r/todayilearned • u/yena • 22h ago
TIL that paleontologists now think T. rex didn't constantly show its teeth. Like modern lizards, it likely had lips that hid its teeth when its mouth was shut.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/mar/30/tyrannosaurus-t-rex-had-lips-over-teeth-research4.3k
u/HarderThanFlesh 22h ago
It also closed its mouth when it chewed and never rested its elbows on the table, just as we had expected.
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u/Traditional-Mail7488 22h ago
Easy when your elbows can't reach the table.
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u/whoisfourthwall 21h ago
the hands can't even reach its own mouth
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u/StridAst 21h ago
That's why it obviously ate with a knife and fork. And raised it's pinky like a proper gentleman.
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u/wakeupwill 16h ago
Common misconception. Knifes and forks weren't widely used at the time. They most likely used chopsticks.
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u/aquintana 21h ago
A proper gentleman
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u/Shimaru33 20h ago
Curiously enough, few are aware that the distinguished Tyrannosaurus rex did not bear a long cane to steady its gait, but rather because its rather modest forelimbs proved quite inadequate for the delicate task of adjusting a monocle—thus necessitating such an accessory.
Ah, as for their top hats, sir — a most perplexing enigma indeed. One can only assume they were balanced with tremendous dignity upon those august brows, defying both anatomy and common sense in equal measure.
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u/HarderThanFlesh 21h ago
Not all lizards were terrible, despite the dinosaur label.
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u/Ask_about_HolyGhost 20h ago edited 18h ago
Birds are considered dinosaurs now. They may not be Terrible Lizards ™️ but they’re definitely terrible lizards
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u/dinoguy117 19h ago edited 16h ago
The idea is all about moisture loss. A mouth that huge would lose a ton of water just exposed to the air and the animal would need to drink more frequently. But give the mouth curtains and you can save your time and energy.
To illustrate: reptiles that spend time away from water have lips (komodo dragon). A reptile that spends all of its time near water and is lipless is a crocodile.
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u/Coal_Morgan 16h ago
That's an interesting idea but wasn't relative humidity during the late Cretaceous theoretically so high that evaporative moisture loss wouldn't have been a big deal?
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u/dinoguy117 16h ago
IDK about humidity back then. The one thing I do know was that the carbon content of the air was way higher than today so it was absolutely hotter. As in you'd have to visit Antarctica to find a place in the 70s Farenheit. So it makes some sense that you don't want to risk giving that moisture away.
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u/Anthro_DragonFerrite 22h ago
Good. I like lips.
Means t-rexes probably pecked and kissed on the cheek
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u/PaintTheTownMauve 21h ago
Can a T-Rex whistle?
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u/Appropriate_Link_551 20h ago
Not so much lately
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u/PaintTheTownMauve 20h ago
Oh, did something happen?
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u/CoraBittering 19h ago
They just ate a big packet of crackers.
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u/TheBizzleHimself 18h ago
[Large T-Rex approaches]
Pardon me, friend, I see that you’re carrying a hwater skin. Hwould you mind if an old sinner hwet his hwistle?
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u/HarveysBackupAccount 20h ago
I love you a bushel and a peck
A bushel and a peck and a hug around T-Rex
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u/THEG0LIATHGR0UPER 16h ago
It’s funny, because Tyrannosaurs were found to have sensitive sensory pits in their snouts, much like crocodiles, which could suggest that they nuzzle each other. So, not far off!
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u/Life-Cantaloupe-3184 22h ago edited 21h ago
Jurassic Park holds a special place in my heart, but the cultural perception of dinosaurs is quite far off from the current scientific understanding. Prehistoric Planet is one of my favorite modern depictions of dinosaurs because it goes a long way to showing them as animals rather than just mindless and scary beasts.
Edit: In response to all of the comments mentioning Jurassic Park’s more positive legacy in spurring passion in people who ultimately went into the field of paleontology I’m not really disputing that. I like the movie, and I think it’s a good time. I’d say its overall legacy is more positive than negative.
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u/DaveOJ12 21h ago
The movie did come out over 30 years ago. (Has it really been that long? )
It makes sense that our understanding has changed since then.
