/sci/ - Science & Math

I would want a T-Rex, because that would be really cool. Seeing whether or not it had feathers and such would be good for biologists and archaeologists alike.

>>6719225
>Not having a utahraptor battlemount
Do you even autistic imagination?

>>6720216
>As far as I know, there were no aquatic dinosaurs.
>As far as I know, there were no aquatic NON AVIAN dinosaurs.
ftfy. Penguins are dinosaurs

>>6722671
What's this shit,a Chocobo or something?

>>6722671
these pictures make me think of how stunningly beautiful natural scenery can be, and I wonder why humans built such butt ugly cities to block that out

>>6722707
>What's this shit,a Chocobo or something?
Nope, only a glorious feathered dinosaur.

You're not a scalefag, are you?

>>6722707
All birds are dinosaurs by modern phylogenetic standards, just like humans are monkeys, mammals, vertebrates, animals and eukaryotes.

>>6722713
This. Stupid grade school curriculum still use Linnaean taxonomy, and Linnaean grades are really only good for describing ecological niches

e.g., the only use of using "reptile" to the exclusion of birds would be to describe how a monitor lizard and a camain might fill a similar ecological role (or similar analogy), even though birds are classed as sauropsida and therefor reptiles

They really do need to teach cladistics in schools, but the Ken Ham crowd will fight tooth and claw to make sure that never happens

Sorry, and I fucking PROMISE this is not b8 or troll, but the last time I talked about dinosaurs with somebody I was probably in the 8th grade. No, not because I don't think they are cool. They are fucking tits.

But this whole feather thing? Dinosaurs were all feathered now? What? Somebody fill me in. This is the first I'm hearing in my whole life of feathered dinosaurs. Talk to me. I'm confused. Jurassic Park.

>>6722739
Someone proposed that some dinosaurs may have been feathered and a bunch of retards took it to 11 and are now claiming every dinosaur had feathers.

>>6722739
Here's the nutshell version. I'll try to use more layman's terms, and not all of the autistic jargon


A small dinosaur called sinosauropteryx was discovered with down-like feather impressions in 1996. It's more primitive than dromaeosaurids (raptors) and many other species, indicating feathers had evolved much previously thought. It was the first non-bird animal found with feathers.

A few years after, a well preserved fossil of a small raptor called microraptor was found with impressions of complete wings with fully formed feathers, and yet it's closer to velociraptor than to birds, indicating fully formed wings and even gliding had evolved quite a bit earlier than true birds. Microraptor was well quite adapted for gliding.

Later, Tianyulong, a primitive herbivore was found with quill like structures, and is completely unrelated to meat eaters, indicating body-cover had evolved early on in the dinosaur family tree. This shows that feather-like structures were ancestral to all dinosaurs

Psittacosaurus, which is distantly related to triceratops also had a quill structure of sorts.

