Dinosaurs

[HackerX]

Who here has a fascination with dinosaurs (or did as a kid?)

Recent purchases have lead me to get back into being interested in the latest developments:
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(replicas :( Small one is a velociraptor claw, big one is deinonychus)

What do people think of dinosaur -> bird evolution. For a long while I've considered it a given but even more recently they've found evidence of velociraptors (and other dromeosaurids, not just proto birds like Archaeopteryx) with the bone structures and even feather impressions.

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Anyways, discuss! (i'm interested in seeing what other articles people can come up with)

[geonerd]

I"ll have to dig around for the article stating that a certain protein found in chickens was discovered in a T-Rex...





geonerd added to this post, 1 minutes and 58 seconds later...

err...which reminds me...have you read the book Raptor Red by Bob Bakker? It is fantastic.

Cool claws!

[Solaris]

Dinosaurs! I went through a dinosaur phase as a kid. I still find them pretty interesting, but have not really read up on them in a while.

What prompted the purchase?

[HackerX]

I"ll have to dig around for the article stating that a certain protein found in chickens was discovered in a T-Rex...





geonerd added to this post, 1 minutes and 58 seconds later...

err...which reminds me...have you read the book Raptor Red by Bob Bakker? It is fantastic.

Cool claws!

Yes I have! Loved that book. I remember that article about the protein too, that comes from the real (non fossilised) bone marrow they found when they cracked one of the t-rex femur bones open.

What prompted the purchase?

Because I could? I saw them and I decided I wanted them then and there, and they're really not that expensive being replica's, something like $10US each plus postage.

[thod]

Kids are interested in monsters. What better than dinosaurs.

I am guessing that deep in the human psyche there is some hard wired racial memory of avoiding being eaten. In the wild the animals always go for the easy prey, the young. This memory is like our fear of heights, it too is hard wired from our monkey days. Everyone feels nervous when looking down.

Now kids will draw all kinds of monsters but most of them are just artwork. The archetype monster has to be something like a T-Rex. Big with a large powerful jaw and lots of teeth. Perhaps this is how a kid would see a hyena. The recognition and avoidance of monsters would have been a survival trait.

Most interest in dinosaurs is in the big carnivores or at least herbivores with dangerous spikes etc.

[athenian200]

I was particularly interested in them when I was younger, probably partially triggered by seeing Jurassic Park at a young age. My mother let me see it after I inadvertently convinced her it wasn't too scary for me, by describing the most disturbing situations I could imagine, in detail, in an attempt to guess what happened in the movie after she watched it and told me that it might be too disturbing for me (my imagination proved far worse than the movie, however).

Anyway, I learned the proper names of all the popular dinosaurs as well as the meaning of their names in Latin, and I remember I had a tendency to correct the characters in "The Land Before Time" whenever they used more colloquial terms to refer to themselves.

I never really collected a lot of dinosaur paraphernalia, though.

[Flamethrower]

Yes I was absoloutely fascinated by dinasaurs as a kid. I used to get books out of the library on them. And I still like them. My favourite is Triceratops.
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[Solaris]

Yes I was absoloutely fascinated by dinasaurs as a kid. I used to get books out of the library on them. And I still like them. My favourite is Triceratops.
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I was a triceratops in my first grade play when we studied dinosaurs. Are you sure you aren't me in some sort of alternate universe?

[thod]

Do you often get picked for these roles, you know, the triceratops, the elephant man, the bog monster etc?

[Flamethrower]

Are you sure you aren't me in some sort of alternate universe?

:p Well maybe we have real proof they actually exist!..... hmmm then that means this forum spans more than one universe too and also everyone on here.... maybe we are all teleporting through time via cyberspace....

[Zilal]

I liked dinosaurs as a kid, but no more than I liked a lot of other things. I did have a lot of plastic dinosaurs toys. I had kind of a fossil fetish... I thought they were very neat... I once stole a brachiopod fossil from earth science class in 9th grade, I just couldn't keep my hands off it. I don't know what happened to that thing, now that I think of it...

I'm not up on the latest dinosaur evolution stuff, except for the Revueltosaurus deal. But that's not quite as sexy as the bird stuff. I know a little bit more about the (non-avian) dino extinction.

[sriv]

I loved dinosaurs as a kid. I was always looking for what was the biggest, heaviest, or baddest. My favorite was the utahraptor. I think that is what its called.

[Solaris]

Do you often get picked for these roles, you know, the triceratops, the elephant man, the bog monster etc?

Cute.

It was first grade man, we were each a different dinosaur.


