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Extinct Animal Questions
Topic Started: Nov 26 2013, 10:24 PM (193,343 Views)
Incinerox
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Āeksiot Zaldrīzoti

Well if he's still saying it dragged its belly along the ground, we know this to be untrue. Trackways suggest it didn't even drag its TAIL along the ground.

Ergo, I wouldn't consider him a viable source on the matter.
Edited by Incinerox, Nov 2 2015, 08:25 PM.
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Paleosaurus
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BossMan, Jake
Nov 2 2015, 08:23 PM
Here's a question which I need answering. Did dimetrodon infact have exposed sail bones? I find that this idea actually makes a lot of sense but this "expert" is saying the idea is 100% false and is that dimetrodon did have a full sail and walked with its belly dragging on the ground.
The study that suggested exposed sail rods was talking about a portion of the sail that was damaged and healed IIRC. It probably doesn't apply to the sail on a healthy individual although it is possible that our usual idea of what a Dimetrodon sail looked like may not be entirely correct. There are a LOT of Dimetrodon species and I'm almost positive the sail would vary in appearance from species to species, especially if it was a sexually selected characteristic.
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Furka
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Incinerox
Nov 2 2015, 07:43 PM
Walking With Things simply did everything properly:

> The dinosaurs themselves were restored as if they were real animals, not just characters in a dinosaur setting (WWD Movie, Dinosaur Planet, Dinosaur Revolution).

> The format of each episode followed in the footsteps of a typical wildlife documentary, rather than constantly repeated footage of crude CGI dinosaurs, with crude CGI anatomical detailing, with quote mined paleontologists talking in between (Clash of the Dinosaurs, Jurassic Fight Club, Planet Dinosaur).

> Not only did they film on location, but the actual filming was done in such a way that they could have been used for modern animal documentaries, so you get more believable angles of the animals on screen rather than just going with whatever looks good (Dinosaur Revolution was filmed on location mostly, but it was very... storyboarded I supposed is the word I'd use).

> Adding onto that, they made sure not only to keep the scenes believable, but to let the footage do the talking, backed up with very understated yet reasonable quality narrating (instead of some overly dramatic, hyper-American WWE-tier narrator talking nonsense over EVERYTHING. Show the scenery to viewers, don't get someone to chew it) (JFC, Clash of the Dinosaurs were horrid when it came down to this).

> Adding on to THAT, Walking With didn't fall victim to over-sensationalism.
And the fact they used Real Life models, animatronics and things like those contributes a lot to make the whole thing feel more real.
Edited by Furka, Nov 3 2015, 05:08 AM.
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babehunter1324
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Incinerox
Nov 2 2015, 07:43 PM
> Adding on to THAT, Walking With didn't fall victim to over-sensationalism.
Well... There was the 25 meters long Liopleurodon, Ornithocheirus 12 m wingspan, missplaced Dimetrodon species (the only one found in Germany so far was puny), super-poisionous Therocephalians...

Yet, in spite of this it still was one of the best shows at depicting prehistoric animals as what they were. Which is extremelly remarkable. A real pitty that no documentary has ever done something like that since our knowledge on Dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures has increased so much in the last 15+ years.
Edited by babehunter1324, Nov 3 2015, 07:46 AM.
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Iben
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There'll be no foot-walking! Just air-flying!

Paleosaurus
Nov 2 2015, 08:29 PM
BossMan, Jake
Nov 2 2015, 08:23 PM
Here's a question which I need answering. Did dimetrodon infact have exposed sail bones? I find that this idea actually makes a lot of sense but this "expert" is saying the idea is 100% false and is that dimetrodon did have a full sail and walked with its belly dragging on the ground.
The study that suggested exposed sail rods was talking about a portion of the sail that was damaged and healed IIRC. It probably doesn't apply to the sail on a healthy individual although it is possible that our usual idea of what a Dimetrodon sail looked like may not be entirely correct.
We are talking about multiple specimens here, and the fact that the neural spines healed the way they do is considered to be an argument against a sail raising all the way up till the end.

Originally they thought that the large grooves in the neural spines was a channel for blood vessels, but the bone does not contain vascular canals; so if there was a said it wouldn't have been as highly vascularized as thought. There was however vascularized soft tissue on these bones, but overall not enough for a sail that had such an extensive function as we give it today.

And last but not least, many specimens have spines with sharply bend proportions, so the sail would have been quite irregular in profile. This suggests that the soft tissue wouldn't have extended all the way to the tips of the spines, meaning it probably did not have such a long sail as we thought.

I think it's a fairly trust-able study, so for now I think it's reasonable to assume that the big long "till the top" sails simply weren't there.
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Furka
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babehunter1324
Nov 3 2015, 07:44 AM
Incinerox
Nov 2 2015, 07:43 PM
> Adding on to THAT, Walking With didn't fall victim to over-sensationalism.
Well... There was the 25 meters long Liopleurodon, Ornithocheirus 12 m wingspan, missplaced Dimetrodon species (the only one found in Germany so far was puny), super-poisionous Therocephalians...
Well, IIRC those (or at least some) were based on some fossil evidence, very dubious ones that got disproven later, but at least for the time they were more believable than a 2 metres tall featherless lizard-raptor.
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Paleodude
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ex-Krampus

I was wondering where do we trace the first members of Gekkota? I can never find anything at museums and when I look up stuff online I find contradictions everywhere.
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Incinerox
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Āeksiot Zaldrīzoti

babehunter1324
Nov 3 2015, 07:44 AM
Incinerox
Nov 2 2015, 07:43 PM
> Adding on to THAT, Walking With didn't fall victim to over-sensationalism.
Well... There was the 25 meters long Liopleurodon, Ornithocheirus 12 m wingspan, missplaced Dimetrodon species (the only one found in Germany so far was puny), super-poisionous Therocephalians...

