PYF Ugly Dinosaur/Paleo Thing

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Snowglobe of Doom: Mar 30, 2012; sucks to be right

Mr.Chill posted:

Edit - Oh poo poo, a gif of Quetzalcoatlus, one of the scariest animals that ever lived

Everything about them was just so ridiculous, I love them so much

There were a whole range of these terrifying lanky bastards:

https://www.deviantart.com/somedeviantartist/art/Largest-Pterosaurs-876091479?comment=1%3A876091479%3A4922721853

Snowglobe of Doom has a new favorite as of 11:20 on Oct 6, 2021

# ? Oct 6, 2021 11:14

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# ? May 2, 2024 13:53

Mr.Chill: Aug 29, 2006

Quetzalcoatlus was amazing, probably my favorite ancient animal ever.
Still terrifying, tho.

# ? Oct 6, 2021 11:41

Kaiju Cage Match: Nov 5, 2012

Alhazred posted:

A crocodile with a safety helmet! That's the dorkiest animal yet.

Even in the late Cretaceous, OSHA was still around.

# ? Oct 6, 2021 11:48

Tree Bucket: Apr 1, 2016; R.I.P.idura leucophrys

Could quetzelcoatlas actually fly? It looks really unlikely.
It's one of those species that makes me wonder if the Cretaceous had ecological niches that simply don't exist anymore, or at least we're really underestimating how weird nature can get.
Maybe quetzalcoatlas soared around, descending onto sauropod nests to feed. Maybe in that oxygen-rich atmosphere, it was able to run really freakin fast, or evaded predators by shrieking ultrasonically at them. Maybe it floated swanlike around continent-spanning knee-deep lakes. Maybe maybe maybe.

Tree Bucket has a new favorite as of 13:15 on Oct 6, 2021

# ? Oct 6, 2021 13:12

Snowglobe of Doom: Mar 30, 2012; sucks to be right

Tree Bucket posted:

Could quetzelcoatlas actually fly? It looks really unlikely.

The paleontological world has been strenuously debating this question for over 40 years now. :v:

# ? Oct 6, 2021 14:03

Cream-of-Plenty: Apr 21, 2010; "The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering."

Boner M posted:

Man, that reminds me of all of the bizarre sea creatures that the ocean spawned, like Opabinia here:

Not two, not eight, but five eyes, a single, long trunk/tentacle with a clawed "grasper" at the end, and a mouth that didn't even have the decency to be located in the same place (apparently it was under the creature's "head"). When I think of cosmic horror and pulp sci-fi creatures that didn't settle for "little green men", I think of things that look a lot like this dummy.

Its cousin, Anomalocaris, at least went for the more relatable "two eyes, two 'arms'" model, despite still looking like a googly-eyed freak in the end:

# ? Oct 6, 2021 15:32

Alhazred: Feb 16, 2011

Boner M posted:

The best part of it is that it's name is Hallucigenia because the paleontologists didn't know what the gently caress it was. It took some time to realize what was legs and what was just weird back spines.

# ? Oct 6, 2021 15:43

Snowglobe of Doom: Mar 30, 2012; sucks to be right

Here's a great list of fuckin' weird prehistoric creature names: https://www.neatorama.com/2007/02/19/the-worlds-strangest-dinosaur-names/

# ? Oct 6, 2021 15:52

Alhazred: Feb 16, 2011

# ? Oct 6, 2021 15:57

Alhazred: Feb 16, 2011

Snowglobe of Doom posted:

Here's a great list of fuckin' weird prehistoric creature names: https://www.neatorama.com/2007/02/19/the-worlds-strangest-dinosaur-names/

LAPUTAVIS
The promiscuous dinosaur.

# ? Oct 6, 2021 15:59

Phy: Jun 27, 2008; Fun Shoe

Alhazred posted:

I always have to double-check the source when there's weird gigantic protrusions coming off of a prehistoric reconstruction, because of that one jackwagon who took grainy pre-existing photos of dinosaur fossils in matrix, and ran them through a sharpen filter a few times, and declared the jpeg artifacts were heretofore undiscovered soft tissue structures

But apparently longisquama (this fellow) really was just kinda like this

# ? Oct 6, 2021 16:19

Snowglobe of Doom: Mar 30, 2012; sucks to be right

Phy posted:

I always have to double-check the source when there's weird gigantic protrusions coming off of a prehistoric reconstruction, because of that one jackwagon who took grainy pre-existing photos of dinosaur fossils in matrix, and ran them through a sharpen filter a few times, and declared the jpeg artifacts were heretofore undiscovered soft tissue structures

David Peters! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Peters_(paleoartist)

Here's some fun articles about his bullshit:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/world-must-ignore-reptileevolution-com/
https://www.vice.com/en/article/vvb8kj/why-paleontologists-get-riled-up-over-this-heretical-pterosaur-concept-art

# ? Oct 6, 2021 16:35

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Cream-of-Plenty posted:

Not two, not eight, but five eyes

Do you ever have a moment where you start thinking out loud about something confusing, then catch yourself saying the dumbest loving thing in the world? Because I was looking at this guy and busted out with "five eyes? Let's fuckin' do it! Five eyes!"

