Totally useless information/trivia

[BOF]

19 hours ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

The blue whale is still to this date the biggest animal ever to have lived, and it's still here.

On that very subject, there has been recent evidence that a species of ichthyosaur may have been as big or bigger than the blue whale.  The individual found was almost as big, suggesting other specimens could have matched or exceeded big blue.

And I'd also always say with facts of this nature that they should always start the sentence with 'To the best of our knowledge ..."

Quote

The ancient remains of a gigantic marine reptile have been found in southwestern England. Known as an ichthyosaur, the animal lived about 205 million years ago and was up to 85 feet long—almost as big as a blue whale, say the authors of a study describing the fossil published today in PLOS ONE.

Biology textbook have long touted the modern blue whale as the largest animal that ever lived, but this and other fascinating fossil finds hint that there may once have been even bigger creatures swimming Earth’s seas.

Ichthyosaurs were ocean-going contemporaries of the dinosaurs, with body shapes superficially similar to dolphins. They reached their greatest diversity about 210 million years ago in the late Triassic, but some persisted into the late Cretaceous. They vanished from the fossil record about 25 million years before the mass extinction that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs.

Self-taught fossil hunter and study coauthor Paul de la Salle was combing the beach at Lilstock, Somerset, in May 2016 when he found a large and puzzling chunk of fossil bone. Suspecting it might be an ichthyosaur, he sent images to marine reptile experts Dean Lomax at the University of Manchester in the U.K. and Judy Massare at SUNY Brockport in New York.

Further searching revealed five fossil pieces that fitted together to form a 3.2-foot-long bone, which the scientists identified as being from the lower jaw of an ichthyosaur. Based on the size of the bone, the scientists think this ichthyosaur was bigger than any previously known to science.

Lomax and Massare travelled to Alberta, Canada, to examine the much more complete fossil of Shonisaurus sikanniensis, a 69-foot-long ichthyosaur found in 2004. Comparing the new fossil to the same bone in the jaw of Shonisaurus revealed that the new bone is 25 percent bigger. Scaling up the animal’s full body gave the team their 85-foot size estimate. (Paleontologists also recently found a remarkably complete 16-foot ichthyosaur in India.)

Lomax says the discovery has led them to reinterpret a whole series of isolated bones found near the village of Aust in Gloucestershire, England. Some collected as early as 1850, these fragments had long been interpreted to be the limb or other bones of terrestrial dinosaurs, but this never quite made sense.

The scientists realized these pieces also belonged to giant ichthyosaurs—and possibly to ones even bigger than the newly identified animal.

“We compared it with these Aust bones, and as soon as I saw it in person, my jaw just hit the floor,” Lomax says. “I realized this was a giant ichthyosaur and the biggest thing ever found in the U.K.”

Darren Naish, a paleontologist at the University of Southampton in the U.K., agrees that the sizes of all these bones are astounding. He is part of a different team that recently examined the Aust bones and similarly concluded that they belonged to enormous ichthyosaurs.

He concurs with the size estimates of the study authors, and says that these animals were “approaching or exceeding various giant baleen whales in size.”

 

[KenjiOgiwara]

Surely the size of an animal is determined by it's mass? 

[HanoiVillan]

8 minutes ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

Surely the size of an animal is determined by it's mass? 

Why its mass, not its dimensions?

[KenjiOgiwara]

Because I'd argue it's the most sensible value to consider. If not the Bootlace worm of the Norwegian ocean is the worlds biggest animal. In fact twice big as a blue whale.  

[a m ole]

1 minute ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

Because I'd argue it's the most sensible value to consider. If not the Bootlace worm of the Norwegian ocean is the worlds biggest animal. In fact twice big as a blue whale.  

how many dimensions are you counting?

[KenjiOgiwara]

Length just doesn't come into it IMO. You look and an african elephant and think that's a huge animal. It's about 5-6 m. You don't look at a python the same way even though it's the same length. 

[Sam-AVFC]

Mass isn't size though, it's mass. Unless you mean volume and mistyped?

[BOF]

'Size' is ambiguous, as it can mean whatever you want it to mean within your own context. 

[bannedfromHandV]

5 minutes ago, BOF said:

'Size' is ambiguous, as it can mean whatever you want it to mean within your own context. 

Yep, 3 inches is **** huge I tell you.

[choffer]

From the current king of useless (pointless) trivia:

 

[choffer]

Not sure how true (or how amazing for that matter) but possibly interesting....

 

[tonyh29]

On 11/09/2019 at 13:24, BOF said:

On that very subject, there has been recent evidence that a species of ichthyosaur may have been as big or bigger than the blue whale.  The individual found was almost as big, suggesting other specimens could have matched or exceeded big blue.

And I'd also always say with facts of this nature that they should always start the sentence with 'To the best of our knowledge ..."

 

Patagotitan mayorum says Hello

[ow paleontologists have announced a species proposed to be most massive dinosaur ever discovered: an enormous herbivore estimated at over 120 feet long and weighing over 70 tons—or longer than a blue whale and heavier than a dozen African elephants. [/quote]

there is some dispute over it though tbf

[HanoiVillan]

12 minutes ago, choffer said:

Not sure how true (or how amazing for that matter) but possibly interesting....

 

I only recently read this as well, and it was one of those 'duh, of course' face-palm moments. Having found it out, I now really resent doing unpaid labour for Google. 

[villa4europe]

from my experience its traffic lights, cars and shop fronts

[Sam-AVFC]

17 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

from my experience its traffic lights, cars and shop fronts

Or road crossings.

Actually makes a lot of sense that the AI learning would be used for other purposes and there does seem to be a theme.

[WhatAboutTheFinish]

Hang on. If you are the one teaching, how come it knows when you've got it wrong? 

[bickster]

1 minute ago, WhatAboutTheFinish said:

Hang on. If you are the one teaching, how come it knows when you've got it wrong? 

I was about to raise this exact point

 

one I did yesterday was parking meters, all viewed from above. What are these cars going to be doing exactly?

[tonyh29]

45 minutes ago, choffer said:

Not sure how true (or how amazing for that matter) but possibly interesting....

 

 Google purchased DNN research and its that tech teaching the driverless cars  ... Captcha data is possibly being used to verify the DNN data rather than educating it

[Sam-AVFC]

10 minutes ago, bickster said:

I was about to raise this exact point

 

one I did yesterday was parking meters, all viewed from above. What are these cars going to be doing exactly?

Jumping ahead a few years for when they'll all be run off of super hi-res satellite images? Not that I know if that's even a plan.

Edited September 13, 2019 by Sam-AVFC

[BOF]

1 hour ago, tonyh29 said:

Patagotitan mayorum says Hello

[ow paleontologists have announced a species proposed to be most massive dinosaur ever discovered: an enormous herbivore estimated at over 120 feet long and weighing over 70 tons—or longer than a blue whale and heavier than a dozen African elephants. [/quote]

there is some dispute over it though tbf

And again there's the 'size' discussion.  He's long, but not heavy in this particular discussion.