You should see the schnozes they're sticking on hadrosaurs these days.
https://earthsky.org/earth/juvenile-hadrosaur-fossil-reveals-fleshy-snout/
this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2025
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So tired of this meme, especially in a science themed sub. It's just wrong and thusly promotes disinformation because it takes seconds to read a meme like this and move on without question. Meanwhile it takes (comparitavely) ages to actually research how fossils are reconstructed. If people even think to research it in the first place, because, hey, it's in a science-based sub, right??
Remember kids, the best memes are those based on truth π
ok, but can we make fun of old "skin wrapping" reconstructions?
because for most people, Jurassic park are still their standard version of dinosaur reconstitution.
Right, and that's why most people would believe this meme and take it as 100% truthful. The meme doesn't specify that that's the way we USED to do it, it says that's how it would be done
so, what is the other reconstitution?
feathers, more chonky, appropriate colours...
not just reptile dragon monsters
Feathers and colours? Dinosaurs must have looked absolutely FABULOUS!
you say it as a joke, but look at the non extinct dinosaurs we have today,
most birds are indeed much more flamboyant than Jurassic park dinosaurs
Something that stands out to me is how the most colorful creatures are good at evasion. Birds and bugs flying or reef creatures have hiding holes. Other colorful life tends to be toxic.
For this reason I doubt the huge species had color that stood out from their environment.
Prehistoric Planet, I say as an amateur. But from what little I read about it it's pretty alright apparently, and most of the 'wrong/we're not sure about this bit' things are listed on the wiki afaik.
Of course there's much more scientific depth possible than a TV show, but it's a start towards recreating the common notion of what dinosaurs may have looked like.
I was wondering this very thing. As some fossils were preserved whole, as others were not. I believe though, the whole ones, or even the ones that captured large contiguous chunks of tail could disprove this. Not sure, just was having a guess.
*Not due to soft tissue being found but more so signs of trapped decay of some sort.
are they actually just lizards?
How do you mean? Dinosaurs? They were warmblooded, so no, not just lizards. Usually in the rock around the fossilized bones are imprints of other features of the animal, like skin texture or the presence of feathers.
We can also tell a lot from the points where muscles attach to the bones.
That's not even accounting for the behavior we can interpret based on fossilized footprints! We're actually learning that T-Rex were pretty good parents for instance.
It's a very complex field, and it's amazing how much we can learn from so few clues.
We sometimes have dinosaur fossil records with feathers. So yeah we already know all the Jurassic park movies are wrong but since we gotten used to them we keep the wrong reconstructions
There are actually some fossils of dinosaur mummies, a rare preservation of a rare preservation. For some species these give us direct evidence of their physical appearance beyond their bone structure.
dinosaur mummies
6 year old me would've been scared shitless with this information
Imagine Brendan Fraser fighting some of these fuckers, fuck the third Mummy movie set in China give me Brendan Fraser getting his ass kicked in North Dakota because he unearthed some dinosaur mummy at Hell Creek.
Fossils are more than just bone in many cases, and study of bones can reveal what they were. Example is that T. rex had lips. How would they know that? By looking at the teeth and how they wear down compared to other animals like alligators, etc.
You can also see where the lip muscles attach to the jaw.
The memes that our current Dino images are wrong are very outdated. Our images are probably surprisingly close to reality.
Why donβt you want us to have weird dinosaurs?
We already have them, just follow any paleoartist that microblogs.
Example is that T. rex had lips.
This is actually doing a disservice to all the work paleontologists do in reconstructing. There was indeed a time where there was too much stretching over bones, but this is something they are now very aware of. Also keep in mind reptiles, avians and and mammals have a very different relationship between bones and body. It's mainly mammals that tend to add a lot of bulk like that.
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I still think T-rex was a big chonky birb.
Bro did you take half an hour just to draw that shit?
Edit: I love the drawing chill out you fuckers
Dont worry about that, it only took as long as you took writing that comment.
I fucking love the drawing bro
It's not new. Been around for a long time. I always comment that to draw it out of someone's meme stash. π
Clever girl
he can't be too chunky due to gigantothermia, though he was probably as chunky as an elephant.
Just looking at the skeleton, we would reconstruct a lot of thing wrong.
Camel:
Platypus:
Seal:
Elephant:
This was already done in "All Todays," which features depictions of modern animals as distant-future paleontologists might reconstruct them, given just skeletal remains.
Example of Elephant, Zebra, and Rhino:
'All Todays' Explained - https://obscuredinosaurfacts.com/blog/post/2020/09/16/all-todays.html
Thank you for sharing this. It's interesting.
This seems like a fun way to create new creatures. Take existing skeletons and just try to plop on flesh in unique ways.
Where else would I see a roentgen of a beaver tail?
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