Things you often Wonder

[sidcow]

9 hours ago, Paddywhack said:

Whenever I put my things on the conveyor belt at the supermarket, I always wonder if I’m the first person to ever buy those exact 25 or so items. My wife always thinks someone is bound to have done.

Last night I suggested I might be the first person to ever have a tuna-mayo sandwich with a side of brie and pickled beetroot for my tea. She looked at me like I was an imbecile. 

 I often wonder how many timewls @Paddywhack's wife has looked at him like he's an imbecile. 

Edited April 26, 2021 by sidcow

[Paddywhack]

1 hour ago, villa4europe said:

When's the baby due? 

In my defence, we were having a new oven and hob fitted so I was scrounging the cupboards.

It was perfectly fine though, would eat again. 6/10

3 minutes ago, sidcow said:

 I often wonder how many timew @Paddywhack's wife has looked at him like he's an imbecile. 

Loads! Just shows how daft she is.

[bickster]

9 minutes ago, Paddywhack said:

It was perfectly fine though, would eat again. 6/10

Gravy thread contender without doubt

[KenjiOgiwara]

On 22/04/2021 at 23:56, HanoiVillan said:

(Maybe everyone else already heard of this?) but talking about dinosaurs, is this true?

Dinosaurs likely didn't roar, new research suggests

'What sound did a dinosaur make?

[...]

If not terrifying roars, then what?

Think more along the lines of a crocodile or a goose.

[...]

How do we know what dinosaurs sounded like?

That's where the latest research comes in. The team behind it found a fossil back in 1992 in Antarctica of Vegavis iaai, a duck and goose ancestor that lived 66 million years ago, during the time of the dinosaurs.

In 2013, they discovered this fossil has the oldest known representation of a voice box ever discovered.

From there, the team figured what sound its anatomy could make. 

"The evolutionary relationships of the new species [V. iaai] and the syrinx remains themselves [told us] that this animal would have made sounds most similar to those of living ducks and geese," she said.'

from: https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/dinosaur-sounds-honk-growl-torah-kachur-1.3803212

I'm not exactly a dino nerd, but didn’t they come out a decade a go saying the dinosaurs most likely had feathers? Even the big bad ass ones? After that I've got these oversized turkeys in my head and I can easily see them not roaring.

[HanoiVillan]

3 minutes ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

I'm not exactly a dino nerd, but didn’t they come out a decade a go saying the dinosaurs most likely had feathers? Even the big bad ass ones? After that I've got these oversized turkeys in my head and I can easily see them not roaring.

That's my understanding as well, that they would all have had feathers but that popular culture and understanding is slow to update the standard portrayal of them (though perhaps it's just too late now, and there's no putting the scaly dinosaurs back into the box).

[villa4europe]

7 minutes ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

I'm not exactly a dino nerd, but didn’t they come out a decade a go saying the dinosaurs most likely had feathers? Even the big bad ass ones? After that I've got these oversized turkeys in my head and I can easily see them not roaring.

Certain ones at certain times, evolved from birds, also in the bone structure of the arms is the same as wings, from memory the main myth buster thing was based around the veliciraptor from JP,  they were also smaller

[Dante_Lockhart]

6 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

That's my understanding as well, that they would all have had feathers but that popular culture and understanding is slow to update the standard portrayal of them (though perhaps it's just too late now, and there's no putting the scaly dinosaurs back into the box).

I'd read that smaller ones like Raptors, Galli and such most likely had some form of feather, but didn't know it covered all dinos (Rexy, Stegos etc...)

[mjmooney]

5 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

Certain ones at certain times, evolved from birds

I thought it was the other way round? 

[villa4europe]

2 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

I thought it was the other way round? 

Not sure, I thought that the theory was that dinosaurs became too large to fly and also then had a body mass meaning they didn't need feathers 

[mjmooney]

14 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

Not sure, I thought that the theory was that dinosaurs became too large to fly and also then had a body mass meaning they didn't need feathers 

Oh, could be I suppose. I'm no dino expert - I have to consult my five year old granddaughter on that subject. 

[a m ole]

Quite a common Dino fact but a good one - T Rex lived closer to us in time than it did the Stegosaurus.

[Chindie]

Birds are descended from dinosaurs.

A lot of them probably did have some form of feathers. It's not clear that they were covered in feathers, or that those feathers were like what we expect of a bird today. It's possible they had very early forms of feathers, and that these were more like crests etc.

[HanoiVillan]

33 minutes ago, Dante_Lockhart said:

I'd read that smaller ones like Raptors, Galli and such most likely had some form of feather, but didn't know it covered all dinos (Rexy, Stegos etc...)

