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Is it really true that the Blue Whale is the largest creature to ever live on Earth?
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Apr 29, 2024 15:52
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You know how in bad cheap 50s movies they would have "dinosaurs" that were just baby alligators and iguanas that would have horns and sails and poo poo glued on them because this was before the days of animal rights activists in Hollywood? The Triassic was the time period where real-life Slurposaurs roamed the Earth
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Apr 29, 2024 15:53
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redshirt posted:Is it really true that the Blue Whale is the largest creature to ever live on Earth? That we know of, to date. khwarezm's mentioned the giant Triassic ichthyosaurs Shastasaurus and Shonisaurus, which have some specimens suggesting sizes comparable to the largest blue whales. It's notoriously difficult to get good weight and even length estimates due to fragmentary remains and oh-so-many unknowns about soft-tissue anatomy.
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Apr 29, 2024 19:48
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OpenlyEvilJello posted:the giant Triassic ichthyosaurs Shastasaurus and Shonisaurus  are we absolutely sure they weren't giant birds
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Apr 29, 2024 20:07
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Imagine the HONK that thing made
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Apr 29, 2024 20:12
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It's birds all the way down.
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Apr 29, 2024 20:13
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Birds aren’t real. Those things you see in the sky are avian theropods.
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Apr 29, 2024 21:28
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Found the thread through the April announcement. This my jamMrQwerty posted:also the first known apex predator, Mr. Anomalocaris What's his username Amazed at this big-rear end bird, and also the fact that this image appears to be in Basque Phlegmish fucked around with this message at 10:04 on Apr 30, 2024 |
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Apr 30, 2024 09:55
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khwarezm can you tell me what furry dog lizard i need to beat to death with a baseball bat if i need to go back in time?
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Apr 30, 2024 10:38
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it's part of the time traveller's code: beat not, lest ye be beaten give unto 'don what is dimetrodon's  + all the rest u know
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Apr 30, 2024 15:34
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Regular Wario posted:khwarezm can you tell me what furry dog lizard i need to beat to death with a baseball bat if i need to go back in time? his name is Andrew, short for Andrewsarchus  good luck
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Apr 30, 2024 16:00
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redshirt posted:Is it really true that the Blue Whale is the largest creature to ever live on Earth? Second, after ur mum By weight, yes, but there are longer jellyfish and other colonial ocean weirdos.
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Apr 30, 2024 16:03
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Deformed Church posted:but there are longer jellyfish what
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Apr 30, 2024 20:23
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Tree Bucket posted:what Oh we could have a whole other thread on weird poo poo currently living in the sea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion%27s_mane_jellyfish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lineus_longissimus Snowglobe of Doom fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Apr 30, 2024 |
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Apr 30, 2024 20:25
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Some of them took the concept of tentacles and decided to not gently caress around.
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Apr 30, 2024 20:25
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Winklebottom posted:
There's a reason when the first fossil marine reptiles and pterosaurs were being discovered one of the early popular theories was that they alongside the recently discovered monotremes represented an odd in between group between birds and mammals(as similarly a popular belief was that reptiles became birds and then birds became mammals) Deformed Church posted:Second, after ur mum And if we extend this out to living things that aren't animals the largest organism on Earth is Pando a quaking aspen who occupies an area of approximately 106 acres and weighs about 6000 tons and depending on which estimate you subscribe to is anywhere from 14000 to 80000 years old
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Apr 30, 2024 22:44
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drrockso20 posted:And if we extend this out to living things that aren't animals the largest organism on Earth is Pando a quaking aspen who occupies an area of approximately 106 acres and weighs about 6000 tons and depending on which estimate you subscribe to is anywhere from 14000 to 80000 years old But enough about your mom 
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Apr 30, 2024 22:46
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 This is a statue of the Megalonyx jeffersonii - the Megalonyx were a genus of giant ground sloth that went extinct about 13,000 years ago, and there is evidence that earlier human beings interacted with Megalonyx. His name is Rusty.
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May 1, 2024 02:52
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is there any fossil evidence of giant frogs existing?
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May 1, 2024 12:18
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Regular Wario posted:is there any fossil evidence of giant frogs existing? There's a bigly frog named Beelzebufo but it wasn't crazy large 
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May 1, 2024 12:25
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Regular Wario posted:is there any fossil evidence of giant frogs existing? Beelzebufo, though apparently it was smaller than they initially thought. Kangxi posted:
So one of the things that always gets me excited when looking at the late Pleistocene is the possibility that some of these extinct animals you can barely imagine actually being a live today might actually have been the subject for paintings and such by early human arrivals in places like the Americas or Australia. In Colombia there's a large amount of rock art at place called Serranía de la Lindosa and its been theorized that there could be a bunch of extinct animals being depicted here, most notably a big dangerous thing attacking humans that could be either a Ground Slot or a Short Faced Bear.   Interpreting these images is highly controversial, in addition to their age with arguments that they might not even be older than a few hundred years. And no offense to ancient Colombians but god I wish they took a few art lessons from their French contemporaries to make it clearer for posterity. As I mentioned in the Australia post as well there's cave art found there too that has been tentatively been interpreted as depicting Thylacoleo or at least a Thylacine:   It blows my mind the idea that these kinds of creatures would have been a normal part of everyday life for people pretty much the same as those alive today. khwarezm fucked around with this message at 12:45 on May 1, 2024 |
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May 1, 2024 12:25
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aww i hoping there was a dog sized frog that ate meganeura
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May 1, 2024 12:39
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This has become my new favourite thread!
