The Paleontology Thread

[Tyrant_Lizard_King]

Meet Dakota. An insanely well preserved Edmontosaur mummy. Huge swaths of the skin have been beautifully preserved. It's pretty insane.

https://twitter.com/TyrantLzrdQueen/sta ... 921AA&s=19

[JAGzilla]

Very nice. Weird that it's almost always Edmontosaurus that gets preserved this well, but at least there's going to be one dinosaur species we have a very clear understanding of.

[LegendZilla]

Meet Dakota. An insanely well preserved Edmontosaur mummy. Huge swaths of the skin have been beautifully preserved. It's pretty insane.

https://twitter.com/TyrantLzrdQueen/sta ... 921AA&s=19

Is it possible that they could determine the creature's skin-color with this specimen?

[Tyrant_Lizard_King]

Front leg of Dakota.

https://twitter.com/TM9380/status/15277 ... ojYBw&s=19

[LegendZilla]

^Now if only they could find a T. Rex mummy.

[SoggyNoodles2016]

completing the giant trio with Spinosaurus and Carchardontosaurus, a so far unamed 20 foot long abelsiaur has been found in Egypt

[Gigantis]

completing the giant trio with Spinosaurus and Carchardontosaurus, a so far unamed 20 foot long abelsiaur has been found in Egypt

The Spino, the Charchar, and the Abel. Alright, that's almost every big theropod genus so far. Now all we need is their to (somehow) be a Tyrannosaur relative.

[MoarCrossovers]

Non-baryonychine spinosaur remains found in the UK - and they hint at the largest predatory theropod in Europe if estimates are correct.

[Tyrant_Lizard_King]

Meraxes, a brand new large South American Carcharodontosaur has been discovered. One of the most complete ever found.

https://www.microsoftnewskids.com/en-us ... ar-AAZlqNW

[Voyager]

Man I love Spinosaurus and Allosaurus. Two coolest Dinos!

[Gigantis]

So, back in 1663 Germany, someone found some of the bones of a Wooly Rhino. They apparently thought it was a Unicorn, and Magdeburg Unicorn was named as such.



.. IDK, I just though the idea of a creature walking around looking like that is hilarious.

[LegendZilla]

You could argue that our understanding of dinosaurs between now and 1993 has changed as drastically between then and the early 20th century. Anyone care to speculate how it could change even further in the decades to come?

[JAGzilla]

Well, we don't have as steep a mountain to climb as was done during the Dinosaur Renaissance. Paleontologists then were going from a cartoonishly wrong starting point of dinosaurs as primitive monsters lurching toward their inevitable replacement by advanced mammals, to an understanding that dinosaurs were real animals as advanced and diverse as anything alive today. What's happened since that time has largely been refinement of that concept and the weeding out of what outdated ideas remained.

Barring some paradigm shifting new discovery that might be dug up tomorrow, the foreseeable future will be about the same basic idea: taking what we know (or think we know) and adding onto it. Filling in details. Fixing old errors. That kind of thing.

[LegendZilla]

Well, we don't have as steep a mountain to climb as was done during the Dinosaur Renaissance. Paleontologists then were going from a cartoonishly wrong starting point of dinosaurs as primitive monsters lurching toward their inevitable replacement by advanced mammals, to an understanding that dinosaurs were real animals as advanced and diverse as anything alive today. What's happened since that time has largely been refinement of that concept and the weeding out of what outdated ideas remained.

Barring some paradigm shifting new discovery that might be dug up tomorrow, the foreseeable future will be about the same basic idea: taking what we know (or think we know) and adding onto it. Filling in details. Fixing old errors. That kind of thing.

Do you have any predictions?

[JAGzilla]

Do you have any predictions?

Eh, I dunno. I'll have to think about it. I imagine we'll find more ceratopsian species in Asia; Sinoceratops having been alone over there is unlikely.

Spinosaurus will probably turn out to have had compound eyes and tentacles.

[SpiderZilla]

Do you have any predictions?

An upright carnivorous dinosaur with boney plates along its back will be discovered. Its resemblance to Godzilla will spark renewed interest from the public and push distributors to resolve contract issues of Godzilla movies (or audio translations of Godzilla movies) thad had previously been out-of-print.

[LegendZilla]

One dream of mine is that one day, they could find the mummified remains of a T-Rex.

[JAGzilla]

Mark Witton is teasing a new book: http://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/2022 ... -blog.html

From the hints he's dropping, it seems to be focused on T. rex and/or tyrannosaurs generally. Hopefully it's as awesome as his pterosaur book was!

[LegendZilla]

^Is it fiction or non-fiction?

[JAGzilla]

^Is it fiction or non-fiction?

Mark Witton is a paleontologist, so definitely nonfiction.