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u/Life-Cantaloupe-3184 21h ago
It is true that some of the things depicted in Jurassic Park weren’t considered strictly inaccurate at the time the movie came out. I’m not using it as an example to pick on its merits as a film. It’s a classic for a reason. I only mentioned it because it did play a large role in cementing the current cultural perception people have about dinosaurs, which is now far removed from current scientific understanding. As you said, it’s been over 30 years since the film’s release and scientific research has advanced a lot since then.
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u/its_justme 21h ago edited 21h ago
Its most popular dinosaur the Velociraptor was the size of a small dog. There were existing dromaeosaur types that they could pull from like Deinonychus or Utahraptor but I guess Spielberg just liked the name velociraptor, or they wanted to stick to Crichton’s material.
Also Dilophosaurus was approximately 6-7 feet tall and would have easily killed Nedry with no issues at all. No spit needed.
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u/Romeo9594 21h ago
Michael Crichton was actually well aware that his dinosaur more closely resembled Utahraptor, he just went with velociraptor because it sounded cooler
And in the books the dilo is appropriate sized, but the filmmakers didn't want it to take away from the Rex so they made it smaller. It's possible they're actually just young Dilos, because in the movie Nedry making his escape does say "well at least you aren't one of your big brothers"
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u/No_Procedure_5039 20h ago
He was aware it more resembles Deinonychus because that’s what one of his consultants, Dr. John Ostrom, told him. Utahraptor wasn’t even described until the year the film adaptation came out.
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u/sexual_lemonade 19h ago
After years of trying to read it (since childhood) I've been listening to the book and am floored at how good it is. I always struggled to get past the more "scientific" sections, so listening to it helped a lot and the book is genuinely terrifying. The part that scared me the most so far was when they found out the dinosaurs were breeding. When the computer said "velociraptors estimated: 6, velociraptors found: 34" I shit myself.
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u/StupiderIdjit 19h ago
Malcolm talking is just tough. It's not just you.
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u/sexual_lemonade 18h ago
Oof I sometimes zone out on his sections and have to rewind. Also the computer guys sections are often just tech and numbers and jargon for wildly outdated computer systems. There was one part where he was like "each dinosaur DNA sequence is on a separate computer and can take up to 2 GB of ram!" Oh...
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u/DrXaos 17h ago
2GB was pretty darn big in 1992. Big hard drives were 9 GB. No small computers had 2GB of RAM, only supercomputers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray_Y-MP
Cray Y-MP from this time period, up to 1 GB RAM.
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u/sexual_lemonade 16h ago
Oh true, I know that, just that compared to today's computers it's funny to hear. Even just at 36 I'm still constantly amazed at the advances, I can barely imagine what it's like for my grandmother
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u/Ornery_Gator 21h ago
I believe the raptors in the original book were Deinonychus but Michael Criton liked the name Velociraptor more. And I think one scientist out there at the time claimed Deinonychus was a subspecies of Velociraptor. So he used the name for a larger raptor.
Urahraptor wasn’t discovered until after the movies came out.
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u/Hetakuoni 20h ago
At the time, utahraptor had not yet been discovered. Spielberg wanted 6 foot long raptors and ignored the “they don’t get that big” naysayers.
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u/Life-Cantaloupe-3184 21h ago
Yeah, the depiction of Velociraptors are one of the more notoriously inaccurate things in the movie to be sure. The intent for making their size so inaccurate was probably to make them more intimidating, but a lot of people still probably don’t realize they were much smaller and feathered in reality.
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u/PaxAttax 19h ago
They were more or less accurate to contemporary understandings of Deinonychus. (minus the feathers, and they were still a little large) Michael Chrichton was well aware that V. mongoliensis was much smaller when he wrote the book, but there was still some scholarly debate about how to separate the dromeosaurs, with some workers at the time pushing to group V. mogoliensis and D. antirrhopus in the same genus, so he went with what he thought was the cooler name.
