
T. prorsus.
Furthermore, the
Anolis study doesn't support your implicit assumption that many ostensibly different species are really just plastic variants:
These results might also lead one to question whether the differences seen among species of Caribbean Anolis that have specialized to use different habitats (‘‘ecomorphs,’’ Williams 1983; Losos et al. 1998) also might be the result of plasticity. This seems unlikely because the differences displayed among such species are vastly greater than those produced in this study.
Perhaps I should have been more specific. I know problems will be discussed within the scientific community. But they will usually not be candidly admitted to the public in plain language, especially if it paints the evolutionary community, or popular evolutionary models in any remotely unfavorable light.
Again, your conspiracy theory holds no water. Paleontologists are very eager (especially in this modern age of easy communication) to publicly announce new findings, particularly if they are shocking. Horner is not being censured for presenting his work to the public in plain language. It is absurd to claim that the public doesn't have fairly extensive access to this sort of information. Anyone can pay for a subscription to scientific journals and even barring that there is no shortage of popular science articles and blogs (many written by actual researches) that present the information in plain language. If you think this sort of information is being hidden from the public, it's only because you haven't bothered to look for it.
