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[–] 116 points 8 months ago (9 children)

So without their feathers they look like they act?

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  • [–] 54 points 8 months ago (8 children)

    I hope what you're implying is that swan feathers are a suit made to deceive humans from their obvious lizard people pet agenda, and that Big Feather needs to be held accountable. I've already booked guests for the podcast and have 17 articles in my substack,

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  • [–] 31 points 8 months ago (7 children)

    I want to see a Jurassic Park movie where it's just geese and swans breaking out of captivity, and mildly annoying everyone.

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  • [–] 16 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    You’ve never met a swan, have you?

    “Mild annoyance” are the seagulls stealing your food.

    (Yes, that swan dunked the seagull so it couldn’t fly away.)

    Swans don’t steal food. You give it to them hoping they don’t murder you.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    I want to see a Jurassic Park movie where it's just realistic velociraptors breaking out of captivity and are just mildly annoying. Then the main character gets stomped on by a brachiosaurus.

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  • [–] 67 points 8 months ago (9 children)

    That statement should start with "in the past". Recent depictions I've seen have them fully fleshed and feathered using up to date methods to create as accurate as possible models.

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  • [–] 50 points 8 months ago (6 children)

    We even have ways to figure out their colouring in some cases now! Like this sinosauropteryx:

    image

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  • [–] 18 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    That's cool. How did they figure out the colouring?

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  • [–] 29 points 8 months ago* (2 children)

    They found preserved melanosomes. It was previously thought these were the remains of bacteria.

    You can find details here, but I highly recommend reading Dinosaurs: New Visions of a Lost World by Michael J. Benton, who was one of the ones doing the research. The book is very fun to read (he's got that typical dry british humour), does a great job of describing the history and current status of paleontology (which is apparently exploding in new discoveries right now) and it has absolutely lovely illustrations, including the one I linked above. And also this anurognathus that is the cutest thing ever:

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    That's cool. We're going to look back at present views of dinosaurs with laughter it sounds like. Thanks for the answer. I'll check out the book.

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  • [–] 12 points 8 months ago

    I just ordered it. I had a girlfriend a few years ago and she was cleaning out some stuff. She found her old dinosaur stuff and asked me if i wanted it for my nephew. I asked her how outdated the things were. She looked at me pretty shocked and said: they are millions of years old, nothing has changed. I found that pretty funny

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    Maybe they don't fit under the term of "paleoartists" (they are artists of Paleolithic creatures) but the most popular modern depictions of dinosaurs are presumably the Jurrasic World movies, and I think they are almost universally lacking plumage. I've only seen the first, but the images I've seen I don't have any feathered dinos. So, no. This is still an ongoing issue.

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  • [–] 31 points 8 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 23 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    New pokemon looks different

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  • [–] 12 points 8 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 13 points 8 months ago

    Choose Goose is looking rough.

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  • [–] 12 points 8 months ago

    I am both frightened and aroused

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  • [–] 11 points 8 months ago

    This is so outdated it's wrong.

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  • [–] 11 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Those old-paleoartists were really unfettered.

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  • [–] 10 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    Is it all the dinosaurs? Or just ones from specific eras that likely had feathers? Ill try to find ou5 myself later. But if anybody has a link to something akin to "feathered dinos for dummies" id love to check it out

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    From what i've seen it's basically 50/50 if any one species had a significant amount of feathers, but feathers do seem to have existed in the earliest dinosaur ancestor so it could maybe potentially show up in any species.

    Then you can get more detailed and memorize which kinds of dinosaur had what kind of feather covering, like sauropods seem to at most have some quills and similar decorations, while dromaeosaurs (dakotaraptor, velociraptor, etc) were basically big murder birds with full on wings.

    But of course even within clades there could be significant difference: T.rex seems to have been, uh, covered in straight up skin like a giant plucked chicken.. but at least some of its relatives were mostly covered in feathers.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago

    All birds today are actually coelurosauria dinosaurs, a group of theropods (T-rex and raptor-shape dinosaurs) who are thought to have all had feathers for warmth, show, and/or gliding and flight. I know we have evidence that some other theropods had feathers (or at least hairy stuff), but I don't know whether the rest of them are lacking evidence of feathers or whether we have evidence against them having feathers.

    I would also love such a book, preferably with lots of pictures.

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  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago

    Wet owl moment

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  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    They'd look like dinosaurs.

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  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago

    I fucking knew it, they’re Tyranids!!

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    If swans were making a metal band...

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  • [–] 9 points 8 months ago* (8 children)

    crazy how there's billion dollar movies that have embarrassingly incorrect dinosaurs in them

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  • [–] 20 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    Movies often align to the popular perception if a thing rather than reality. Otherwise you're watching a documentary.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    it's not like documentaries aren't plenty popular, that recent series on dinosaurs (walking with dinosaurs, i think?) with our homeboy David Attenborough was hyped as fuck, no cap, on god, etc

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    While the look is based in old misconceptions of dinosaur biology, the Jurassic Park dinos lacking feathers actually works really well for the story. They were never meant to be real dinosaurs. They're just theme park attractions, so of course they look how the customers expect them to. Just like how most of them aren't even from the Jurassic period.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Yes that was the retcon explanation. The actual explanation is that they wanted to have Velociraptors in the movie and weren't really bothered about the fact that they aren't actually that big, there are species of raptor that are that large, but they didn't want to use their names because they were less well-known. Velociraptor was one of the few dinosaurs people knew. T-Rex didn't become famous until after Jurassic Park.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    T-Rex didn't become famous until after Jurassic Park.

    Really? I thought everyone knew T-rex when I was a kid. The only pick for Land Before Time I thought was weird was Duckie because I'm still not 100% sure what she is despite having looked it up a few times. The rest of the cast are what I'd consider your classic dinosaurs. But it's hard to know what other people know when you're an autistic kid.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    They can break a man’s arm.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago

    "Scientists believe that these strange creatures used their spiky arms to spear their prey."

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    I’d say ‘nope!’ But they kinda look tasty…

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