Zegh's Dinosaur Thread

A new specie has recently been discovered in Argentina. It's called Jakapil kaniukura.

There is already some drama around it, but nothing formalized; one leading expert who also peer-reviewed the research later tweeted her doubt as to the new species being a Thyerophoran (Ankylosaurs + Stegosaurs, which incidentally is her field of expertise) and that it instead is an armored Ceratopsian, which is even more buck wild, but the notion is getting some traction for some simple reasons: 1 - both Thyreophorans as well as Ceratopsians are as good as non existent in all of Gondwana (save for 2 species of Stegosaurid and 1 Ankylosaurid in Africa) - meaning any remnant of these groups are bound to have evolved unique forms never seen in typical Thyreophorans or Ceratopsians - meaning both are equally incredible, and none is less likely than the other; a strange, bipedal basal Thyreophoran 100 million years after any similar relative died out OR an equally bizarre bipedal, armored Ceratopsian.

2 - the details, obviously. Her main point of contention was lacking Thyreophoran traits (save for the very obvious armor, but armor is not uniquely Thyreophoran!), as well as a lower jaw that screams Ceratopsian. Once pointed out, more and more leading figures agreed, although still - totally informally, all on Twitter. It got to the point of discord, aggressive subtweeting - but the main jist (and point of insult for the original research-team) is that they have been "blinded" by the large pieces of armor, commonly known in Thyreophorans, jumped the gun, and described it as such, without considering the possibility that what they found was *even more* incredible.

She is however open to the idea that the original team was right all along, since the skeleton is very incomplete, but it's quite intriguing - not only might it be South America's second only known Thyreophoran dinosaur, but it might even be its first Ceratopsian - and even the worlds first armored Ceratopsian. It's just very cray cray!

Half related: If you ever wonder how many dinosaurs are still missing, consider this: Imagine the span of time as slices, and imagine TODAY as a slice of time - a slice that is roughly 100 000 years thick, meaning throughout this slice, we don't see any significant evolution - we have a mostly stable fauna, around the world, one that includes the ice age fauna: Imagine... somewhere as small as Denmark: As of today, there are afaik badgers there, foxes, there are weasels, wild cats, squirrels, countless species of rodent, hares, rabbits, there are deers - probably 1-3 species that might wander in and out of the main continent - of the megafauna, there's any that can fit, that move through Europe at the time, including moose, vicent, rhinos and mammoth, even if actual evidence remains uncollected, to hunt them would be wolves, wolverines, bears, lynxes and lions - there are multiple representatives of every bird family, there are so many types of duck, so many songbirds, so many sparrows - but the entire fossil record from Denmark, representing dinosaur species, in a time-span of 220 million years - is ONE species; represented by two... sole... teeth.
The rest is gone! Missing! Now begin multiplying, across the world, across time :D

The only reason we have a feeling "lots" of dinos are known (around 2000 species are named, of which about half are considered fully valid), is because of some few hotspots around the world, Gobi desert, Yixian in Liaoning province PRC, Morrison and Hell Creek formations in the US, Dinosaur Park formation in Canada, Cambridge Greensand in the UK and several similar hotspots in Argentinean Patagonia - and even these places showcase diversities in the dozens of species, not the hundreds that were potentially present (Except for Yixian, and the so called Jehol-fauna, which consists of entire warehouses of species awaiting description!)

The rest of the world's fossil sites are not like that, and yield a tooth here, a rib there.
 
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Zegh, you really need to put your autis ... I mean your extrodinary skills to some good use! For mankind! Or well, Sauropods. What ever suits you more.

Half related: If you ever wonder how many dinosaurs are still missing, consider this: Imagine the span of time as slices, and imagine TODAY as a slice of time - a slice that is roughly 100 000 years thick, meaning throughout this slice, we don't see any significant evolution - we have a mostly stable fauna, around the world, one that includes the ice age fauna: Imagine... somewhere as small as Denmark: As of today, there are afaik badgers there, foxes, there are weasels, wild cats, squirrels, countless species of rodent, hares, rabbits, there are deers - probably 1-3 species that might wander in and out of the main continent - of the megafauna, there's any that can fit, that move through Europe at the time, including moose, vicent, rhinos and mammoth, even if actual evidence remains uncollected, to hunt them would be wolves, wolverines, bears, lynxes and lions - there are multiple representatives of every bird family, there are so many types of duck, so many songbirds, so many sparrows - but the entire fossil record from Denmark, representing dinosaur species, in a time-span of 220 million years - is ONE species; represented by two... sole... teeth.
The rest is gone! Missing! Now begin multiplying, across the world, across time
The amount of stuff we do not know - and probably never will know - is staggering though. I can't find anymore the documentary that was explaining it but just from the time-frame alone as you explained, like 99% of the life which this planet has seen has died out so far. That's an insane amount of species. From bacteria to highly complex organisms. 400 Billion years of evolution.
 
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Zegh, you really need to put your autis ... I mean your extrodinary skills to some good use! For mankind! Or well, Sauropods. What ever suits you more.


