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What annoys you about paleontology?; Rant on about moronic theories, complaints, or just animals that annoy you.
Topic Started: Sep 28 2013, 05:04 PM (256,248 Views)
CyborgIguana
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Livyatan has a better chance of survival into the present than Megalodon IMO, and even then the chance is pretty low. But of course, Megalodon's the one everyone knows about.
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the dark phoenix
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King of wonderlandia

Your note was a wise move. I'm surprised she read it instead of throwing it in the trash.
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Iben
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There'll be no foot-walking! Just air-flying!

Incinerox
Jan 28 2015, 12:16 AM
CyborgIguana
Jan 27 2015, 09:42 PM
There'd have to be a reason for it to go bald though. Evolutionary changes don't just happen because they can.
One word to think about here:

Thalassocnus.
Possible, but not a given though.

Mammals are weird in that way, one group will go bald while the other one will retain their hairs and go for specific waterproof coats. Not to debunk you here or say it's impossible, but this is one of those things where we can't be sure at all :P
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Incinerox
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Āeksiot Zaldrīzoti

You raise an excellent point actually.

Hippos, cetaceans and manatees are all essentially hairless.

But then you get things like otters and pinnipeds which have dense hairs.
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babehunter1324
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I also think that is quite likely that Thalassocnus had a very dense hair over beign bald, mostly because even extant and terrestrial sloths had already a very dense coat so evolving a coat thick enough to dive on sea waters wouldn't have been much of a problem.

IMO neither Livyatan or C./O. megaladon would have much of a chance in the present. Livyatan might had been able to live in colder waters than Carcharocles* megaladon but it also probably needed more food at the same weight than the shark did (the extant Great White sharks can go without food for weeks or even months, toothed whales generally need to eat a few times a week, particullary if they don't have much blubber) which btw I think that it could have been the factor that lead to C. megalodon apparently outliving Livyatan (and also C. chubutensis and C. angustidens outliving Basilosaurus and other Archaeocets and sharks surviving the K/T event while Mosasaurids and Plesiosaurids perished). Besides the main souce of food for both species (Cetotheriidae) is down to a single species -the Pygmy Right Whale- which likewise inhabits a very different ecosystem than it's extinct relatives.

* Or Ottodus.
Edited by babehunter1324, Jan 31 2015, 03:50 AM.
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Iben
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There'll be no foot-walking! Just air-flying!

Incinerox
Jan 31 2015, 03:28 AM
... pinnipeds which have dense hairs.
And even those guys can't keep it together ._. I mean seriously, we have seals, sea-lions and sea-leopards in one hand, and elephant seals and walruses in the other. This is one of the main issues in integument research of prehistoric animals, we just scratched the surface of our own modern animals' integument, it makes it even harder to find out what possible in extinct animals.

Integument research is one of the most fascinating but most annoying parts of palaeontology tbh. From what we have, it might turn out that dinosaurs had a more complex integument variation than we can imagine, getting close or even surpassing the oddities in the mammal kingdom.

What annoys me at this point is that there's no way to prove certain hypothesis on integument. Like, my personal hypothesis on Ornithopod integument. To me it sounds quite reasonable to assume that basal and "light-weight"/biped fast running ornithopods might have had more "feather"-like integument at the start, but slowly developing scales on their tails as a form of protection ( kinda like the tails of rats, and mostly lizards.) It's the prime target of a predator when hunting on such speedy animals, and perhaps they even had a similar ability to "drop their tails" like modern day lizards. Assuming this was the reason behind it, we can even go further and assume that, as the predators got bigger and bigger, ornithopods slowly got more and more scales for further protection, slowly getting to the "full scaled" Iguanodontia. It's an interesting thought pattern, but it's so annoying there's no way to prove such a thing ;_;
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Furka
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Wouldn't loosing their tail cause them to lose balance aswell, if not die from blood loss ?
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Mathius Tyra
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Rat snake is love... Rat snake is life

For speedy bipedal animal, losing tail seems like a doom to me....
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Iben
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There'll be no foot-walking! Just air-flying!

