[HN Gopher] What modern animals would look like if we drew them ...
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       What modern animals would look like if we drew them in the same way
       as dinosaurs
        
       Author : andyxor
       Score  : 153 points
       Date   : 2021-07-13 03:33 UTC (19 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.dailymail.co.uk)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.dailymail.co.uk)
        
       | popsie wrote:
       | This is wildly inaccurate to the point that I would consider
       | asking for this list to be taken down.
       | 
       | We know a lot about how the muscles sits on bone, how different
       | bone density and shapes affect strength and thus possible uses.
       | We can also draw a lot from reptiles and living dinosaurs (birds)
       | by looking at analogous structures that are widely present in
       | existing animals.
       | 
       | This sort of news has been going around the Brazilian internet
       | for quite a while to the point that a fairly well known
       | paleontologist and science communication showed the process of
       | how this reconstruction would be made (video, in portuguese:
       | https://youtu.be/8TPPFcZpCbA)
        
         | zabzonk wrote:
         | > This is wildly inaccurate to the point that I would consider
         | asking for this list to be taken down.
         | 
         | It's the Daily Mail - wild inaccuracy goes without saying.
        
           | amanaplanacanal wrote:
           | Actually I'm surprised to see anything from the daily Mail
           | posted here. I would have guessed it was on a block list.
        
             | the_only_law wrote:
             | It may not be true, but I swear there's been an uptick in
             | submissions from tabloid-like sites in the past year.
        
             | zabzonk wrote:
             | Well, let's not go nuts. It is almost certainly the worst
             | newspaper in the world, read only by the racist tubs of
             | lard seen capering around Wembley at the weekend. But
             | censorship is even worse.
        
         | popsie wrote:
         | Since there's a hippo in the article as well, here are some
         | major points:
         | 
         | - From the teeth shape and abrasion patterns we can tell that
         | this was a herbivorous animal.
         | 
         | - Muscle attachment points intm the jaw and huge concave
         | regions suggests large and powerful jaw muscles, so the hollow
         | skinny picture in the article is not viable.
         | 
         | - Being a herbivore with powerful jaw muscles, this animal
         | would need to chew on food a lot. Without cheeks, food would
         | fall out as the animal chews, so it clearly has cheeks.
         | 
         | - Eyew need to fit in the ocular orbit, so they're not tint
         | dots, they're large eyes.
         | 
         | - if we knew any surviving mammal, we would know this animal
         | probably had eyelids (all mammals do).
         | 
         | - This head is huge and heavy, so we'll need a bunch of muscles
         | to keep it up, so this animal has a chunky neck as well.
         | 
         | You can see what the reconstruction would look like with this
         | info at ~40 minutes into the video.
        
       | obloid wrote:
       | These images are from the book "All Yesterdays: Unique and
       | Speculative Views of Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals"
       | 
       | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Yesterdays
        
       | therealdrag0 wrote:
       | Related podcast/article.
       | 
       | https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/welcome-to-jurassic-a...
        
       | everdrive wrote:
       | >A scary looking baboon re-imagined from its skeleton - it
       | appears to have a dinosaur-like tail
       | 
       | Baboons are terrifying in any context.
        
         | danellis wrote:
         | They're quite enjoyable in the context of being in a car with
         | the windows rolled up.
        
           | baboonincar wrote:
           | Like INSIDE the car? That sounds terrifying!
        
       | BoxOfRain wrote:
       | I know it's the Daily Mail so it goes with the territory, but
       | that website is truly obnoxious on mobile. It's a masterclass in
       | why having multiple content-covering boxes which are hard to
       | dismiss is a stupid idea.
        
