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[efyu_lemonardo]

Yeah that's exactly what I meant by "hippo skull syndrome" lol.

But you make a good point about the heads of most animals not being very fleshy or fatty. In fact hippos may be a bit of an exception because of their semi aquatic nature. They're probably closer to other water mammals in that regard. If triceratops was a land dweller it probably makes less sense for it to be so "chubby".

Elephants are another famous exception but I don't think there's anything on a triceratops skull that suggests it needed to support any external appendages.

Ceratopsian skulls are just weird to me because they seem so different from anything alive today, unlike many other species that don't have such prominent features. Stegosaurus' backs are strange to me for the same reason. Ankylosaurs I'm somehow ok with, can't say why

 

[Cow Mengde]

Swiggity Swooty.

I just discovered this new artist new James Kuether. His art is amazing! That Lythronax and Machairoceratops is his work. He has a full gallery plus comparison charts for a huge amount of dinosaurs!

Check out his site.

http://www.jameskuether.com/


Here's a big ceratopsian chart!

 

[Anton Sugar]

Oh goooood, Dino-GAF! Kickstarter for an open-world dino survival game where you actually play as dinos.

FEATHERS MOTHERFUCKERS

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

Yeah, Saurian looks amazing!

And The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs: Second Edition comes out Oct. 23rd!

If you don't own the first edition, I highly recommend it.

 

[Septimus Prime]

It's like the new Designosaurus.

 

[Cow Mengde]

Yeah, Saurian looks amazing!

And The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs: Second Edition comes out Oct. 23rd!

If you don't own the first edition, I highly recommend it.

I own the first addition. I DO NOT recommend it.

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

I own the first addition. I DO NOT recommend it.

Same, and as a longtime admirer of Greg Paul, I have to say that it came out about a decade, (or more), too late.

These days, I find his art lacking and the methodology behind his skeletal reconstructions has been shown by others to be not nearly as rigorous as he claims. Let's not even get into his unconventional approach to taxonomy. A shame, really, given his undeniable influence on the field of paleontography.

It will be very interesting to see how the second edition fares. If it provides more in the way of specimen numbers, measurements, etc, (the kind of data that made the catalog in Predatory Dinosaurs of the World so useful), it may actually be of some value. Barring that, it'll be a tough purchase to justify for me.

 

[The Albatross]

So, gaf, this morning I had a thought that ruined Dino movies like Jurassic Park for me. Well not really ruined, but made me think about it critically. Not that Jurassic Park is couched in reality or anything but...

In the first Jurassic Park, we're mostly led to believe that the visitors to the island are really visiting some of the first mature, grown dinosaurs on dino island. Sure, maybe some of them had been around for a generation or two, given the years, but by and large most of those dinosaurs are the first dinosaurs to roam the land in some 50 million years or whatever.

Yet...

The dinosaurs are all doing things we expect dinosaurs did 50 million years ago. The T-Rex's run like T-rex's, the big friendly giants stalk the land and eat tree leaves, the raptors are deadly scavengers and opportunists. (now of course what we know about dinosaurs behavior is a lot of conjecture, but my point is that each dino in Jurassic Park has a specific personality and traits)

Now, yes, evolutionary biology influences behavior. A dog with sharp K-9 teeth with likely be a meat eater, good at catching moving prey.. An animal with many rows of dull teeth will likely gnaw on vegetables and mush them up into vegetable puree with his grinding teeth. An animal with a stomach fit for eating meat will probably eat meat, and so on and so forth.

But... Doesn't it stand to reason that it would take many generations...... Many thousands of generations, for that T-Rex to know to shake the hell out of its prey before eating it? Or those giant leaf eaters to actually eat leaves, instead of, say, trying to eat a car or a shoe or a raptor? In other words, what part of dinosaur behavior -- or any animal behavior -- is influenced by learned behavior from other animals, over many generations?

My dog knows not to bite too hard when he's playing because he learned that behavior from other dogs in his litter, who honed that shrill bark over many dozens (or hundreds) of generations of dogs playing as puppies in the den...

But if we took a dog and transplanted him 50million years into the future, where there were no other dogs, sure he'd have that shrill bark, but he wouldn't know how to use it. If that dog was raised by neo-bears in 50million years, sure he may have some dog behavior that's hard wired into his evolved brain, but he may also try to catch fish like his adoptive bear parents, or rub his back up against trees like his adoptive bear brothers, or try to eat a hell of a lot of food in the autumn like his adoptive bear sister. So, wouldn't it stand to reason that Terry the T-Rex wouldn't have another T-Rex around to show him how to be a T-Rex, so instead maybe he learns how to be a dinosaur from the nearest big dino he sees, the Brachiosaurus? And then he gets damn hungry and dies because he needs to eat more than just leaves, and doesnt understand why his bros are never hungry but he is?

This made me think more critically about a movie that I really shouldnt think about at all, but it's smething I hadn't thought of before.

Your thoughts?

 

[Green Mamba]

I do believe that precise problem is brought up in The Lost World novel as to why the Velociraptors were such rancid, horrible monsters.