# ? Oct 7, 2021 05:59

Mohawk Potato: Jan 15, 2008

Snowglobe of Doom posted:

The paleontological world has been strenuously debating this question for over 40 years now.

The current popular belief is yes they can, here's a fun video from on of my favorite paleo you tubes that covers just that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rVA9d_HCHM

# ? Oct 7, 2021 06:45

DicktheCat: Feb 15, 2011

Antivehicular posted:

Do you ever have a moment where you start thinking out loud about something confusing, then catch yourself saying the dumbest loving thing in the world? Because I was looking at this guy and busted out with "five eyes? Let's fuckin' do it! Five eyes!"

Would you believe I did something very similar?

# ? Oct 7, 2021 06:58

SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL: Feb 21, 2006; Holy Moly! DARKSEID IS!

You may be excited to know some modern insects (mantis, vespids, dragonflies) have five eyes, two big compound and three tiny simple ones. Opabinia and modern Arthropoda have the same common ancestry to the best of our knowledge.

# ? Oct 7, 2021 11:09

Alhazred: Feb 16, 2011

# ? Oct 7, 2021 18:12

Squatch Ambassador: Nov 12, 2008; What? Never seen a shaved Squatch before?

Carnotaurus - useless flappy arms and a stubby snout

Unlike T-Rex, the arms of Carnotaurus and many other Abelisaurids probably were vestigial, and had lost or reduced bones in their arms and hands. They probably could wave the arms around a bit, but that's all.

# ? Oct 7, 2021 19:39

Mr.Chill: Aug 29, 2006

Weren't carnotaurus arm sockets really good at waving, too? Like those things had ridiculous range despite being vestigial? Imagining this mouth with legs running while twirling those nubs fills my heart with delight

# ? Oct 7, 2021 21:02

Mohawk Potato: Jan 15, 2008

Mr.Chill posted:

Weren't carnotaurus arm sockets really good at waving, too? Like those things had ridiculous range despite being vestigial? Imagining this mouth with legs running while twirling those nubs fills my heart with delight

Yup also the socket was such that their arms at rest pointed back to their tail.

# ? Oct 7, 2021 21:55

Carnotaurus: Feb 27, 2006; meat-eating bull

Hungry Computer posted:

Carnotaurus - useless flappy arms and a stubby snout

Unlike T-Rex, the arms of Carnotaurus and many other Abelisaurids probably were vestigial, and had lost or reduced bones in their arms and hands. They probably could wave the arms around a bit, but that's all.

# ? Oct 7, 2021 22:02

Falukorv: Jun 23, 2013; A funny little mouse!

Snowglobe of Doom posted:

Oh they hand long legged 'galloping' crocodyliforms as well, such as the kaprosuchus which was maybe 20 feet in length and had ridiculous tusk-like teeth:

They also had colossal crocs the size of a bus such as the deinosuchus which was about 30 to 40 feet long and weighed 5 to 8 tons (there's been a LOT of arguments over its size, they usually only find the skull and have to guesstimate the rest):

But this thread is for weird-rear end ugly critters so here's laganosuchus whose name translates as "the pancake crocodile":

.... and the dog-sized anataosuchus whose name translates as "duck crocodile":

A real life crocoduck!

.... and the armadillosuchus whose name means ..... well, I'm sure you can figure that one out on your own

Crocodylomorphs seldom get the recognition they deserve. People look at them today and think it represents something ancient and primitive just because the semi aquatic forms remain. When we�ve just lost a bunch of diversity and living crocodilians are not fully representive of past croc diversity. Heck, modern crocodilians are not particularly old (in line with modern mammal lineages) nor the first to go semi aquatic, but it proved to be a stable niche. The crocodylomorph clade eusuchia, one of few who survived the kt-extinction, and which all extant crocodilians belong to, stem from the Cretaceous, and crocodilians themselves diverged in late Cretaceous. By then marsupials and placentals had already diverged. The crocodilian body plan and semi aquatic habits go back to the jurassic Neosuchia, but the more basal crocodylomorph clades we know of were more terrestrial. The lounged walking and semi-aquatic lifestyle in a way are the more derived traits for that big group.

Many crocs had shorter snouts, could climb, more erect and gracile like greyhounds� some were fully marine with fin-like tails and legs. Some were insectivores and even a herbivore among them.

This is for example one of the most basal crocodylomorphs known:

Check out simosuchus for a cool herbivore crocomorph. Some of the more terrestrial Notosuchians or their sister group (the Sebecosuchians) even survived the KT-extinction alongside crocodilians, until the Miocene and were for a while the largest land predators, continuing to fill large predator niches since the Jurassic.

