There is a book called All Yesterdays that highlights the mistakes made by earlier artistic interpretations of creatures based on their fossils. As a thought experiment, it also includes a section called “All Todays” where artists reinterpret today’s fauna based only on their skeletal structure using the same approaches that had been done to dinosaurs for decades.
It’s an interesting read for anyone curious about this sort of thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Yesterdays
I find this sort of “reconstruction” kind of disingenuous. Dinosaurs were reptiles, so they’re reconstructed to look roughly like reptiles of today. Of course the approach gives wildly inaccurate results on mammals, but on modem reptiles it would be alright. This same approach isn’t taken to reconstructing prehistoric birds or mammals either.
That’s not to say dinosaurs haven’t been portrayed as too bony for the coolness effect or that the Dunkleosteus wasn’t subject to the same exaggerated treatment, but why go into the other extreme?
Well, yes and no.
The premise of the book itself is to highlight that much of what was assumed about dinosaurs, depicted through those artistic representations modeled after modern reptiles, is downright wrong. E.g. newer discoveries that several dinosaur species had feathers, classifying them closer to birds than lizards (and that birds of today are more “dinosaurs” than, say, a crocodile).
Compare the depictions of Deinonychus from the 90’s to today:
After the feathers discovery, newer depictions place them closer to cassowaries than lizards.
The point of the All Todays section is just to make this concept more relatable, by highlighting the fact that many distinguishing features of modern animals would be completely invisible in fossil records. The large ears and trunks of elephants would never survive fossilization, and their feet may not be interpreted as thick, fleshy pads, so they instead drew the elephant more gaunt, with short ears and a bulbous nose to explain the shape of their skull. Because the reality of an elephant might seem too outlandish for a future paleontologist to assume based on fossils alone. Certain keratinous features like horns and hooves would not survive either, so that explains the hornless rhino and toed zebra. Not to mention the most iconic feature of a zebra, the black and white stripes, would never be known, and so who would assume that’s how they’d look?
And FWIW, the depictions aren’t even that far off in terms of skin texture, since the elephant and rhino are already mostly furless mammals. The elephant may have too much fur, if anything. Only the zebra seems off for its lack of coat.
But the point is that it’s supposed to be ridiculous, because these styles have just as much grounding as the long-held depictions of dinosaurs as scary, giant lizards. Maybe some are closer to truth than not, but the majority are just artistic license. For all we know, the tyrannosaurus rex could have been covered in rainbow feathers like a giant macaw. It might seem ridiculous and improbable, but so could the stripes of a zebra or the trunks of an elephant.
I understand, but this is still coming off as “being the general after the battle”. I.e. judging the mistakes done by scientists while the available knowledge was more limited. The shift towards portraying dinosaurs with feathers was triggered by, well, discovering dinosaur fossils with feathers. We made a discovery and corrected accordingly.
Of course we should be aware of the limits of studying and reconstructing prehistorical species in general, I’d say most popular dino media downplays or ignores the difficulties and doubts in the endavour, presenting the conclusions as a given rather than as an educated guess, without showing the “behind the scenes”. But the image of “scary, giant lizards” in popular perception has IMO been on the decline since Walking with Dinosaurs from 1999 - of course, the exaggerated Jurassic Park and its increasingly trashy sequels and similar media have had more of a broad cultural presence, but that’s not much to do with paleontology and serious paleo-art.
Of course we should be aware of the limits of studying and reconstructing prehistorical species in general
Exactly, and that is to say, that is the entire purpose of the text I mentioned. It’s just an exploration on how fossil records leave so little evidence to make truly educated guesses in reconstructions, and the introduction of new evidence changes our perspective so dramatically.
So yes, the models update to try to be more accurate, but it’s effectively like saying we went from 10% certain to 12% certain. There are still too many unknowables. And should additional evidence come to light at some point in the future, we must assume the possibility that the current depictions will eventually seem just as comically wrong.
Weren’t dinosaurs feathered and we now know all those modern reptile looking illustrations were completely wrong?
“Completely wrong” is an exaggeration, would portraying a chicken without feathers be “completely wrong”? Of course not, if the overall anatomy is plausible, it would be inaccurate in one regard but not scientifically or illustratively worthless.
No, not all dinosaurs were feathered. Some definitely were not feathered (we have evidence of their scaly exterior, most impressively this armoured dinosaur specimen) while certain other clades definitely were, for which we have strong evidence, and thus species such as Velociraptor have been reconstructed with feathers even in the most broad-audiences-oriented media for over two decades. For many species it’s uncertain. So no, many of the featherless reconstructions are still not wrong in that department, considering our current knowledge.
I guess the equivalent would be to make a really hairy rhino and elephant… which I guess the latter at least did actually exist.
There also was such a thing as the woolly rhinoceros
I assumed that there must have been, but I didn’t look it up. Thanks!
Just for completeness, here’s A PDF of one of my favorite books, all tomorrows. A speculative evolution science fiction that explores the future history of humanity if we were enslaved by a species of sadistic aliens who then proceed to bioengineer us into tools for every possible use
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most animals have skin over they bones, wonder why they saw a wierd skull and decided that this fish has no skin on its head
could be like turtle shells
still it isn’t the bone that’s on the outside
but even if we had a vertebrate fossil that had parts of their endoskeleton exposed, it’s so rare that it’s safe to assume it wasn’t.
imma bet the thagomiser was covered with tissues, hardened skin, ketarin, not just naked bone.
still it isn’t the bone that’s on the outside
That’s what I mean. Skin that gives color but mostly preserves the look of the bone plates, with gaps remaining visible
That is fair, but I don’t think the edges of the bones would be visible, look at the turtle skeleton for example.
Sadly we will never know how it really looked, we just get to be less wrong about how badly we draw it.
Appropriate reaction
