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Regular Wario posted:
It looks like a gator who wishes to have long legs
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May 7, 2024 04:55
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Jimbone Tallshanks posted:It looks like a gator who wishes to have long legs https://i.imgur.com/s51TLYv.mp4
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May 7, 2024 05:03
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Jimbone Tallshanks posted:It looks like a gator who
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May 7, 2024 05:25
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Phlegmish posted:Supposedly a herbivore but I am still not messing with that apparently you used to be able to just do whatever the gently caress you wanted like check out this dead-rear end opossum style:
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May 7, 2024 05:43
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ah yes, the dickasuchus
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May 7, 2024 05:45
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Jimbone Tallshanks posted:It looks like a gator who wishes to have long legs Its got hands It shouldnt have hands
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May 7, 2024 05:53
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Nice try buddy, but I know classic 1950s Slurpasaurs when I see them https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlNRToxSwyU Edit: this video shows a LOT of old timey animal cruelty 
Snowglobe of Doom fucked around with this message at 08:50 on May 7, 2024 |
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May 7, 2024 08:39
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SniperWoreConverse posted:apparently you used to be able to just do whatever the gently caress you wanted like check out this dead-rear end opossum style: Worth mentioning that Cheetahs are actually pretty chill compared to most other cats, pretty much the only reason we didn't end up domesticating them is that they don't like breeding in captivity and it took humanity an embarrassingly long time to figure out artificial insemination
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May 7, 2024 09:10
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SniperWoreConverse posted:apparently you used to be able to just do whatever the gently caress you wanted like check out this dead-rear end opossum style: Bringing Up Baby is a weird movie from a modern perspective and perfect for this thread, can a paleontologist get the missing bone he needs by helping his grant benefactors daughter take care of a semi-domesticated leopard.
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May 7, 2024 09:23
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Getting my own Aetosaurus just so I can talk to girls walking theirs
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May 7, 2024 10:02
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Pretty wild that all these animals went extinct millions of years ago when the planet is only 6,000 years old.
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May 7, 2024 13:12
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What's really wild about all these Triassic guys is how they look like weird reptilian funhouse mirror versions of modern animals. Like, "Oh, that's a bison, that's an otter, that's an anteater, that's a squirrel, that's a deer, that's a kangaroo rat," except it's all half-crocodile. Convergent evolution is nuts, man
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May 7, 2024 15:45
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Convergent evolution, or mimicry? Maybe all the modern species evolved to look like these guys just to blend in and deceive predators.
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May 7, 2024 15:53
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drrockso20 posted:Worth mentioning that Cheetahs are actually pretty chill compared to most other cats, pretty much the only reason we didn't end up domesticating them is that they don't like breeding in captivity and it took humanity an embarrassingly long time to figure out artificial insemination yeah i was posting somewhere about how gorillas get super fuckin bent out of shape and mega stressed the gently caress out by things humans don't even notice or pay attention to. There's some old like 1940s research saying they ate their poops to extract nutrients -- turns out no, they're going insane in captivity unless certain conditions are met, and once they have those they become more normalized. Zoology had completely deranged concepts even 20, 40 years ago, not even talking 80 or 100. I wouldn't be shocked if a lot of mental health stuff people have trouble with would be alleviated if we looked at things critically in a similar way. iirc cheetahs were semidomesticated for a long time but due to an incomplete understanding of inbreeding(?) they got all hosed up and then died out. Back in the Dayse of Olde™ (500y? 1000 years ago?) they even had different kinds such as blue or white ones and there are still depictions in manuscripts -- this would be when they were still endemic to the middle east and would be similar to how there's blue dogs. Something like this? It was that and/or something else. Back before then they had all kinds of crazy poo poo and even had stuff like cedars of Lebanon going down to Euphrates and all that at one point maybe 10ky. You could straight up just walk outside of town in Carthage and there'd be lions and crocodiles, ostriches hanging out in Persia, so seems kinda plausible to me. There were wild nile crocs still living in Palestine when it was under Brit control before Israel was established. The whole world was crazy as gently caress even within living memory. Cheetahs were all over the place, check out this poo poo:  It's estimated there's only 12 asiatic cheetahs left, somewhere in that dark green. Barudak posted:Bringing Up Baby is a weird movie from a modern perspective and perfect for this thread, can a paleontologist get the missing bone he needs by helping his grant benefactors daughter take care of a semi-domesticated leopard. Supposedly that's a real cheetah that you could just buy as a pet in the 30s for huge money. I guess irl they get along p well with friendly, relaxed dogs & now they use specially trained retrievers to keep them from getting too stressed out. Seemingly they have a sort-of group family structure that is in between wolves and most cats, so they might be good candidates for domestication if they weren't insanely endangered. Probably don't keep one alone in your apartment.
