Dinosaurs -

[Yutyrannus]

Because I'm a fucking autist and want to sperg with other paleofags around here about new and relatively new dinosaur shit. Or discuss/debate papers and shit. Or whatever.

Starting off with this cool infant bird found in Myanmar. A Cretaceous enantiornithean (If you don't know what that is or don't want to read the articles, it basically looked like modern birds but with teeth, fucky backwards shoulder bones, and clawed digits. They belonged in a different grouping and have no extant relatives.) hatchling fell out of the nest into the amber and its impression was perfectly preserved for the ensuing 100 million or so years.

Also this cool paper that was just published suggesting that Neovenator possessed sensory organs on the snout similar to those found on crocodilians.

If this is too :autism: feel free to delete.

 

[Replicant Sasquatch]

Name your favorite dinosaur, Kiwis. Mine is the Eustreptospondylus. Daspleteosaurus is a close second.

Don't even fucking bother posting in this thread if you're gonna say T-Rex or Triceratops or some other casual shit.

 

[Yutyrannus]

Name your favorite dinosaur, Kiwis. Mine is the Eustreptospondylus. Daspleteosaurus is a close second.

Don't even fucking bother posting in this thread if you're gonna say T-Rex or Triceratops or some other casual shit.

Acrocanthosaurus, Changyuraptor, Irritator, Therizinosaurus, and Herrerasaurus are a few of my favorites. I'm a sucker for theropods if you can't tell. Bet mine absolute favorite isn't too hard to guess, though.

 

[Intelligent Calcium]

Name your favorite dinosaur, Kiwis. Mine is the Eustreptospondylus. Daspleteosaurus is a close second.

Yi Qi, I just think it's cute and the bat-wings look pretty unique on a feathered dinosaur.

Carnotaurus gets an honorable mention for probably looking like an extremely fast sausage on legs.

 

[cumrobbery]

I like Ceratosaurus. I used to be a pleb who liked Spinosaurus the best until modern paleontology nerfed the fuck out of it

 

[Yutyrannus]

I like Ceratosaurus. I used to be a pleb who liked Spinosaurus the best until modern paleontology nerfed the fuck out of it

Quadrupedal Spino is cool as shit though. Although I do remember reading there might have been a slight miscalculation in that paper and the back legs wouldn't quite have been so stubby, but how the hell could a giant shambling knuckle-walking water monster not be fuckkin awesome

 

[cumrobbery]

Quadrupedal Spino is cool as shit though. Although I do remember reading there might have been a slight miscalculation in that paper and the back legs wouldn't quite have been so stubby, but how the hell could a giant shambling knuckle-walking water monster not be fuckkin awesome

Suchomimus and Baryonyx had normal sized back legs for a theropod right? Its strange that Spinosaurus seems to be the only one who evolved to have shorter back legs

 

[Yutyrannus]

Suchomimus and Baryonyx had normal sized back legs for a theropod right? Its strange that Spinosaurus seems to be the only one who evolved to have shorter back legs

Suchomimus and Baryonyx were also much more closely related to one another than they were to Spinosaurus, which explains a lot of that difference. Neither were entirely piscivorous nor nearly as huge as Spinosaurus either, and were both only semiaquatic to boot. There is some compelling arguments against fully quad Spino (here's that commentary I was talking about) but even in Hartman's revision of the Ibrahim Spino it is still proportioned differently than Baryonychidae with a further forward center of gravity. I would assume is because of Spino's further specialization to a fully or mostly aquatic lifestyle and huge size. As far as I know, there has been no evidence of Spino eating anything that was not an aquatic animal, while Baryonyx was linked to pterosaur predation.

The real question is Irritator's posture imo, considering it is a part of Spinosaurinae. I can't find any info on it.

Gotta love taxonomy being differed only by one fucking letter

Edit: Oxlaia was also probably postured similar to Spinosaurus, so Spino wasn't exactly unique. My personal hypothesis is that their sheer size is most of the reason why.

 

[Positron]

Name your favorite dinosaur, Kiwis.

Great Spotted Kiwi

 

[Kari Kamiya]

The Dromaeosauridae line's my favorite, but mostly the motherfucking subfamily Dromaeosaurinae.

But I'm much more interested in the prehistoric marine life like Dunkleosteus, Basilosaurus, and the ammonites, though the marine reptiles like Sarcosuchus and the pliosauroids are much more fascinating. Scary to think such creatures once swam the ancient seas, but they're just so cool.