Makes me wonder what made the last sebecosuchians go extinct well after the KT since they�ve long been successful.

Here is Langstonia, one of the last sebecosuchians of the Miocene and thus the last non-crocodilian crocodylomorph.

And from the late Cretaceous, Simosuchus, a herbivore notosuchian pug-croc!

Falukorv has a new favorite as of 16:17 on Oct 8, 2021

# ? Oct 7, 2021 22:03

Squatch Ambassador: Nov 12, 2008; What? Never seen a shaved Squatch before?

Carnotaurus posted:

https://twitter.com/FredtheDinoman/status/1432384588840677381

# ? Oct 8, 2021 05:02

7c Nickel: Apr 27, 2008

How about the Tully Monster (Tullimonstrum)?

A creature so drat weird that it has been variously classified as a mollusc, an arthropod, a conodont, a worm, and a vertebrate.

# ? Oct 8, 2021 12:39

Carnotaurus: Feb 27, 2006; meat-eating bull

7c Nickel posted:

How about the Tully Monster (Tullimonstrum)?

A creature so drat weird that it has been variously classified as a mollusc, an arthropod, a conodont, a worm, and a vertebrate.

That is clearly a flamingo.

# ? Oct 8, 2021 14:46

Edgar Allen Ho: Apr 3, 2017; by sebmojo

diggin the new grass type starter.

# ? Oct 8, 2021 16:16

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

Tree Bucket posted:

Could quetzelcoatlas actually fly? It looks really unlikely.
It's one of those species that makes me wonder if the Cretaceous had ecological niches that simply don't exist anymore, or at least we're really underestimating how weird nature can get.
Maybe quetzalcoatlas soared around, descending onto sauropod nests to feed. Maybe in that oxygen-rich atmosphere, it was able to run really freakin fast, or evaded predators by shrieking ultrasonically at them. Maybe it floated swanlike around continent-spanning knee-deep lakes. Maybe maybe maybe.

There's a theory that a fundamental difference in the way birds and pterosaurs were built that allowed pterosaurs to still be able to fly at much larger sizes. When birds take off from the ground they jump up with their hind legs, which are generally small and weak to keep their total weight down. Pterosaurs launched by pushing off with their front limbs, which were already big and well-developed by virtue of being their flight muscles. If a big bird developed big legs to allow it to launch off the ground, it'd be adding to its total weight, as well as devoting its body's resources away from its flight muscles to power the big legs. It's thought this limit on their ability to get off the ground is what has kept the largest flying birds in history about the size of a mid-sized pterosaur.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALziqtuLxBQ

Cream-of-Plenty posted:

Man, that reminds me of all of the bizarre sea creatures that the ocean spawned, like Opabinia here:

Not two, not eight, but five eyes, a single, long trunk/tentacle with a clawed "grasper" at the end, and a mouth that didn't even have the decency to be located in the same place (apparently it was under the creature's "head"). When I think of cosmic horror and pulp sci-fi creatures that didn't settle for "little green men", I think of things that look a lot like this dummy.
...

This little guy's been making the rounds on paleontology blogs lately for some reason. Technically it had (at least) two eyes, but they grew into each other like Sonic the Hedgehog.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v-0G5u0Njo

# ? Oct 9, 2021 19:02

Falukorv: Jun 23, 2013; A funny little mouse!

Like in many male species of flies.

# ? Oct 12, 2021 16:33

Mr.Chill: Aug 29, 2006

Better bring yer gun there are TERROR BIRDS afoot!

These are SCARY BIRBS!

These birds loved standing next to silhouettes of significantly smaller humans!

# ? Oct 12, 2021 20:07

Edgar Allen Ho: Apr 3, 2017; by sebmojo

They look like the Ginyu Force of birbs

# ? Oct 12, 2021 20:56

CJacobs: Apr 17, 2011; Reach for the moon!

Alhazred posted:

I'm pretty sure I had to shoot over this guy in mini golf once

# ? Oct 12, 2021 22:02

Gravitas Shortfall: Jul 17, 2007; Utility is seven-eighths Proximity.

Alhazred posted:

This has to be one of those "whoops we forgot that skulls are covered in soft tissue" illustrations, right?

# ? Oct 14, 2021 17:09

Falukorv: Jun 23, 2013; A funny little mouse!

Terror birds ignored the KT memo regarding who is to be top dog.

# ? Oct 14, 2021 19:53

Knormal: Nov 11, 2001

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcqBtdwVQY4

# ? Oct 15, 2021 03:28

Snowglobe of Doom: Mar 30, 2012; sucks to be right

The toxodon was a boring basic-bitch hornless rhino thing which was completely uninteresting except for two facts: 1) Charles Darwin was one of the first people to collect toxodon fossils, paying a Uruguayan farmer 18 pence for a skull, and 2) it has some big-rear end novelty nerd teeth: