Demoncarnotaur
Member
Another awesome oddity, Masiakasaurus-
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What are your favorite extinct prehistoric animals?
- Thread starter Mumei
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Hobbestetrician
Member
I have always had a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that these creatures used to roam the planet.
Just absolutely fascinating, every singe one of them.
Just absolutely fascinating, every singe one of them.
triplestation
Member
Demoncarnotaur
Member
Another awesome looking Masiakasaurus-
CamoBadger
Neo Member
I like bears, and thankfully the world decided to tone down their size a wee bit so that we wouldn't piss ourselves just from going to the zoo
We weren't around to kill and eat them.
why was everything so fucking big back then
Oxygen richer atmosphere.
Argentavis magnificens is so amazing - a bird with a 23 foot wing span, nearly 90 foot wing area, and 160 pounds? Awesome.
I think Queztalcoatlus is still the most amazing freakishly oversized flying animal, though.
CamoBadger
Neo Member
I'm in the same boat, I was obsessed with all these kinda things as a kid. Couldn't get enough.
This is so much better than Aye-ayes
imagine the shit
Angry Fork
Member
Has there ever been an extinct ape that was huge? Not King Kong huge but bigger than ones that currently exist?
Half and half
Member
Dunkleostesus is the man right here:
It's a big ass 35 ft fish with an armored head causing havoc where it goes.
edit:
Heh, AgentP touched this above. Same pic and everything lol.
It's a big ass 35 ft fish with an armored head causing havoc where it goes.
edit:
Heh, AgentP touched this above. Same pic and everything lol.
CamoBadger
Neo Member
Angry Fork
Member
There's Gigantopithecus and Gigantopithecus Blacki
Ninja'd D:
Don't know how I missed it I guess I scrolled down too fast. Fuck that's awesome though, I'm fascinated by apes/chimps since they're so close to us.
arts&crafts
Member
man these are all AWESOME! who knew earth was that awesome.
Choke on the Magic
Banned
Sabretooth tigers and Dire Wolves
If you want a book that covers a wide range of dinosaur species, offering a little synopsis on each, I would recommend Dinosaurus - The Complete Guide to Dinosaurs:
http://www.amazon.com/Dinosaurus-Complete-Dinosaurs-Steve-Parker/dp/1554074754/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1359772065&sr=1-1&keywords=dinosaurus
I have the hardcover coffee table version of this book and it is great to flip through. Looks like the paperback version is only $19.99 and there's a pretty lengthy preview on Amazon that you can check out.
Demoncarnotaur
Member
Size isn't everything, however Amphicoelias was huge:
Try imagining seeing that thing alive and breathing.
Try imagining seeing that thing alive and breathing.
CamoBadger
Neo Member
My life mission would become riding that thing one time.
triplestation
Member
XANDER CAGE
Member
Grenouille
Member
No giant spiders back then? We seem to have had giant versions for everything...
(please no spider pictures)
(please no spider pictures)
Megladon:
The people who drew these should've looked at the chart. Are those blue whales in the second picture?
Cow Mengde
Banned
Tyrannosaurus - I used a skull photo on purpose. The skull of T.rex is easily the coolest part of the animal. The concave curvature of the skull (unique to only tyrannosaurids) and the reinforced nasal allows the skull to cope with the stress of its powerful bite. The premaxillary teeth can be used as delicate flesh stripping tools, and also tears the head off a Triceratops. The railroad spike teeth very much unlike most other predators. The wide skull gives it binocular vision. This is something very few predatory dinosaurs had. The fenestrae on the skull are also much smaller than other theropods of similar size. Excellent sense of smell and hearing from what we can tell from the skull.
Oh, and when Tyrannosaurus dominated its environment, we mean it DOMINATED the place. In most ecosystems, there are large, medium, and small predators covering different niches. With Tyrannosaurus, it's either jumbo size T.rexes or dog sized dromaesaurs with nothing in between. The ecosystem was practically ruled by Tyrannosaurs. The adults took up the big predator niche with the young and teenage tyrannosaurs filling in as the medium size predators. Not even trace fossils like shed teeth to suggest anything else other than tyrannosaurs dominating the place. Shed teeth are pretty common fossils too. This is true for many areas, including Asia where Tarbosaurus ruled. Zhucheng may be different, but even then Zhuchengtyrannus shared it with another big tyrannosaurid and not anything else.
