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Favorite Dinosaur Reconstructions
Topic Started: Sep 28 2013, 09:05 PM (305,555 Views)
Incinerox
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Āeksiot Zaldrīzoti

On top of that, he references Saurian's T. rex as the pinnacle of the "lizard lipped" hypothesis. Which would make sense given that lizard lips are likely the ancestral condition for all diapsids (maybe all sauropsids, or even amniotes). So at least structurally and anatomically speaking, that would make the most sense, regardless of how mammalian it would look in life.

But what he kinda didn't realise there was that the Saurian T. rex's lip design was directly referenced from bears. That is how much lippage a theropod would have had if it was done to the degree shown in bears. And bears, as he pointed out, are a very good comparison for T. rex. And the Saurian team capitalised on that.

The other thing is that he makes strong references to bloodhounds. Which is fine because they're sniffer type dogs. Problem here is that they are also not natural, wild dogs. Wild carnivorans are far more conservative in their lippage, and I presume that has everything to do with flappy bits impeding hunting ability. A bloodhound may have an incredible sense of smell, but how good is it at anything else? If it wasn't in any way detrimental to have that kind of flappy lippage in the wild, then it's weird that nothing took their sense of smell that far, notably bears.

Speaking of bears, he made a point about how they smell open-mouthed. And he reckons it has something to do with their enlarged, floppy lips. But they aren't the only animals to do this, and it's actually documented as something more specific - the Flehmen Response. Which is directly related to picking up pheromones, rather than more generic scents, and is therefore specifically to do with animals finding receptive mates in their area.

Last thing as well, you can actually tell what kind of epidermal covering the faces of dinosaurs might have had based on the texture of the bones. There's a paper that discusses the implications of this on pachyrhinosaurini skulls, and the results are that not only can one tell what was keratin and what was skin, what was scales etc. but you can also track direction of growth. And using that logic, you end up with something closer to a lizard lipped skull:
> There was a thick nasal ridge on T. rex, as we all already know. But it would have been thicker in life than that in his drawings (presumably because he wants to highlight other points).
> The lacrimals were not keratinised. But the post orbitals were, and they had hornlets which pointed upwards, outwards, and backwards. In some specimens, this would have looked legitimately demonic.
>The most relevant part here is that the snout was covered in what is simply just a completely scarred surface. Not scars from fighting or anything like that. Just really fine scarring across the whole surface of the bone, spreading from the sides of the snout, up and around the eye socket. And this actually implies the sort of thick hide that you'd see on the faces of hippos or rhinos (not the whole animal, quite specifically the faces, there's a difference here) - an integument free, REALLY THICK, inflexible layer of hide, which would have been very puncture resistant. The sort of thing you want if you are spending a large portion of your time trying to bite the face off another animal which will spend a large portion of its own time trying to bite your own face off. Catch here is that it needs a bony surface to work. So while a bear or normal dog-like lip would be within reason, going full blood-hound on it would likely contradict the established bone texture.

So while I doubt that T. rex had bloodhound-tier floppy bits on its face, I am in full support of the parts where he discusses the possibility of enlarged jowls. Hell, I'll go a step further and imply that much about the more chiseled reconstructions of T. rex jawlines are more to do with shrink wrapping - they literally have NO jaw muscles. AT ALL.
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babehunter1324
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There's also the fact that evolution doesn't/ can't always opt for the most efficient solution in a group of animals. Large ground mammals like Paraceratherium or Paleoloxodon rivalled some rather hefty sauropods in weight (like for example Brontosaurus excelsus and even Diplodocus hallorum). Yet they didn't develope the same adaptations of Dinosaurs to do it, most notably like all mammals, Paraceratherium and Paleoloxodon were stuck with a thoracic diaphragm, one-way respiratory system, they didn't need to develope airsacs, hollowed bones and other mumbo-jumbo to reach those sizes. Same deal with vestigial skeletal features like hips in whales and clavicles in Moa birds (unless any of those two had an unknown to me biomechanical advantage to keep them around).

In the same way using mammals facial structures to reconstruct Dinosaur facial structure runs into some problems (though to be fare Duane Nash mentions some of them), the main one I can think of is that sure, some birds like Andean Condors had lose skin around their faces, but that skin plays no role in keeping the mouth closed because like all birds thay have firmly shut beaks. Now I think it is quite likely that some Dinosaurs had similar skin structures in the face, but I doubt they would play a role in closing the mouth since we really have no analogous that relies completelly in suspending jowls of skin to keep it's mouth shut without a very advanced mammalian style muscular lips, and the logistics of not biting those floppy jowls with a +60º gape and 25 cm teeth (roots included) would be kinda complicated.

That said I do like the novelty of seeing theories like this, while not particullary likely it helps to put things into context and frankly lizardy lips on Theropod Dinosaurs while IMO the most likely configuration are threatening to became a paleoart meme. And the point about Dinosaur not having to be aesthetically pleasent for humans is a pretty good one.
Edited by babehunter1324, Apr 16 2016, 03:19 AM.
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CyborgIguana
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Of course one can go just a bit overboard in their attempts to present novel hypotheses *coughDavidPeterscough*
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Jon Sam
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Posted Image


Posted Image
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DinoBear
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Posted Image

Picture of the Leviathan of Beaumaris, an unamed Australian physteroid with teeth extremely similar in size and shape to Livyatan. Exception being that it is only 5-6 million years old, or about 7 million years younger than Livyatan.


So, HYPE
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Paleodude
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ex-Krampus

Posted Image
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heliosphoros
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Your first fifteen guesses as to what this is are wrong. But yes, it is fairly closely related to you-know-what.
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BossMan, Jake
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Son of God

Like a prototerror bird? You make it sound like it's not even an actual terror bird, if that's the case I'm very interest to know what this is! :D
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Even
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I kinda cheated (he posted that pic in Speculative Evolution Forums as well), but its the bathornithid Paracrax antiqua... What an impressive beast
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Alvin The Dinosaurman
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I just love the Ice Age Giants Shasta Ground Sloth it is just too accurate. Which inspired me to make one for ZT2. Does anyone else like it too?
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heliosphoros
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BossMan, Jake
Apr 25 2016, 12:06 AM
Like a prototerror bird? You make it sound like it's not even an actual terror bird, if that's the case I'm very interest to know what this is! :D


Even
Apr 25 2016, 01:53 AM
I kinda cheated (he posted that pic in Speculative Evolution Forums as well), but its the bathornithid Paracrax antiqua... What an impressive beast


Correct (well, listed as Paracrax gigantea, but I suppose the genus needs some slight tuning).

Bathornithidae was a family of birds related to terror birds and modern seriemas that lived in North America from the Eocene to the Miocene. The first forms appearently could fly, but beasts like Paracrax were both flightless and giant.
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CyborgIguana
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So there were two families of gigantic flightless predatory birds related to seriemas? The Cenozoic just got a lot more confusing! :P
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Incinerox
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Āeksiot Zaldrīzoti

Confusing how?

It doesn't undermine caraimidae evolution, since their distribution can be explained with flight.
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CyborgIguana
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I wasn't being especially serious, can't anyone in this subforum take a joke anymore? xD
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Posted Image Xenephos
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ᴀ ʟɪᴛᴛʟᴇ ᴏʙsᴇssᴇᴅ

CyborgIguana
Apr 25 2016, 01:05 PM
I wasn't being especially serious, can't anyone in this subforum take a joke anymore? xD
It's complicated, making jokes about Paleontology and all. xD
I always take a look or two at what I post most of the time with "Will this provoke a discussion on what dino toes looked like?"
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