explain xkcd:Museum
Welcome to the explain xkcd wiki!
We have an explanation for all 3234 xkcd comics,
and only 62
(1.9%) are incomplete. Help us finish them!
Latest comic
| Dinosaurs And Non-Dinosaurs |
 Title text: Staplers are actually in Pseudosuchia, making them more closely related to crocodiles than to dinosaurs. |
Explanation
|
This is incomplete: This page was created by a webserver that is often described as being a dinosaur, however it is definitely not. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page! |
This comic explores the seeming paradox that certain extinct prehistoric species which are popularly thought of as being "dinosaurs" are, from a strict taxonomic viewpoint, not. It also takes into account the fact that all bird species are descended from dinosaurs and thus - again, from a strict taxonomic viewpoint - are themselves dinosaurs as well (see 1211: Birds and Dinosaurs). To illustrate this, Randall provides silhouettes of dinosaurs, of entities that are widely thought of as dinosaurs but are not, of entities that are not widely thought of as dinosaurs but are (i.e., birds), and, lastly, of entities that are neither dinosaurs nor thought of as dinosaurs (which is funny because it's so all-encompassing as to be practically meaningless, just like it would be if you replaced the word "dinosaurs" by any other plural noun, or adjective).
In reading order from upper left in each quadrant of the image:
- Silhouettes in "seem like dinosaurs / are dinosaurs": Stegosaurus, Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus, Diplodocus and Velociraptor
- Silhouettes in "seem like dinosaurs / are not dinosaurs": Mosasaur, Quetzalcoatlus, Dimetrodon, Plesiosaur and Pteranodon
- Silhouettes in "don't seem like dinosaurs / are dinosaurs": Penguin, Egret, Falcon, Pigeon and Ostrich
- Silhouettes in "don't seem like dinosaurs / are not dinosaurs": Squirrel, Stapler, Bicycle , Human (here depicted as Cueball) and Pineapple
The title text is a further joke about taxonomy, seemingly predicated on the assumption that staplers are biological organisms, and can thus be sorted into taxa. Pseudosuchia is in fact the clade that encompasses all crocodilians, and staplers bear a certain resemblance to the open mouth of a crocodilian.
The original Linnaean taxonomy did at first have a top-level classification for "mineral" taxonomy, in addition to those for animal and plant, which in its broadest sense might allow one to assign a stapler a taxonomic relationship with dinosaurs.
Creatures that seem like dinosaurs, but are not
Dinosaur is a paleonotology term which refers to a specific group of reptiles, based upon evolutionary lines, bone structure and living domain. However, it is also a popular science/cultural term which refers to extinct large reptiles, hence the confusion between what is scientifically included and what is culturally assumed to be included.
The creatures listed are:
- A mosasaur is an extinct aquatic reptile, looking similar to a dolphin, that existed at the same time as the dinosaurs. Whilst it appeared in Jurassic World, momasaurs had a different ancestor than dinosaurs
- Pleisosaurs and Pterodons are flying reptiles
- Dimetrodon
- Quetzalcoatlus
Transcript
- [A 2x2 chart where each of the four quadrants contains five silhouettes. These depicts various animals a few objects and a human. Above each column and to the left of each row there are a label:]
- Left column: Are dinosaurs
- Right column: Are not dinosaurs
- Upper row: Seem like dinosaurs
- Lower row: Don't seem like dinosaurs
- [Here follows a list of what are in each of the four quadrants:]
- [Top left (seem like dinosaurs, are dinosaurs):]
- [Stegosaurus, Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus, Diplodocus and Velociraptor.]
- [Top right (seem like dinosaurs, are not dinosaurs):]
- [Mosasaur, Quetzalcoatlus, Dimetrodon, Plesiosaur and Pteranodon.]
- [Bottom left (don't seem like dinosaurs, are dinosaurs):]
- [Penguin, Egret, Falcon, Pigeon and Ostrich.]
- [Bottom right (don't seem like dinosaurs, are not dinosaurs):]
- [Squirrel, Stapler, Bicycle , Human (here depicted as Cueball) and Pineapple.]
Add comment 
Create topic (use sparingly) 
Refresh Discussion
Maybe it's more of statistics than exhibitions. --While False (speak|museum) 21:17, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
pixels-assembly-3.png
how is it 0 bytes?? i see that it is shown as 0 bytes on the wiki, but the file itself, when downloaded is 5kb! how???108.162.221.209 16:41, 4 October 2022 (UTC)Bumpf
- If the question is how it can be written like that here, the answer is that I used the numbers of the wiki. βWhile False (speak|museum) 19:18, 4 October 2022 (UTC)
- Sorry, should have made it more clear. Do you know why it is shown as 0 bytes on the file page? 172.70.134.103 12:37, 7 October 2022 (UTC)Bumpf
- There's always the possibility that this is actually the Null image under the .png file format. Every other .png is defined by the delta required to display the desired graphic when starting from the baseline of this 'ur'-image, but if you ever wanted to display that graphic the undocumented format specifications allow you to omit all unnecessary bytes (including the magic header bytes) and it will happily produce its hardcoded "it's a PNG!" preprocessing template, which happens to be this image. Obviously, the PNG spec (and, ultimately, the original ancestor of the detailed source code tree for every subsequent implementation) was written before Randall ever got anywhere near to drawing this image so the chances are slim that he just happened to luck upon the exact image that happens to have a 100% compression rate because it just happened to consist of something Randall wanted to draw, and in the manner of Randall's artistry. But it's a non-zero likelihood that an arbitrary artist might draw exactly the same image as a purely arbitrary "index null" page's collection of pixels and so... This might not be the Best Of All Worlds, but there has to be some highly fortunate occurance to balance out all the unfortunate ones, statistically, and this is ours!
- (Or maybe there's a minor bug/data-error in the way the wiki database serves the front-end webserver, but I can't ask you to believe something as trivially random as that!)) 172.70.90.245 15:03, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
Add comment
- Sorry, should have made it more clear. Do you know why it is shown as 0 bytes on the file page? 172.70.134.103 12:37, 7 October 2022 (UTC)Bumpf
Is this out of date? .
New here?
Last 7 days (Top 10) |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
You can read a brief introduction about this wiki at explain xkcd. Feel free to sign up for an account and contribute to the wiki! We need explanations for comics, characters, themes and everything in between. If it is referenced in an xkcd web comic, it should be here.
- If you're new to wiki editing, see the explain xkcd:Editor FAQ for a specific guidance to this Wiki and the more general help on how to edit wiki pages. There's also a handy wikicode cheatsheet.
- Discussion about the wiki itself happens at the Community portal.
- You can browse the comics from List of all comics or by navigating the category tree at Category:Comics.
- There are incomplete explanations listed here. Feel free to help out by expanding them!
Rules
Don't be a jerk!
There are a lot of comics that don't have set-in-stone explanations; feel free to put multiple interpretations in the wiki page for each comic.
If you want to talk about a specific comic, use its discussion page.
Please only submit material directly related to (and helping everyone better understand) xkcd... and of course only submit material that can legally be posted (and freely edited). Off-topic or other inappropriate content is subject to removal or modification at admin discretion, and users who repeatedly post such content will be blocked.
If you need assistance from an admin, post a message to the Admin requests board.
