Booooooooo science! How do they know that the Torosaurus wasn't just a giant mutated Triceratops? Answer me that science. With your microscopes and big fancy words

RyanG: You think I'm destructive? ME? REALLY? Did you forget who just wrecked the gulf cost with their fossilised bodies? Was it me? No, frickin' Dinosaurs.. again! I'm trying to protect people here. Dinosaurs were and are dangerous. I'm a frickin' hero here. I used to be happy, I was loved and could love others but no more, the dinosaurs took it all away from me. THEY STARTED THIS!

I think all this Triceratops debate has exposed the real problem; “I Hate Dinosaurs” 's Anti-Dinosaur rhetoric. How long do we have to put up with this destructive behavior? I think it's time we expose IHD for the bigoted speciesist he is. And he spreads hate of an extinct species, at that. How low can one stoop? IHD instead waits 65 million years later to spew forth his vile lies, when dinosaurs are no longer around to defend themselves. Time to forgive, IHD, Is your love not big enough to reach through time to the mesozoic era?

They're also coming for two species of pachycephalosaurs, which is also not news.

Jack, let’s set aside your problematic use of “collective memory” for a moment and really think about this. That we called a creature a “Triceratops” yesterday and a “Torosaurus” today doesn’t affect its existence in the past. From my perspective, your attack on scientists is completely unwarranted and somewhat suspicious. Scientists are simply correcting a wrongheaded cultural construction of this creature. Rather than focusing on childhood nostalgia, think about what can be gained from untangling ourselves from this burdensome assumption of Triceratops existing as a species distinct from Torosaurus. Did you learn nothing about the dangers of naming from Rwandan Genocide? “Triceratops” and “Torosaurus” might have gotten along if society wasn’t so quick to emphasize their differences. Now, as it turns out, we know that these differences were strictly artificial. Why on earth would you want to preserve the mistakes of the past? I was hesitant to point out the racist undertones of your post because I’m fond of you, Jack. I don’t know if you’re bought and paid for, or if you really need to believe that “Triceratops” are different for some personal reason, but I think it’s time to wake up and recognize what you’re actually advocating here. Oh, and quoting Wordsworth isn’t actually an argument, you damned hippie.

Read this whole article. Or more prudently read the last sentence; “The torosaurus will now be abolished as a separate species and remains from it reclassified as triceratops.” They're getting rid of the Torosaurus and reclassifying them as Triceratops. http://www.neatorama.com/2010/08/01/scientists-triceratops-never-existed/ Pluto is still a planet, it's just a called a “dwarf” planet, and if a dwarf star is any barometer that simply makes it more awesome. Brontosaurus was a mistake, Victorian archaeologists were retarded. Just take a deep breath and move on.  It's okay. Stay calm. Nothing to see here. Move along and have a nice day.

Jack, so young and naïve. There is no such thing as an innocent dinosaur. Brutal, bloodthirsty killers the lot of them. Now the science is doing the right thing, removing these horrible creatures from history and our collective memories. It's for the children Jack, you want the children to be safe, right? Or are you willing to stand idly by while these devil creatures kill out children? IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?!? JACK? REALLY?!?

Oh, Turtlefeed, your defense of these “scientists” is as transparent as it is misguided. Past existence is exclusively contingent upon our own collective understanding of the past. When push comes to shove, all that we really have are our memories. But your friends, the scientists, are trying to change our memories. And in so doing they are committing murder of an innocent creature who used to live there.  But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth.

Don't listen to Jack. The only reason a creature called a Triceratops existed was because humans named it that. The animal still exists, regardless of whether it's a distinct species.  Also, renaming occurs all the time. Where was Jack Shepherd when they tried to merge Trachemys into Chrysemys a few years back? That was really an outrage, and there wasn't a peep from him. I kind of wonder if Jack is part of a secret Triceratops lobby. Or maybe a Triceracist. His partiality for Pluto and Ceratopsids is very telling. Start reading between the lines, people.

I prefer to think that Triceratops is now bigger and more bad-ass than ever previously conceived.

Hell, I say it's a good thing that science is improving what we know. Pluto isn't a planet, it's a dwarf planet. (and it's actually the second largest dwarf planet in our solar system.) Eventually we'll be able to move on, and stop getting so upset over little things.

They are still trying to take away the Triceratops, in an existential sense. There will still be a thing called “the Triceratops” but it will not be the thing that we thought it was. What these “scientists” are trying to tell us is that the Triceratops is in fact nothing more than a baby Torosaurus. They're trying to appease us by renaming the Torosaurus “the Triceratops,” which, I will grant is deviously clever. But our Triceratops is still gone forever, unless we manage to ignore their insidious propaganda. DOWN WITH SCIENCE!

While we're bitching about taxonomic nomenclature, I'd like to revert back the Linnaean system as laid out in the tenth edition of Systema Naturae (1758). Plants were much sexier back in the day.