Your Dinosaurs Are Wrong

April 25, 2020 2:18 PM

Your Dinosaurs Are Wrong

We like talking paleontology, and how current research understands prehistoric organisms by using their toys as a starting point

Indeed.

This is my new favorite YouTube channel. It is well worth exploring.

The Velociraptor program alone provides an hour and five minutes of correction to everything Jurassic Park got wrong. Feathers and all.

posted by y2karl (26 comments total)

I want to see, say a remake of Jurassic Park, where all of the dinosaurs have feathers. I picture a T rex running towards me looking just like a huge macaw.

Oh how cuteCHOMP
posted by Splunge at 3:34 PM on April 25, 2020 [9 favorites]

An accurate Jurassic Park would basically be Untitled Goose Game: The Movie.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 4:07 PM on April 25, 2020 [30 favorites]

100% here for dino-pedantry. #clappersnotslappers
posted by tobascodagama at 4:13 PM on April 25, 2020 [1 favorite]

I want to see, say a remake of Jurassic Park, where all of the dinosaurs have feathers.

The CGI parts would be easy enough -- but how would they shrink the puppets ? Difficult to imagine the kitchen scene with turkey sized velociraptors.
posted by y2karl at 5:01 PM on April 25, 2020 [3 favorites]

Deinonychus is still available, if you want something closer to Jurassic Park raptor size, or Achillobator. There's no shortage of roughly-human-sized theropods.
posted by Pyry at 5:16 PM on April 25, 2020 [6 favorites]

Or what about a troodontid like Latenivenatrix? Roughly human sized, maybe as smart as a mid-range bird, there's a lot to work with for a movie, especially once you allow the normal movie liberties ("Oh you thought velociraptor was smart? Well you should see these ones...").
posted by Pyry at 5:26 PM on April 25, 2020

Given that a cassowary can kill a human with its claw, I'd see a flock of actual size velociraptors as potentially as dangerous as a wolf pack.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 6:51 PM on April 25, 2020 [6 favorites]

Latenivenatrix and Deinonychus are mentioned in the velociraptor segment of Your Dinosaurs Are Wrong -- and a pack of small velociraptors would be scary enough. Especially as the curved sickle claw toe was always elevated so as to keep the claw sharp.

I was thinking of that kitchen scene more in terms of where people were hiding -- with turkey sized velociraptors, everyone would have had to climb into the high cabinets to hide.

And the velociraptor vs. tyrannosaur fights would be a bit different.

The mosasaur in Jurassic World, on the other hand, would be unchanged. So there is that.
posted by y2karl at 7:33 PM on April 25, 2020 [2 favorites]

I believe there was a line in one of the latest Jurassic Park movies the made it clear they fiddled with the DNA so their dinos would NOT have feathers.
posted by VTX at 9:13 PM on April 25, 2020 [1 favorite]

You know in retrospect, the amazing resemblence between our old view of dinosaurs and plucked chickens really should have given us a clue!
posted by jamjam at 9:23 PM on April 25, 2020 [4 favorites]

Latenivenatrix and Deinonychus are mentioned in the velociraptor segment of Your Dinosaurs Are Wrong -- and a pack of small velociraptors would be scary enough. Especially as the curved sickle claw toe was always elevated so as to keep the claw sharp.


It has been observed that while people might dismiss the notion of turkey-sized velociraptors as comical and unthreatening, most of us who behave faced a pissed-off Canada goose know that birds of such a size can already fuck you up. If they had nine-inch scimitars on each foot, I believe you’d definitely think twice.

I mean, really, birds are dinosaurs, just the ones who survived the meteor because their niche was eating seeds. If the surviving descendants had twenty times the muscle mass and twelve times the needle teeth of your average kitten (but two-fifths the predatory instincts), forget about it.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:35 PM on April 25, 2020 [10 favorites]

This guy looks like who Bill Haverchuck grew up to be. Remarkable.

This channel is brilliant. Thanks for posting.
posted by Pecinpah at 11:19 PM on April 25, 2020

...most of us who behave faced a pissed-off Canada goose know that birds of such a size can already fuck you up.

One of my favorite things in the world is renting a canoe from the U of W waterfront activity center behind Husky stadium. And one of the most frightening things one encounter in that environment happens upon accidentally coming too close to a swan's nest.

Then those graceful necks twist and turn in ugly serpentine curls as they hiss, kick and surge from the water and bite at you with every intention of flipping your canoe over and driving you under -- they are fully capable of drowning large dogs in such a state. It is most intimidating to have a run in with an angry swan.
posted by y2karl at 11:48 PM on April 25, 2020 [9 favorites]

There's a private park near us we go to whenever we can but there's a pair of really assertive black swans, they look almost comical until they run out of their pond, hissing at you. They still remember they're dinosaurs.
posted by unearthed at 12:57 AM on April 26, 2020 [2 favorites]

Apropos, These Fur Parents Turned Their Pets Into Dinosaurs - Neatorama.
posted by zengargoyle at 1:12 AM on April 26, 2020 [1 favorite]

Yeah, geese can be unpleasant, but swans terrorize them. Swans and ducks get along OK, though.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:27 AM on April 26, 2020 [1 favorite]

Can I please get a complete social hierarchy of birds, t to b? Like, where does the western meadowlark fall in the pecking order?
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 7:06 AM on April 26, 2020 [3 favorites]

it's a goddamn crime that the prehistoric megafauna don't get as much prestige as dinosaurs
we have a cat with chainsaw teeth fighting a pack of super wolves and you're all cheese-fingered and salivating over some extremely inefficient birds
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 8:30 AM on April 26, 2020 [6 favorites]

> maybe as smart as a mid-range bird<
So still dumber than a sack of hammers?

(not a bird fan)
posted by twidget at 3:21 PM on April 26, 2020

No, birds are smarties. Their brain to body ratio tips far towards brains by weight no matter what their size.

Exhibit A: crows. Nuff said.

Exhibit B, from personal experience: hummingbirds.

When the feeders go dry in the courtyard, they hover a foot from my face, make eye contact and click at me like a smoke alarm with a dying battery. I fill the feeders forthwith.

Birds are smart and do not suffer fools in silence.
posted by y2karl at 3:46 PM on April 26, 2020 [4 favorites]

My close encounter with dinosaurs. A few years ago, some Texas ranchers thought they could get rich quick raising emus. Well, the scheme didn't work out so they set the emu flocks free. Driving out in the county, you never know when you'd see 'em. I turned down a tiny dirt road and emus charged my car. I backed out like a bat outta hell.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 5:09 PM on April 26, 2020 [1 favorite]

> And the velociraptor vs. tyrannosaur fights would be a bit different.

file photo
posted by sebastienbailard at 5:37 PM on April 26, 2020 [4 favorites]

A guy I know had a run-in with a swan on Long Island Sound once, in which it charged at his boat, took the prow of said boat in the chest, stopped the boat dead, hissed at my friend, and flew off.

It seems implausible that a swan could stop a thirty-foot boat, so maybe it just slowed it significantly, but either way, that’s a heck of a bird.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 12:40 AM on April 27, 2020 [1 favorite]

They kick with both legs when they come at you, rising up from the water with each kick. I paddled like crazy away from one which kept biting on the back keel of the canoe for about a hundred feet..
posted by y2karl at 5:45 PM on April 27, 2020

This is great, thanks for posting it!
posted by LobsterMitten at 7:57 PM on April 27, 2020

ELEPHANT used
ROUNDHOUSE KICK!

But it failed!

(best to mute audio, probably.)
posted by sebastienbailard at 10:05 PM on May 7, 2020