One Must Never Call the Police Dumb.

I spent the majority of my discussion today in Human Variation writhing in mental agony because the professor, in trying to argue that some obvious morphological traits may not be considered adaptations if we can't know their function, used the plates of stegosaurus as an example. "We have theories but we can't say it's an adaptation if we don't know that it's something affecting an organism's survival against a selective force" what was said was something to that effect.

Thinking about it now, I get the point she was trying to make, but that example was outright terrible! The implication is that we don't know the exact function of the Stegosaurus's plates, so how do we know they were evolved to increase fitness and aren't a byproduct to something else. My mind kind of exploded out my mouth in a not good way; I can't even articulate how insane that all sounds to me; those kinds of structure arise, if infrequently, in the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods. Similar structures appear on each of the three main lineages of dinosaurs: Theropods, Sauropods, and Ornithischians like Stegosaurus. It's one of the most classic examples of Homoplasy I ever thought of! (aside from the whole fly-wing, bird-wing, bat-wing comparison). It's clear that with several different and yet similar structures among large animals of the Mesozoic that these find structures were being used for something communication, mating, heat regulation... something! Unfortunately I've never been articulate when my mind explodes in dinosaur rage and I made myself look an ass in class.

More towards the end I asked her if she ever shaved a polar bear. I don't know what it is with that class in particular, but I feel like I end up looking more like a freak every week I'm in there.

EDIT: I should probably say that although Stegosaurus and his plates are a bad example, you could talk about that weird space in his hip where people thought he had a second brain for the longest time. Or you swtich species entirely! Go to the Segnosaurs, no one even know what the hell those things are anyways.