Does anyone else wonder how they decided what color dinosaurs were?

[geonerd]

Does anyone else wonder how they decided what color dinosaurs were?

Yes. It makes me think back to the Burgess Shale fauna that some geologists found in Canada...it's a rare collection of soft-bodied organisms that were actually preserved in the rock record (usually only hard-shelled organisms are preserved). Well, they sketched out what the animals might have looked like, and seriously screwed up a couple of them. They had sketched one animal entirely upside-down! Also, some organisms that they thought were ancestors of shrimp turned out to be the feeding mechanism of a much larger creature. There are still some that they don't know wtf they were.

My point is that there was quite a bit of guesswork (imagination?) involved in reconstructing these creatures. I'm not sure if the dinosaur colors were based on what they ate, atmospheric/climatic conditions at the time, or what. Animal colors today range from grey and brown to bright reds, greens, oranges, blues...I like to wonder if T-Rex was really hot pink instead of grey/brown. Why not??

[thod]

Animal colors today range from grey and brown to bright reds, greens, oranges, blues...I like to wonder if T-Rex was really hot pink instead of grey/brown. Why not??

A predator has to approach its prey undetected. OK a ten ton dinosaur is quite easy to detect but the principle applies. It wants to get close enough to its prey undetected before making its hunting charge. This would suggest some drab color perhaps with spots like leopards. Animals with bright colors are for mating displays, dominance displays or to signal to predators that they are poisonous. Of course this does not prove that T Rex wasn't hot pink.

If you recall the Jurassic park movie dinosaurs were created from the blood in the stomach of a mosquito that got trapped in amber (fossilized tree resin). In fact the body decays leaving an impression of the soft tissues in the amber and you couldn't extract DNA from it to recreate a dinosaur to check its color.

You could recreate mammoths though. We have frozen specimens of these and you could extract DNA to impregnate a female elephant to get a hybrid. By then impregnating her daughters with more mammoth material you would move to 100% mammoth.

[sriv]

One theory is that the T-Rex was a scavenger and it was crimson red, just like a vulture, to scare off other carnivores eating a deal body.

[Zilal]

Going to school for geology has ruined me on popular science programs/books about dinosaurs and such. I'm always saying to the TV, "Oh, they don't know that!" and "That's just an idea." It's amazing what thin threads of evidence they have to go on sometimes.

I think the colors that illustrators/modelers tended to make dinosaurs were based on the reptiles people were familiar with... iguanas, alligators, anoles, whatever. But if we were really basing dinosaur colors on the variety of colors found in today's reptile world, that'd open a lot of possibilities. And illustrators are using catchy colors more now. But there is certainly no way to know what colors they actually were.

It's definitely interesting what bits of evidence they use to develop ideas behind other stuff, though, like what an animal ate or what some bony structure on its head was for.

[HackerX]

Going to school for geology has ruined me on popular science programs/books about dinosaurs and such. I'm always saying to the TV, "Oh, they don't know that!" and "That's just an idea." It's amazing what thin threads of evidence they have to go on sometimes.

I think the colors that illustrators/modelers tended to make dinosaurs were based on the reptiles people were familiar with... iguanas, alligators, anoles, whatever. But if we were really basing dinosaur colors on the variety of colors found in today's reptile world, that'd open a lot of possibilities. And illustrators are using catchy colors more now. But there is certainly no way to know what colors they actually were.

It's definitely interesting what bits of evidence they use to develop ideas behind other stuff, though, like what an animal ate or what some bony structure on its head was for.

*nods* though I'd be inclined to say they should be looking at birds rather than reptiles for ideas (of course, birds are so diverse, it would be night on impossible). Lately, a lot of therapods are starting to be displayed feathered.

On your last point, what's interesting is that some of those same smaller therapods (especially dromeosaurs, i.e. the "raptors") are being found where their arm bones have the same nodules that modern birds have that form the anchors for the flight feathers.


I don't see why the major predators would need to be the drab colours they are now. The environments were a lot different back then. A lot more highly dense pine forests where something like a tiger's strips (high contrast breakup) that helps break up the outline of the animal rather than a lion's drab coat (suited to the open plains) or a wolf's coat (open forest). Combine that with current ideas of mating displays, along with the fact that various dinosaurs have been shown to be quite social and I imagine that they'd have some quite distinct patterns.

ps - all my own conjecture

[Solaris]

*nods* though I'd be inclined to say they should be looking at birds rather than reptiles for ideas (of course, birds are so diverse, it would be night on impossible). Lately, a lot of therapods are starting to be displayed feathered.

