We don't have a DINOSAUR thread? Inconceivable!

valhalla130

I love dinosaurs. All kinds. They are awesome. And to think that these things were alive, and roaming the earth millions of years ago is just fascinating to me. I love the history of dino bone hunting, from Marsh and Cope and their race to find new dinos, to the image of dinos in pop culture. Dinos started out as slow and dumb reptiles.



Then they got all cool and dark, still slow and meandering, but also somehow menacing.



But as time went on, paleontologists realized these things were actual animals, who completely filled the niches in their environment in such a dominant fashion that they existed on Earth longer than most animals since.

Then there are all the animals that get called dinosurs, but aren't. Dimetrodon, for instance...



Isn't a dinosaur, but a mammal-like reptile, which went extinct 40 million years before dinos.

There are also flying reptiles and marine reptiles, which also get lumped in with dinos, but aren't.




But they are all awesome too.

I love dinos and all big reptiles. So we can post about any of them here. Here are some more pics of dinos...





Also feel free to talk about dinos in media too... like...



and...

ASimPerson

Paging @Brovid Hasselsmof

Sterica

You forgot modern dinosaurs

ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRR

Joolander

Theropods had feathers, and there's nothin any of you can do about it

chiasaur11

Joolander wrote: »

Theropods had feathers, and there's nothin any of you can do about it

Not until I finish the time machine, anyway.

valhalla130

And not to necessarily bring this up, but I realized today why the Spinosaurus dispatched the T Rex so easily in JP3. Jack Horner was the advising paleonotologist on the movie, and he has had some serious beef with T Rex for decades, and still holds to the theory that it was a scavenger. So, not only does he have some outlandish theories about T Rex, but also doesn't quite understand the skull structure of Spinosaurus, since he was all about Spinosaurus being a predator, while T Rex was just a scavenger, and Spinosaurus obviously being more vicious than a T Rex, although we really don't know how vicious any of these animals were, since all we have are their bones.

He seriously said this. I just... don't even. As my 13 year old daughter would say.

knitdan

Open the door
Get on the floor
Everybody walk the dinosaur

Joolander

Jack Horner does not actually have a degree in paleontology

Just sayin'

knitdan

His expertise lies mostly in the disciplines of

Sitting in corners
Eating Christmas pie

miscellaneousinsanity

BlankZoe

Finally, a thread about the most important thing in the world

Me

valhalla130

One thing I've always been fascinated by, primarily because I grew up on it, when pop culture seemed to somehow think it was real, are tales of cavemen fighting dinosaurs. Or people finding lost continents or islands, like that Tarzan story the Frank Frazetta art is from. Or the Lost World where Professor Challenger finds a lost Amazonian plateau where dinosaurs survived.

Seriously

I enjoy emily willoughby

chiasaur11

Seriously wrote: »

I enjoy emily willoughby

I'm not exactly thrilled by the whole dinosaurs with feathers thing, but some artists can really make it work.

This is a nice picture.

Seriously

I really love that something most people thought was all the way sewed up came so undone

they aren't what we pictured them as, and they never were


they moved

just for a moment, they were alive again

Sterica

I 100% support making dinosaurs more cute.

Xehalus

I went to dinosaur museum recently

it also had a bunch of minerals and rock formations

it was a lot of reading but rad

Anzekay

Dinosaurs are awesome

But now I want to make a Dragon thread where we can talk about how cute dragons are

Brovid Hasselsmof

Joolander wrote: »

I love this punk t rex!

Mr Fuzzbutt

Dinosaurs were cool before their featheriness was known.

Now they are even cooler.

valhalla130

From Wikipedia:

Definition

Under phylogenetic taxonomy, dinosaurs are usually defined as the group consisting of Triceratops, Neornithes [modern birds], their most recent common ancestor (MRCA), and all descendants.[12] It has also been suggested that Dinosauria be defined with respect to the MRCA of Megalosaurus and Iguanodon, because these were two of the three genera cited by Richard Owen when he recognized the Dinosauria.[13] Both definitions result in the same set of animals being defined as dinosaurs: "Dinosauria = Ornithischia + Saurischia", encompassing theropods (mostly bipedal carnivores and birds), ankylosaurians (armored herbivorous quadrupeds), stegosaurians (plated herbivorous quadrupeds), ceratopsians (herbivorous quadrupeds with horns and frills), ornithopods (bipedal or quadrupedal herbivores including "duck-bills"), and sauropodomorphs (mostly large herbivorous quadrupeds with long necks and tails).[14]

