lol meme but the positioning and size of the spines vs the buffalo doesn’t make this likely
Considering the old model is made with shrink-wrapping this is viable option
Submitted 3 weeks ago by Nikls94@lemmy.world to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/b84a4109-2970-48ff-ba39-b2735c6617c1.webp
Comments
Devadander@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Mothra@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
Plus palaeontologists would’ve picked up on other clues if the bones had large muscles attached to them like a buffalo.
Kowowow@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
And the jaw muscles would have to be equally built up to make grabbing and holding make sense, all arm strength no hand strength
seekpie@lemmy.seekpie.nohost.me 3 weeks ago
What is the “fin’s” purpose then?
Devadander@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Display and / or temperature regulation. What’s the ‘purpose’ of any exterior adornment?
Akasazh@feddit.nl 3 weeks ago
Usually weird protrusions on dinosaurs have to do with sexual distinction, rather then function.
Even the horns and neck shield on the triceratops are more about sex than about offense/defense
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Some recent evidence suggests the Spinosaurus may or may not be semi-aquatic. We’ve got a super limited fossil record from this region of Egypt.
mmddmm@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Good. Now cover it in huge colorful feathers.
(Don’t let the fact that it’s wrong stop you.)
Anomalocaris@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
when was “being wrong” stopped anyone?
driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br 3 weeks ago
They always use mammals as examples of modern animals on this examples, but imo they should look for birds/reptiles for that.
hansolo@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
In which case it’s just a 3D crocodile. 4D crocodile? It’s a beefy necked crocodile, OK?
Lumidaub@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Science stop changing spinosaurus for 5 minutes challenge
casmael@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
(Impossible)
ICastFist@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
That’s one hell of a chungusaurus
CaptainBlagbird@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
🤘🏻 Headbangosaurus 🤘🏻
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Party on, Wayne!
Jessica@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
Ah so this is how Monster Hunter came up with the design of Deviljoe
TheYojimbo@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
That’s just a deviljho
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
All Hail Yeetosaurus
altphoto@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
Going back in time could be really confusing.
loomy@lemy.lol 3 weeks ago
😂
emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
That’s a bison, not a buffalo. Buffalo don’t have those humps.
Nikls94@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Dude I don’t even know an oboe from an elbow
Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
Funny, but afaik/iirc the spine things are more like fins, a bit too thin & they lack big anchoring points for giant muscles (where tendons and ligaments attach to bone). Also they are positioned in the middle of the back, not behind the neck (above shoulders).
Perhaps they evolved for display, temperature management, or even for swimming maybe.
Or they were just walking ad billboards.
grue@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Obligatory:
Image
Nikls94@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
And a cat
Image
SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
That does more accurately convey their behavior.
Venator@lemmy.nz 2 weeks ago
That’s just a hairless cat that lost its ears fighting other cats 😅
iheartneopets@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
(Except that’s not how paleo art works anymore)
I know it’s a meme, but when this is posted without clarification, it spreads to people who think it’s real and they regurgitate it as fact
maxwellfire@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
How does paleo art work now? What’s done differently?
someguy3@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It was hotter back then.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yeah man, but it was a dry heat!
WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Mostly this is just an issue with the nature of science. There’s fundamentally just a lot we don’t know about what these creatures looked like. Thankfully, in the last 20-30 years, we’ve learned a lot more. We’ve become a lot better at finding evidence of feathers and other surface details. We may have gotten better at estimating the musculature? I’m not really sure what the current state of knowledge is here.
But the key thing to consider is that science, as a project, is incredibly conservative. Science is all about precisely defining your claims and clearly justifying them, ideally via quantitative analysis. The reason old renderings of dinosaurs look like this is that these represent the threshold of the known. They are scientific renders, containing only the details that we can be reasonably certain actually existed on these animals. You can of course go further and fill in missing details with imagination and reasonable speculation, but this will always be more an exercise in art than science, a speculative exercise. Yes, dinosaurs likely didn’t have this “shrink wrapped” appearance. But what their real appearance was is a guessing game. Yes, it’s plausible spinosaurus had big back muscles rather than a fan, but there are likely also other speculative models people could propose. Maybe the spine isn’t a fan, but the base of some giant peacock-type tail? Maybe it wasn’t a fan, but a series of spikes. Maybe it wasn’t one vertical fan, but two horizontal sheets? Who knows?
Science is an inherently conservative exercise. We tend to forget this. Political conservatives hate science because they hate when reality disagrees with their dogma. But while political conservatives call science woke or liberal, the truth is, institutionally, science is conservative. Ideas move slowly. Major paradigm shifts only occur when overwhelming evidence forces them to. Ideas often take decades to slowly percolate through academia, sometimes only changing because the old generation retires or dies of old age.
Scientists as such are, generally, biased against making unfounded claims and speculation. A lot of scientific training focuses on precisely defining your claims, including the precise limits of those claims. And this bleeds over into scientific renderings. From a scientific perspective, it is often better to make a rendering that you know is almost certainly incorrect, rather than make a likely more correct rendering that you cannot support with evidence.
grue@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I feel like a better way to represent “the threshold of the known” would be sort of the pictorial equivalent of “error bars” — instead of doing one image showing an animal that basically looks like it has mange because that’s all you can be sure of, do a matrix of images that show various extremes of possibilities.