On your last point, what's interesting is that some of those same smaller therapods (especially dromeosaurs, i.e. the "raptors") are being found where their arm bones have the same nodules that modern birds have that form the anchors for the flight feathers.


I don't see why the major predators would need to be the drab colours they are now. The environments were a lot different back then. A lot more highly dense pine forests where something like a tiger's strips (high contrast breakup) that helps break up the outline of the animal rather than a lion's drab coat (suited to the open plains) or a wolf's coat (open forest). Combine that with current ideas of mating displays, along with the fact that various dinosaurs have been shown to be quite social and I imagine that they'd have some quite distinct patterns.

ps - all my own conjecture

Noting that lizards are often patterned, I have wondered if dinosaurs may also have been patterned. Maybe even some of them were able to adapt their colors like chameleons, it would make sense for some of the smaller species.

Does anyone know where traditional dinosaur colors originated? I mean, was it a group, a person, a school, what?

[ShaiGar]

I want a Deinonychus to ride to uni and work.

[TheLastMohican]

I was fascinated/obsessed with dinosaurs when I was younger. I still like them, but now my interests are more diverse. I like to keep up on all the latest developments and discoveries, of course.

I think the dino>bird evolution is unlikely. It's an interesting thought, but there isn't much direct evidence, just speculation. The extinction of the dinosaurs seems pretty much the end of the road for them. (But then there's Loch Ness...)

HackerX, good for you having those claws! Ever since seeing Jurassic Park, I've wanted one of those. ;)

[integratedvelocity]

Erm, sorry, but no. I actually find modern reptiles much more appealing. I could handle feeding live mice to a snake, and they're nonallergenic, I believe.

I am much more interested about global conditions during the time dinosaurs lived than the actual creatures themselves. And I like prehistoric mammals.

[HackerX]

I want a Deinonychus to ride to uni and work.

Ah, they're not really big enough to ride... You could probably get away with a Utahraptor though, they're what the Jurassic Park velociraptors were based on.

See the size comparisons:
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To give you an idea, the velociraptor claw is about the size of my thumb, and the deinonychus claw fits into my palm.

I was fascinated/obsessed with dinosaurs when I was younger. I still like them, but now my interests are more diverse. I like to keep up on all the latest developments and discoveries, of course.

I think the dino>bird evolution is unlikely. It's an interesting thought, but there isn't much direct evidence, just speculation. The extinction of the dinosaurs seems pretty much the end of the road for them. (But then there's Loch Ness...)

HackerX, good for you having those claws! Ever since seeing Jurassic Park, I've wanted one of those. ;)

Ah, it's one of the few things were there is a lot of fairly direct evidence for. Fossilised feather impressions, bone structure etc.

Erm, sorry, but no. I actually find modern reptiles much more appealing. I could handle feeding live mice to a snake, and they're nonallergenic, I believe.

I am much more interested about global conditions during the time dinosaurs lived than the actual creatures themselves. And I like prehistoric mammals.

I got to hold a snake today actually. Each to their own, but I wouldn't want to limit myself to just one particular subject like this.

[thod]

I think the dino>bird evolution is unlikely. It's an interesting thought, but there isn't much direct evidence, just speculation.

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[TheLastMohican]

People, I know about the feathers, and the evidence that certain dinosaurs had them. But I think it is not likely that this indicates that birds evolved from dinosaurs. That hypothesis brings new questions to the nature of the extinction of dinosaurs, which are very hard to reconcile.

But, I guess we will see. Right now there is a lot of debate, and I think there is simply not enough information for either side to prove anything.

[rwyatt365]

I had an absolute hard-on for dinosaurs as a kid! I read every dinosaur book in the local library and practically lived in the main library downtown - just to get hold of new books when they came in.

My favorite was the Triceratops, it just looked like an indestructible thing to me.

[TheLastMohican]

My favorite was the Triceratops, it just looked like an indestructible thing to me.

The perfect balance to the T-Rex. (Actually my favorite carnivore as a kid was the more obscure Allosaurus.)

[Motor Jax]

all dinos actually interested me when growing up

and i even had my career centered around paleontology

even archeology

but grew up instead

still interested in paleontology, and i find myself watching birds whenever they are walking around on the ground, and trying to imagine if they were only 6' taller with huge claws

my favorites: T Rex, Allosaurus, Raptor, Triceratops, and Stegosaur

[geonerd]

all dinos actually interested me when growing up

and i even had my career centered around paleontology

even archeology

but grew up instead


too bad for you ;) Being a professional kindergartner rules!