Birds are now recognized as being the sole surviving lineage of theropod dinosaurs. In traditional taxonomy, birds were considered a separate class that had evolved from dinosaurs, a distinct superorder. However, a majority of contemporary paleontologists concerned with dinosaurs reject the traditional style of classification in favor of phylogenetic nomenclature; this approach requires that, for a group to be natural, all descendants of members of the group must be included in the group as well. Birds are thus considered to be dinosaurs and dinosaurs are, therefore, not extinct. Birds are classified as belonging to the subgroup Maniraptora, which are coelurosaurs, which are theropods, which are saurischians, which are dinosaurs.

valhalla130

A little more definition, saurischians are "lizard-hipped" dinos, and ornithiscians are "bird-hipped" dinos.

Funny thing is, these classifications were created based on the bone structure of dinos, since some have hips that resemble lizards and some have hips resembling birds.

But then we discovered that birds evolved out of the lizard-hipped dinos.

Joolander

So hips DO lie!

I trusted you, Shakira!

Gvzbgul

If only we could do DNA analysis on dinosaurs, then I'd bet that a bunch of dinosaurs that were previously from the same branch would in fact belong to totally different branches. Like when they did it to birds and found that falcons and eagles are not bros.

I can't read these articles so I am just assuming that they are talking about what I am talking about.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/graphic-science-the-bird-family-tree-gets-a-makeover/

Basically, previously we'd organised the bird family tree by looks. Now we organise it by DNA. I imagine that a similar reorganisation of the dino family tree would have even more shake ups.

UnbrokenEva

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vSY_rB928c

CorporateRed

valhalla130 wrote: »

And not to necessarily bring this up, but I realized today why the Spinosaurus dispatched the T Rex so easily in JP3. Jack Horner was the advising paleonotologist on the movie, and he has had some serious beef with T Rex for decades, and still holds to the theory that it was a scavenger. So, not only does he have some outlandish theories about T Rex, but also doesn't quite understand the skull structure of Spinosaurus, since he was all about Spinosaurus being a predator, while T Rex was just a scavenger, and Spinosaurus obviously being more vicious than a T Rex, although we really don't know how vicious any of these animals were, since all we have are their bones.

He seriously said this. I just... don't even. As my 13 year old daughter would say.

I'm pretty sure Horner said that he never truly believed T-rex was a scavenger. He liked to talk about the idea a lot because it pissed some people off and made others give him money.

BrocksMullet

valhalla130 wrote: »

And not to necessarily bring this up, but I realized today why the Spinosaurus dispatched the T Rex so easily in JP3. Jack Horner was the advising paleonotologist on the movie, and he has had some serious beef with T Rex for decades, and still holds to the theory that it was a scavenger. So, not only does he have some outlandish theories about T Rex, but also doesn't quite understand the skull structure of Spinosaurus, since he was all about Spinosaurus being a predator, while T Rex was just a scavenger, and Spinosaurus obviously being more vicious than a T Rex, although we really don't know how vicious any of these animals were, since all we have are their bones.

He seriously said this. I just... don't even. As my 13 year old daughter would say.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2ewx9vIw68

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0229/T.-rex-bite-much-worse-than-previously-thought-video

BOW BEFORE THE KING

miscellaneousinsanity

from tumblr:

at the end of All Yesterdays (the extremely good book about imagining and illustrating dinosaurs in complex speculative ways i was talking about yesterday) there’s a section where they prove the point about the fact that we need to be more open to imagining skin coverings and fat/cartilage deposits by illustrating modern-day animals as if a nonhuman paleontologist from millions of years in the future reconstructed them using the just-skin-stretched-over-the-skeleton-and-muscles method that unimaginative paleoartists use with dinosaurs

with results like:


and

and


and i love it so much because it absolutely unquestionably proves the point the book is making

This book should be mandatory reading for everyone even passingly interested in dinosaurs. You can buy it here.

BrocksMullet

Dino-Thread, should I feel emotionally threatened by Gigantosaurus?
http://www.livescience.com/24642-giganotosaurus.html

On one hand:

For a long time, Tyrannosaurus rex — "king of the dinosaurs" — was thought to be the largest carnivorous dinosaur. Today, Giganotosaurus is believed to have been slightly larger than T. Rex, though even Giganotosaurus ranks behind Spinosaurus in size among the meat-eating dinosaurs....