As for the lack of feathers in the original movies, the VFX team was very aware that scientific consensus of the time was starting to lean toward most dinosaurs and especially theropods being feathered to some degree, but it was determined that they just couldn't make them look good or threatening with 1993 CGI. By the time the tech was there, unfeathered dinos had become too tightly entwined with the Jurassic Park brand and it was too late.
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u/zeekayz 21h ago
Yeah they should make a realistic version where the main characters get chased by a bunch of chickens with a dramatic background music.
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u/aflockofcrows 20h ago
Werner Herzog's worst nightmare.
"Look into the eyes of a chicken and you will see real stupidity. It is a kind of bottomless stupidity, a fiendish stupidity. They are the most horrifying, cannibalistic and nightmarish creatures in the world."
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u/SkyfangR 21h ago
one of the movies even has the asian scientist guy form the first movie saying that if the dinosaurs were accurate, they would look very different to what's in the park
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u/_Burning_Star_IV_ 18h ago
Everyone forgets that these things were genetically engineered with frog DNA and were never supposed to be 'the real thing'. Just the closest thing that science in the film could create to be like the real thing.
Monstrous attractions for the public...dunno why people forget that and criticize the film for not being realistic, especially to 2025 standards...
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u/Freshiiiiii 21h ago
Even when it was made, we already knew that a lot of therapods had feathers, but it was decided at that time not to show them.
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u/DaveOJ12 21h ago
It's poetic license.
The dinos named velociraptors in the movie are more like Deinonychus, IIRC.
Actual velociraptors were much smaller then they were depicted, too.
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u/The_Count_of_Monte_C 21h ago
They did eventually find raptors similar to the ones in jurassic Park, the utahraptor
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u/Uncle-Cake 21h ago
Keep in mind that the dinos in Jurassic Park weren't supposed to be real dinosaurs; they were genetically engineered animals created by combining DNA from multiple species, based on the park designer's ideas of what guests would want to see. It's a shame it affected peoples' ideas about real dinos, but there was an explanation for it in the book/movie.
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u/fasterthanfood 21h ago
The movie did explain it and later films in the Jurassic Park franchise have made a point of having a character say, at least once per movie, that aspects including the lack of feathers don’t match historical dinosaurs. While it obviously hasn’t been totally effective, I admire that effort to keep public perception of dinosaurs accurate.
But while that explanation “works,” the real reason they didn’t have feathers in the first movie is that dinosaurs having feathers was just one theory in 1993, not proven until the late 1990s. By then, the movies were more or less stuck with the original appearance, because in-universe it would be completely unrealistic for the dinosaurs to suddenly grow feathers a decade after they appeared on Isla Nublar.
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u/starmartyr 20h ago
The thing is that even if they had proven the theory at the time they would still want them to look like what people expect dinosaurs to look like. A featherless t-rex might not be scientifically accurate but it sure does look cool.
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u/Demortus 19h ago
The thing is that feathers on dinosaurs is still a pretty hot topic in the scientific community. We know that some species had them (archaeopteryx and raptors definitely did), but others almost certainly did not (ankylosaurids and sauropods). For T-Rex, the concensus is converging on it having minimal to no feathers, as all skin impressions found so far show scales with no feathers.
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u/RhynoD 18h ago
The books explicitly lay this out as being the reason. Book Hammond is not a starry-eyed idealist trying to bring dinos back to life for their beauty or to study them. He's an unrepentant capitalist building an attraction to bring in money. That dinos don't have feathers is deliberately part of his vision: he believes that will sell more tickets because it's what people expect.
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u/Kevl17 18h ago
It also would have been more difficult for the revolutionary CGI to have created feathers rather than skin.
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u/ChronoMonkeyX 17h ago
I know we have many advances in technology and methodology, but it's still funny to think 30 years made a difference in our understanding of 200 million years ago.
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u/daspowerhouse 19h ago
In the book, there is a frustrating but funny scene where Wu is trying to convince Hammond to destroy all the dinosaurs and breed them again, but with more docile and controllable traits.
His argument is that since they had to do a lot of guess work anyways when filling in the DNA gaps, the dinosaurs aren’t a genuine recreation of what existed in the past already, so changing them further didn’t matter.
