• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Childhood further ruined: T-Rex likely hid its teeth behind lips

Status
Not open for further replies.
M

MMarston

Was getting caught part of your plan?
Can a crocodile’s smile reveal whether dinosaurs had lips? What if lips and gums hid most of dinosaur's teeth?

New findings from University of Toronto vertebrate palaeontologist Robert Reisz challenge the idea of what therapods might have looked like when dinosaurs roamed the earth.His research will be presented today at a conference at U of T Mississauga – and it's already making headlines.

“When we see dinosaurs in popular culture, such as in the movie Jurassic Park, we see them depicted with big teeth sticking out of their mouths,” Reisz says. Large dinosaurs, such as Tyrannosaurus rex, bare a ferocious grin, while smaller creatures such as velociraptors are shown with scaly lips covering their teeth.

The U of T Mississauga expert was curious about which version might be most accurate. “We have very little information about dinosaurs’ soft tissue,” he says.

For clues about how therapods might have appeared, he looked to modern-day reptilian predators like crocodiles and monitor lizards. According to Reisz, lipless crocodiles have exposed teeth, much like a Jurassic Park predator, while monitor lizards conceal teeth behind scaly lips that are similar to the movie version of velociraptors.

Lips help to protect teeth, in part by helping to enclose them in a moist environment where they won’t dry out, Reisz says. Crocodiles, which spend their time submerged in water, don’t need lips for protection. “Their teeth are kept hydrated by an aquatic environment,” Reisz says.

Reptiles with lips, such as monitor lizards, typically live on land (much like their movie counterparts) where their teeth require different protection. From this, Reisz concludes that dinosaur teeth would likely have been covered by scaly lips.
Click to expand...
https://www.utoronto.ca/news/did-dinosaurs-have-lips-ask-university-toronto-paleontologist

Personally, I thought this was already a given but other people can also freak out over this and feathers now.

Must go faster if old.
 
R

rtcn63

Member
tumblr_n43uobYPeN1qm8lnwo2_400.gif
 
T

Tugatrix

Member
So the velociraptors like the t-rex were lip teeth turkeys? alright still scary just not on the kind we were used to
 
C

Concept17

Member
Trex as a giant meat-eating chicken scares the shit out of me still. Way more frightening than Jurassic Park Trex.

All twitchy and shit, cocking its head around.
 
B

billy beane

Banned
We're gonna find out next that T-Rex's were actually hella nice animals and are just misunderstood. They don't wanna eat you they just wanna give you a hug.
 
nkarafo

nkarafo

Member
Concept17 said:
Trex as a giant meat-eating chicken scares the shit out of me still. Way more frightening than Jurassic Park Trex.
Click to expand...
Even if it looked like a chicken, it would be physically impossible to move like one since any living thing with such mass wouldn't be able to.
 
D

demon

I don't mean to alarm you but you have dogs on your face
zaldrizes said:
Is there a chance we ever will be able to create a dinosaur with dna from their bones? I wish we could see them like in the moviez.
Click to expand...

Their bones don't exist anymore, just their fossils, which aren't really their bones, and thus don't contain their DNA.
 
T

Turin Turambar

Member
ArkhamFantasy said:
Its crazy that they can figure this stuff out.
Click to expand...

He actually used a very simple logical guess that it could have been done a few decades ago.

This won't surprise paleontologists, they know the popular image of dinosaurs has always been manipulated a bit to make it more impactful, even before having cinema (how the drawing of possible dinosaurs and how the bones were mounted in museums, for example).
 
E

eyeball_kid

Member
billy beane said:
We're gonna find out next that T-Rex's were actually hella nice animals and are just misunderstood. They don't wanna eat you they just wanna give you a hug.
Click to expand...

But because of their short arms, they could not, and thus became the fearsome, lonesome predators we know today
 
L

Liu Kang Baking A Pie

Member
billy beane said:
We're gonna find out next that T-Rex's were actually hella nice animals and are just misunderstood. They don't wanna eat you they just wanna give you a hug.
Click to expand...
This is already true. I've read things over the years about how they're slower than we thought and that they just ate already dead animals. Just a big slow softie (with poisonously bad breath).
 
G

Green Mamba

Member
Yeah, lips in dinosaur depictions has gone back and forth for a while. The most common supposition for a lack of lips was a comparison to dinosaur's modern relatives--birds and crocodiles. But birds have beaks, and crocodilians likely lost their lips independently, so they're not really good analogues at all.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

  • Locked
Move over, dinosaur feathers: T. Rex lips!
2
92
22K
echoshifting replied
Jurassic GAF |OT| The Park is closed, the World is open
48 49 50 51 52
3K
321K
#Phonepunk# replied
  • Locked
Jurassic World |OT| WARNING! Safety Not, uh, Guaranteed | RT: 71?!%
50 51 52 53 54
3K
213K
Manu replied
  • Locked
Jurassic World plot details from Colin Trevorrow
2
93
15K
Kyleripman replied
  • Locked
T. Rex, Predator or Scavenger?
25
2K
Kard8p3 replied
Top Bottom