Comment on Dunkle
zikzak025@lemmy.world 1 week agoWell, yes and no.
The premise of the book itself is to highlight that much of what was assumed about dinosaurs, depicted through those artistic representations modeled after modern reptiles, is downright wrong. E.g. newer discoveries that several dinosaur species had feathers, classifying them closer to birds than reptiles (and that birds of today are just as much “dinosaurs” as, say, a crocodile).
Compare the depictions of Deinonychus from the 90’s to today:
The point of the All Todays section is just to make this concept more relatable, by highlighting the fact that many distinguishing features of modern animals would be completely invisible in fossil records. The large ears and trunks of elephants would never survive fossilization, and their feet may not be interpreted as thick, fleshy pads, so they instead drew the elephant more gaunt, with short ears and a bulbous nose to explain the shape of their skull. And certain keratinous features like horns and hooves would not survive either, so that explains the hornless rhino and toed zebra. Not to mention the single most distinguishing features of zebras, the black and white stripes, would never be known.
And FWIW, the depictions aren’t even that far off in terms of skin texture, since the elephant and rhino are already mostly fur-less mammals. The elephant may have too much fur, if anything. Only the zebra seems off for its lack of fur.
But the point is that it’s supposed to be ridiculous, because these styles have just as much grounding as the long-held depictions of dinosaurs as scary, giant lizards. Maybe some are closer to truth than not, but the majority are just artistic license. For all we know, the tyrannosaurus rex could have been covered in rainbow feathers like a giant macaw. It might seem ridiculous and improbable, but so could the stripes of a zebra.
antonim@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I understand, but this is still coming off as “being the general after the battle”. I.e. judging the mistakes done by scientists while the available knowledge was more limited. The shift towards portraying dinosaurs with feathers was triggered by, well, discovering dinosaur fossils with feathers. We made a discovery and corrected accordingly.
Of course we should be aware of the limits of studying and reconstructing prehistorical species in general, I’d say most popular dino media downplays or ignores the difficulties and doubts in the endavour, presenting the conclusions as a given rather than as an educated guess, without showing the “behind the scenes”. But the image of “scary, giant lizards” in popular perception has IMO been on the decline since Walking with Dinosaurs from 1999 - of course, the exaggerated Jurassic Park and its increasingly trashy sequels and similar media have had more of a broad cultural presence, but that’s not much to do with paleontology and serious paleo-art.
zikzak025@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Exactly, and that is to say, that is the entire purpose of the text I mentioned. It’s just an exploration on how fossil records leave so little evidence to make truly educated guesses in reconstructions, and the introduction of new evidence changes our perspective so dramatically.
So yes, the models update to try to be more accurate, but it’s effectively like saying we went from 10% certain to 12% certain. There are still too many unknowables, and should additional evidence come to light at some point in the future, we must assume the possibility that these newer depictions will eventually seem just as comically wrong.