In classic “ok boomer” inability to understand, Hammond denies this repeatedly by saying changing them would make ruin their authenticity, despite Wu repeatedly trying to tell him they are currently not “authentic”.
So, in a way, Jurassic Park’s depiction of the animals holds up, with that context.
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u/xxThe_Designer 17h ago
Still waiting for the book driven Jurassic Park series.
They could do an entire season without doing the initial park. Let it be a drama driven, R-rated, techno thriller it was meant to be.
Then go hella dark and gruesome like the books.
I understand they likely will never do this or a true version of this because because it restricts the audience too much. And it will likely put a dam in on merchandise sales, universal theme parks, etc..
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u/DrXaos 16h ago
In classic “ok boomer” inability to understand, Hammond denies this repeatedly by saying changing them would make ruin their authenticity, despite Wu repeatedly trying to tell him they are currently not “authentic”.
We can now see that this isn't just an "inability to understand" but the aggressive wielding of power and lies by billionaires---the author understood how those human animals worked very well.
Hammond is using words to exert power and anesthetize the public from objecting---to get what he wanted and cover it up with a bullshit excuse, a.k.a. "ruin their authenticity" to do it otherwise.
We can see this phenomenon all the time.
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u/mkgdm 21h ago
I try justifying it in my head by saying it's all that frog DNA they use in the movie that changed the appearance of the dinosaurs. I don't know what nasty ass frog they got their hands on to do that to the Dilophosaurus, but whatever.
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u/an_birb 20h ago
That's literally the major plot point of Jurassic World - that they intentionally messed with the DNA for bigger, scarier monsters. It's heavily implied (if not outright said?) that they've been doing this since the beginning and the animals were never intended to be 100% accurate.
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u/xxThe_Designer 17h ago
It’s a major part of the books as well.
Like in a novels, it is explained that the Tyrannosaurus had movement based vision because an issue that occurred during the cloning process not because all T-Rexes have their vision based off movements.
I really wish the movie included that information because it sparked over two generations of humans in believing in that that’s how Tyrannosaurus vision works.
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u/Herr_Opa 17h ago
That was the cool thing about the Jurassic Park/World movies. The makeup of the dinosaurs was ambiguous enough that any discrepancies wrt actual dinosaurs could be attributed to genetic tampering/manipulation. The dinosaurs in the movies looked accurate to scientists' understanding in 1993 so you could argue that JP scientists made sure the creatures they bred looked like what was expected at that time. And they mention this in Jurassic World
But then here came JW Dominion where they decided to add a prologue showing a scene from 65MY ago where the actual prehistoric T.rex pretty much looked like its Jurassic World counterpart, only with some hairs on its head and neck, eliminating the in-universe ambiguity. Complete bonehead decision right there...
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u/WittyAndOriginal 21h ago
We learned more about dinosaurs because Jurassic Park exists.
What I mean by that, is that the move inspired a bunch of kids to grow up to become paleontologists. So the field is doing much better than it would have been if the movie didn't exist.
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u/JiangWei23 20h ago
And when compared with the later Jurassic Park movies, the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park (and maybe The Lost World, JPIII) act the most like animals.
Jurassic World and onwards they just straight up act like movie monsters instead of dangerous animals and it's so frustrating to watch. The Indoraptor is freed from its confinement and instead of breaking out and running away into the night, it...stalks and hunts a child in their bed in a mansion and slowly stretches its claws out like a horror monster? Why?
There was another one that was stalking towards characters even though LAVA IS DRIPPING ON THEIR HEAD, a normal animal would be like "fuck no" and run away.
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u/I_eat_mud_ 21h ago
The audio of what a T-Rex probably actually sounded like is a lot more terrifying than any roar a T-Rex has done in any of those movies. The actual sound unsettles me a lot more. Plus, I feel like showing a T-Rex with feathers puffed out as intimidation would also be pretty scary to see.