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May 7, 2024 17:51
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Does this mean that there's some sort of missing link when it comes to Pterosaurs? There seems to be an evolutionary blank spot for them as well as Ornithopods.
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May 7, 2024 19:55
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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:Does this mean that there's some sort of missing link when it comes to Pterosaurs? There seems to be an evolutionary blank spot for them as well as Ornithopods. That seems to happen a lot with flying animals. Pterosaurs, bats, flying insects. There's just a big question mark on the intermediate stage between some fully terrestrial ancestor and something with complete functional wings. Birds are one of the only examples where there's actually something approaching intermediate fossils.
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May 7, 2024 20:01
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They just found a pretty good candidate for a pterosaur ancestor last year. It looks surprisingly like what you'd expect a pre-flight pterosaur ancestor to look like, down to an extended fourth finger and start of a beak. Of course as always this almost certainly wouldn't have been a direct ancestor, but just an example of the kind of animal pterosaurs would have come out of. And there's still a huge gap between what's basically a not-quite-theropod and something capable of any kind of flight. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-fossilized-nonflying-precursor-pterosaur-brazil.html 
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May 7, 2024 22:22
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Knormal posted:They just found a pretty good candidate for a pterosaur ancestor last year. It looks surprisingly like what you'd expect a pre-flight pterosaur ancestor to look like, down to an extended fourth finger and start of a beak. Of course as always this almost certainly wouldn't have been a direct ancestor, but just an example of the kind of animal pterosaurs would have come out of. And there's still a huge gap between what's basically a not-quite-theropod and something capable of any kind of flight. poo poo, that's great, I can add that to the next post. Though it would behove me to mention that early Pterosaurs tended to be well-toothed all along the jaw and toothless beaks are secondary adaptations that show up at various points much further down the line (ie, Pteranodon), the likes of Eudimorphodon and Peteinosaurus had tons of teeth.
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May 7, 2024 22:53
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Knormal posted:They just found a pretty good candidate for a pterosaur ancestor last year. It looks surprisingly like what you'd expect a pre-flight pterosaur ancestor to look like, down to an extended fourth finger and start of a beak. Of course as always this almost certainly wouldn't have been a direct ancestor, but just an example of the kind of animal pterosaurs would have come out of. And there's still a huge gap between what's basically a not-quite-theropod and something capable of any kind of flight. Is that a silhouette of john hammond?
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May 7, 2024 23:24
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Regular Wario posted:Is that a silhouette of john hammond? Yeah. They spared no expense.
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May 7, 2024 23:36
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khwarezm posted:poo poo, that's great, I can add that to the next post. Though it would behove me to mention that early Pterosaurs tended to be well-toothed all along the jaw and toothless beaks are secondary adaptations that show up at various points much further down the line (ie, Pteranodon), the likes of Eudimorphodon and Peteinosaurus had tons of teeth. How could I forget these guys. 
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May 7, 2024 23:52
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What do we think was the smartest dinosaur? Modern day lizards seem quite dumb but there are a lot of smart birds and I imagine the sheer size of some ancient animals must have resulted in some big brains.