Yet, in spite of this it still was one of the best shows at depicting prehistoric animals as what they were. Which is extremelly remarkable. A real pitty that no documentary has ever done something like that since our knowledge on Dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures has increased so much in the last 15+ years.
To be fair, back in the late 90s when it was made (YES, IT WAS 1999 WHEN IT CAME OUT - NEARLY 20 ****ing YEARS!), a lot of those errors were actually still possible. Liopleurodon's size was based on the "Monster of Aramberri", which consists of fragmentary remains, and GINORMOUS bitemarks on plesiosaur remains. Even today we still don't know much on the actual technical details. Ornithocheirus too, was based on fragmentary information. Hell, what they called Ornithocheirus in the series is ACTUALLY Tropeognathus, which were still pretty massive (8m wingspans, basically). 12m was the maximum estimates based on what we had at the time for that particular species. And, bear in mind, the individual male specimen the episode follows was supposed to be THE giant of the sky, being a particularly old male of an already large species.

Their issue with Dimetrodon is not so much a misuse of species - literally everything presented in that section of WWM DID coexist...

In Oklahoma...

Also, we actually do have data to suggest that venomous bites were in fact common across therocephalians. Euchambersia (the species used in WWM) and Ichibengops are two confirmed cases with grooves in their canine teeth actually connecting directly to recesses in their jaws which housed venom glands - very similar to many snakes today (and NOT like that one time we thought Sinornithosaurus was venomous).
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Rockypockypuff
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Is walkin' with a dead man.

I've been thinking of this, Dimetrodon had quite skinny bones in the sail, right? Wouldn't a sail be easy to damage? Like it's all flashy flashy, so a potential bigger predator see it and break it easily? Without the sail, and just being "spikes", that possibility is removed, right?

...I honestly know nothing about extinct animals lol
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heliosphoros
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Paleodude
Nov 3 2015, 09:05 AM
I was wondering where do we trace the first members of Gekkota? I can never find anything at museums and when I look up stuff online I find contradictions everywhere.

Depending on who you ask, some of the Solnhofen lizards are stem-Gekkota, though unfortunately not much has been done in regards to phylogenetic studies of these guys.
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Fluffs
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Pull my finger!

I recently saw a few people arguing new research about whether ceratopsians (Triceratops mainly) had cheeks or not. Any recent analysis to this?
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Acinonyx Jubatus
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I AM THE UNSHRINKWRAPPER!

Rockypockypuff
Nov 3 2015, 10:20 AM
I've been thinking of this, Dimetrodon had quite skinny bones in the sail, right? Wouldn't a sail be easy to damage? Like it's all flashy flashy, so a potential bigger predator see it and break it easily? Without the sail, and just being "spikes", that possibility is removed, right?

...I honestly know nothing about extinct animals lol
Spikes work just fine for intimidation, if they're brightly coloured and stand out a la African porcupine quills. And yes, a sail would be fairly easy to damage- but let me call you to mind the Siamese Fighting Fish, which are named for the males' habit of fighting amongst themselves and which frequently tear each other's voluminous tail to shreds. I don't know much about bettas, but I've heard that the tails grow back to their original size fairly quickly. It could be possible that Dimetrodon spines, whether or not they supported a sail, healed quickly when damaged, and so a critter with a damaged sail/spine would only go without for a few weeks.

Also, to my knowledge the bigger species of Dimetrodon were the largest terrestrial predators in their environment, so threat of damage to the spine would more likely come from rivals of the same species instead of predators.
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PrimevalRaptor
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King of Memers

Is there a current consensus on how far the pycnofibres would extend on pterosaur wings, especially in regards to azhdarchids?
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Incinerox
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Āeksiot Zaldrīzoti

Dimetrodon question:
Well that was partly the reason why they started thinking the sail didn't reach all the way to the ends of the bones - they were frequently damaged, broken and split near the tops (though I wonder how a Dimetrodon would actually break the tips of their sails alone in a fight - perhaps they just get battered about as it moved through dense scrubby areas?) to a point where the presence of skin would be detrimental to any healing that took place there.

Pterosaur question:
I'll have to double check what they got out of Sordes and other fossils of that quality if they even exist, but off the top of my head, I recall that they covered the faces, core body and the limbs themselves down to the elbows and knees. The membranes themselves were left bare, and I think the tails of rhamphorhynchoids were too. That said, I distinctly recall in Conway and Witton's book that anurognathids had small tufts of fibers on their wingtips.

Ceratopsian question:
Where was this argued, and in what context? This fascinates me. Details, bro. Details!
Edited by Incinerox, Nov 3 2015, 04:00 PM.
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BossMan, Jake
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Son of God

As to how they break I can only think of breaking them on trees or if they were attacked by a carnivorous fish like xenacanthus. This is pure speculation btw

Prior to Trex was Daspletosaurus North America's largest tyrannosaur?
Edited by BossMan, Jake, Nov 3 2015, 04:42 PM.
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