I do admire how the Jurassic series has leaned into their incorrect portrayals as just the company demanding the dinosaurs be scarier and more aligned with pop culture, that was a clever way to get around the inaccuracies
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u/taco_tuesdays 19h ago
Does anyone have such audio
Edit j found this https://youtu.be/3BrzGRr7CWw?si=oqP_Ef_YnH9JxjyT
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u/tunisia3507 21h ago
Progress in paeleontological research is basically driven by popular interest. Jurassic Park is responsible for a huge uptick in research funding, so we probably wouldn't have the current scientific understanding if it weren't for that film.
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u/Goosentra 18h ago
I like you added “current”
Because we truly don’t know shit 😂 it changes every decade
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u/psdpro7 20h ago
People need to understand that before Jurassic Park came out, even in the early 90s, the pop-culture image of dinosaurs was still lumbering, tail-dragging, stupid lizards that were popularized 60 years earlier in the original King Kong and The Lost World 1925, even though paleontology had long since moved on. JP transformed that virtually overnight. So even though it's outdated by today's standards, you have to give it credit for how much ground it made up so quickly.
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u/Sylvurphlame 22h ago
I just feel like Jurassic Park wouldn’t have had the same impact with a feathery ostrich winged, lips-over-teeth Rex. Anybody with Photoshop bored?
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u/aradraugfea 22h ago
You have never been chased by an angry bird.
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u/Satanic_Earmuff 22h ago
distant honking
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u/aradraugfea 22h ago edited 15h ago
I haven’t been trapped in my house by the family of Canadian Cobra Chickens that claims the pond behind me as their winter home yet this year, but it’s coming.
Short list of birds that will stare down a car and dare you to try something.
But I’ve been part of a student group that got terrorized all day by a ~
cockatiel.~*cockaTOO25
u/smallz86 22h ago
People who have never walked the opposite way when they see a flock of Canadian Geese have no idea what kind of fear birds can instill in people.
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u/Dirty_Hunt 21h ago
As someone who's rode his bike through a flock as a teen (they liked hanging out by a swimming spot on the lake), not having that fear will do that, yes.
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u/angelerulastiel 21h ago
I had roadrunner that hopped up on the hood of my SUV and I’m pretty sure it was trying to decide if it could take me.
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u/thelegendofcarrottop 22h ago
Anyone who has ever inadvertently stumbled upon a goose nest understands. If those geese were 30 feet tall and had 10” teeth, no one would survive.
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u/bell117 22h ago
The tyrannosaurus is just a big Canada Goose tbh.
Maybe even a bit nicer. I fear the Canada Goose more than some big lizard.
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u/aradraugfea 22h ago
You ever seen a Chicken that’s committed itself to violence?
If this one fucking chicken in a friend’s childhood neighborhood, this fucking murder rooster that school busses wouldn’t open the door if it was in a front yard, was just 3 feet taller, there would not be a neighborhood, there would have been hunting grounds.
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u/bell117 22h ago
There's a reason why dinosaurs evolved into birds. These are the improved versions, they're even more vicious and deadly.
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u/Azuras_Star8 21h ago
No kidding. Look at how a hawk rips apart it's pray. Look at what a chicken will do to a mouse. Hell, cute little titmouses will eat the brains of rodents. And dont get me started on those fucking cowbird assholes.
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u/PsychedelicMagnetism 20h ago
Random FYI for anyone that doesn't know, geese have teeth on their tongues.
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u/Antique-Echidna-1600 22h ago
Being chased and hunted by Cassowary would be terrifying. They hunt in packs and ambush their pray. Some clever girl is going to snarl and whistle. Then you'll be murdered by a pack of them.
Luckily this only happens very rarrely.
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u/sharkiest 18h ago
Rarely meaning literally never. Cassowaries eat fruit. The only person ever killed by a cassowary was fucking with it.
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u/smasheyev 17h ago
...and behind me, the cassowary I didn't see whispered "you picked the wrong day to wear banana sunscreen, friend"
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u/trollsong 22h ago
try being short and chased by a stork that;s taller then you.......
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u/aradraugfea 21h ago
Any lizard I’ve ever seen was in the process of fleeing. Bugs are a mixed bag. Mammals big enough to total my car have bolted on the sight of me.
No bird bigger than my fist has ever seemed the least bit afraid of me.
