Carrying a Jurassic on me
Chapter 1356 - 660 Instant Messaging Detective Story_2

Chapter 1356: Chapter 660 Instant Messaging Detective Story_2

Watching and watching, he stumbled upon something interesting—or rather, something useful—he found an instant messaging software.

He clicked to download it and then cast it aside—those who have never experienced internet speeds of this era will never know how long it takes to download a small piece of software. If you watch it download, even the best of tempers would explode. This was also why Yan Fei opened several web pages first, then did something else before checking back.

Because of the pitiful internet speed, it was not until after he had seen off Boss Niu that Yan Fei completed the grand task of registering his own number. Of course, he didn’t just register one; he also registered one for his wife, and they added each other as friends, ready for when his wife arrived and could use it.

After seeing off Boss Niu, Yan Fei returned and heard Liu JinXue grumbling, "What a pain, this even has to be ordered from Japan, such a hassle."

Yan Fei asked him, "You also ordered magazines from Japan?"

Liu JinXue explained, "No, this one isn’t from Japan. Originally it’s a magazine from Britain, but if we want to order it domestically, we can only order it through Japan."

Yan Fei casually asked for the name of the magazine, etching it into his mind. In the evening, he entered the dinosaur world and summoned his laborers to inquire.

When he had ’moved’ the lab initially, he hadn’t spared even the desks and benches, so of course, he wouldn’t have overlooked any documents or magazines. After asking, it turned out they did have the magazine Liu JinXue was trying to order—though they were older issues, at least he could get an idea of what the magazine was like first.

Moreover, he had confirmed Liu JinXue’s reliability in getting things done, being someone who had worked in the lab. Although Old Liu hadn’t made any earth-shattering research findings, he was quite clear about which magazines were the good ones.

Staring with a frown at those professional jargon-filled magazines, he heard a few people starting a lively debate not far away, and he immediately became somewhat impatient—academic papers filled with professional terminology were really too difficult to understand. His head was already in a whirl, and now they were adding to his troubles, looking for a fight?

"What are you doing there? If you’ve got something to say, come here and say it." He looked up and called out to them, and immediately the group stopped their debate, exchanged glances, and hurried over.

Seeing the group come over in silence, Yan Fei pointed at a middle-aged man who looked as if he were bearing a great injustice: "You, tell me, what’s the matter?"

"I wrote a speculative article that I think could be published in some more well-known magazines," the middle-aged man said as he looked down at the item in his hand.

Yan Fei raised his hand, and the middle-aged man hastily passed over the article.

After a brief glance, Yan Fei asked, "What’s the cause of your argument?"

The dinosaur enthusiast, an old man, stepped forward: "I think his paper lacks the necessary theoretical support. From what we see now, the conclusions are correct, but without having uncovered enough fossils or gathered sufficient evidence, it’s hard to get such an article published in a true academic journal. And other magazines wouldn’t have much interest in this kind of article..."

"We could simply find any excuse; the result is what matters, isn’t it?" the middle-aged man was obviously of the radical camp. "No one knows what the next fossil will look like, and publishing such a paper earlier would give us the advantage. If we wait for fossil evidence to emerge, then it wouldn’t be called a speculative article anymore."

Indeed, it was a speculative article, and Yan Fei was embarrassed to even call it a paper. The focus of this article was on conjecturing the appearance and physiology of dinosaurs.

Today, what we discover are fossils, and surmising the appearance and physiology of dinosaurs just from bones certainly can’t guarantee accurate results—in fact, there’s no way to fully ensure the accuracy of such conjectures.

It’s like lions, tigers, and leopards all being in the feline family—if one only looked at their skeletons without having seen the actual animals, at most one could infer their rough size and build based on the thickness and size of their bones.

Such deviations are very normal; just by looking at bones, who could know tigers could be so robust, and leopards so slender? Their strengths in attack are vastly different.

And as creatures of ancient times, if one wanted to speculate in detail about a particular dinosaur, taking the Tyrannosaurus for example, to study their hunting capabilities and food sources would require a lot of additional evidence. The most common method involves using the wounds on the bones of their prey as proof.

But as for these dinosaurs, whether a certain spot had a lumpy growth of flesh or an extra mound of muscle, without complete fossils, no one could make those conjectures.

Some dinosaurs might be surmised to have particularly robust limbs, such as a tail, but the exact extent of their robustness is in question.

Being unable to accurately describe their shape means that any estimated weight will certainly be inaccurate—for some large dinosaurs, an extra layer of flesh could mean an increase of more than a ton or two.

And this research paper by the middle-aged researcher is precisely about this topic. His conclusions are undoubtedly correct, which is obvious because if he can’t write something accurate when looking at dinosaurs, he might as well feed himself to them.

However, it was also certain that there was insufficient theoretical evidence to back up the speculation.

Yan Fei looked at it for a while and then, after some thought, asked, "If you were asked to refine this paper and find suitable theoretical evidence, could you find it? It doesn’t have to be published in some particularly professional journal; there must be journals willing to publish speculative articles, right?"

Not just some—there were plenty of such journals. After all, some of the bolder speculations were particularly effective at drawing attention.

On hearing Boss Yan speak in this manner, everyone else stopped arguing and began considering how to better refine the paper and the feasibility of publication in different journals.

After a while, a young person asked quietly, "What if we rely on kinetic principles?"

"What does this have to do with kinetic principles?" someone else countered.

When it involved Boss Yan’s interests, they had no choice but to argue. If something went wrong, everyone would be responsible. Thus, even with the boss present, they still had to speak their minds.

The young man, having been responded to, fell silent for a while before saying, "We could make direct observations and then, based on their typical motions when running, foraging... that is, the series of actions they take when facing predators or being preyed upon, to prove this perspective..."

This...

Everyone started to ponder.

After a while, a dinosaur enthusiast was the first to affirm, "In that case, it’s not impossible. As long as it seems like there is sufficient theoretical evidence, it can be published in some less rigorous journals without any issues. After all, our results are correct, and the reasoning process is logical and well-founded. Even if it seems like there is insufficient evidence now, it’s not a major issue."

"As long as there is ample fossil evidence to support our views in the future, the reasoning process will become irrelevant by then, and our purpose will be achieved. The issue is, when we can actually have that ample evidence; this is completely unpredictable..."

It certainly was unpredictable. No one knew what kind of fossils the next step might unearth. If it took ten or twenty years to prove, that would be too late—they all knew that Boss Yan wasn’t willing to wait that long.

At this moment, the middle-aged man spoke again, "We can write more; there’s bound to be a hit somewhere. As long as one or two articles get validated, the rest of the papers will inevitably attract sufficient attention."

"Right!" the young man added again. "We could write about a few of the more common dinosaurs. If Boss Yan is willing to invest, then getting these papers published shouldn’t be an issue."

What they called "some investment" was like the things Boss Yan had done before—money might not be omnipotent, but sometimes, it could still get things done, even in the rigorously reputed academic world.

As for the common dinosaurs he spoke of, aside from those based on the number of dinosaurs in the dino world, another basis was the fossils that have been unearthed in human society. The more fossils that have been found for certain dinosaurs, the higher the likelihood that their results could be proven correct in the future.

Of course, no one could predict the future; this was just a probability, and uncertain, but it was still better than banking on rare dinosaurs.