       | Brian_K_White wrote:
       | Is this just meant to be silly for the fun of it? Or is it meant
       | to suggest our real extrapolations are probably as ridiculous as
       | these things are?
       | 
       | If we have even a single mud impression somehere, and we do, then
       | this implication is DailyMail, I mean garbage.
       | 
       | Similarly, unless you take an artist who currently draws
       | dinosaurs to the best of their ability with all current
       | anatomical understanding, and THEY produce these drawings from a
       | monkey etc, then again, DailyMail, I mean garbage.
       | 
       | "These drawings I made are stupid" on no way proves that
       | "therefor those drawings you made are stupid."
        
       | yakubin wrote:
       | _> He believes Hollywood is to blame for giving dinosaurs their
       | skeletal  'monster' image._
       | 
       | I don't think most dinosaurs are seen as monsters. When it comes
       | to public relations "monsters", I think it's mostly T-Rex, and
       | usually it isn't portrayed as skeletal. Depictions of most
       | dinosaurs make them look cute.
        
         | edflsafoiewq wrote:
         | It's older than Hollywood. Early attempts to rationalize
         | geological time with Genesis located dinosaurs in a pre-Adamic
         | world of eternal darkness.
         | 
         | Really interesting article about this:
         | 
         | Terrible lizards and the wrath of God: How 19th century
         | Christianity and Romanticism affected visual representations of
         | dinosaurs and our perceptions of the ancient world:
         | https://web.archive.org/web/20200905194215/https://web.stanf...
        
           | AdmiralAsshat wrote:
           | That certainly squares with H.P. Lovecraft's "Antediluvian
           | horrors".
        
           | GoblinSlayer wrote:
           | Pagan big reptiles weren't nice either, were they? Tiamat,
           | Nidhogg, Jormungandr, Hydra, Fafnir.
        
       | 93po wrote:
       | Would be more accurate if it was just titled "Mammals look weird
       | if we draw them as if they were reptiles instead".
        
       | hprotagonist wrote:
       | the classic "we can't prove they weren't huge fatbirds":
       | https://coelasquid.tumblr.com/post/111317780763/nebu-kuro
        
         | bitwize wrote:
         | I'm not sure that being eaten by a giant toothed finch would be
         | any less scary than being eaten by the lizard-thing we're used
         | to.
        
         | genericone wrote:
         | Related/Unrelated:
         | https://videos.dailymail.co.uk/video/1418450360/2014/02/1418...
        
         | renewiltord wrote:
         | Surely this T-Rex would spontaneously combust from the heat
         | retention.
        
       | yorwba wrote:
       | I didn't see the artist's website linked in the article, so here
       | it is: http://cmkosemen.com/
        
       | juliushuijnk wrote:
       | Eons video about the history of how dinosaurs have been drawn,
       | including the mistakes and why they were made:
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDnQmBFxIfE
        
       | NotSwift wrote:
       | One point that most illustration of the old dinosaurs probably
       | get wrong is the lack of feathers. After all, all current
       | dinosaurs have feathers (Yes birds are technically dinosaurs) and
       | it seems reasonable to assume that some of their ancestors had
       | them too. Unfortunately, unlike bones, feathers do not fossilize
       | really well, so we cannot easily determine which species had
       | them. The most likely reason dinosaurs developed feathers is
       | thermal insulation, just like why mammals developed hair.
        
         | throwaway0a5e wrote:
         | We have enough fossils of "things that don't fossilize well"
         | that if dinosaurs were feathered by default we'd know about it.
        
           | handrous wrote:
           | Last I checked back in on my childhood obsession of
           | paleontology, consensus was that a whole lot more theropods
           | were at least partially feathered, at least at _some_ life
           | stages, than previously thought, including some of the big
           | ones, but there 's not evidence that many other categories of
           | dinosaur were feathered.
        
             | throwaway0a5e wrote:
             | AFAIK that's still correct.
             | 
             | The dinosaurs from which birds are descended are thought to
             | have feathers or something similar, in some case or at some
             | stages of life. But that's a really long way from being the
             | default or even a sizeable enough majority that one could
             | say "the dinosaurs had feathers" as a generalization and do
             | so with a straight face.
        