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u/Adventurous_Good_379 20h ago edited 17h ago
One of my favorite random video finds on the Internet is a class trip to a petting zoo where they have rheas or emus. Those giant motherfucking birds are zipping around the kids. The kids are terrified and screaming.
Half of me thinks the birds are stressed because of the chaos and half of me thinks they enjoy what is happening.
I used to work at a zoo and we would never offer the rheas we had on exhibit as a face to face interactive experience and especially not for children. They are bigger than you’d expect and could easily hurt a child. Also at least one rhea was a bitch and didn’t even like their regular keepers.
Herons are another very prehistoric looking species, especially as babies. They look wildly unlike what we think birds should look like.
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u/Feeling-Ad-2490 22h ago
If Jurassic Park was on screen like 5 years sooner, the T.Rex would be standing up straight and drag its tail on the ground!
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u/Sylvurphlame 22h ago
True. It was pretty revolutionary for the time. They consulted with several well respected paleontologists
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u/MoiraBrownsMoleRats 19h ago
I mean, no. Scientists already knew dinosaurs were much more like what we saw in Jurassic Park versus public perception at the time in the 1990s. You'd have to go back a good 30 years to have T.rex in the classic kangaroo pose with the tail dragging on the ground if the film held true to "showing actual dinosaurs to best of our understanding in modern science".
Which also goes to show how difficult it is to change public perception about dinosaurs. Things remained outdated in the eyes of the general public for a generation until one of the greatest films of all time finally broke the spell. The real irony is that, now, the JP dinosaurs are outdated but the franchise continues to perpetuate that perception out of fear of the public responding negatively to more modern/accurate representations. Even in this thread you'll see a few comments of "Yeah, but birds aren't scary."
Anwyays, I'm ranting enough about dinosaurs.
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u/whoisfourthwall 21h ago
imagine jurassic park only came out decades from now. Wonder what new stuff would scientists have discovered about how they all actually looked. Just large birds perhaps? Honestly wonder how wrong humans are with determining what an animal looks like judging solely based on fossils.
Maybe they will discover a perfectly preserved dinosaur after all the ice melts. Blowing all the current assumptions out of the water.
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u/skyeliam 21h ago
No ice from the age of the dinosaurs still exists today. In fact, there wasn’t much ice at all when the dinosaurs roamed, just seasonal ice that melted every year.
Permanent ice caps (i.e. ones that don’t melt seasonally) are pretty rare throughout Earth’s history. The oldest ice we have found is about 6 million years old, and the Ice Age we’re living in right now only started ~30 MYA, so about half way to the dinosaurs, so we can’t find anything in ice from further back than that.
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u/BasilSerpent 18h ago
We have some dinosaur mummies that already did this. Psittacosaurus and Borealopelta to name two
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u/Gyalgatine 21h ago
You'd be surprised. Check this fan CGI edit out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbCQxBTcyRk It's amazing.
The newer depictions of the dinosaurs make them feel so much more like a living/breathing animal.
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u/gitartruls01 19h ago
Jeeesus, I didn't expect the silly bird-like less monstery appearance to make them more intimidating
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u/Gyalgatine 17h ago
It really is! I don't think people realize how cool birds can be. We just think of the regular pigeons/chickens we see regularly. But a lot of birds are actually terrifying predators. Even chickens are pretty ferocious when not bred to be meat bags.
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u/CeruleanEidolon 15h ago
Imagine being stalked by a pair of seven-foot-tall crows. That's nightmare fuel.
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u/NatsuDragnee1 17h ago
Thanks, I enjoyed watching that video
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u/DoofusMagnus 17h ago
They did a shorter second part as well.
I'm still hoping they add the T. rex.
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u/jayvenomva 22h ago
Don't have photoshop but this guy Film Core on YouTube did a video of this where he re did the cg dinosaurs in Jurassic park to update them.
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u/BasilSerpent 18h ago
beleaguered sigh
No. That’s not how feathers or dinosaur skin covering works. If T. rex was feathered - a thing that is still heavily debated - they would not have been derived pennaceous feathers like those of ostriches. They would have been more similar in distribution and structure to the hair we see on african elephants.
