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I see only 1 large-bodied species of herbivore here. Just that one really fat chick, Washington is riding for some reason.Originally Posted by KaiserSoze
ahem...
This was my favorite childhood dinosaur and now it doesn't exist? Robbed!
Wait.. There was a Jurassic park III? Even after the abortion of a movie Jurassic Park II?
Also, fuck Pluto
Thanks for bringing the heat pods, very good reads!
We need an "Ask a Paleontologist a question thread." That was great.
i've always asked, "if they've all been dead for millions of years, how does anyone know what they actually looked like?"
how do we know, from their bones, they had reptile skin? how do we know they were green or gray or black or white and not purple (that barney sumbitch may know something we don't!)
i still enjoyed dinosaurs the same, but i figured there'd be some "clarification" later on... carry on.
hell yeah hoosier. errbody knows t-rex was black...
so whats really been said here is that the raptor should have been the little guy responsible for killing newman, and the whatever should have been the large dino that hunted the people? nice work, crighton and spileberg.
hoosier, you look at the bones, you can see the muscular attachements. from that, you can estimate a shape. then you use what nature shows us today as to how similar animals look and feel and make an educated guess.
or you just make it up because "we don't have a clue what it looks like" doesn't deliver grant money or get you published in any periodical other than scientific american.
Last edited by Duck of Death; 08-03-2010 at 11:33 AM.
Also, dinosaurs skin, skin imprints, and other fossils have revealed texture and even color in some cases:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/...n6151957.shtml
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=106229723
http://www.wired.com/science/discove.../12/dino_mummy
if it was a lie, he fought on that lie.
I never bought into the thinking that dinosaurs had dull colors., I believed when I was small that since birds we colorful for attracting a mate then most dinosaurs would be as well.. My fucking third grade teacher made me recolor my Stegosaurus into a shit brown after I made him red and blue... Fuck You Mrs.Lynn, fuck you....
T-Rex probably was a thirty foot tall Peacock... there I said it...
They're still real to me. Fuck the scientists.
Are you real, or are you a bit? It's too painful to think that you're real, and that you attended The University of Texas.
and you're damn right, too.
It don't make a shit
As USAROTC said a few posts above, we've got skin impressions from a variety of dinosaur groups. For some of them, we've had skin impressions since the early 1900's. These show the classic scaly skin dinosaurs are traditionally shown with.
The realization that birds evolved from dinosaurs tells us that feathers evolved somewhere in that lineage. There are fossils from Germany (Archaeopteryx) and China (tons of them: Caudipteryx, Confuscisornis, Sinosauropteryx etc.) that preserve feathers on many of the meat eating dinosaurs. Past that, we use a technique called phylogenetic bracketing to estimate behavior and anatomy. You look at their relatives and see what they looked like. For fossil A, if you have a more "primative" fossil B and a more "advanced" one C, you can compare the traits of B and C. If they both have a similar feature, it is safe to postulate that the fossil A also had this trait. For example, birds evolved from the meat-eating dinosaurs and crocodylians evolved from a more "primitive" ancestor. We can look at both crocs and birds today and compare them. For example, they both lay eggs. We could assume, even without fossils of them, that dinosaurs laid eggs. We actually have tons of fossil eggs, including a number with recognizable embryos inside. We can also observe that both crocs and birds display some degree of parental care for the young, such as guarding the nest from predators, or bringing food. Many people don't know that crocodylians take care of their young, but one of the last places you want to be is near an alligator nest when there are hatchlings. All the gators are hyper-aggressive and unrelated ones will respond to a distress call from the hatchlings. By comparing the 2 living groups that bracket around dinosaurs on the evolutionary tree, we can conclude that dinosaurs likely had some level of parental care both pre and post-hatching. There is pretty good fossil evidence for this too. There are nests known from many countries, but Montana has some of the best evidence. There are duckbill dinosaur nests that have been found where the sides are too steep and tall for the hatchling to leave the nest. There are also plant fossils in the nest. It appears that the adults were bringing food to the babies in the nest until they were old enough to leave it.
We know that many of the meat-eaters had downy feathers on their skin based on numerous fossils from China that preserve filament structures. Using the phylogenetic bracketing technique mentioned above, people have suggested that T. rex would have had feathers at some point in their life. Ancestors of T. rex had feathers and so did dinosaurs that are more "advanced". The downy feathers are probably for insulation, possibly also for sexual display. Because of that, and the large size of T. rex, adults almost certainly didn't have them. We've now found evidence of skin impressions for a number of large-bodied, adult tyrannosaurids and they show scaly skin, like the classic reconstruction. There are 2 main groups of meat eaters and T. rex evolved from the smaller lineage of meat-eaters though and later became huge. This lineage has evidence of fossils that are much more primitive than T. rex and preserve feathers. Ancestral tyrannosaurs were not that big and the feathers would have been a huge aid in regulating their body temperature. However, more advanced adult tyrannosaurs are very large and are so large they would retain their body heat just from their mass. In this case, it becomes difficult to cool down, rather than to warm up. For that reason, adults would not be expected to have feathers. It is likely that juvenile tyrannosaurs had downy insulating feathers and that they lost them as they grew.
