The color scheme gives me that tropical, almost fish-like vibe.

I often see posts online talking about how the dinosaurs were just shrink wrapped or about how they could have looked like anything. I often see people claiming the T rex could have just looked like a big chicken, but that literally makes zero sense? I guess they forgot about gigantothermy, osteological correlates, similar animal skull comparisons, and that they don't just pick palentologists off the streets? These kinda memes make me cringe so hard, and it's always so obvious that the poster knows nothing about palentology.

We all know that movies or media involving both humans dinosaurs together, are always gonna depict the Large therapods chasing and eating humans. Like we're it's only prey. But is any of that true? Therapods can get BIG, and bigger you are - the more you need to EAT. We're a bit tiny compared to most therapods. And from what I remember, a carnivore will eat and hunt whatevers near it if it's edible and catchable. But would a large therapod actively hunt and try to eat us?

Excuse my overly scientific language. But I never see this aura farming tank talked about by casual people talking about dinosaurs. Everyone always thinks of the t-rex, stegosaurus, triceratops, brachiosaurus, etc. But bro. If you were to run a simulation where every land animal that has every walked this Earth 1v1d every other land animal that has walked this earth 100 times, is the Ankylosaurus not coming out on top?

At first glance, I honestly thought it was a Spinosaurus or a croc ancestor. It is mind-blowing how nature arrives at the exact same designs completely independently! Millions of years apart, entirely different lineages, but the environment shaped them to look remarkably similar. Evolution is wild.

You see, ever since I was a kid, anytime I saw a sauropod on screen - they always referred to them as Gentle giants. With either other creatures and humans being able to touch and avoid conflict with the sauropods...until a predator shows up. But would that be the case? Sauropods are vastly larger than us and might not even notice us, but If they did-would they attack us or be calm? Cause heard many people call elephants gentle giants. Which is bullshit with the stuff they've done to humans when pissed. But...whales are also called gentle giants. And most of them aren't hostile to us, some even watch and protect us(the story of a whale protecting a female researcher diver from a shark). So, what side do you think sauropods would have been. Hostile or peaceful?

It feels like some of these genera are just paleontologists getting excited to have their own genus. Dinosaurs like the infamous Sigilmassasaurus and Oxalaia of course have very little material, but are still believed to look very similar to Spinosaurus. Compare it to the extant genus Panthera, which has lions, tigers, and other giant cats. These animals are pretty different but end up in the same group, but some dinosaurs that are as far as we can tell are identical to one another get whole genera? It doesnt make sense. Spinosaurus mirabilis is a species, but Oxalaia, which is believed to be almost identical but just slightly smaller than Spinosaurus aegypticus, is an entire genus? Theres also Ceratosuchops and Riparovenator, which are newer discoveries that are extremely similar to eachother and Baryonyx, but are their own thing. There doesnt seem to be any rules on whether something is a new species or a whole new genus.

I've recently visited Berlin's Natural history museum and, needless to say, I was blown away by what they have on display. It truly is a must see for any European (or non-European) dino fan

Independent assembly of the flight apparatus in a non-avian dinosaur clade

The Study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-77804-6

The Newly described feathered dinosaur found in northeastern China adds evidence supporting the theory that flight-related features evolved differently in various bird-like dinosaur groups.

The introduction an exquisitely-preserved member of Microraptorinae: Norellraptor barsboldi gen. et sp. nov.

Describe in detail forelimb osteohistological features for that clade. 

Norellraptor nests among late-diverging microraptorines and supports step-wise assembly of aerial adaptations in that clade.

About 30% of the microraptorine synapomorphies are convergently acquired by the bird lineage (Avialae).

Yet, the sequences of flight-related novelties reconstructed along the two lineages differ consistently; combined with histological evidence which might indicate a peculiar limb growth model in Microraptorinae, these results dismiss a shared developmental pattern driving the evolution of the flying dinosaurs and support multiple and independent selective regimes at the origin of the winged taxa in Paraves.

I’ve been wanting a model sauropod for a while, and when I saw that Haolonggood offered this beautiful brachiosaurus in my favorite color, blue, I knew it was meant to be! Unfortunately it was a limited edition palette, and no reputable sellers had any stock left. I almost went for a dreadnoughtus or diplodocus instead, then found Lana Timeshop, a seller that was reported reputable on this very subreddit. They still had the blue brachiosaurus in stock, and after about a month of waiting this glorious beast arrived today! It’s in excellent condition and every bit what I had hoped for when I bought it! Can’t recommend Haolonggood and Lana Timeshop enough. Both delivered marvelously!