Going down a rabbit hole here, but the Natural History Museum are claiming T-Rex's did have feathers, but (most?) earlier dinosaurs and (most?) non-meat-eaters didn't:

The first dinosaurs probably didn't have feathers

'Did dinosaurs have feathers?

Yes! When the first perfectly preserved specimens of feathered dinosaurs were found in China in the 1990s, it was proved beyond doubt that these ancient animals were the ancestors of modern-day birds.

Since then, more and more species of dinosaur have been revealed to have been covered in feather-like structures. But how common these structures were, and how many different groups were feathered, is still being debated today.

[...]

there are a couple of examples of other dinosaurs from completely unrelated groups with feather-like coverings, most notably the herbivorous dinosaurs Kulindadromeus, Psittacosaurus and Tianyulong. In addition, it is also thought that some pterosaurs, which are the next closest relatives to dinosaurs, may also have been covered in feather-like structures.  

This has led to speculation that feathers were not just concentrated in the meat-eaters, but that many other groups, like the horned ceratopsians such as Triceratops, may also have had a smattering of feathers. 

But the analysis by Paul and his colleagues shows that this was unlikely, and it supports the idea that true feathers were concentrated only in the group closest to living birds. The few other specimens with feather-like features may instead be examples of convergent evolution.

What is a feather?

One of the biggest challenges when it comes to determining whether or not a dinosaur had feathers is the definition of a feather itself.

[...]

To be a true feather, there are characteristics that need to be fulfilled. The structures must be made from a protein called beta-keratin, they must be branched, and finally they must originate from a follicle.

While these are obviously easy characteristics to ascertain in living species, when it comes to the fossil record things start to get a little trickier. Aspects like their physical structure might be discernible from well preserved specimens but figuring out what protein they were made from and whether or not they originated from a follicle is far less straightforward. 

'Most of the occurrences of feathers that we know about in the fossil record are all very heavily concentrated in the meat-eating dinosaurs that are closely related to birds,' explains Paul. 'The dinosaurs that are furthest away from birds that all scientists agree had feathers are actually animals like tyrannosaurs and comsognathids, which although they look very different from birds are not actually that distantly related.'

[...]

In fact, most dinosaurs with strong evidence of feathers come from within a very select group of theropods known as the Coelurosauria. This includes not only tyrannosaurs and birds, but also the ornithomimosaurs, therizinosaurs and compsognathids.

Going further back in time, things get rapidly murkier. 'We have very little evidence of feathers in earlier meat-eating dinosaurs,' says Paul. 'The further down the theropod dinosaur family tree we go, the evidence for feathers gets thinner and thinner.'

Mostly scaly

This could be for one of two reasons: either the animals simply did not have feathers, or these earlier dinosaurs have been fossilised in rocks that are not conducive for the preservation of soft tissues. 

For those 77 dinosaur species where skin has been preserved, Paul and his colleagues were able to map them onto evolutionary trees to see how feathers were distributed across dinosaurs and their close relatives. 

'We have really strong evidence that animals like the duck-billed dinosaurs, horned dinosaurs and armoured dinosaurs did not have feathers because we have lots of skin impressions of these animals that clearly show they had scaly coverings,' says Paul. 'We also have zero evidence of any feather like structures in the long-necked dinosaurs, the sauropodomorphs.

'If we look at the evidence that we do have, and we combine that with evolutionary trees, what we find is that there is no evidence for the first dinosaurs being feathered.''

more if you want it at: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2020/march/the-first-dinosaurs-probably-didn-t-have-feathers.html

[sidcow]

1 hour ago, a m ole said:

Quite a common Dino fact but a good one - T Rex lived closer to us in time than it did the Stegosaurus.

Well yes, they were having hits right through the 70's

[lapal_fan]

Velociraptors in Jurassic Park are actually meant to be deinonychus, utahraptors or dakotaraptors - which were slightly taller (at the hip, becoz dinos moved almost horizontally) than humans. Velociraptors were turkey sized - but the name sounded (and is) cooler, so they went with that for the movie. 

The Dilophosaurus  (the one which spits in JP) is much taller than portrayed in the film, but at the time one of the only fossils found was that sized, hence the size in the movie.  They actually grew quite large!  About 3m tall at the hip.  There's also no evidence (sadly) that they have 2 frilly crests which shake, or that they spit   Twas a sad day when I found that out. 

