Zegh's Dinosaur Thread

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Good one!
Jurassic Park - the first movie, is excellent. Good story, good message, good (enough) science, and amazing effects.
Jurassic Park - the Lost World (before spino, still only Tyrannosaurus) is an... okay sequel. It is an archetypical sequel. "Oh, yawn, more of the same, eh?"

The rest are just... so much ugh. So much. So much. Sooo much...
 
zegh8578 said:
Good one!
Jurassic Park - the first movie, is excellent. Good story, good message, good (enough) science, and amazing effects.
Jurassic Park - the Lost World (before spino, still only Tyrannosaurus) is an... okay sequel. It is an archetypical sequel. "Oh, yawn, more of the same, eh?"

The rest are just... so much ugh. So much. So much. Sooo much...
Click to expand...
I WANT MY ALLOSAURUS.
 
TorontoReign said:
I WANT MY ALLOSAURUS.
Click to expand...

Allosaurus is awesome! Totally different beast from Tyrannosaurus - despite reaching similar size - much more slender, much more ninja!
Did you know, however - that from the Allosaur family, the so-called Carcharodontosaurs evolved, these were massive Allosaurid theropods, that followed a "tyrannosaur-ish" convergent evolution - in fact, they were the first ones to adopt the tiny arms, stocky neck, humongous head bodyplan. They were likely out-competed later on, by Tyrannosaurids, which started out as small raptor-type dinos next to giant Allosaurs and Carcharodontosaurs.

There's also an interesting thing where - you might be familiar with the biological tendency of baby-animals retaining the traits of ancestral forms; a baby human is more monkey-like than an adult human, and so on. In other words - a baby Tyrannosaurus rex would have been very similar to its raptorian-esque ancestors. It appears that this might have ended up being detrimental to theropod diversity wherever advanced Tyrannosaurs existed, since their newborn would out-compete small raptors, their teens out-compete medium raptors, and adults out-competed apex predators. In other words, where - say - in a Jurassic setting, you'd have a whole bunch of species for the small niche, another bunch for the medium etc - in a late cretaceous setting, these varieties were being stamped away by Tyrannosaurus in every niche!
By the end of the cretaceous, theropod diversity is so low, most theropods have moved away from hunting, with the Ornithomimus types, Oviraptors, Therizinosaurs all doing vegetarianism/omnivorism, and the only hunters left little Velociraptor-types, who are like "yeah buddy, you TRY to outcompete us, I'll slice you to ribbons."
 
zegh8578 said:
Allosaurus is awesome! Totally different beast from Tyrannosaurus - despite reaching similar size - much more slender, much more ninja!
Did you know, however - that from the Allosaur family, the so-called Carcharodontosaurs evolved, these were massive Allosaurid theropods, that followed a "tyrannosaur-ish" convergent evolution - in fact, they were the first ones to adopt the tiny arms, stocky neck, humongous head bodyplan. They were likely out-competed later on, by Tyrannosaurids, which started out as small raptor-type dinos next to giant Allosaurs and Carcharodontosaurs.

There's also an interesting thing where - you might be familiar with the biological tendency of baby-animals retaining the traits of ancestral forms; a baby human is more monkey-like than an adult human, and so on. In other words - a baby Tyrannosaurus rex would have been very similar to its raptorian-esque ancestors. It appears that this might have ended up being detrimental to theropod diversity wherever advanced Tyrannosaurs existed, since their newborn would out-compete small raptors, their teens out-compete medium raptors, and adults out-competed apex predators. In other words, where - say - in a Jurassic setting, you'd have a whole bunch of species for the small niche, another bunch for the medium etc - in a late cretaceous setting, these varieties were being stamped away by Tyrannosaurus in every niche!
By the end of the cretaceous, theropod diversity is so low, most theropods have moved away from hunting, with the Ornithomimus types, Oviraptors, Therizinosaurs all doing vegetarianism/omnivorism, and the only hunters left little Velociraptor-types, who are like "yeah buddy, you TRY to outcompete us, I'll slice you to ribbons."
Click to expand...

I did not "know" that but I suspected it due to similarities in some of the carnivore types. Good to know!
 
"Americasaurus" is so far an unclaimed name, which is interesting, since Europasaurus is a thing. No Nazisaurus though, that'd probably be a bit awkward. I still can't quite believe Supersaurus is a legit dino, even firmly entrenched, with lots of material, and two different species.
 
That photo/meme is in Wasteland 3. Just thought I would point that out.
 
Yes, these are great news! Very interesting!

Also interesting is the trivia that, okay - let's go back!
In the 70s, a coelurosaur theropod is found dead in the middle of a nest with elongated eggs. It is believed this theropod was raiding the eggs when it died, so it was named Oviraptor, and since it was the first of its defined family, the family AND group was named from it: Oviraptoridae and Oviraptorosauria.

The elongated eggs turned out - in the late 90s - to belong to... *drumroll* Oviraptor.
It wasn't raiding anything - it was killed on top of its own nest, defending its eggs from the environment. "Oviraptor" has ever since been a complete misnomer! The elongated eggs are in fact typical for theropods - and the eggs + embryos in this new discovery: even MORE Oviraptorids! :D

(I do doubt they will ever seek to determine the species of the embryos, since embryonic fossils are considered undiagnostic, which is a bit of a pity, since these eggs could represent a brand new species, so far unknown to science - OR it could supplement data for an already known species, there's really no way of knowing)
 
My own interpretation of "Oviraptor" mongoliensis, later renamed Rinchenia mongoliensis, since Oviraptor itself was more distinct, here eating what Oviraptorids might have eaten; anything they could catch with their weird parroty beaks.
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Yeah, in my paleo-twitter it seems a clear majority consensus, is that this new species of human was not only unecesary, but would give everyone else a bunch of extra work to untangle and disprove this new species, since most of them consider it just an example of individual variation inside H. heidelbergensis, which many of them also consider a natural variation of H. neanderthalensis.
There's a very strong sense of "ugh... " overall, concerning this new description and species :D
 
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