The numerous feathered dinosaur fossils also suggest that at least some lineages of meat-eating dinosaurs were warm-blooded, that is, they could produce their own body heat like mammals and birds do. We know warm-bloodedness evolved somewhere on the line to birds and downy feathers are excellent insulators, so it is logical to assume that the origin of feathers is related to keeping body heat. Based on that, and also traits of their bones that are related to rapid growth, I think it is likely that many of the meat-eaters were warm blooded.
I don't completely buy into the absolute identification of color. I don't trust the trace materials in the feathers and bones given how long they've been in the ground. However, I do believe the alternating bands of light and dark color patterns that have been reported. I just wouldn't feel comfortable saying exactly which light and dark colors they were.
This is a reconstruction of the banded color patterns in a small meat eater.
Here is the fossil.
We know a lineage of meat eating dinosaurs evolved into birds. We know birds are highly colorful and this coloration plays a very heavy role in mate choice and reproductive success among birds. We also know that dinosaurs had excellent color vision, color vision is a very primitive reptile trait. Most of them have excellent color vision. Given these factors, it is probable that groups of dinosaurs also had vibrant colors, especially during mating season. Bright colors don't necessarily make you stand out to prey either. If it is muted, like the black stripes on a bright orange tiger, it can help blend in to the background.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if some dinosaurs looked like this than how they've been typically portrayed.
Thero,
Are you David Schwimmer in real life?
I love this post so muchAs USAROTC said a few posts above, we've got skin impressions from a variety of dinosaur groups. For some of them, we've had skin impressions since the early 1900's. These show the classic scaly skin dinosaurs are traditionally shown with.
The realization that birds evolved from dinosaurs tells us that feathers evolved somewhere in that lineage. There are fossils from Germany (Archaeopteryx) and China (tons of them: Caudipteryx, Confuscisornis, Sinosauropteryx etc.) that preserve feathers on many of the meat eating dinosaurs. Past that, we use a technique called phylogenetic bracketing to estimate behavior and anatomy. You look at their relatives and see what they looked like. For fossil A, if you have a more "primative" fossil B and a more "advanced" one C, you can compare the traits of B and C. If they both have a similar feature, it is safe to postulate that the fossil A also had this trait. For example, birds evolved from the meat-eating dinosaurs and crocodylians evolved from a more "primitive" ancestor. We can look at both crocs and birds today and compare them. For example, they both lay eggs. We could assume, even without fossils of them, that dinosaurs laid eggs. We actually have tons of fossil eggs, including a number with recognizable embryos inside. We can also observe that both crocs and birds display some degree of parental care for the young, such as guarding the nest from predators, or bringing food. Many people don't know that crocodylians take care of their young, but one of the last places you want to be is near an alligator nest when there are hatchlings. All the gators are hyper-aggressive and unrelated ones will respond to a distress call from the hatchlings. By comparing the 2 living groups that bracket around dinosaurs on the evolutionary tree, we can conclude that dinosaurs likely had some level of parental care both pre and post-hatching. There is pretty good fossil evidence for this too. There are nests known from many countries, but Montana has some of the best evidence. There are duckbill dinosaur nests that have been found where the sides are too steep and tall for the hatchling to leave the nest. There are also plant fossils in the nest. It appears that the adults were bringing food to the babies in the nest until they were old enough to leave it.
We know that many of the meat-eaters had downy feathers on their skin based on numerous fossils from China that preserve filament structures. Using the phylogenetic bracketing technique mentioned above, people have suggested that T. rex would have had feathers at some point in their life. Ancestors of T. rex had feathers and so did dinosaurs that are more "advanced". The downy feathers are probably for insulation, possibly also for sexual display. Because of that, and the large size of T. rex, adults almost certainly didn't have them. We've now found evidence of skin impressions for a number of large-bodied, adult tyrannosaurids and they show scaly skin, like the classic reconstruction. There are 2 main groups of meat eaters and T. rex evolved from the smaller lineage of meat-eaters though and later became huge. This lineage has evidence of fossils that are much more primitive than T. rex and preserve feathers. Ancestral tyrannosaurs were not that big and the feathers would have been a huge aid in regulating their body temperature. However, more advanced adult tyrannosaurs are very large and are so large they would retain their body heat just from their mass. In this case, it becomes difficult to cool down, rather than to warm up. For that reason, adults would not be expected to have feathers. It is likely that juvenile tyrannosaurs had downy insulating feathers and that they lost them as they grew.