 

[beansntoast]

good thread :powerlevel: I almost went for geology as my major bc dinos (and earth history in general) are cool af

I can't really choose what's my favourite, there are way too many interesting ones

 

[Owen Grady]

I have many favorites I can think of. I like Concavenator just because it's so weird looking and that hump on its back makes no sense. I also have a fondness for Cryolophosaurus due to personal ties. I love Compsognathus because it's so smol and vicious, even if it didn't necessarily hunt in groups like it does in the movies. I like hadrosaurs because nobody else does and they are majestic animals that deserve love too.

All that said I hope I don't seem like a normie if I come out now and say that my all time favorite is probably T. rex.

And I'm thrilled to hear that it didn't have feathers.

 

[Replicant Sasquatch]

I like hadrosaurs because nobody else does and they are majestic animals that deserve love too.

Jack Horner, who discovered Maiasaurus, worked as a technical advisor for all the Jurassic Park movies, and was a partial inspiration for the character Alan Grant, is an avowed hadrosaur fanboy.

 

[Owen Grady]

Jack Horner, who discovered Maiasaurus, worked as a technical advisor for all the Jurassic Park movies, and was a partial inspiration for the character Alan Grant, is an avowed hadrosaur fanboy.

Oh, so I've heard. I believe they are his specialty. Supposedly there are fewer hadrosaur experts than there are actual uncovered specimens of hadrosaurs. Bit of a shame Horner has become something of a contrarian nutjob with an honorary Ph.D. and ran off to marry a nineteen-year-old. But I perhaps I am not in a position to judge.

 

[beansntoast]

And I'm thrilled to hear that it didn't have feathers.

also a link to the paper the misleading pop science articles are based on: http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/13/6/20170092

edit: obligatory disclaimer, I'm not a feather fetishist, neither a scaly who throws a tantrum abt "muuh precious childhood monstuuuhs!" (not meant at you Owen, more at those pop journalists and their fanboys), I'm pretty annoyed by "extremists" on both sides, those who make dinos into puffballs and claim it's accurate (sure it can be cute but accurate? we don't know! there's not enough impressions for most species), but tbh those who treat dinosaurs like some sort of fantasy creature invented by a monster designer to look as scary as possible... those annoy me even more, dinosaurs were animals, they're not supposed to look "cool" and us getting more info on them is a good thing, even if it means we have to get rid of old concepts

edit²: lol sorry for the rant, I'm one of those stem spergs who gets deeply offended by the anti-science mindset of the general population and the willful mispresentation of studys in mainstream media

 

[Yutyrannus]

And I'm thrilled to hear that it didn't have feathers.

Damn. Someone beat me with the Trey the Explainer video before I could wall of text about why T. rex very much likely did. But yeah, it's a good video. Sorry to crush your dreams about scaly tyrannosauroids.

If it's any consolation, there are plenty of theropod groups further distanced from the coelurosaurs (probably Avetheropoda as a whole mostly had some sort of plumage somewhere) that were less likely to have feathers or featherlike structures. I'd say Ceratosauria and Carnosauria are likely candidates for not having many, if any, feathers.

Edit: Found a cool cladogram. This is from 2015 so some things may have been subject to change, but ey!

Edit #2: God, does it piss me off when tyrannosaurs are drawn with pennaceous feathers though. Don't even get me STARTED on when they draw fully plumed arms. Like what the fuck. They wouldn't have the full feather spread like maniraptorans did. Are you stupid.

 

[Owen Grady]

also a link to the paper the misleading pop science articles are based on: http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/13/6/20170092

edit: obligatory disclaimer, I'm not a feather fetishist, neither a scaly who throws a tantrum abt "muuh precious childhood monstuuuhs!" (not meant at you Owen, more at those pop journalists and their fanboys), I'm pretty annoyed by "extremists" on both sides, those who make dinos into puffballs and claim it's accurate (sure it can be cute but accurate? we don't know! there's not enough impressions for most species), but tbh those who treat dinosaurs like some sort of fantasy creature invented by a monster designer to look as scary as possible... those annoy me even more, dinosaurs were animals, they're not supposed to look "cool" and us getting more info on them is a good thing, even if it means we have to get rid of old concepts

edit²: lol sorry for the rant, I'm one of those stem spergs who gets deeply offended by the anti-science mindset of the general population and the willful mispresentation of studys in mainstream media

Damn. Someone beat me with the Trey the Explainer video before I could wall of text about why T. rex very much likely did. But yeah, it's a good video. Sorry to crush your dreams about scaly tyrannosauroids.

