• Dharma Curious
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    191 year ago

    Does anyone know if this is something that was actually possible? Like, how sure are we they looked one way and not the other?

    • @GeneralVincent
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      441 year ago

      “Every reconstruction involves some level of inference and speculation to literally ‘flesh out’ details not preserved in the fossil record,” Celeskey explains. “In the process of creating paleoart, artists and the researchers have discussions about how to fill in these missing pieces, which helps everyone involved to think about how they are interpreting the actual evidence at hand.” From a NatGeo article I found

          • @Viking_Hippie
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            91 year ago

            Similarly, “I asked around the office and everyone agreed that giving dinos the feathers we now know they had would look too silly”

          • pancakes
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            31 year ago

            “Triceratops had cat ears because of reasons.”

    • @[email protected]
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      281 year ago

      Nope, sauropods were already right up against the limit of what’s physically possible for a land animal on Earth. If they were that chonky they would have been too heavy and would have overheated just from their body heat.

    • ancap shark
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      121 year ago

      Of course it’s possible. It’s highly improbable due to weight, of course, but it’s not impossible.

      There’s a lot of information that was not recorded in fossil, and we have very few fossil recorded, compared to how many animals of a species lived. How we reconstruct existinct animals keeps on changing with every new information, so it’s always cool to challenge the way we view a creature.

    • @[email protected]
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      101 year ago

      Not very likely due to the weight. Same with the trunk suggestion, there was a lot of air space and gaps in the few skulls that were preserved to make them weight less.