Also, yutyrannus, an early cousin of T rex was found completely covered in similar down-like feathers, and it was gigantic.

~~~~~~~~~

Much of this is due to the recent explorations of Chinese fossil beds, whose fine grained sediments are better for preserving soft tissues such as feathers. By comparison, sediments in Montana fossil beds out west are much rougher.

Not to say that all of them had feathers, many large ones would likely have lost feathers just as elephants and rhinos tend to lose most of their body hair. At this point it's clear that body cover of some sort or another was pretty common across the board. And complex feathers were common in advanced theropods (bipedal meat eaters)

Pic: Microraptor. Pigment remains indicate it's feathers were a glossy black, like a crow

>>6722746
>now claiming every dinosaur had feathers.
Gr8 strawman m8.

No paleontologist has ever claimed "all" dinosaurs had feathers. Many of them didn't, we know this because many left skin impressions

>Someone proposed that some dinosaurs may have been feathered
We have fossil evidence to confirm many species did. See pic, also microraptor

Please, do some research before you shitpost

Dumping, for all of the deniers
Pic: tianyulong

yutyrannus

eosinopteryx

>>6704101
Wouldn't that mean we're getting less oxygen,what if it leaves us for good?

>>6722775
Well answered, thank you. This whole thing (less the feathered dino's and more people's reactions to it) gives me quite a chuckle TBH

almost made a bad chicken or egg joke, but nah

>>6722795
then everything that needs oxygen to survive either adapts or dies (protip: most die)

>>6722795
It fluctuates. There's other factors involved, such as the climate (thus effecting vegetation and photosynthetic algea levels), as well as the carbon cycle (both oceans an the mantle can trap or release CO2)

Jurassic oxygen levels weren't too terribly different from today. Carboniferous levels (the "age of insects") were insanely high. The earth was basically a jungle in the carboniferous, hence the coal beds laid down by carboniferous forests

Anyway, among other things >>6705541 is a likely cause. Conifer needles are hard to digest, and fermentation of vast quantities of vegetable matter is a very efficient manner of digestion

I'd rather resurrect cool extinct mammals.

>>6703967
The Spanish Flu

too many damn people on this planet

>>6703967
>If you could resurrect a single specimen of any extinct organism to study, which one would you bring back?

One of those ancient human types that supposedly lived for hundreds of years, so we can get some real longevity research done.

>>6703967
Why not start with something that went extinct only a few hundred years ago.

>>6723315
Because that's fucking stupid

>>6723437
What did you just say to me?

Even if we could piece together a dino genome somehow, we'd need a viable surrogate mother for gestation. It's going to be hard to find a compatible mother animal for a species that went extinct 65 yr ago, or longer.

The only way I can imagine it working is with some serious reverse engineering of the dinosaurs genome based on modern relatives and whatever protein we can find. And then we'd either have to successfully clone each ancestor of their closest modern relative in order to use it as a surrogate mother for the next oldest ancestor, or engineer an artificia womb.

>>6723457
I don't think anyone realistically thinks it's possible to resurrect extinct dinosaurs. Getting the dinosaur DNA is much more of a problem (impossible) than finding a surrogate mother.

>>6723315

Maybe you just misunderstood the question, or you're so unbelievably boring individual that you make some of the most mentally retarded people seem like creative geniuses.

>>6703967
Neanderthals. Prehistoric humans.

Would be cool to learn more about them and their behavior.

A neanderthal human child. A child because, then we can get a better approximation of their mental development and capabilities relative to modern homo sapiens.

>>6722860
Edgy

>>6723471
>>6723475
Yeah, but what if the neanderthal feels like a freak living amongst modern humans? If they are as intelligent as us, then they might feel like an unwanted and unloved expirement. It could produce a very miserable life

Lieopleurodon

You have to wonder how such a strange creature evolved like that for life in the oceans. I mean there's nothing else like it (Large, lizardlike body with fins instead of claws and a long, gaping maw) living in the oceans, so how would it fair in the oceans today?

>>6723663
>Lieopleurodon
The real 7-10 meter one, or that silly 25m nonsense from Walking With Dinosaurs?

REAL liopleurodon was no larger than an orca. All of that super-giant 80ft shit is based off a few toothmarks on other animals, which probably were inflicted at a young age and then stretched as the victim grew and healed

>>6723677

Regardless of size, I just find it an interesting creature. I know that in reality it wasn't that massive

>>6723652
>If they are as intelligent as us, then they might feel like an unwanted and unloved expirement. It could produce a very miserable life

There is always rape.

>>6723697
Just making sure, I'm one of the in-house paleo-autists. Apparently there's a theropod craniologist and a basal archosaur paleontologist on /an/

>>6723652

That would be a very interesting scientific observation.

>sounding edgy when not trying to, sorry

>>6723475
>>6724026

Okay, make it a male. He'll be a freak, but he'll be buff and many times stronger than any human beings. Many homo sapiens girls will offer themselves for him. Part of being unwanted solved right there.

>>6723475
>>6724026 (You)

Okay, make it a male. He'll be a freak, but he'll be buff and many times stronger than any other existing human being. Many homo sapiens girls will offer themselves for him. Part of being unwanted solved right there.

>>6723464

We can look at the DNA of their closest modern relatives, extrapolate from that what we know about their environment, reverse-engineer proteins we can recover from fossils, and run computer simulations / just be creative to fill in the gaps.

I certainly down believe our knowledge of genomics has matured enough.

But roughly reproducing the genome of a creature from 65M yr. ago is still within the realm of definitely possible science.

>>6723652

>Yeah, but what if the neanderthal feels like a freak living amongst modern humans? If they are as intelligent as us, then they might feel like an unwanted and unloved expirement. It could produce a very miserable life

You would clone at least several neanderthals simultaneously so they have some sense of community.

>>6722671
Aquatic in the sense that they live primarily underwater and derive their oxygen through gills or some equivalent. Context, context.

>>6722713
Humans aren't monkeys. We have a common ancestor. Humans are primates, however.

Similarly, birds are descendants of dinosaurs, but a sparrow is not a dromaeosaur. When a paleontologist says the word "bird," they'll always mean an animal in class Aves, whereas when they use the word "dinosaur," they'll always be referring to some animal which is not in that class.

>>6724056
See: Jack Horner

>>6724091
>Humans aren't monkeys. We have a common ancestor. Humans are primates, however.
Fucking Linnaean faggots and their paraphylitic groups:

>"Monkey" includes the groups haplorhini and simians, except tail-less simians which we've arbitrarily decided to classify as non monkeys.

Disgusting.

>>6724091
>When a paleontologist says the word "bird," they'll always mean an animal in class Aves, whereas when they use the word "dinosaur," they'll always be referring to some animal which is not in that class.

Also, that's wrong. Paleontologists don't use Linnaean taxonomy at all. Serious biologists of any kind don't use it either. Birds are dinosaurs, birds are reptiles, humans are monkeys, and giraffes are fish.

Common ancestors is the only meaningful and objective system of classifying organisms, anything else is arbitrary bullshit.

>>6722775
all of those examples you mentioned were found in china or adjacent asian countries. Do you think it's possible feathered dinosaurs were a product of Mesozoic china and not spread worldwide?

>>6724091
Humans are monkeys, actually.

The distinction between man and monkey is completely arbitrary and non-scientific. We're a subspecies of old world monkeys (Cercopithecoidea).

>>6724091
Humans are monkeys, actually.

The distinction between man and monkey is completely arbitrary and non-scientific. We're a subspecies of old world monkeys (Catarrhini).

>>6724656
We are monkeys, but we aren't a subspecies of the family, we're an entirely separate species. Since species can be objectively determined, the distinction between man and ape is scientific and non-arbitrary. It merely doesn't abide by phylogenic conventions.

>>6724668
>species can be objectively determined
>the distinction between man and ape is scientific and non-arbitrary
My point is that the distinction itself only exists in non-scientific context. There is no scientific distinction to be made. The word "ape" isn't useful for describing specific anthropoids because the definition is too broad.

The only thing that is objective here is that hominoidea is a superfamily of the parvorder catarrhini.

>>6705635
The truth hurts, anon.
But not this one. Get over it.