• SporkMasher@kbin.social
    28·
    2 years ago

    When my wife drives and we come to a complete stop, if the car next to me has their window down I usually try to ask them their favorite dinosaur. So far only one person has gotten really mad at me, most people just get confused.

    • maudefi@lemm.ee
      7·
      2 years ago

      Absolutely. I don’t know what it is about them but yeah, stegosaurus are cool.

        • maudefi@lemm.ee
          3·
          2 years ago

          Oh yeah, I can se that. I’m not sure why I fixated on stegosaurus but man, if you asked me at age 5 who my best friend was id probably have said, “Stegosaurus!”

  • GreenMario@lemm.ee
    16·
    2 years ago

    Feathered T-Rex. The theory is that those useless little arms are actually supposed to be wings makes more sense. Do they fly? No, and neither do ostriches. Probably glide tho.

        • Zagorath@aussie.zoneEnglish
          6·
          2 years ago

          That enabled animals to grow as large as they did, and it enabled massive pterosaurs like Quetzalcoatlus to exist. And even Quetzalcoatlus, which is much lighter and had much larger wings than T. rex, has been the subject of debate as to whether and to what extent it could fly. Both existed in the late Cretaceous period.

          • unnecessarygoatEnglish
            31·
            2 years ago

            the atmosphere 66 million years ago wasn’t that different to the atmosphere today, the reason why pterosaurs like quetzalcoatlus was able to grow to such massive sizes was because they had extremely light skeletons. higher oxygen levels did allow arthropods to grow to giant sizes during the carboniferous, but it would have little effect on how large vertebrates could grow.

          • Pipoca
            22·
            2 years ago

            Dinosaur lungs are much more efficient than mammal lungs. Their bones are lighter, too.

            It’s also why birds can fly so much higher and be so much larger than bats.

            • Zagorath@aussie.zone
              2·
              2 years ago

              I’m not comparing dinosaurs to mammals though. I’m comparing them to pterosaurs. Or more specifically, I’m comparing the specific dinosaur in question (T. rex) to the largest and most likely to struggle with flying of the pterosaurs, (Q. northropi).

              T. rex was, according to my quick search, at least 5000 kg. Q. northropi was just 250 kg at the higher end of estimates. The dinosaur had an armspan less than a metre, while the pterosaur’s was in excess of 10 times that.

              • Pipoca
                3·
                2 years ago

                That enabled animals to grow as large as they did, and it enabled massive pterosaurs like Quetzalcoatlus to exist.

                I wasn’t responding to comparing dinosaurs to pterosaurs. I was responding to the part about them being big because of the atmosphere.

                There’s a number of reasons we don’t have brontosaur-sized elephants. The differences in the atmosphere explains far less than hyper-efficient lungs and light bones.

        • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
          2·
          2 years ago

          It wasn’t different enough that those chicken wings would let a 15,000 lb critter fly. It had more oxygen, which was helpful for letting critters get big (esp insects), but it wasnt physically thick.

    • fkn
      5·
      2 years ago

      I like the idea that their feather ratio would be more like a chicken or a turkey… and they would just be there absolutely chonky birds…

    • Pipoca
      5·
      2 years ago

      One idea is that T Rex arms were used to latch onto prey. Their arms were short, but very muscular.

      The would have been about as useful for gliding as a rear spoiler on a car.

    • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
      4·
      2 years ago

      Probably glide tho.

      Something way back in my ancestry just cowered deep in a hole and I felt it.

    • unnecessarygoatEnglish
      21·
      2 years ago

      tyrannosaurs didn’t have the advanced feathers seen on birds, so it wouldn’t be possible for them to have wings

    • Alteon
      2·
      2 years ago

      I don’t know…After watching Primal, I can never look at a Bronto the same way again…

  • Adalast
    141·
    2 years ago

    Ankylosaurus, give me a living tank with a club for a tail that could likely damage a real tank.

  • Zombie-Mantis
    12·
    2 years ago

    Archaeopteryx

    It is to our understanding of dinosaur & avian evolution what Lucy is to our understanding of human evolution. Also it looks cool.

  • technologicalcaveman@kbin.social
    11·
    2 years ago

    I always like pterodactyls, specifically the classic big lizard ones. I do have a tiny Dimetrodon in my pc case though that I got out of a crane machine.

    • reattach
      9·
      2 years ago

      Pterodactyls aren’t dinosaurs, FYI: they’re pterosaurs. It doesn’t matter in the least, but I have a 5-year-old so I’m learning a lot about prehistoric reptiles.

        • Pipoca
          7·
          2 years ago

          There’s two big groups of four-limbed vertebrates: amphibians (like frogs), and amniotes (like us and birds). Amniotes developed into two groups: synapsids (mammals) and saurapsids (lizards, birds, turtles, etc.).

          Dimetrodon was a synapsid that ruled the world tens of millions of years before the first dinosaurs evolved.

          That makes it really cool, actually, precisely because it isn’t a dinosaur. Dimetrodon is to us as brotosaurus is to chickens: a really interesting great great etc uncle.

    • Rhaedas@kbin.social
      5·
      2 years ago

      That moment when someone mentions something and it brings back old memories. I had a big pterodactyl as a kid, sold as a plastic model kit to assemble. Had it hanging from the ceiling for years, and had long forgotten it.