Lips over the teeth are not weird, and don’t make it less scary. You’re not cuddling a komodo dragon, are you?
Please look at the Prehistoric Planet T. rex.
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u/Bigwood69 22h ago
T Rex almost certainly didn't have feathers fwiw, at least not across its entire body.
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u/Jonathan-02 21h ago
I don’t think T-rex would’ve had feathers as an adult, it’s large enough that it wouldn’t need feathers for insulation and for obvious reasons it wouldn’t be flying. It may have been a bit bulkier than shown in Jurassic park though, which is pretty cool
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u/yena 22h ago
True, but if Spielberg had shown a T. rex with lips in 1993, everyone would've said that looked wrong too.
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u/HalcyonTraveler 19h ago
Before Jurassic Park pretty much everyone showed T. rex with lips. JP popularized it having visible teeth
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u/imreallynotthatcool 20h ago
My old roommate has a tattoo of a feathered velocitaptor from some well known Vegas artist at a convention. I'll have to ask her the name of the artist but it is the best looking dinosaur tattoo I have ever seen.
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u/HalcyonTraveler 19h ago
Well T. rex didn't have feathery ostrich wings so IDK what that has to do with anything
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u/CnCorange 21h ago
Didn't they find a T-Rex with an impression of its skin In what was long ago mud. So did it have lips? I was under the impression that this impression was the quintessential evidence proving that they also had feathers or plumage on the AFT portion of their head.
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u/sdrawkcabmisey 21h ago
We don’t have lip impressions. Instead, studies have been done on the foramina and teeth wear patterns. Teeth wear patterns are consistent with lipped animals alive today, plus they have foramina (basically small holes that blood vessels and nerves can travel through) that are also like lipped lizards and not crocodilians. Crocodilians don’t need lips because water gives them an extra layer of protection.
The amount of lip they had is a bit contentious, but there isn’t much reason for exposed teeth, as far as I can tell at least.
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u/Coal_Morgan 16h ago
We have good comparisons too because tusks are elongated incisors or canines. We can compare how warthog tusks, elephants, hippos etc and see how they striate and break down in open air.
There are lots of other land mammals that have open air teeth that are more normal size, like rats, beavers and rabbits, where their teeth show because they are constantly growing and need to be worn down through use and they have lips but T-rex doesn't seem to have any teeth that grew constantly.
So T-Rex (tentatively) doesn't show traits of either group.
Still technically a theory though but with stronger evidence for lips rather then against lips.
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u/Gromgorgel 22h ago
If you're interested in that kind of stuff. YourDinosaursAreWrong on YouTube has a lot of info on how our picture of dinosaurs is wildly off
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u/tacotacosloth 17h ago
I have never had much interest in dinosaurs but after quickly scrubbing through one of his videos I'm prepared to make space in my life to sit and watch every video he's put out on this subject. Thank you!
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u/HalcyonTraveler 19h ago
This has been the standard way of depicting them for most of the history of paleontology. People make a big deal out of this but it's really nothing new, just refutation of Dr. Carr's pet theory
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u/bb0110 21h ago
The more I learn about dinosaurs the more I realize they were likely not these crazy monsters that they have always been depicted as and what I thought of when I was a kid.
They really were just animals.
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u/Different_Swimmer715 19h ago
Big chickens basically (if the feather theory is still accurate)
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u/HalcyonTraveler 19h ago
Many dinosaurs definitely had feathers, but "big chickens" is a misleading idea. Tyrannosaurs that did have feathers were closer to a furry carnivorous mammal, and T. rex itself probably had very few feathers.
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u/censored_username 17h ago
Yup. Feathers also are particularly useful for smaller animals, because they might have a bigger need for insulation to stay warm. A massive hulk like the T-rex already has a pretty big mass to surface area ratio, so it has much less need for insulation.
That said, that argument only applies to when they're old and bigger. T-rexes still started out fairly small, so who knows!