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May 1, 2024 21:54
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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:This has become my new favourite thread!
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May 2, 2024 00:44
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https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/a-prehistoric-hunt-preserved-in-incredible-fossilized-tracks/558797/
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May 2, 2024 03:37
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The picture on that article makes it look like the sloth is a drunk guy that wants to fight trying to be talked down by his mates
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May 2, 2024 04:40
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Telsa Cola posted:https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/a-prehistoric-hunt-preserved-in-incredible-fossilized-tracks/558797/ Unfortunately Bennett is a well known harasser of women
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May 2, 2024 07:25
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khwarezm posted:That's a good point, but when it comes to sail functionality there's very little written about Ctenosaurs compared to more familiar cases like Spinosaurs and early Synapsids. If I can talk about those other animals, I know there's a lot of work that's been done on the thermoregulatory properties of them for Dimetrodon and its controversial because you get smaller sail like structures on related genera like Sphenacodon where my understanding is that research points towards them being of little use for gaining or losing heat. You also have the sails on much smaller species within the Dimetrodon genus, even though structures like this would be more useful for larger animals (like the elephant here) who may have bigger issues with getting too hot. Finally I think recent research has shown that the sails go through distinct growth spurts that would match sexual maturity more than anything, just generally most times I've seen this discussed I get the impression that thermoregulation is not a favoured idea at the moment. I didn't want to get extremely into the weeds on particulars, I was mostly just cautioning against the tendency to throw up our hands and go "I dunno, a sex display?" at anatomical features that don't have an immediately apparent function. Although I would mention that computer modeling of Dimetrodon's sail shows that it would be quite effective at gaining heat, though not nearly as much at losing it, so kind of the opposite of an elephant's ears in that regard. But that could well have been its function anyway; there's a whole spectrum of thermoregulatory schemes besides the commonly understood "cold-blooded" and "warm-blooded", maybe they needed more help getting revved up than coming down, and it became adapted to that purpose from an ancestor's smaller crest which was maybe a sex display (or fat hump, or whatever). quote:I do agree with the tendency for it to feel like Scientists go 'gently caress it, its sex related' to any bizarre feature lol. I've also noticed that meme about 'Ritual Object' when it comes to archaeology too. I suppose I'm not one to second guess but you do wonder if people are just doing that to have an explanation, I've sometimes wondered about things like the tail of a Thresher Shark and how we know it actually does have practical functionality of whipping fish, but if scientist 50 million years in the future with no Thresher sharks around found a fossil preserving this feature, wouldn't the automatic assumption be that it was for sexual display and any other reason is too ridiculous to explain such a weird tail? I think part of it too is just that, you know, scientists are people like anybody else, and people don't like to be put on the spot and not have a good answer for a pressing question. When you're an ostensible expert in your field and you're writing up a new discovery, or publishing another research review for our delightful "publish or perish" paradigm, "I don't know" isn't good enough -- even though that's supposed to be the germination of all discovery, the beginning of wisdom. It should be okay to admit that sometimes we just don't know, but pride and ego are as old as the rocks and the fossils.
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May 2, 2024 09:39
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Dimetrodon wasn't nearly big enough to require a radiator adaptation.
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May 2, 2024 14:19
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Ratios and Tendency posted:Dimetrodon wasn't nearly big enough to require a radiator adaptation. Also some of the sphenacodontidae which were very closely related to dimetrodon barely had any sails at all, such as the sphenacodon  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphenacodon
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May 2, 2024 14:47
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Here's an amazing 1981 documentary movie from the National Film Board of Canada. It's bizarre to think that this was just 12 years before Jurassic Park hit cinemas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv3_TSbwx14 1981 doco about prehistoric mammals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Yjx_bgfSCM Here's a news feature from 1967 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_oBI385qSE Snowglobe of Doom fucked around with this message at 15:28 on May 2, 2024 |
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May 2, 2024 15:14
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Ratios and Tendency posted:Dimetrodon wasn't nearly big enough to require a radiator adaptation. Makes me wonder if it's a case of runaway evolution.
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May 2, 2024 15:19
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