My girlfriend is going to go mad when I overexcitedly show this to her and then talk about dinosaurs for 5 hours.
Posted Jun 9, 2020, 11:37 AM UTC
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In permian lived a lot of animals whose skull looks a lot like a hippopotamus skull, for example the gorgonopsians. So I have imagined that these animals resembled the hippos in their appearance more like a foreign aliens.
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I also have a feeling that there‘s something off about our common synapsid reconstructions
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Note that hippos, being semi-aquatic, should not be wantonly used as a model for all manner of fossil terrestrial mammals, and ESPECIALLY not for dinosaurs. This image does a good job of demonstrating the pitfalls of shrinkwrapping, but it would be too easy to throw hippo-scale blubber on extinct mammals and call it a day without considering their ecology.
The extinct group to which this applies the most are the entelodonts, which were closely related to whales and hippos (whippos!) and have traditionally been reconstructed in the manner of the second image above. A middle ground, depicting entelodonts as closer in facial tissue morphology to modern hippos, while accounting for the terrestrial lifestyle of entelodonts and not simply draping them in a hippo suit, is likely the most solid approach to reconstructing accurate entelodonts.
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Hippos don't have blubber.
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They have big bones
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Maybe we should consider this when reconstructing spino
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I’m gonna stop you right there. Let’s give the good watery boi a month before we rebuild him again, okay?
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Okay, okay
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He’s already a croconewt. No need for any new weird design changes.
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Spinosaurus 2050: just a fat jump-like sail with mouth, no legs, no arms.
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This just in Spinosaurus had two sails.
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I feel like the fact it’s a semi-aquatic predator with clear convergent traits to crocodilians implies a similar appearance. But then again, wtf do I know.
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wtf do I know
I think all palaeontologists say the same when they see Spinosaurus on the news again
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I once suggested to friends that he was hump-backed like a bison and it did not go well!
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Thankyou, I've wanted something like this.
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Wow, there's even a specific sub for this kind of thing. Only seen a few similar posts here.
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Are you saying that you can talk about dinos for 5 hours and have a gf? I thought it was one or the other lol.
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I know this is a joke, however, my wife has found more dinosaur fossils than I have and has at least one specimen in the Smithsonian's collection. She's a nightmare at shark teeth collecting as I scrabble to get what's left after she makes one (1) fucking pass.
I guess, maybe I can name more species? She has the fossil-finding skills, though.
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I’d love it if I had a guy talking about dinosaurs!
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This is a very wholesome subreddit full of Dino nerds 10/10
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Besides humans, are there any animals that can successfully take down an adult hippo, one on one?
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I'm pretty sure an elephant wouldn't want to try to begin with but an adult male african elephant probably could.
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Elephants can, but hippos usually show them deference. White Rhinos also can, but are generally stupid enough for the hippo to spook them with a mock charge. If it doesn't work though, the rhino can easily gore them.
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Another adult hippo
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A cryptid called the Mokélé Mbembé, in Congo, is said to be dangerous to hippos. In fact, the absence of hippos is thought to be a indication of a Mokélé's territory. That being said it's not even sure that it exists.
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It almost certainly doesn’t exist, most African cryptic reptiles like that can be attributed to early European explorers clout chasing.
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[deleted]
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It makes me happy to think there possibly could have been a bunch of chubby bois running around in the past.
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Seeing this, are there reconstructions that take dinosaurs under this concept? As in, absurdly chunky dinosaur?
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I've seen at least one drawing of a chunky T. Rex. I don't think I've seen anything really serious though, most are just made for fun. It's a shame because I like the idea.
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The alien reconstruction reminds me of an Odogaron
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Fuckin' spastic asshole won't stay still to get whacked by my big ass sword.
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Goddamn hyperactive meat weasel
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Have you seen All Yesterday's? Might keep you and the gf occupied all month.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Yesterdays
Great book, 10/10
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I always think about this with estemmenosuchus.
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Can't you make AI "guess" a more natural reconstruction of fossils?
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You could definitely train an AI to do that. I was thinking the same thing after I saw this.
You could train it on photographs of animals and their bones then have it generate dinosaurs and other extinct animals from their fossils.
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Okay but I absolutely dig that middle illustration. That looks so bad ass
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The caption is incredibly relatable. Literally every Saturday morning breakfast... I feel bad but can never shut up.
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I mean, you can still see that skull.
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Dino gang for life.
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Did you saw the comments in that post tho?
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Cool!
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Never mention the book "All Yesterdays". Its full of stuff like this ...
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Makes me wonder about Uintatherium.
Ok yeah that ones raising some flags
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that skull is pretty accurately reconstructed because they have ossicones like giraffes which would be sticking out as opposed to having a lot of flesh attached to their faces like hippos
Yeah i could see that, looks like someone smacked his brain with a bat while he was still cooking tho lmao
I was gonna say that’s one of the weirdest skulls I’ve ever seen haha, it’s like someone was just dragging the dimensions around in MS paint lol
Something tells me the head isn't quite as dramatic as the reconstruction on the wiki page...