---

Let's not even get into his unconventional approach to taxonomy.

The one thing that stood out to me as odd even by GSP standards is that he lists Guanlong as a species of Monolophosaurus. Unconventional is one thing but that was just outright bizarre.

 

[Cow Mengde]

Yeah, the Monolophosaurus with Guanlong was the most baffling thing I ever seen. Luckily, David Hone mentioned the controversy in his new book, or else I would have thought Paul was making shit up.

The book is also badly written. X is the enemy is Y like it's some kind of rivalry. He also lists taxons that aren't even named or studied, so you have 2 Daspletosaurus .sp in there with no information.

That said, I still might check out the second edition. I might glance at it in a museum gift shop or something.

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

The one thing that stood out to me as odd even by GSP standards is that he lists Guanlong as a species of Monolophosaurus. Unconventional is one thing but that was just outright bizarre.

Stuff like that, yeah. All North American centrosaurines being congeneric with Centrosaurus itself is what left me scratching my head.

Even accepting the fact that genera are purely semantic constructs and not a biological reality, the fact that he shuffles names without justification in the text is needlessly confusing.

The book is also badly written. X is the enemy is Y like it's some kind of rivalry.

lol

I'm reminded of Darren Naish's review and his tongue-in-cheek objection to an animal's friends not being listed as well.

 

[Cow Mengde]

Kindle book sale! The Dinosaur Four for only 99 cent. I impulse bought it. I don't regret it one bit. Really fast pace story about accidental time travel. A group of people at a cafe suddenly got transported back into the Cretaceous.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KK1SU9W/?tag=neogaf0e-20

 

[bengraven]

We need to find a way to look into the past. I don't care about time travel, I just want to view the past. Let me satellite zoom down into a Cretaceous forest and study dinosaur behavior.

Kindle book sale! The Dinosaur Four for only 99 cent. I impulse bought it. I don't regret it one bit. Really fast pace story about accidental time travel. A group of people at a cafe suddenly got transported back into the Cretaceous.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KK1SU9W/?tag=neogaf0e-20

Sounds so random it could be awesome!

 

[Nikodemos]

Here's a big ceratopsian chart!

I'm pretty certain a number of those are, in fact, the same species at different development stages and different genders.

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

I own the first addition. I DO NOT recommend it.

When do you want to duel?

 

[Cow Mengde]

When do you want to duel?

 

[Green Mamba]

Does anyone here play Primal Carnage: Extinction? I don't, I'm just curious how the unlockable skin market works. There's a skin for the Acrocanthosaurus in the game that looks an awful lot like the color scheme I made for a picture of a Saurophaganax I have in my DeviantArt gallery with a couple changes made. From my understanding it was a fan made skin that's officially part of the game now, but I might be mistaken.

 

[Anton Sugar]

Any recommendations for good dino/paleo podcasts?

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

Any recommendations for good dino/paleo podcasts?

I highly recommend the Tetrapod Zoology Podcast.

The topics discussed tend to be varied, expansive and more than just paleo, but there's a good helping nonetheless. It's often entertaining and always illuminating.

PLOS also has several great suggestions.

 

[Nikodemos]

In today's "creatures made out of discarded spares" we bring you Tullimonstrum gregarium. Yes, it's exactly what it looks like. A lamprey with a pincer for a mouth, located at the end of a proboscis, with stalked eyes and a squid-like mantle.

Illustration courtesy of http://paleoart.tumblr.com/.

 

[Amalthea]

I always love how awkward those very early animals looked. They might appear bizarre enough to name them -monstrum but compared to a modern squid with their many sucker arms a single tentacle with a claw shows in what early stage the survival of the fittest was back then.

 

[Polioliolio]

In today's "creatures made out of discarded spares" we bring you Tullimonstrum gregarium. Yes, it's exactly what it looks like. A lamprey with a pincer for a mouth, located at the end of a proboscis, with stalked eyes and a squid-like mantle.




Illustration courtesy of http://paleoart.tumblr.com/.

Lovely!

I'm a big fan of these early critters too.

 

[Septimus Prime]

I always love how awkward those very early animals looked. They might appear bizarre enough to name them -monstrum but compared to a modern squid with their many sucker arms a single tentacle with a claw shows in what early stage the survival of the fittest was back then.

They're like...strange shrimp.

 

[Toxi]

In today's "creatures made out of discarded spares" we bring you Tullimonstrum gregarium. Yes, it's exactly what it looks like. A lamprey with a pincer for a mouth, located at the end of a proboscis, with stalked eyes and a squid-like mantle.

Illustration courtesy of http://paleoart.tumblr.com/.

Good old Tully Monster.

 

[Contica]

This is so cool. Dinosaur feathers caught in amber. Incredibly well preserved. http://gizmodo.com/these-dinosaur-feathers-trapped-in-amber-are-ridiculous-1789826976

 

[Anton Sugar]

Just saw this today: slightly NSFW (gore) painting of feathered raptors eating a CEO.