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Jan

26

Picking Apart “Origins: Battle for the Planet” (Part II)

Filed Under Cambrian Period, Wacky Science, YouTube

Desmond Collins

Above: Desmond Collins. If they'd actually consulted with him, the movie
wouldn't have sucked so much.


Check out Part 1 if you missed it!

I only scratched the surface of the stupidity contained in this documentary in Part 1.  The first part of the video is largely an introduction.  Part 1 set the stage for the stupid, and Part 2 delivers. Big Time.

The really disappointing thing is that this segment heavily features Desmond Collins of the Royal Ontario Museum.   If they’d actually run the narration by Des Collins before they recorded it, they could have eliminated 99.99% of the stupid.

Let’s dive right into the blow-by-blow:

“When we think of fossils, we think of Dinosaurs…” (0:34)
No, we don’t. Maybe you do, but you’re an idiot.

“These are the armoured bugs Canadaspis, that once filled the Cambrian oceans.  Believed to be the ancestor of many modern insects.”  (1:33)
No, it’s not. There are some ongoing arguments as to how Canadaspis perfecta should be classified, but it is considered a crustaecean ancestor. Shrimp and lobsters… they aren’t insects. At least they got the phylum right – Canadaspis is an Arthropod.

“This five-eyed freak is Opabinia, another bug ancestor” (1:56)
Wrong.  Not so much an ancestor as a very distant cousin, whose lineage split away from “the bugs” half a billion years ago.  Arthropods and Opabinia have a common ancestor, but then again, so do humans and arthropods.  More on this later.

“The only clues to the killer’s identity were a set of circular jaws, and several pairs of disembodied claws.  But  for years they had no idea what they belonged to.  Then in the early ’90′s, Des lead a party to the Burgess Shale, which uncovered the first complete specimen … They could finally build a complete profile of the serial killer, a predator they called Anomalocaris…” (5:52)
I consider this to be the second biggest mistake in the whole movie.  They completely ignores the fact that Harry Whittington reconstructed Anomalocaris in the ’80′s. Stephen Jay Gould was writing about Anomalocaris in the late ’80′s as well. This is a huge fail, which cuts the people who did the major work reconstructing Anomalocaris completely out of the story.

Plus, they pretend like Anomalocaris wasn’t named until the ’90′s.  Jeebus!

“From the watching five-eyed scavengers like opabinia, to the monster predators like anomalocaris, right down to the Olenoides scurrying on the sea floor, the oceans at this time were dominated by one group of animals.  The arthropods – the MEGA BUGS.” (8:43 – 0:10 of Part III)
This is the worst mistake the documentary makes, in my opinion.  Neither Anomalocaris, nor Opabinia were Arthropods.  The Olenoides trilobite was an arthropod, but considering it was a victim of the first two, it doesn’t fit the “MEGA-BUG” theme. I’ve modified one possible classification for Anomalocaris and Opabinia to demonstrate how they aren’t arthropods:

Opaninia - Anomalocaris Classification

It’s not a very difficult concept to grasp. EPIC FAIL.

Here is the video for Part II:


    Remember to comment. Nobody likes to watch a train wreck alone!

    Comments

    6 Responses to “Picking Apart “Origins: Battle for the Planet” (Part II)”

    1. Raptor Lewis on January 26th, 2009 6:36 pm

      No thanks, Marek. From what you said and what I saw in part one…*shudders*

    2. Corinna Bechko on January 26th, 2009 10:20 pm

      Wow. Just wow.

    3. admin on January 26th, 2009 10:25 pm

      It’s pretty shocking. When you’re batting like 10% on getting the PHYLUM of an animal right, you have some pretty major accuracy problems.

      It’s only one step better than calling an animal a plant, after all (mixing up the kingdom)!

    4. Simon on February 18th, 2009 3:23 am

      I think you are way to negative and critical and denying the beautiful simplicity of life created. Bugs, arthopods, lobopods, who cares? It stands to reason that in the 6 000 years since God has created the universe, there was simply no time for all those different phyla to have evolved from each other or some Ur-Bilaterium or whatever – which proves that all that taxonomizing is all nonsense anyway. The great designer designed bugs to be bugs, not some high fallutin kind of taxon atheists come up with. If it paddles like a bug, and looks like a bug it’s probably just a bug.