I'm not saying loosing the full tail guys, that wouldn't make any sense at all :P Simply a part of the tail, like the tip. ;) Blood loss isn't much of a problem, we have several modern day examples of animals that are capable of releasing a part of their tail ( which is often referred to as "loosing their tail" ) in order to escape from predators. It's a perfectly reasonable survival strategy. Especially for animals that are very quick and fast.

In the end, it doesn't even matter that much, the tail in fast and agile animals like rats/lizards are often the prime target for predators, it isn't unreasonable to assume that fast and agile bipedal ornithopods might have developed extra protection for those bits.
Edited by Iben, Jan 31 2015, 10:25 AM.
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Incinerox
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Āeksiot Zaldrīzoti

Iben
Jan 31 2015, 08:45 AM
I'm not saying loosing the full tail guys, that wouldn't make any sense at all :P Simply a part of the tail, like the tip. ;) Blood loss isn't much of a problem, we have several modern day examples of animals that are capable of releasing a part of their tail ( which is often referred to as "loosing their tail" ) in order to escape from predators. It's a perfectly reasonable survival strategy. Especially for animals that are very quick and fast.

In the end, it doesn't even matter that much, the tail in fast and agile animals like rats/lizards are often the prime target for predators, it isn't unreasonable to assume that fast and agile bipedal ornithopods might have developed extra protection for those bits.
You'd find "break points" in the skeleton like ye would with geckos.

That and also the reason why it's so detrimental to the animal is because unlike squamates, who are quadrupedal and have reduced m. caudiofemoralis muscles, and quadrupedal rodents which don't have one at all, ornithischians NEED their tails for balance and running.

Like, all of it.

Quite literally the only "losable" parts of the tail would be the last 5 or 6 caudal vertebrae, and that is literally "just the tip".

But I agree with how annoyingly difficult it is to come to any solid conclusion. Especially now that we've got ornithischians which outright contradict each other in their integument. In exactly the same way in which your hypothesis that the original dinosaur was feathered (because of the presence of feathered ornithischians) and my hypothesis in which the original dinosaur was covered in pebbly scales (on the basis that all known saurischian integument up until a certain point waaaaay down the line and the presence of consistent scale types across both saurischians and ornithischians) are currently equally valid, even though the outcome are polar opposites.
Edited by Incinerox, Jan 31 2015, 03:37 PM.
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Yi Qi
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Incinerox
Jan 31 2015, 03:32 PM
But I agree with how annoyingly difficult it is to come to any solid conclusion. Especially now that we've got ornithischians which outright contradict each other in their integument. In exactly the same way in which your hypothesis that the original dinosaur was feathered (because of the presence of feathered ornithischians) and my hypothesis in which the original dinosaur was covered in pebbly scales (on the basis that all known saurischian integument up until a certain point waaaaay down the line and the presence of consistent scale types across both saurischians and ornithischians) are currently equally valid, even though the outcome are polar opposites.
And the fact that our current otnithischian taxonomy is so f***** up doesn't help it, either
Edited by Yi Qi, Jan 31 2015, 03:52 PM.
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Paleop
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Paleopterix

I found this a while ago and wanted to show how bad a kid's tv show can mess up on information and 'facts'

some examples of the games inaccuracies
greyhound running speed 63mph vs dromaeosaurus 64mph
giraffe 52mph vs velociraptor 40 mph
cheetah 113 mph vs quetzalcoatlus 80 mph

apparently this is what they have been teaching children nowadays :implode:
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Paleosaurus
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The Quetzalcoatlus speed is actually pretty much accurate. When big azdarchids were really really high up they could surpass 70mph, so says Mark Witton.
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Posted Image Guat
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Paleosaurus
Feb 2 2015, 12:27 AM
When big azdarchids were really really high up they could surpass 70mph, so says Mark Witton.
Cheetahs run 65 mph. Also what show was that?
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Paleop
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Paleopterix

the show was Dino Dan it's on nicktoons, also since barney is not accurate, I thought I might share this:

t rex meets Barney
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