         | Cd00d wrote:
         | My kids have a dinosaur book, and I was blown away at the
         | difference in portrayal of the velociraptor compared to what
         | was in the original Jurassic Park film. Super bird-like now.
         | 
         | https://www.dkfindout.com/us/dinosaurs-and-prehistoric-life/...
        
         | cwmma wrote:
         | that being said there is a pretty good chance a lot of the
         | bigger dinosaurs (e.g. t. rex) probably did not have many
         | feathers similar to how rhinos, elephants and other large
         | mammals don't (but hey mammoths did so so it's probably not
         | none)
        
           | frosted-flakes wrote:
           | ...don't have fur, I think you mean?
        
         | autokad wrote:
         | > "After all, all current dinosaurs have feathers"
         | 
         | that's selection bias. only the avian 'dinosaurs' survived, but
         | calling them dinosaurs would be like calling humans rodents.
         | It's not like birds existed back then.
         | 
         | There seems to be a rush to try and put feathers on everything.
         | We are finding some amazing specimens that are giving us
         | amazing detail, such as the ankylosaur found in Canada. Yup,
         | covered in scales and hard armor.
         | 
         | Now we got this T-rex crazed idea to put feathers all over
         | them. It sort of reminds me of the 1990s who tried to put t-rex
         | as scavengers / non predators because of 1 solitary data point.
         | the data strongly suggests they were scaled (we found skin
         | impressions of t-rex, they had scales). So now they are trying
         | to say 'oh well maybe they had feathers elsewhere, or were
         | covered in feathers when young'. sheesh.
         | 
         | > "Unfortunately, unlike bones, feathers do not fossilize
         | really well"
         | 
         | if a leaf can be fossilized, I imagine so can a feather.
        
           | NotSwift wrote:
           | Dinosaurs are only one of the many groups of reptiles that
           | have ever existed. It is normal use in biology to classify
           | species in the same group as the group of their ancestor
           | species. So, whether you like it or not, humans are mammals
           | and primates. There really are no sound biological reasons to
           | exclude birds from belonging to the group of dinosaurs.
        
           | LinAGKar wrote:
           | >only the avian 'dinosaurs' survived, but calling them
           | dinosaurs would be like calling humans rodents.
           | 
           | No, humans did not evolve from rodents. It's more like
           | calling humans primates.
           | 
           | >It's not like birds existed back then.
           | 
           | Back when? There were birds before the other dinosaurs went
           | extinct, so concurrently with T-Rex.
        
             | autokad wrote:
             | > "No, humans did not evolve from rodents. It's more like
             | calling humans primates."
             | 
             | Its my understanding humans evolved from a rodent like
             | creature that existed during the time of the dinosaurs.
             | primates did not exist then.
             | 
             | also, humans did not evolve from primates. humans are
             | primates.
        
               | LinAGKar wrote:
               | >Its my understanding humans evolved from a rodent like
               | creature that existed during the time of the dinosaurs.
               | primates did not exist then.
               | 
               | Our ancestors might at some point have been rodent-like,
               | in the sense that they looked somewhat like rodents (or
               | rather, some rodents still look like them, as the rodents
               | also evolved from the same ancestor). But they weren't
               | rodents, and they didn't have the incisors that
               | characterize rodents.
               | 
               | >also, humans did not evolve from primates. humans are
               | primates
               | 
               | Yes, we evolved from primates, and thus still are
               | primates, like how birds still are dinosaurs.
        
               | autokad wrote:
               | birds are NOT dinosours. they are descended from them. as
               | far as I know, there were no birds during their time.
        
               | abc_lisper wrote:
               | Hmm.. That's not true. There were birds then. And a lot
               | of dinosaurs that look like birds. https://twitter.com/se
               | rpenillus/status/1226553777983016960?s...
               | 
               | Edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_birds
        
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       (page generated 2021-07-13 23:02 UTC)