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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 (256,149 Views)
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Yi Qi
May 28 2016, 02:35 AM
stargatedalek
May 28 2016, 01:23 AM
Not that I want to keep this going, but dolphin fish colours only work because they hunt at the surface. They wouldn't work for anything significantly larger than them or with a different hunting technique.
They actually work because they hunt in the photic zone of shallow seas, I.E where sunlight reaches with enough force that their yellow parts melt and hide them within the glaring sunlight. The western interior seaway was a large, tropical shallow sea much similar to the habitat today inhabited by the dolphinfish, being a particularly shallow sea (it wasn't much deeper than 700m), it also had a large photic zone way up to its bottom, and considering thge fact that tyrlosaurines would've likely be hunting on the photic zone where larger fish and bellemites (as well as the occasional marine reptile) are, it does make sense to assume that they could likely sport a similar hunting strategy to that of modern day dolphinfish.

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Also size doesn't matter in that case, sunlight works the same on a 2 or 12m animal, it really has more to do with the coloration of the water around them and how it is affected by the tropical sun than anything to do with its size, my point is, to us this tylosaurus may look glaring, but from a fish looking down from below or above, it becomes nearly invisible.
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Fish like the dolphinfish and the marlin and the sailfish are the closest analogues to how Tylosaurus hunted because they are also fast pelagic predators that prey on the photic zone, and the two groups also exhibit quite obvious patterns of countershading, which was also present in mosasaurs. the thing about countershading is that it uses the sunlight itself to hide the animal rather than its pigmentation on itself, it's colors don't mean jack as long as they blend with the patterns of sunlight that are coming from above, and on a shallow sea, where sunlight can go pretty deep, this presents an ideal form of hiding the animal's body from its potential prey.

It'd be speculation? Yes, but so is most paleoart, it only becomes a problem when it actually contradicts known evidence, and right now, what we know about tylosaurus really puts pelagic fish as some of the best models for its behaviour.
Mahi Mahi don't just use counter shading to hunt, though. Their scales are highly specialized to bend light to help hide their appearance, hence why they become bright yellow and green when excited but are usually light blue. I HIGHLY doubt that Tylosaurus had the same muscle control of its scales as a mahi mahi, and I know their scales were not designed the same way.
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heliosphoros
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Plus Trucidocynodon is a great Triassic hurrah for synapsids.
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Mathius Tyra
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Rat snake is love... Rat snake is life

Yi Qi
May 28 2016, 02:04 PM
Mathius Tyra
May 28 2016, 01:38 PM
^I guess because it doesn't have many dinosaurs in it and dinosaurs are what make most people get into paleontology anyway.
But Dinosaurs are only a small part of the diverse animal fauna that inhabited the world in the forlorn past, there are manygroups of creatures throughout the history of the earth that were just as fascinating as dinosaurs can get. They just don't get enough attention and this annoys me.
I agree with you but honestly, there are many people that claim to like paleontology or having some knowledge than average people, that only care about the famous feature like dinosaurs, pterosaurs and major group of marine reptiles. True that Triassic creatures are so diverse and fasinating but when comparing them to super stars like dinosaurs from Jurassic and Cretaceous, they are not as recognizable. They also don't get much attention in media as well. There are like only recent 3 documentaries that depict creatures from Triassic, starting from WWD(Not gonna count older docs or unfamous because people barely remember them anyway.) and I think there are none that ever been featured in movies. (There are some in Primeval series tho.)
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heliosphoros
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heliosphoros
May 28 2016, 08:16 PM
Plus Trucidocynodon is a great Triassic hurrah for synapsids.

Turns out it was also one of the first attempts at cursoriality on the part of synapsids, as if it wasn't badass enough. Keep in mind that running theropods already existed when it lived.
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BossAggron
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Formerly Dilophoraptor

heliosphoros
May 28 2016, 11:16 PM
heliosphoros
May 28 2016, 08:16 PM
Plus Trucidocynodon is a great Triassic hurrah for synapsids.

Turns out it was also one of the first attempts at cursoriality on the part of synapsids, as if it wasn't badass enough. Keep in mind that running theropods already existed when it lived.
And it was about the size of a freaking leopard
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babehunter1324
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Cynognathus is usually quote to be 1 meter long, what not many know is that is only the lenght of the head and torse, with tail included it would had been at least 1.5 meters long and it's skull was about 30 cm long, larger than a spotted hyeana.

Considering that it predated Theropods and most large Archosauromorphs it is pretty likely Cynognathus was an apex predator in it's envioriment.
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Supersaur
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Diabloceratops

In fact one of my favourite extinct animal lines is from the Triassic (pseudoseuchians) I also probably butchered that.Also how is the triassic boring? Its awesome!
Edited by Supersaur, May 29 2016, 12:22 PM.
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stargatedalek
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I'm not slow! That's just my moe!

Despite the almost overwhelming number of specimens (and photos thereof) I couldn't find any high resolution photos of the shoulder for Yanornis, and the only skeletal that doesn't obscure the shoulder region entirely is by Peters. And even that is frankly very confusing and strangely articulated.

I feel so incompetent having to infer the appearance of known(?) materials.
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CyborgIguana
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People who still hold the misconception that sauropods were extinct by the late Cretaceous. They weren't even rare, titanosaurs were still among the most successful and dominant herbivores of the time.
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Incinerox
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Āeksiot Zaldrīzoti

Only in the southern hemisphere.

They got the crap end of the stick in the north.
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heliosphoros
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Well, they were still present abundantly in Asia and Europe. In North America, they were probably rare, given that only Alamosaurus is known.
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Incinerox
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Āeksiot Zaldrīzoti

Present, but nowhere near dominant.
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babehunter1324
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Well, in Europe they seem to held out without much of a hitch in the Campanian and onto the end of the Maastritchian, unlike other groups like Nodosaurids or Rhabdodontidae which apparenlty were declining rapidly by then, probably do to ecological changes and the success of Hadrosaurines.
Edited by babehunter1324, Jun 2 2016, 01:13 PM.
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Supersaur
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Diabloceratops

Well titanosaurs probably didn't want to live there due to the hadrosaurs being the large grazers and they didn't need another so they probably moved down south where they where in lesser numbers(the hadrosaurs) Also probably due to large preadtors evolving in the north. T.rex for example.
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CyborgIguana
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T. rex (or at least a similar large tyrannosaurid) is actually known from the same formations as Alamosaurus too. :P

Pretty sure hadrosaurs were there as well.
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