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May 7, 2024 23:59
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Regular Wario posted:Is that a silhouette of john hammond? Yes. This specific John Hammond, to be exact 
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May 8, 2024 00:47
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Asterite34 posted:That seems to happen a lot with flying animals. Pterosaurs, bats, flying insects. There's just a big question mark on the intermediate stage between some fully terrestrial ancestor and something with complete functional wings. Birds are one of the only examples where there's actually something approaching intermediate fossils. Insects are possibly the most insane thing I can even think of. What the gently caress is metamorphosis how the gently caress does that happen  and insects are part of pancrustacea! what the gently caress is going on!?
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May 8, 2024 05:04
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I wonder if the lack of pterosaur ancestor fossils indicates they were all really really small and fragile. Maybe it's always tree-dwelling mouse-lizards who learn to fly first. SniperWoreConverse posted:Insects are possibly the most insane thing I can even think of. What the gently caress is metamorphosis Caterpillars are the weirdest thing in the world.
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May 8, 2024 05:26
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Chas McGill posted:What do we think was the smartest dinosaur? Modern day lizards seem quite dumb but there are a lot of smart birds and I imagine the sheer size of some ancient animals must have resulted in some big brains. i was looking at some crap online and it seems that many vertebrates in general are actually p smart, they just don't obviously show it. Compared to like... a slug. Even then, neurons and behavior are generally more advanced than previously thought across most animals? Supposedly some viral dna introgression at the vertebrate ancestor level caused myelinization to occur, where myelin has been traced back to being a viral protein derivative and dramatically improves nerve function instead of causing catastrophic brain damage. Inverts were not susceptible to this and didn't get it, so in order to get good brain they just need thicker nerve bundles, there's no way around it, which means in order to get smarter they have to get physically bigger and the whole creature is even more metabolically expensive? So you either go thicc or you finished thinking and the nerves still firin' at the same time there's a bunch of crap of like those old studies on bees and how they are able to track and map flowers, they have playful behavior where they like to just fool around for no benefit, they watch other bees and can learn certain skills to obtain rewards, real weird stuff going on there for an animal that has a brain the size of the fleck of an average goon's keyboard grime. Crabs have been estimated to have similar cognitive function to mice, as well as similar situational awareness and ability to feel pain, so crawfish boils would be ethically similar to throwing a bucket full of live mice into boiling water. A lot of this stuff isn't necessarily that the animal is dumb, per se, but that we can't easily intuit its emotions or intent. They've done experiments showing crocodiles can distinguish between individual humans and remember which humans they've had good interactions with and which ones may be dangerous to be near, and that they know the difference between tones and are more leery of men even if they are trying to use positive sounding tones. Certain lizards, i'm thinking tegus, may be on par with dogs. Or even like turtles and tortoises have different personalities. My fish used to be able to recognize different people and knew who had the food or no food, and who they wanted to be petted by and who they wanted to avoid. Crabs also. Def many animals are dumb as gently caress however. They've actually analyzed the brain functions of certain snails and nailed it down to these specific cells do this specific job and it has hunger response, aversion response, horny response, and that's it. Or just be a stupid parasite organism. Or be a weirdo with like 8 brains or some poo poo. Tree Bucket posted:I wonder if the lack of pterosaur ancestor fossils indicates they were all really really small and fragile. Maybe it's always tree-dwelling mouse-lizards who learn to fly first. Also: there's no bird-sized dinosaurs in the "traditional dinosaur" era, right? Like there's no mouseasaurus at all? For all those millions of years it goes from relatively chunky fatass therapods to relatively chunky birds before you get to modern sparrows, doesn't it? V mysterious. Telling you these insects... something weird going on here.
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May 8, 2024 05:41
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SniperWoreConverse posted:Also: there's no bird-sized dinosaurs in the "traditional dinosaur" era, right? Like there's no mouseasaurus at all? For all those millions of years it goes from relatively chunky fatass therapods to relatively chunky birds before you get to modern sparrows, doesn't it? V mysterious. There's been a lot of discussion about why that is, but in my opinion it's as simple as those niches are always already filled by other non-archosaur reptiles and mammals. Even right after a mass extinction when niches are going to open up the smaller animals are generally going to hang on and keep their niches filled better than the bigger archosaurs. In the one niche archosaurs were able to move into that nothing else already occupied, flying vertebrate, they had no problem getting super tiny. The other interesting question that brings up is what were birds doing that was so different from pterosaurs that the first clumsy fliers weren't just immediately outcompeted by the other flying reptiles that had like a 80 million year head start.