Models suggest that Giganotosaurus could run up to 31.3 mph (50.4 km/h), according to a 2001 article in the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica. Any faster and the animal would lose its stability and fall over. By comparison, a 2011 study in the journal PLOS ONE computed the maximum running speed of T. Rexto be 25 mph (40 km/h).

On the other:

Some estimates propose that the dinosaur had a bite force several times weaker than that of T. rex, which suggests Giganotosaurus may have hunted by inflicting slicing wounds instead of biting — a tactic that would have allowed it to take down very large prey that it couldn't have gotten its jaws around.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsM9py39F0U

Yes.Yes. GO. I believe.

Gvzbgul

That hippo one is spot on though.

chiasaur11

Gvzbgul wrote: »

That hippo one is spot on though.

Well, it says they were predators.

Hippos don't kill for food. They kill for fun.

DrDinosaur

DINOSAURS ARE RAD

THEY ARE ALSO A REALLY WEIRD FIELD OF STUDY BECAUSE CLASSIFYING WHAT IS AND IS NOT A DINOSAUR IS KIND OF A MESSY SUBJECT

STILL WAY COOLER THAN ANY LAME ANIMALS ALIVE TODAY

chiasaur11

DrDinosaur wrote: »

DINOSAURS ARE RAD

THEY ARE ALSO A REALLY WEIRD FIELD OF STUDY BECAUSE CLASSIFYING WHAT IS AND IS NOT A DINOSAUR IS KIND OF A MESSY SUBJECT

STILL WAY COOLER THAN ANY LAME ANIMALS ALIVE TODAY

What about... mammals?

And... robots?

Radius

DrDinosaur wrote: »

DINOSAURS ARE RAD

THEY ARE ALSO A REALLY WEIRD FIELD OF STUDY BECAUSE CLASSIFYING WHAT IS AND IS NOT A DINOSAUR IS KIND OF A MESSY SUBJECT

STILL WAY COOLER THAN ANY LAME ANIMALS ALIVE TODAY

I feel like this opinion may be biased in some way.

Rankenphile

How does one classify...

...love?

Gvzbgul

Could we reclassify Dinosaurs so that humans are dinosaurs?

Rankenphile

I mean, we could create models where we stretch muscle and skin across its bones, but how can we truly know what love once looked like, honestly?

We are fooling ourselves. Damn our hubris!

BahamutZERO

it turns out the real dinosaur is man

DrDinosaur

chiasaur11 wrote: »

DrDinosaur wrote: »

DINOSAURS ARE RAD

THEY ARE ALSO A REALLY WEIRD FIELD OF STUDY BECAUSE CLASSIFYING WHAT IS AND IS NOT A DINOSAUR IS KIND OF A MESSY SUBJECT

STILL WAY COOLER THAN ANY LAME ANIMALS ALIVE TODAY

What about... mammals?

And... robots?

mammals win special mention for being both boring and dumb

oh wow opposable thumbs that's cool

any natural spikes? armor? mace-like bone masses? no?

robots are not animals but they are acceptable as long as they conform to the highest of aesthetic standards

Radius wrote: »

DrDinosaur wrote: »

DINOSAURS ARE RAD

THEY ARE ALSO A REALLY WEIRD FIELD OF STUDY BECAUSE CLASSIFYING WHAT IS AND IS NOT A DINOSAUR IS KIND OF A MESSY SUBJECT

STILL WAY COOLER THAN ANY LAME ANIMALS ALIVE TODAY

I feel like this opinion may be biased in some way.

that's perposterous

chiasaur11

DrDinosaur wrote: »

chiasaur11 wrote: »

DrDinosaur wrote: »

DINOSAURS ARE RAD

THEY ARE ALSO A REALLY WEIRD FIELD OF STUDY BECAUSE CLASSIFYING WHAT IS AND IS NOT A DINOSAUR IS KIND OF A MESSY SUBJECT

STILL WAY COOLER THAN ANY LAME ANIMALS ALIVE TODAY

What about... mammals?

And... robots?

mammals win special mention for being both boring and dumb

oh wow opposable thumbs that's cool

any natural spikes? armor? mace-like bone masses? no?

Boom. Boom. Boom.

Mammalia, motherfuckers!

Brainleech

Brovid Hasselsmof wrote: »

Joolander wrote: »

I love this punk t rex!

It looks like something out of Monster Hunter