      But as always, this reasoning will be ignored by the mainstream brainwash evolutionst conspiracy, however stringent.

    5. Denis on November 11th, 2009 9:19 am

      //“When we think of fossils, we think of Dinosaurs…” (0:34)
      No, we don’t. Maybe you do, but you’re an idiot.//
      That’s what many peoples think, so that kind of journalistic sentence ain’t so stupid. Even if I’m one of those you thinks “Tullimonstrum, Marrella or Trilobite” when I read “fossil”…

      //“These are the armoured bugs Canadaspis, that once filled the Cambrian oceans. Believed to be the ancestor of many modern insects.” (1:33)
      No, it’s not. There are some ongoing arguments as to how Canadaspis perfecta should be classified, but it is considered a crustaecean ancestor. Shrimp and lobsters… they aren’t insects. At least they got the phylum right – Canadaspis is an Arthropod.//

      Who knows? Insects are now classified within crustaceas (pancrustacea – and shrimps and lobsters are malacostraca)… I don’t know when the two groups splitted, but there’s no impossibility that Canadaspis was a close relative to insects ancestor.

      //“This five-eyed freak is Opabinia, another bug ancestor” (1:56)
      Wrong. Not so much an ancestor as a very distant cousin, whose lineage split away from “the bugs” half a billion years ago. Arthropods and Opabinia have a common ancestor, but then again, so do humans and arthropods. More on this later.//

      Well, I agree with you, but some authors (Budd) tells that Opabinia is member of arthropods stem group. So, how much Opabinia was distant from euarthropods is still a matter of debate.

      // “The only clues to the killer’s identity were a set of circular jaws, and several pairs of disembodied claws. But for years they had no idea what they belonged to. Then in the early ’90’s, Des lead a party to the Burgess Shale, which uncovered the first complete specimen … They could finally build a complete profile of the serial killer, a predator they called Anomalocaris…” (5:52)
      I consider this to be the second biggest mistake in the whole movie. They completely ignores the fact that Harry Whittington reconstructed Anomalocaris in the ’80’s. Stephen Jay Gould was writing about Anomalocaris in the late ’80’s as well. This is a huge fail, which cuts the people who did the major work reconstructing Anomalocaris completely out of the story.
      Plus, they pretend like Anomalocaris wasn’t named until the ’90’s. Jeebus!//

      You’re totally right, and they also forgot the work of Walcott and, too bad, that history of the study of Anomalocaris dates back 1892 (Whiteaves description).

      //“From the watching five-eyed scavengers like opabinia, to the monster predators like anomalocaris, right down to the Olenoides scurrying on the sea floor, the oceans at this time were dominated by one group of animals. The arthropods – the MEGA BUGS.” (8:43 – 0:10 of Part III)
      This is the worst mistake the documentary makes, in my opinion. Neither Anomalocaris, nor Opabinia were Arthropods. The Olenoides trilobite was an arthropod, but considering it was a victim of the first two, it doesn’t fit the “MEGA-BUG” theme. I’ve modified one possible classification for Anomalocaris and Opabinia to demonstrate how they aren’t arthropods://

      I would agree that Opabinia and Anomalocaris aren’t arthropods… But it depend on the sense you give to “arthropod”. Budd say they are on the stem group of Arthropods, Collins say there are Arthropods, Berström too, with an alterative reconstruction. Personnaly, I don’t know if it’s so clear : can’t they be linked to tardigrades or velvet worms? Or maybe another phyllum?

      Both options have drawbacks :
      if you say “they are arthropods”, you forget their characteristics
      if you say “they are related to any other groups”, it’s like saying “I don’t know”.

      And there’s a recent paper published in nature which deal with the fact that Anomalocaris didn’t actually ate trilobites… Or perhaps flipping them to attack the ventral side.

      To summarize, I’m always happy to see new documentary about invertebrate paleontology, there’s too much stupidities on TV and in news papers. So, when a journalist publish something, I won’t throw him stones just because he does some small errors… Moreover, one thing is clear about Burgess Shale : we still don’t know everything, and everyone working on the subject aren’t sharing exactly the same point of view… And that’s great, because it’s stimulating researches.

      Please apologize the many mistakes I probably do, English isn’t my native language.

    6. EtriX on July 13th, 2012 3:37 pm

      Could someone please repost the movie? It is no longer available in the link above. Thanks!

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