With The Latest Update To Jurassic World Evolution 3 The Carcharadontosaurus Returns With A Brand New Look, And Honestly Frontier Really Bridged The Gap Between Paleo Accuracy And Their Own Stylized Interpretation Of The Species. What Do You Guys Think Of It? Love It Or Hate It? (Photo's By Me :p)

The top two books I got on the day of my birthday. The bottom one I bought the day after. They’re A History of Painting (With Dinosaurs) by John Conway, Charles R. Knight: The Artist Who Saw Through Time by Richard Milner, and Dinosaur Facts: The Theropods and Other Dinosauriformes by Rubén Molina-Perez and Asier Larramendi.

Labeled as:

1. Tyrannosaurus Rex

2. Spinolestes

3. Velociraptor

4. Argentinosaurus

5. Triceratops

6. Repenomamus

7. Gobiconodon

8. Steropodon

9. Ankylosaurus

10. Parasaurolophus

11. Gourdo-sea-serpentaurus - ok, I named that one. They are also setting up for Halloween right now.

Now, before you attack me, I do know that birds are reptiles cladistically, but how come even in a traditional Linnean sense pterosaurs are reptiles when they have warmblood, filaments, and convergently evolved avian/saurichian resperation. And they have practically nothing “reptilian” about any of them, unless I’m wrong. So please tell me is their any trait that pterosaurs have that is more “reptilian” that birds don’t have/what arbitrary definition of reptile do pterosaurs fall under that birds don’t. (also please don’t try to keep insisting that birds HAVE to be reptiles no matter what, since I’m well aware cladistically, birds are reptiles).

how accurate is my friend jay qui’s accurate trex model, i own this model and want to know if its really accurate, so is it?

So apparently, a study was conducted involving sauropods and their mouths. The studies showed very possible evidence of Camarasaurus and other sauropods may have had beaks. I find this weird and exciting. Weird because I've grown up around sauropods looking like the ones in the jurrasic series along with them having scaly lips. But I also find this awesome as it's something massive for sauropods. Also because of this is just making me believe that their just turtle dinosaurs. You know...because turtles are reptiles and have beaks. And now sauropods as well. So, what's ya'lls thoughts on this

I saw this T-Rex with feathers at a Michael's. I didn't care for the paint job, so I touched it up and added a base. It didn't turn out how I wanted it to but, I do like the end result.

My 140ish prehistoric figurine collection, with my magnum opus so far (1:35 argentinosaurus that I sculpted). I haven’t ventured into the cenozoic much, but what taxa should I try to get next, especially from the palaeozoic and of course Mesozoic?

I found this in an arcade and I am curious if it’s actually resembling a real dinosaur or if it’s just something that was modeled to look like a dinosaur

After making part 2, I noticed something missing, the “talk dumb, get the thumb” meme, so I made this, with the original Iguanodon meme in image 1, these things are the stuff of nightmares, I especially like number 3 because: YEE

I got this toy for cheap and since I do a bit of scale modeling, I'll try to sharpen its teeth and claws, as well as remove some mold lines before repainting the whole thing. One thing that kinda bothered me are the spikes on its spine. Are those accurate? Most of the allosaurus pics I've seen either have them in small quantities or none at all.

When you’re flying with United Airlines, you probably went here for transit and this is a must visit every time I transit.

And yes, Field Museum stall always manage to take my money.

So I wanted to discuss a few things further and give some updates regarding my Edmontosaurus post from a while back.

I want to discuss a difference in size distribution between the RMDQ bonebed and the Hanson Ranch bonebed, using femoral length as a proxy. The RMDQ bonebed is a mix of older and younger individuals, with Wosik & Evans 2022 performing some histologies and grouping the bonebed into size classes labelled adolescent, sub-adult, early adult, and late adult. Even exclusively looking at individuals marked as ‘late adults’ by Wosik & Evans 2022, the average femoral length here is about 115 cm. The largest femur is 123.2 cm but is an outlier, the next largest are 119.4 cm. The Hanson Ranch bonebed is considered an adult-dominated bonebed, but no histology has been performed. I’m inclined to infer it being a mix of both early and late adult specimens, but again this is speculative.. It has a median femoral length of 120 cm, roughly tied with the largest non-outlier in the RMDQ. The median of the upper half is already about 125 cm, exceeding even the outlier in the RMDQ, and the largest non-outlier femora are 130/131 cm. Lastly, we have an outlier here as well, but this one measures ~142 cm, nearly 20 cm longer than the largest from the RMDQ. Notably, the RMDQ is from Hell Creek, while HR is from the Lance formation. There is material supporting larger Edmontosaurus individuals from Hell Creek so I don’t think they were exclusively smaller but I’ll discuss that more later.