T.rex is fun to study too.
- Very complete skeleton.
- Very good understanding of the evolution of the tyrannosauroidea lineage compared to most other dinosaurs. Excellent fossils for many of them as well.
- Clear examples of different morphologies that could possibly indicate sexual dimorphism.
Rahonavis - Confusing taxonomic position makes it fun to read about. I remember reading a book on this animal where the original people who found the fossils were looking for birds instead. When they found the fossils, they remarked on how very dromaeosaur like this animal was that they joked about finding a sickle claw on it. A few days later, they found a sickled claw. It's now filed under Unenlagiinae. I just love confusing dino-birds.
Therizinosaurus - Not much I can add since there's not much of Therizinosaurus there to study yet. But just look at those freakin' arms!!! The only thing missing in Green Mamba's post is showing just how huge Therizinosaurus really is.
Spaceman Spiff
Member
Ah, my favorite kind of thread.
I'll use this as an opportunity to post some lovely John Conway art, as well as some of my editorial comments:
I'll use this as an opportunity to post some lovely John Conway art, as well as some of my editorial comments:
Tyrannosaurus rex
Such is the fame of T. rex that it seems difficult to say anything about it that hasn't been said before. If this wasn't your favorite dinosaur growing up, I have nothing but the deepest of sympathies for you. It's an icon, and deservedly so.
Giraffatitan brancai
Theartistmacronarian titanosauriform formerly known as Brachiosaurus brancai. Those thuggish theropods, your rexes and raptors, might have been the stars of Jurassic Park, but those of superior taste know that the movie's climax was the encounter with this most magnificent of sauropods. Everything afterwards was a letdown.
Deinonychus antirrhopus
Velocirator, or at least the Hollywood caricature, may be more familiar to the public, but the discovery of Deinonychus marked a paradigm shift in our understanding of dinosaur diversity and behavior, and nearly single-handedly ushered in the "Dinosaur Renaissance." The revitalization, (Huxley was on the right track, folks), of the idea that birds are dinosaurs has led to among the most fascinating and wonderful developments in all of paleontology.
The T. rex picture you chose reminds me of this somewhat:
I was also wondering what you thought about the whole ectothermic / endothermic / intermediate debate?
And I should have known the chapter after the "They were ectothermic!" and "They were endothermic!" chapters was going to be "Nope, Goldilocks."
dangerbyrnes
Member
Ok, first off. i think the spinosaurus was the best part of JP3, but the rest of the movie sucked. also, i liked spinosaurus before they made him the main baddie in JP3. it was a little ridiculous to see a predator that probably feeds off of marine life take down a T-Rex. but the main draw for me has always been the sail. also the reason i like dimetrodon.
i really liked the portrayal of the Lipleurodon in walking with dinosaurs. just seemed very large and majestic, but also the alpha predator at sea.
finally, i really like the prehistoric mammal andrewsarchus. its not a super well known animal, was probably a great predator, or maybe even a scavenger like a hyena. but the thing that blows my mind is that they were probably distant relatives to hippos and WHALES! whales!
i really liked the portrayal of the Lipleurodon in walking with dinosaurs. just seemed very large and majestic, but also the alpha predator at sea.
finally, i really like the prehistoric mammal andrewsarchus. its not a super well known animal, was probably a great predator, or maybe even a scavenger like a hyena. but the thing that blows my mind is that they were probably distant relatives to hippos and WHALES! whales!
SatelliteOfLove
Member
So many to choose from.
That said, Carnotaurus-
People talk about Tyranosaurids' teeny arms, but those were mobile and functional. Abelisaurids had wierd arms that just hung back and did nothing.
What a wonderful cooincidence this blog which is great for everyone in this thread. Seems they MIGHT have been common where large and in-charge theropods weren't in place as a top predator.
There's alot we still don't know about that thing; only from one skull, and it's a WIERD skull.
Tell ha Mumei.
I'm currently working on a personal project which involves studying marine dinos.
Meet tylosaurus, the top predator in the late Cretaceous Interior Seaway:
They grew up to 50 feet!