The numerous feathered dinosaur fossils also suggest that at least some lineages of meat-eating dinosaurs were warm-blooded, that is, they could produce their own body heat like mammals and birds do. We know warm-bloodedness evolved somewhere on the line to birds and downy feathers are excellent insulators, so it is logical to assume that the origin of feathers is related to keeping body heat. Based on that, and also traits of their bones that are related to rapid growth, I think it is likely that many of the meat-eaters were warm blooded.
I don't completely buy into the absolute identification of color. I don't trust the trace materials in the feathers and bones given how long they've been in the ground. However, I do believe the alternating bands of light and dark color patterns that have been reported. I just wouldn't feel comfortable saying exactly which light and dark colors they were.
This is a reconstruction of the banded color patterns in a small meat eater.
Here is the fossil.
We know a lineage of meat eating dinosaurs evolved into birds. We know birds are highly colorful and this coloration plays a very heavy role in mate choice and reproductive success among birds. We also know that dinosaurs had excellent color vision, color vision is a very primitive reptile trait. Most of them have excellent color vision. Given these factors, it is probable that groups of dinosaurs also had vibrant colors, especially during mating season. Bright colors don't necessarily make you stand out to prey either. If it is muted, like the black stripes on a bright orange tiger, it can help blend in to the background.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if some dinosaurs looked like this than how they've been typically portrayed.
Nope, but there is a paleontologist named David Schwimmer. He's been in the field since before the Ross character.
My schedule sucks this week and I don't have time to do it until next week, but I'll start one Monday if there is interest.
Yes yes yes!
um, yes. please.
+1.....
Cool, I'll post one Monday. Some questions I'll be able to answer quickly, some I may have to do a literature search and read some of the more recent papers on before I can answer. I've been working on monitor lizards, as well as birds and the meat eating dinosaur lineage they descended from. I can answer most questions in those groupings off the cuff, but I'm behind on reading some of the papers that have come out on sauropods and ornithischian dinosaurs, as well as mammal paleontology over the last 2 years, so I may have to review the latest information for some of the questions and want to make sure I have time to answer them the right way if so.
You are not allowed to come in here with your knowledge and science and what not and disprove what I have learned from Hollywood. Booooooo!
Seriously...ask a Paleontologist thread sounds fun.....especially if Thujone later does an MS paint of it.
You know what else is a lie? You're stupid face.
"If the skywater falls and it just won't stop, that's bad luck"
A dinosaur almost exactly like brontosaurus existed. It's called the apatosaurus. Apparently, back in the late 1800's two guys were in a race to discover the most dinousaur species. One of them found an apatosaurus skeleton minus the skull. He found a couple of skulls at other sites that he believed to fit what he had found and brontosaurus was thusly discovered. Now we know that he screwed up and combined two different species, so brontosaurus is no more.
So..what you're trying to say is...Fred Flintstone did NOT eat brontosaurus burgers on a regular basis? Right. Sure he didn't.
OH! OH! No you di'nt!!So Raptor Jesus is a false God....
You guys just make this shit up as you go, don't you?
"Oh, noes--T. rex isn't it's real name."
"But we can't get rid of it--every kid in America has a T. rex action figure."
"I know--let's change the rules."
"Brilliant!"
As a lawyer, I find that offensive. Because we would never change the rules to suit our profession's ends. Never.
So what you are saying is that Scientists are really just like women?
I just want to start going by my first and middle initials and my last name from now on. And get in an academic feud....
http://gizmodo.com/5601514/the-trice...other-dinosaur
Scientists are saying that the Triceratops dinosaur—you know, the three horned one—was actually a juvenile form of a Torosaurus, the three horned dinosaur you don't know. Apparently, dinosaurs' skulls can shape-shift.
The scientists, John Scannella and Jack Horner, believe that the Torosaurus and Triceratops are actually of the same species. According to the them, as a Triceratops aged, its horns and frill became more similar to that of a Torosaurus. Short becomes long, saw-edged becomes smoothed and so on. Having them be the same species would explain why there were never any young Torosaurus fossils discovered.
The duo say there is a clear transition from triceratops into torosaurus as the animals grow older. For example, the oldest specimens of triceratops show a marked thinning of the bone where torosaurus has holes, suggesting they are in the process of becoming fenestrated
Scientists sure enjoy crushing my childhood memory of The Land Before Time (they nixed Brontosaurus a while back). Hopefully they won't delete Triceratops too. [New Scientist via BoingBoing]
Send an email to Casey Chan, the author of this post, at cchan@gizmodo.com.
The adult
The juvenile
You shut your whorish mouth right now.
I guess that's exactly what I'm saying.
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