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d3gaia t1_j0w444x wrote

Reply to comment by amp1212 in Discovery identifies Australia as birthplace of all modern mammals by geoxol

> “Analysis of existing fossil material suggests earliest mammal lineages arose in Gondwanaland, the Southern supercontinent that includes what is now Australia.”

Really rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?

I’m with you in that science headlines need to be more accurate but outside of dedicated scientific journals, I’m not sure a headline like the one you’ve suggested would get many clicks

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amp1212 t1_j0w6jhy wrote

>I’m with you in that science headlines need to be more accurate but outside of dedicated scientific journals, I’m not sure a headline like the one you’ve suggested would get many clicks

I agree that it may be hard to write headlines, but it is really irritating - and scientifically misleading - to write about "Australia", when what is meant is Gondwanaland.

They are not at all the same things, even though a bit of what once was Gondwanaland is now Australia.

. . . and note that the original journal reference was "The Gondwanan Origin of Tribosphenida (Mammalia)." - which was correct. Or one could have parsed this "The ancient origins of mammals in Gondwanaland" -- the problem with the title as it was written for Australian Geographic was that it was a bit of Down under click boosting, completely understandable - but nonetheless inaccurate.

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HobgoblinKhanate t1_j0wdkre wrote

Godwanaland included Africa and South America right? Are they literally calling this whole place Australia?

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amp1212 t1_j0wfce8 wrote

>Godwanaland included Africa and South America right? Are they literally calling this whole place Australia?

Yes, but with the "they" being the journalists at Australian Geographic, not the authors of the original scientific publication. So you can blame it on them; the original authors don't make that mistake.

Its why I make myself a pest here to call out crap pop science writing, which so often takes a good and carefully written finding, and then makes it worse.

To be fair, because people love imagining long ago landscapes, there's a lot of confusion about "the place where we find fossils now" - and "the place where these animals lived, at the time they were laid down"

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