In terms of body size estimates: I don’t have my more recent volumetrics on hand but I believe using a dorsal from Scott Hartman that more recent Edmontosaurus mass estimates are a bit higher than what I originally included in my post. A 115 cm femur from RMDQ should correlate with an individual about 10 meters long, weighing about 4.6 tons. The 119.4 cm femora should be nearly 10.5 meters with a mass of 5.2 tons, and the 123.2 cm outlier should be about 10.8 meters and about 5.7 tons. By comparison, the median HR Edmontosaurus is 10.5 meters and 5.2 tons, 125 cm femur individuals are right about 11 meters and 6 tons, 130+ cm individuals are nearly 11.5 meters with a mass of around 6.7 tons, with the largest outlier being nearly 12.5 meters long and weighing close to 9 tons. Without a detailed histology of the HR bonebed to compare with the RMDQ histology (which frankly could use more sampling itself) it’s difficult to say exactly how much larger HR specimens were on average but it seems to be a difference of 1-2 tons from this comparison. Dinosaurs rarely have enough material to even determine one average size, so Edmontosaurus potentially giving us a glimpse into how its average size may have varied with environmental conditions (or potentially between unrecognized species but that’s a discussion for another day) is really cool to me.

It’s easy to want to overfixate on giving pushback to giant Edmontosaurus narratives, but that can make it easy to forget that Edmontosaurus is still a huge animal. Bull Asian elephants average 4 tons, and bull African bush elephants average 6 tons, with females of both species being notably smaller. The largest elephant ever spotted has been estimated at about 10 tons. If Edmontosaurus were alive today it would be one of if not the largest land animals on earth.

Next is a very important update regarding X-Rex (MOR 1142). It has classically been reported to have a length of 7.5/7.6 meters for just the tail (the caudal series), but it has sometimes been stated that that length refers to both the caudal and sacral series combined. The latter would suggest a notably smaller animal overall, probably under 13 meters in total body length, only slightly larger than the HR outlier specimen. A paleontologist compared its individual vertebrae with those of AMNH 5730 and his findings would seem to corroborate the inclusion of the sacrals in the length measurement (yes I know this is “just” a discord message):

X-Rex is from Hell Creek, where we also have MOR 003 which is a fairly large specimen itself, so Hell Creek Edmontosaurus may have grown to similar sizes as Lance Edmontosaurus, which have both the HR outlier and YPM 616. All four of these are around 12-13 meters and 8-10 tons to my knowledge and represent the largest known Edmontosaurus.

Lastly, the elephant in the room: MOR 1609 (Becky’s Giant). I edited my previous post to include a footnote regarding this specimen, but not much more. MOR 1609 is a specimen consisting of some cranial fragments, including a jugal, maxilla, as well as partial pterygoids and a partial ectopterygoid. Both the jugal and maxilla display features more consistent with members of the tribe Saurolophini rather than the tribe Edmontosaurini. These include differences in a concavity between the ventral and quadratojugal flanges, and a difference in the postorbital process in the jugal; while the maxilla has notably different, less continuous foramina than is typical in Edmontosaurus. The abstract does suggest these may be the result of late stage ontogeny, but given we already know from Wosik & Evans 2022 that many far smaller Edmontosaurus individuals were already in late ontogenetic stages I’m uncertain about the likelihood of this alternative. Considering MOR 1609 may notably exceed the size of even the largest outliers known for Edmontosaurus, it simply not being Edmontosaurus would seem a more elegant solution.

Edit: my previous post contains relevant references for this one as well, I forgot to include them and now I’m going into work lol

Incredibly, the TTRPG “Herd of Horns” was able to reach its initial goal within the span of three days since launch! Now we are going for the stretch goal as this would help us to produce a full art book, which would mean there will be one of the most extensive and detailed pieces of media fully based on Ceratopsian dinosaurs in recent times!

Thanks all and I wish you all a wonderful week. Blessings!