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May 8, 2024 08:58
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Knormal posted:The other interesting question that brings up is what were birds doing that was so different from pterosaurs that the first clumsy fliers weren't just immediately outcompeted by the other flying reptiles that had like a 80 million year head start. SniperWoreConverse posted:Also: there's no bird-sized dinosaurs in the "traditional dinosaur" era, right? Like there's no mouseasaurus at all? For all those millions of years it goes from relatively chunky fatass therapods to relatively chunky birds before you get to modern sparrows, doesn't it? V mysterious. This stuff makes my head hurt, but in kind of a good way. Tree Bucket fucked around with this message at 09:04 on May 8, 2024 |
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May 8, 2024 09:02
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Theres no fossil evidence of proto-birds because birds only arrived on this planet in the 1960s
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May 8, 2024 09:03
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https://youtu.be/gIVGftIWt4s?si=lv3lA3V5wp5jEzWh
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May 8, 2024 16:39
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Chas McGill posted:What do we think was the smartest dinosaur? Modern day lizards seem quite dumb but there are a lot of smart birds and I imagine the sheer size of some ancient animals must have resulted in some big brains. The sad truth is that we just can't really know, its extremely hard to estimate dinosaur intelligence when the only thing you have to go off of are the size of braincases and comparisons with living relatives. Broadly speaking, I think most researchers would say that what we can tell about Dinosaur brain structure is that they lean a lot more towards crocodilians than birds. Crocodiles aren't the dumbest animals, some of their feats might surprise people, like tool use, but they can't really compare with mammals or birds in general and absolutely not with the smartest birds, corvids and parrots, which reach levels of brainpower that are otherwise reserved for primates and cetaceans. There's actually been a lot written about this recently, because of a study that was done that claimed that T-Rex's intelligence could have been comparable to a great ape, and a more recent response saying no it wasn't, that's ridiculous. The crux of the first argument is that bird brains tend to be more efficiently organized than mammalian brains, packing in way more neurons in a smaller area, which is one of the ways that crows can compete with mammals with much larger brains in the problem-solving department. It was suggested that the pure size of Tyrannosaurus's brain (since brain size at least partially correlates with body size) meant that it just had a ridiculous amount of neurons and was thus the Dinosaur equivalent of Mr Terrific. The response pointed out that its actually only really in advanced birds (Telluraves) that we see much sign of this neuron packing and a lot of currently alive birds that are less derived don't display it and the resulting sharp minds, and that Telluraves brains clearly have a different structure from non-Avian dinosaurs, even ones with larger brains than the norm like T-Rex, with indications that they have been considerably beefing up their mental capabilities since the K-Pg extinction. Bird brains are actually on average quite a bit larger than dinosaur brains as a percentage of their body mass, and apparently there's a better correlation for intelligence in animals based on the relative size of the brain compared to their body as opposed to the absolute size of a brain, ie, a giraffe's brain is quite a bit bigger than a chimp's in pure weight and size, but a chimp is a much smarter animal when its brain is much larger in proportion to the rest of its body. However, this proportionality is lessoned for small animals, songbirds and shrews have brains that make a large part of their overall body weight, but they aren't particularly intelligent. Anyway, the responders also point out that the original study probably made an error and overestimated the overall brain size in dinosaurs, and that the evidence that neuron count equal smarts isn't as strong as suggested. I doubt that dinosaurs back in the day would have been particularly smart compared to living animals, although T-Rex probably was leading the pack. Contrary to popular belief we don't have any evidence that Dromaeosaurs like Velociraptor had particularly big brains and there's really no good evidence of complex group strategy pop culture has decided they have, especially not pack hunting. They might have been more comparable to an opossum or ostrich compared to the chimp level intellect you get in Jurassic Park. I do think that Stenonychosaurus (formerly Troodon) is still considered to have some of the highest braincase ratio found in non-avian dinosaurs though. Personally, my belief is that the smartest dinosaurs of all time are probably knocking around right now and are probably digging through your rubbish and screeching at cats right as we speak. Tree Bucket posted:I