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Professional Scientists of Lemmy: What is your field of study's, most complex unanswered question?
  • The diapsid part is very likely indeed, as fossil skulls of early stem turtles do show some temporal openings ( https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-110218-024746 ) The point is more where do they nest within Diapsida, more closely to the Lepidosauromorpha, or to the Archosauromorpha, and where precisely if within one of those clades. The point is that can't quite be proven using only extant species, whether by DNA or morphological evidence. And concerning ML, the methodology is often criticised, not because it's bad, but because it's opaque and thus it is difficult to justify and understand as a process

  • Professional Scientists of Lemmy: What is your field of study's, most complex unanswered question?
  • In phylogeny, genomic is just another tool. The point is that turtles are os course animals, but they do branch off of different reptile groups if you look at morphological evidence (which includes fossil data) or at molecular (genetic) evidence (which only includes extant species). This is not something frequent, as usually molecular evidence tends to strengthen previous morphologically established evolutionary relationships. And even though molecularists are more numerous today, their methods are neither better or worse than anatomy.

    Phylogeny is not as straightforward as some people make it seem, and especially molecular phylogeny tends to rely on abstract concepts that can't always be backed up by biological evidence (I'm not saying it's wrong, it's very often very good, juste that a lot of people doing it do not understand the way it works, and thus can't examine the process critically).

    And so turtles' origin are still very much an active debate!

  • Professional Scientists of Lemmy: What is your field of study's, most complex unanswered question?
  • I feel inappropriate near all the very universal questions here, but as a paleontologist specialised in some reptilian groups, the question would probably be "where the fuck do turtles come from?!" The thing is that fossil evidence points to different answers when compared to genetic evidence, and thez separated long enough from other extant groups that we keep on having new "definitive" answers every year

  • Gabriel Attal becomes France’s youngest and first openly gay prime minister
  • He was Education minister before this, despite never setting foot in a public school, and heavily criticised protesters during the very unpopular pension reform while he was already a millionaire at 25 even though he never worked a day in his life. But hey, nice for us that he's young and openly gay !

  • New Zealand scraps world-first smoking ‘generation ban’ to fund tax cuts
  • If you do that, then you should also forfeit your right to use publicly funded hospitals that already struggle enough with people suffering of conditions they did not ask for voluntarily. Smoking is not just a cost for your body, but for society as a whole, hence the justification in a ban

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  • Yes, and as someone who is probably close to a 5yo's knowledge on the topic, I don't know anything (or close to that) on either programming or other parts of being "tech savvy". Thus me saying that coming on the ELI5 community and saying "yeah I actually want a very much not 5yo answer type" is not the spirit, I'd much rather like first basic answers, and eventually other comments going more in-depth, like we see in the majority of posts here

  • French rail pass: €49 ticket to launch after German success
  • Very good start, but as a French I fear that it may not be complete until it starts to include the high speed lines (TGV) that are the most expensive but also the most competitive when trying to divert traffic from cars or planes

  • InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)TH
    TheMetaleek @sh.itjust.works
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