this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
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Because the post is not about aliens. It's about people. Aliens serve here to help you see the problem from the outside, to not use what you know about the animal. It's supposed to show you the reflection of our way of thinking about fossils.
How can anyone say that an Alien archeologist would make the same minimalist assumptions that humans have made as opposed to making their own assumptions about the muscle and cartilage structures based on the creatures they're familiar with or current creatures alive on earth at the time.
Don't fixate on the alien part. That part is not supposed to be realistic, because it doesn't really represent aliens - it represents us people.
It's the same kind of alien trope used in Star Trek to represent different aspects of humans. It's not what aliens would probably really be like (trully alien).
It's a tool for illustrating human behaviour and it works decently well.