If it's any consolation, there are plenty of theropod groups further distanced from the coelurosaurs (probably Avetheropoda as a whole mostly had some sort of plumage somewhere) that were less likely to have feathers or featherlike structures. I'd say Ceratosauria and Carnosauria are likely candidates for not having many, if any, feathers.

Edit: Found a cool cladogram. This is from 2015 so some things may have been subject to change, but ey!

Edit #2: God, does it piss me off when tyrannosaurs are drawn with pennaceous feathers though. Don't even get me STARTED on when they draw fully plumed arms. Like what the fuck. They wouldn't have the full feather spread like maniraptorans did. Are you stupid.

This is all very informative, thank you. Ironically I only heard about the discovery by word of mouth from a friend who was riding with me down to an actual dig this last weekend, so I never got to read the full article. But God damn, mainstream science journalism pisses me off with this kind of sensationalist bullshit.

I have never doubted that some dinosaurs had feathers (though I admit I can get nostalgic about scaled dinosaurs sometimes). I just have never found the evidence for feathers to be as undeniable and all-encompassing as most scientists seem to see it.

Like sure, some species we know had feathers because we have found them with obvious impressions near the bone. We even know what color some of these animals were because of how well preserved their feathers were (Sinosauropteryx, Microraptor, etc.). But some people take this and bring it to ridiculous extremes throwing every single member of that species' family group into the mix and assuming without any further evidence that all of these things looked unashamedly like giant fluffy playthings just because of a single body.

I don't know. I just think we jump to overblown conclusions on feathers sometimes. I have seen images of feathered tyrannosaurs with such obscenely bright and excessive plumage they've made me want to physically retch. Did some of these animals have feathers? Absolutely. But if anything as large as Tyrannosaurus did it almost certainly looked something more like the thumbnail in that YouTube video, not a purple Big Bird on steroids.

 

[Replicant Sasquatch]

This is all very informative, thank you. Ironically I only heard about the discovery by word of mouth from a friend who was riding with me down to an actual dig this last weekend, so I never got to read the full article. But God damn, mainstream science journalism pisses me off with this kind of sensationalist bullshit.

I have never doubted that some dinosaurs had feathers (though I admit I can get nostalgic about scaled dinosaurs sometimes). I just have never found the evidence for feathers to be as undeniable and all-encompassing as most scientists seem to see it.

Like sure, some species we know had feathers because we have found them with obvious impressions near the bone. We even know what color some of these animals were because of how well preserved their feathers were (Sinosauropteryx, Microraptor, etc.). But some people take this and bring it to ridiculous extremes throwing every single member of that species' family group into the mix and assuming without any further evidence that all of these things looked unashamedly like giant fluffy playthings just because of a single body.

I don't know. I just think we jump to overblown conclusions on feathers sometimes. I have seen images of feathered tyrannosaurs with such obscenely bright and excessive plumage they've made me want to physically retch. Did some of these animals have feathers? Absolutely. But if anything as large as Tyrannosaurus did it almost certainly looked something more like the thumbnail in that YouTube video, not a purple Big Bird on steroids.

Personally I think the revelation T-Rex had "lips" was way more jarring. I'm so used to dramatic portrayals in movies where the Rex's teeth stick out across its lower jaw like a crocodile's. The new look is a lot more avian.

 

[Un Platano]

It's not my favorite dinousaur, but one of the most interesting is this obscure one that I remember reading about a long time ago. It was an ornithischian with a low sprawling gait like a crocodile that had huge forward facing eyes and giant teeth in front that stuck way out of the mouth. It wasn't a joke, I can't remember what it was called or even what group it belonged to, and I've never been able to find it again.

 

[Replicant Sasquatch]

It's not my favorite dinousaur, but one of the most interesting is this obscure one that I remember reading about a long time ago. It was an ornithischian with a low sprawling gait like a crocodile that had huge forward facing eyes and giant teeth in front that stuck way out of the mouth. It wasn't a joke, I can't remember what it was called or even what group it belonged to, and I've never been able to find it again.

Was it the Placerias?

If so, it's technically not a dinosaur. It's a Dicnyodont: an archaeic reptile which actually predates the arrival of dinosaurs and died out sometime in the Triassic period.