[Lucan]

The Triceratops, the Stegasaurus and the Pleisaurus( the supposed Loch Ness Monster! :thumbsup:)

[Zilal]

I don't believe there's any question in paleontological circles that birds evolved from dinosaurs. The questions are more to do with how, when, why etc.

[Falcarius]

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[rwyatt365]

The dino's today (and those re-imagined from earlier incarnations) are far cooler than the dino's pictured in the 60s. That Falcarius is way cool!

[integratedvelocity]

Maybe I'm just weird, but my favorite dinosaur was the brachiosaurus, one of the giant plant-eaters. They seem like they would make good pets :)

[Zilal]

I liked the tricerotops, because it was attractive and well-built. Like a nice car.

[geonerd]

I always thought this guy was pretty cool.

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[spiritdetectivegirl]

I was compleatly into Dinosaurs when I was little, it sparked my interest in the past. I still love them to death. Up untill the forth grade I was always the only girl that could name at least 20 off the top of my head.


My all time favorite is still the Valosoraptor; so smart and cunning. Much like wolves they were speculated to be.

[OneBadMother]

I was a huge fan of dinosaurs when I was about eight or nine. What really sparked my interest in the huge dinosaur book I had, though, wasn't actually related to dinosaurs. It was a picture of a curled-up dog that had been cast from the ashes of Pompeii. The Mt. Vesuvius eruption and its effects and aftermath fascinate me to this day.

[geonerd]

What really sparked my interest in the huge dinosaur book I had, though, wasn't actually related to dinosaurs. It was a picture of a curled-up dog that had been cast from the ashes of Pompeii. The Mt. Vesuvius eruption and its effects and aftermath fascinate me to this day.

ohh Pompeii *drools* I love the Villa of the Mysteries. ok i'm done posting off-topic.

[enigma]

I am guessing that deep in the human psyche there is some hard wired racial memory of avoiding being eaten. In the wild the animals always go for the easy prey, the young. This memory is like our fear of heights, it too is hard wired from our monkey days. Everyone feels nervous when looking down.

I read this topic somewhere... I believe it says that hard wired memories were located in our amygdala..

[Shadow]

When I was 7 or 8, my parents subscribed me to a weekly magazine all about dinosaurs, called "Dinosaurs!" The magazines were great, lots of colourful drawings, plus a large amount of facts and two centerpieces, a 3D one and a full colour one. Plus it gave a fair amount of info per magazine. And the collectable bits, I have around 10 posters (90cm*60cm) and two glow in the dark skeletons (T-Rex and Stegosaurus).
Really the only time I've been able to use this information was when we were learning about dinosaurs in class, at around the same age. I remember happily correcting the teacher numerous times.

[Motor Jax]

superb!

i used to do the same thing

except on a quiet note

or just realize how little the teacher knew about the subject matter

and shake my head

[HackerX]

When I was 7 or 8, my parents subscribed me to a weekly magazine all about dinosaurs, called "Dinosaurs!" The magazines were great, lots of colourful drawings, plus a large amount of facts and two centerpieces, a 3D one and a full colour one. Plus it gave a fair amount of info per magazine. And the collectable bits, I have around 10 posters (90cm*60cm) and two glow in the dark skeletons (T-Rex and Stegosaurus).
Really the only time I've been able to use this information was when we were learning about dinosaurs in class, at around the same age. I remember happily correcting the teacher numerous times.

I think I had those too! Didn't the T-Rex eventually come with the "skin" to cover the skeleton?

[Shadow]

I think I had those two! Didn't the T-Rex eventually come with the "skin" to cover the skeleton?

I'm sure that I still have the skin somewhere in the house, big and green if I remember correctly. I didn't really want to put the skin over the skeleton though, how was I supposed to see the glowing then?

[HackerX]

I thought the same thing :|

[Jack]

People, I know about the feathers, and the evidence that certain dinosaurs had them. But I think it is not likely that this indicates that birds evolved from dinosaurs. That hypothesis brings new questions to the nature of the extinction of dinosaurs, which are very hard to reconcile.

But, I guess we will see. Right now there is a lot of debate, and I think there is simply not enough information for either side to prove anything.

I agree!

I liked Dinosaurs as a kid, the Stegosaurus was my favorite.

Archeology is a cool science, but what I really want know is, how are the on-going discoveries actually beneficial to the human race?

Do these discoveries really help us understand more about the evolution of life?

How much more do we need to learn, before we figure out that life's origins and it's plans are possibly unsolvable?

Who's to say that the majority weren't wiped out by a still undiscovered virus that came from the little amount of small mammals that existed at that time(rodents?), which then eventually over time evolved into what we call the human race... Discovering something like that would be discovering a real time machine... Just a small theory.

