The dinosaur thread

Then someone stupid will try to clone a dino and make a park despite the media showing what could go wrong.

edited 7th Oct '11 11:36:04 PM by joyflower

Jurassic Park in real life is the dinosaur enthusiast's dream, because, given enough money, running it properly would be trivially easy.

Well, she said she'd been really careful and thrifty for the whole year, and then she just decided she was sick of being sensible

• I've always been fascinated by dinosaurs because they seem to belong to both reality and imagination. Yet such imagination can only go so far when it comes to popular cultural depictions of dinosaurs on screen
  • What I hate the most are those tv shows (Primeval, Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Journey To The Center of The Earth) that portrays them as these roaring (anyone who has seen a carnivore hunt knows that they would never roar unless they wanted to scare off their prey), dynamic (I'm not saying the dinosaurs were slow or stupid like earlier depictions but they are always depicted as constantly full of energy and moving all over the place instead of mundane things like sleeping or marking territory), ever fighting (not over territory or food but all the time), scary (no doubt many dinosaurs were scary but some depictions portray them as outright demonic) creatures whose existence in the present day would make them anomalies and against all that is normal instead of just plain animals who happened to go extinct at a particular place in time.

I'm pretty sure that Jurassic Park portrayed them in some scenes doing pretty normal animal things. For instance, the T-Rex didn't growl at the goat that was tied up. And the scene in Primeval with the Wooly Mammoth had the thing trumpeting because it was panicking. (And various other scenes I barely remember had the animals panicking due to being out of their normal environment, but otherwise behaving normally.)

Plus, you know, rule of cool plays into this a lot.

Don't worry if they eat any slimey lawyers then the dinos will be okay in my book.

That is true, Jurassic Park did come closest to portraying dinosaurs realistically, but there was still some discrepancies such as insane intelligence of the raptors and the t rex being unable to see still objects even if they're up close and its smelling them. Also, I did think the actions of the mammoth were justified due to stress and fear, but others were just for "Rule of Cool", such as the gorgonopsid's unrelenting attack of the teacher and kid in the elementary school and pterosaur attacking and carrying away people to kill.

This is what they actually think it looks like◊. Who said that giant turkeys can't be scary?

Aww. He looks so fluffy!

Also, while the pack hunt thing is unlikely, the ability to glide is very likely.

/newfeatheredraptorsareheresy.jpg

http://www.captainoccam.com/ ferahgo/shartman.jpg

edited 8th Oct '11 10:45:46 AM by Gannetwhale

Evolution does not pander to what fanboys think are cool or not.

Fuck evolution, I want my cool raptors back.

Paleontologists, ruining our childhoods.

I don't know about you, but I preffer flying raptors to raptors that look like aborted lizards.

Raptors couldn't fly, though.

I just can't take what looks like angry poultry seriously, I guess...

Well, considering that they grew slowly and therefore could occupy several ecological niches across their life time, I'd say at least the juveniles could fly.

And, well, back then redwood forests (Sequoia does grow quite much, after all) were very widespread, so bigger species could glide. All you need for gliding is long wing feathers, nothing more.

edited 8th Oct '11 1:33:51 PM by Gannetwhale

Yeah, I've heard that they may have been able to glide, but what I understood is that they just weren't designed for flight. Too heavy and dense.

Well, there's two umambiguously flying raptors, Microraptor and Rahonavis. The others people simply didn't made any studies on because they assumed right away they were too heavy, even though some suspicions are arrising in regards to some species.

Sheesh, you find one or two fossils with feathers and suddenly it's an established "fact" that EVERY SINGLE DINOSAUR HAD FEATHERS! ALL OF THEM! SO THERE! Next thing you know they'll be saying Triceratops and Brachiosaurus had feathers. I'm not saying no dinosaurs had feathers...I just think it's ridiculous how often palaeontologists and the like make enormous sweeping generalizations or change their theories based on one a small amount of evidence.

I love it when they discover something they can't account for...and they look at their theory, and back at the evidence, and back at the theory...and all they can say is "Huh." I find it hilarious...maybe that's only because I don't believe in evolution...in any case, dinosaurs were awesome and I do love learning more about them.

That's what I love so much about Planet Dinosaur - it seems to rely on far less conjecture and far more real fossil evidence than other dinosaur documentaries. Actually seeing proof that Stegosaurus impaled Allosaurus with it's thagomizer? And that Allosaurus often survived? How cool is that?? I love this show!

EDIT: GRRR I keep getting TV Tropes forum markup confused with the other forums I frequent! I can't seem to remember that [i] and [/i] are not valid tags on TV Tropes...grrr...

edited 8th Oct '11 2:20:42 PM by LoganLocksley

what.

No one is claiming that all dinosaurs had feathers.

I was making use of hyperbole to prove my point. Nobody's saying that all dinosaurs had feathers, but they are saying that MANY of them did. I just don't agree that fossil evidence is as clear on the subject as some seem to think it is.

edited 8th Oct '11 2:22:12 PM by LoganLocksley

Want a feathered utahraptor for a pet.

No, I want the badass Utahraptor in the original picture I posted.

"Go get him, boy!" "OH GOD IT'S EATING MY LEG!"

edited 8th Oct '11 2:25:35 PM by USAF713

The thing with feathered UR is that people would never suspect it being capable of that, but it still has all of its capabilities and can be used as a pillow with sufficient electro-shock restraints.