wonder if the lack of pterosaur ancestor fossils indicates they were all really really small and fragile. Maybe it's always tree-dwelling mouse-lizards who learn to fly first. The bias against the preservation of small animals is why some particular lagerstatten (sites of exceptional preservation) such as the Messel Pit and Solnhofen shale in Germany or the Jiufotang and Tiaojishan Formations in China are so drat important, not only are they showing us incredible detail with things like skin structures on familiar animals, they are preserving much smaller animals than we normally get and giving us insight into parts of the ecosystem that generally have a strong bias against them being preserved. This extends to insects and other land arthropods where we generally have a poor record for them so they are invaluable for giving a wider understanding of these ecosystem beyond the bigger, cruder animals. On a side note, I feel like Germany and China are weirdly overrepresented in these sites of extremely good preservation? khwarezm fucked around with this message at 23:56 on May 8, 2024 |
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May 8, 2024 23:48
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khwarezm posted:This is absolutely the reason, flying animals always have fragile bones because they are evolved to be as light as possible to save weight, at the cost of strength. Even if they weren't flying, smaller bones and smaller organism just have a harder time persevering through the fossilization process and coming out the other end. Small bones get crushed, or eaten, or otherwise destroyed, there's a lot that I can say about preservational biases but its a really important topic for Palaeontology, its why we tend to have better records of larger animals made with robust and tough bones compared to smaller ones. That makes sense. There's a forest down the road from my house where I walk a lot. I've seen a good number of cow bones there (even though no livestock have been there in decades) and a scattering of kangaroo skull or pelvis bones... but as for the hundreds of tiny birds that live in that forest, like my av, I've never seen any remains. I guess that will happen when a fox can eat those remains in one bite. Oh, wait, I found one dead superb parrot (that's its actual name) but that's only because it literally fell out of the tree and landed dead next to me. Weird.
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May 9, 2024 01:32
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Intelligence is generally part of the suite of abilities related to sociability, so it wouldn't surprise me if hadrosaurs were relatively bright seeing as they lived in big herds. They had their big, specialized crests for honking at each other too.
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May 9, 2024 01:43
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perhaps you may enjoy this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7QLLJuxup4
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May 9, 2024 04:12
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Ratios and Tendency posted:Intelligence is generally part of the suite of abilities related to sociability Hey, I'm not extinct!!!!
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May 9, 2024 18:37
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SniperWoreConverse posted:Insects are possibly the most insane thing I can even think of. What the gently caress is metamorphosis I want to write a story where aliens come to Earth to check on the probes that they left. When people ask "What probes?" as a small flock of butterflies show up. The aliens explain that butterflies are a designed species left on Earth as a benevolent and incognito sensor. If the butterflies are killed off it's a sign that something went wrong. Then someone asks if moths were left too and the aliens respond "You have moths?" They look at each other nervously and then quickly leave.
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May 11, 2024 06:43
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Darth Brooks posted:I want to write a story You just have! This is what we call a short story.
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May 11, 2024 06:57
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May 11, 2024 07:01
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Darth Brooks posted:I want to write a story where aliens come to Earth to check on the probes that they left. When people ask "What probes?" as a small flock of butterflies show up. The aliens explain that butterflies are a designed species left on Earth as a benevolent and incognito sensor. If the butterflies are killed off it's a sign that something went wrong. Then someone asks if moths were left too and the aliens respond "You have moths?" They look at each other nervously and then quickly leave. This sounds dope and I would read it. (Again maybe).
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May 12, 2024 01:58
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Edit: whoops, mistake! Just editing this post
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May 12, 2024 02:06
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