[Beery Swine]

Maybe I'm just weird, but my favorite dinosaur was the brachiosaurus, one of the giant plant-eaters. They seem like they would make good pets :)

Hell yeah. Growing up I loved the sauropods but when Jurassic Park came out I fell in love with that one in particular. I don't even wanna see what color a real one looks like, or how they really move, that would kill the fantasy. I also like the larger Sauroposeidon.

[demvesalius]

I met Jack Horner once when I was in elementary school. He use to write letters to our class to. He is an American paleontologist who discovered and named the Maiasaura, providing the first clear evidence that some dinosaurs cared for their young. He is one of the most well known paleontologists in the United States. In addition to his many paleontological discoveries, Horner served as the technical advisor for all of the Jurassic Park films, and even served as partial inspiration for the movie's lead character, Dr. Alan Grant.

[replicant]

Yes. It makes me think back to the Burgess Shale fauna that some geologists found in Canada...it's a rare collection of soft-bodied organisms that were actually preserved in the rock record (usually only hard-shelled organisms are preserved). Well, they sketched out what the animals might have looked like, and seriously screwed up a couple of them. They had sketched one animal entirely upside-down! Also, some organisms that they thought were ancestors of shrimp turned out to be the feeding mechanism of a much larger creature. There are still some that they don't know wtf they were. Why not??

Ah, the Burgess Shale, how I have that place etched in my memory thanks to my geology professor. Based the information you are giving, it sounds like you are talking about the misidentification of Anomalocaris. Pieces here and there were found of Anomalocaris. The misidentification of the pieces and what they represented were cleared up by two Paleontologists in 1985.





replicant added to this post, 3 minutes and 57 seconds later...

I have been fascinated with dinosaurs but I didn't become sincerely interested in them until this year when I took a class this year called Creation Revisited. We traced the beginnings of life to the present. We covered a lot of time and various developments. We went over various life forms and the conditions they were subjected to. We discussed evolution. We discussed plant development. We discussed extinctions. We discussed dinosaurs and humans briefly near the end. The course was a special topics class and we were the guinea pigs for its first time run. Our teacher was an incredible academic and geologist. This is the second class I have had with him.





replicant added to this post, 12 minutes and 6 seconds later...

There have been several theories as to why the dinosaurs died off. The theory that has been at the forefront of things is the K-T Boundary Extinction. The idea that a meteorite caused the death of the dinosaurs. This theory has been challenged by a Princeton professor. It's definitely an amusing debate.

Other scientists explain that Dinosaurs were slowly dieing off because their natural habitats were disappearing. Volcanism, such as the Decan traps, was contributing to global warming, producing an 8 degree change in climate. Climate change, rainfall change, habitat change equates to environmental catastrophe for life.

I think animals that were smaller had advantage than larger animals given the increase in heat and poor atmospheric environment, which surely impacted oxygen levels. Dinosaurs were too big for their breeches.

With respect to Carbon-12, a New Scientist article from 1993 claims Carbon-13 dropped suddenly around the world releasing extra Carbon-12 into the atmosphere and it took place because of a lot of burning biomass, which suggests that there were a lot of fires at the end of the Cretaceous period. The question that lingers is - how did all of these fires get started and what about the lack of charcoal at various KT sites?





replicant added to this post, 1 minutes and 35 seconds later...

Something always bothered me about Jurassic Park is they named it Jurassic Park and the T. Rex wasn't present until the Cretaceous period.

[HackerX]

I met Jack Horner once when I was in elementary school. He use to write letters to our class to. He is an American paleontologist who discovered and named the Maiasaura, providing the first clear evidence that some dinosaurs cared for their young. He is one of the most well known paleontologists in the United States. In addition to his many paleontological discoveries, Horner served as the technical advisor for all of the Jurassic Park films, and even served as partial inspiration for the movie's lead character, Dr. Alan Grant.

Cool, I know who he is. I'd love to talk to him given the chance. He's done a whole lot for paleontology.

Something always bothered me about Jurassic Park is they named it Jurassic Park and the T. Rex wasn't present until the Cretaceous period.

Most of the dinosaurs where from the cretaceous period. I guess Cretaceous Park didn't sound as good...

[sriv]

Apparently all the raptors had feathers. Interesting.

[replicant]

An interesting physical feature of dinosaurs is their hip. There are the "bird hipped" dinos and the "lizard hipped" dinos. However, "lizard hipped" dinosaurs are said to be related more to birds than "bird hipped."

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