So cool *.*
Spaceman Spiff
Member
There is a growing consensus, from biomechanical, geochemical, and bone histological disciplines, that dinosaurs had elevated metabolisms. Whether or not they were fully in the range of mammals or their avian descendants is open to some debate, but it is highly unlikely that ecotothermy in the traditional "reptilian" sense was a viable metabolic strategy, and it's one that very few people in the field seem to be advocating these days.
The bones tell us that, physiologically, dinosaurs were doing things that living, and, as far as we can tell, extinct, reptiles simply cannot. The growth rates estimated by counting LAGs, (lines of arrested growth, which are not limited to ectotherms as once thought), in dinosaurs are elevated well above those observed in both wild and captive reptiles. It was traditionally thought that ectothermic dinosaurs could retain heat simply via their often large body sizes, and such "gigantothermy" would also show higher growth rates than the reptilian norm, but LAG-count analyses on some contemporaneous giant crocodilians, such as Deinosuchus, have shown that they grow much like their modern relatives: slowly over a long period of time. The growth profile of many dinosaurs was fundamentally different: accelerated growth early on allowed them to reach adult size, even in 30-50+ tonne sauropods, in no more than two or three decades. As far as I know, a means by which a typical ectothermic metabolism could sustain such growth rates has yet to be proposed.
Finally, (and I'm not sure how much of this was covered in The Complete Dinosaur, 2nd ed., as I haven't been able to give my copy the time it deserves), with a group as long-lived and diverse as the dinosaurs, with a range of body sizes spanning several orders of magnitude, it's not unreasonable to suppose that their metabolic rates were similarly varied, with some running "hotter" than others.
BolognaSoup
Member
Great thread! Reminds me of my childhood. I need to go get some of those old books I used to have because just looking at this thread, this stuff still fills me with wonder like it did even back then.
The stegosaurus was always my favorite. Like the punk rocker of her time.
The stegosaurus was always my favorite. Like the punk rocker of her time.
I'm gonna have to buy that book. It's been sooooooo long since I've read about dinosaurs.
Jack Remington
Banned
Liopleurodon for sure.
Third Strike
Member
Entelodont. Giant, meat-eating pigs:
Chalicotherium. Related to the horse, but with a gorilla-like body:
Epicyon Haydeni. Considered one of the largest dog species to ever live:
A comparison of some of the large flightless birds, and a human (image is small):
Chalicotherium. Related to the horse, but with a gorilla-like body:
Epicyon Haydeni. Considered one of the largest dog species to ever live:
A comparison of some of the large flightless birds, and a human (image is small):
Always loved the giant prehistoric versions of today's species
Giant ground sloth
I love these things. The coolest part of the North American megafauna is that living people once saw these things. Unlike dinosaurs, someone probably once stood next to a real one.
brianmcdoogle
Member
Since some of you are discussing dinosaur books, can someone help me recall a book from my childhood? It was a hardcover paleontology book, I think, that discussed what it was like to be a paleontologist as well as dinosaurs. There was a passage where it talked about the typical day of a paleontologist (I was dumbstruck that it said they woke up at... 6AM! SO EARLY to a child). It was a bit squarish of a book, and big; maybe 12 by 10 inches, and 150 pages or so? I wish I had more to go on then that. The book was brown, I think. It was probably a young adult dinosaur book, as opposed to a children's book, but I could be remembering it wrong.
As for the thread, Pachycephalosaurus and Ankylosaurus were my favorites.
As for the thread, Pachycephalosaurus and Ankylosaurus were my favorites.
Not prehistoric, but I think it's interesting that the largest animal ever known to have existed still lives on to this day, the blue whale:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_whale
Endangered, though :-(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_whale
Endangered, though :-(
I always learned it was nature's arms race, as in simple size is by far the most effective offensive and defensive attribute, so through natural selection many species grew bigger over the millions of years, to do that they would have needed an excess of food as well obviously and there the atmosphere and climate plays a big role for vegetation.
In that sense the atmosphere should have had less Oxygen and more Carbon Dioxide for plants to get so productive right? I probably should check Wikipedia before making this assumption.
Edit: probably just more of both than what we now have.
MaddenNFL64
Member
Triceratops
Bring it on T-Rex, ya bastard!
Bring it on T-Rex, ya bastard!
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