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[ChairmanPoo]

Jesus Christ what's that red one.

Amphicoelias fragillimus. 

Largest dinosaur thought to have existed.

Just read the article.

TBH, considering that all evidence of it's existence is conveniently disappeared, and no other fossils have been found, I find the suspicions of it being "Piltdown 2" to be at the very least understandable.

[Muz]

Eh, no surprise. There's always something new for science to discover. Marine biology is probably not even as detailed as dinosaur biology is. I'm personally hoping that dinosaurs were really dragons.

[Josephus]

I'm not.

If they were, I'd be all depressed because the dragons all died out or evolved into birds.

[Il Palazzo]

I'm not.

If they were, I'd be all depressed because the dragons all died out or evolved into birds.

They did not. They lost the evolutionary battle to the newly emerged(now also extinct) species of eques errantus.

[Josephus]

Well played, sir. Well played.

[woose1]

This:


to this:


Evolution scores another one for the winning team.

[Africa]

Guys is it wrong that I've never heard of Torosaurus?

[Josephus]

You were never a six-year old with dinosaur books! And that's very wrong.

[RedKing]

I've never heard of Torosaurus either. And I *was* a six-year old with dinosaur books.

Of course, that was long enough ago that the book had like ten dinosaurs, period. 
I took my daughter to a natural history museum not too long ago and I didn't know half of the dinosaurs there. 

[Josephus]

Man, really? I remember the 1988 dinosaur books were pretty comprehensive. They had Acrocanthosaurus, revised Spinosaurs, most of the Tyrannosaurid family, and so on. What they didn't have was the feathers.

[RedKing]

Man, really? I remember the 1988 dinosaur books were pretty comprehensive. They had Acrocanthosaurus, revised Spinosaurs, most of the Tyrannosaurid family, and so on. What they didn't have was the feathers.

Try 1981 for me. I think I still have those Scholastic books somewhere. I know they didn't have Acrocanthosaurus (we have a large Acrocanthosaurus model at the local museum, and I had never heard of it as an adult until we visited). They had the old basics (Tyrannosaurus, Brontosaurus, Diplodocus, Stegosaurus, Triceratops, Hadrosaurus, Archaeopteryx). I think Allosaurus was a fairly "new" dinosaur, as was Troodon, Deinonychus, and Apatosaurus. I don't think they even had velociraptors. 

I'm sure my children will give me a thorough update on the frontiers of paleontological knowledge over the next few years.

[Josephus]

No doubt they'll consider past generations silly for such a notion as "featherless velociraptors".

1981? That means... probably then the prevailing theory regarding sauropods in your books was that they were primarily aquatic? I'm not sure when that theory was stricken from the books for good.

[RedKing]

No doubt they'll consider past generations silly for such a notion as "featherless velociraptors".

1981? That means... probably then the prevailing theory regarding sauropods in your books was that they were primarily aquatic? I'm not sure when that theory was stricken from the books for good.

I think the aquatic theory was mainly for large quadrupeds like Apatosaurus by that point. Depictions of therapods were usually on open plains, IIRC. And yeah, the only thing that had feathers in that book was Archaeopteryx. And even those, they were like "Fossils seem to show that it MIGHT have had feathers".

Personally, I totally buy the Velociraptor --> Chicken theory. Most chickens are still just as vicious, and seem to have mostly reptile-like instincts. Plus, it just feels more badass to think "I'm eating fried mini-raptor".

[Josephus]

I know, man. Have you seen what the vicious little bastards do to prey animals? It's crazy. They'll eat anything smaller than them - rats, lizards, cockroaches - definitely still dinosaurs.

[RedKing]

I once watched a flock of chickens completely shred a live mouse in their pen. That was probably when I lost all sympathy for chickenkind. Knowing that it's basically only the size differential that keeps them from doing the same to us.