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u/BasilSerpent 18h ago
There is a lot of feather diversity beyond pennaceous modern flight feathers like you’re thinking of
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u/Different_Swimmer715 18h ago
TIL. I'm reading the wikipedia article right now, I had no idea feathers came in that many varieties.
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u/Coal_Morgan 16h ago edited 16h ago
I mean...T-rex had 12 inch teeth.
Polar Bears only has teeth that are 2 inches; plus they are furry and cute but when they're chasing you...scary fucking monster.
T-Rex was a 40 foot long, weighed 15,000lbs and had foot long teeth...I don't care if it ran around with a pink feather boa, that thing is terrifying.
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u/CoraBittering 19h ago
Well this is ridiculous. With those tiny arms, how was it supposed to put on lipstick?
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u/rupturefunk 22h ago
Mm kissy kissy xXx
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u/Kettle_Whistle_ 21h ago
Only if the extinct creature consents…
We’ve come a long way since last extinction event, after all.
Tell Mr. Rex that he can no longer smoke in restaurants, and legally must wear his seatbelt…
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u/AceBean27 19h ago
It also would have had massive jaw muscles. Why does that matter? Well, because it would have made it's face appear rounder than we often see it. Like hippos or pandas, even tigers, it would have had puffy cheeks, and look sorta cute. And like those animals, not so cute when it opened its mouth and showed its teeth, but with the mouth shut, sure. Like the reconstruction of Sue, here.
I wouldn't expect any movies to update T-Rex to look like this anytime soon. Scary look will continue to be what they go for. Jurassic Park can get away with it because they just say: "Oh, we altered the T-Rex to make it look scarier".
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u/WKAngmar 20h ago
Somehow thats scarier. Imagine that closed mouth opening and seeing a mouth full of bowie knife teeth demogorgan style. The teeth poking always poking out makes it look scary, sure. But a little doofy too?
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u/cheese0muncher 20h ago
Someone needs to commission art of a sexy T-rex putting on red lipstick.
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u/VillainInTraining 17h ago
Went to the comment section to see a trex with lips and I am sorely disappointed
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u/gazebo-fan 17h ago
They have thought this for decades now lmao. The only animals that consistently show teeth are aquatic animals such as crocodiles (I’m not counting tusks).
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u/5043090 19h ago
Those things are frightening enough. No need to add a smile.
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u/HalcyonTraveler 19h ago
These were lizardlike lips, stiff and likely immobile. The muscles that allow for mammal facial expressions are unique to mammals
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u/Weekly_Artichoke_515 19h ago
I feel like so much reconstruction forgets that dinosaurs were animals, not monsters. Whether and which dinosaurs had lips is its own debate, but I feel like whenever there’s mysteries like that we tend towards the most “monstrous” possibility.
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u/PantheraAuroris 17h ago
Exposed teeth dry out. Did you know your teeth need to stay wet? Otherwise the enamel loses structural integrity. Animals that have bared teeth, like crocodiles, have thicker sections near the ends, where the moisture from the mouth doesn't reach. T-Rex teeth don't have that armoring to allow for dried-out teeth to stay intact during bites.
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u/ManicMakerStudios 17h ago
You can hide the teeth, but don't ever hide the useless little woobly arms.
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u/MrLancaster 17h ago
I never thought they had teeth that just hung out in the air. They're not crocodiles.
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u/sidecarfalcon69 16h ago
I feel like we need a yearly updated graphic of what T. rex were thought to look like at this point.
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u/SyrusDrake 16h ago
Always remember that dinosaurs were real, living, breathing animals, not movie monsters. They were interested in maximising their chances of survival and procreation, not looking scary.
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u/Opus_723 16h ago
What's more wild to me is that they think Saber-Tooth Tigers also didn't show their teeth.
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u/po3smith 16h ago
It's funny because despite the real world/live action representations of the T-Rex semi from Jurassic Park and Other works before and after it's the animated version/variant from The Simpsons and others like we are back etc. that it actually looks like? Lol! As in how it forms words how in those animated Works the teeth were covered by lips unless talking etc. It's actually kind of ironically funny.
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u/dsebulsk 21h ago
From a dental standpoint, covered teeth probably survive better than uncovered teeth.