Feathers - you can see the holes around elbow joints where the plumes would have grown from, they're like small pits - put t-rex feathers (as far as I can find) aren't proven.  Another thing they think JP got wrong, is that that T-Rex would very likely have been able to hide it's teeth behind a set of lips, without the teeth protruding from it's mouth constantly.  In the natural kingdom, unless those teeth are constantly wet, like in a crocodiles mouth, lips are usually found, if not, the teeth become extremely brittle, which isn't good for crunching bones and meat, like t-rex would have.  If anyone has been to Chicago Nat History museum, you'd have seen "Sue" the most complete T-rex fossil ever found, you'll notice how deep her rib cage sits, giving her a much "chunkier" appearance that the slender JP version, there are some good videos about how chunky t-rexes would have been, go find em. 

The vocalisations are something of an interest at the moment too, with the JP T-rex roar, you've got a mix up of Tiger/Elephant and Crocodile, whereas they now think it would have been very low pitch, bassy sounds which you'd feel, rather than hear! 

Also as much as I liked it when I first watched it, JP3, where the Spinosaurus and T-rex fight (and the ****' Spino wins..) is stupid.  

Spinosaurus would have essentially have been a "bear-like" fisherman, wading in shallows, catching fish with it's claws, or snagging them on their pin-like teeth.  The strength of their bite wouldn't have been that strong, especially compared to t-rex, which is still - even with larger carnivores being found - the holder of the strongest bite of all time. 

CHONKY SUE!

 

 

 

 

[sharkyvilla]

4 hours ago, villa4europe said:

Not sure, I thought that the theory was that dinosaurs became too large to fly and also then had a body mass meaning they didn't need feathers 

The simplified version in my head is that some flying dinosaurs survived the asteroid mass-extinction, along with underground mammals and species in the sea.  Hence all birds are descended from dinosaurs, a fair amount of underwater species like sharks and crocs are largely the same but mammals have evolved hugely through survival of the fittest.  There's a huge amount we just can't know about how dinos looked or behaved but hopefully it will get uncovered over time.

[lapal_fan]

Oh god and look at this beauty (Nodosaurus, relative of the famous Ankylosaurus, minus the club on it's tail).

Looks like she could wake up at any moment, and look! No feathers 

[BOF]

59 minutes ago, lapal_fan said:

Velociraptors in Jurassic Park are actually meant to be deinonychus, utahraptors or dakotaraptors - which were slightly taller (at the hip, becoz dinos moved almost horizontally) than humans. Velociraptors were turkey sized - but the name sounded (and is) cooler, so they went with that for the movie.

In their defence, that was the science at the time. We didn't know what we know now about velociraptor when they stuck it in the movie, and they've said it wouldn't make much sense to change them now given that that's what a JP raptor looks like now, but yes I heard they're basically deinonychus.

59 minutes ago, lapal_fan said:

Also as much as I liked it when I first watched it, JP3, where the Spinosaurus and T-rex fight (and the ****' Spino wins..) is stupid.  

Spinosaurus would have essentially have been a "bear-like" fisherman, wading in shallows, catching fish with it's claws, or snagging them on their pin-like teeth.  The strength of their bite wouldn't have been that strong, especially compared to t-rex, which is still - even with larger carnivores being found - the holder of the strongest bite of all time. 

Spiny is another victim of new science. They were way off with him. And there's very recent new info on Spinosaurus after they found the end of its tail. Up to now they were guessing the last vertebrae based on other dinos, but now that they know it basically has a properly evolved paddle for a tail they think it is much more aquatic than they used to. They think it might even be full time aquatic or certainly more so than, say, a crocostimpy.

[lapal_fan]

1 hour ago, BOF said:

In their defence, that was the science at the time. We didn't know what we know now about velociraptor when they stuck it in the movie, and they've said it wouldn't make much sense to change them now given that that's what a JP raptor looks like now, but yes I heard they're basically deinonychus.

Spiny is another victim of new science. They were way off with him. And there's very recent new info on Spinosaurus after they found the end of its tail. Up to now they were guessing the last vertebrae based on other dinos, but now that they know it basically has a properly evolved paddle for a tail they think it is much more aquatic than they used to. They think it might even be full time aquatic or certainly more so than, say, a crocostimpy.

Absolutely!  JP films are a product of their time, and as you say, a spino wouldn't have made a good villain had it been in the water 80% of the time.

Its amazing how much more science we have since 92!

Google "duelling dinosaurs" for probably the most interesting fossil found of all time

 

 

[BOF]

2 minutes ago, lapal_fan said:

Absolutely!  JP films are a product of their time, and as you say, a spino wouldn't have made a good villain had it been in the water 80% of the time.

Its amazing how much more science we have since 92!

Google "duelling dinosaurs" for probably the most interesting fossil found of all time

Yeah I've seen them