The amount of stuff we do not know - and probably never will know - is staggering though. I can't find anymore the documentary that was explaining it but just from the time-frame alone as you explained, like 99% of the life which this planet has seen has died out so far. That's an insane amount of species. From bacteria to highly complex organisms. 400 Billion years of evolution.

Even worse is geological erosion over huge timescales, for example - most of Scandinavia has been eroded down, not only over the span of time (it has had eroding mountain-ranges even since before the Mesozoic), but even more after the ice-age, meaning - it's not even a matter of time: Most Scandinavian dinosaurs are simply lost forever, turned to dust and sand, and returned to the circle of life as literal minerals.
We have different hot-spots, Norway is a prime place to find trilobites, sea-scorpions, armored fish - lots of Cambrian-explosion stuff! Lots of really cool fossils, incidentally - but yeah, no dinos :D
 
Not only that, but you Norwegians also "mine" those Dinosaurs for runing cars :(!

Oh, the oil :V specifically, the vast majority of petroleum is much, much older than dinosaurs - and [nerd-time] dinosaur fossils are not ever going to "become oil", because it is limited to ocean floor silt compressing. The life forms that became todays oil are probably even older than Norways Cambrian trilobites.

THAT SAID one of my favorite Norwegian childrens song features a baby dinosaur that struggles to follow its mother, under the watchful eye of the moon. The dinosaur falls into a lake, and drowns, and millions of years later, it becomes fuel to carry space-rockets up to the very same moon, it once walked underneath.
Obv, as a kid, I'd cry.
 
Oh, the oil :V specifically, the vast majority of petroleum is much, much older than dinosaurs - and [nerd-time] dinosaur fossils are not ever going to "become oil", because it is limited to ocean floor silt compressing. The life forms that became todays oil are probably even older than Norways Cambrian trilobites.

THAT SAID one of my favorite Norwegian childrens song features a baby dinosaur that struggles to follow its mother, under the watchful eye of the moon. The dinosaur falls into a lake, and drowns, and millions of years later, it becomes fuel to carry space-rockets up to the very same moon, it once walked underneath.
Obv, as a kid, I'd cry.

What came first the egg or the dinosaur ?
 
Well there are a lot of weird things, that's for sure. For example, if you would be on a planet in a Star System 65 Million lightyears away from our Solar System, you could actually watch Dinos walking around on earth, if you had a telescope strong enough to see it.
 
This topic, will not be allowed to die.

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Well there are a lot of weird things, that's for sure. For example, if you would be on a planet in a Star System 65 Million lightyears away from our Solar System, you could actually watch Dinos walking around on earth, if you had a telescope strong enough to see it.

Is that with optical zoom or digital zoom. You cant see things with a radio telescope but you may hear them fart. If the fart was not in audible Hrtz range, you could not would not hear farty noises.

Also if the said planet was in our future you could never see the dinosaurs.

It would have to be in a new star system with a star created from the debris of supernovae. An ordinary lens telescope would need a lens 65x() *<>X where X=M2/..._-infinity. So an estimated size of 650000 miles diameter! And nice weather.
 
Paleo-nitpick of the day: It's actually 66 million years ago, not 65; - and that tiny little difference between 66 and 65 is *hugely* important when examining top cretaceous outcrops - because, obviously; it matters!

There are a few mesozoic formations in the world that DO exceed the KT-boundary, most notably the Hornerstown formation in New Jersey, US - its bottom layers are Maastrichtian (Cretaceous) while the top layers are Danian (Paleocene), and common fossils include oceanic avians

There has so far never been found a non-avian dinosaur in either of these outcrops: Not one! But that's the little hope, with other similarily-aged fossil sites; what if we find a 65 million year old non-avian dinosaur?
(It'd just be a population of doomed stragglers, no real implication, but it'd be interesting!)
 
Two best ways to tell them apart (sometimes the only way) from dinosaurs is the hip socket and the construction of the ankles.

And the last lineage that is not our common crocodila died out in Europe 20 million years ago - and it was a wolf-sized running predator.
 
And the last lineage that is not our common crocodila died out in Europe 20 million years ago - and it was a wolf-sized running predator.

Oh yeah, I love the doggy-crocs and other "borrowed niches", there were some very agile little ones in the Mesozoic, dunno much about them - just know they're very common wherever dinos are found (not as common as turtles though - holy shit turtles are *everywhere* in the fossil record!)
 
Crocs are not Dinos?

*sad gator noices*

They are not dinos - and here's one better: They do not look like dinosaurs, nor did dinosaurs look like crocodiles. My dad still points at turtles, and exclaim "Now that's a real dinosaur!" with actual ostriches and stuff in the other enclosures. Sparrows on the ground, for that matter, but he doesn't wanna hear it; it's the big turtle. That's the real dinosaur, "Yes dad, okay, sure."
 
Crocs and dinosaurs are two groups that run parallel and are put into the same clade called "Archosaur".

Psuedosuchians are the category of big reptilians that crocodiles fall into, other now extinct groups were in there too (famously the species Postosuchus).

And turtles makes everyone in the field mad and confused because they're not in agreement on what it actually counts as, or what it's ancestor was.
 
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