Comments on: When 2 dinosaurs become 1

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I had the following thought in a museum a few years ago: maybe the arms of Tyrannosaurus rex are not evolutionarily vestigial, but rather developmentally vestigial.

If you imagine a T. rex growing from a much smaller egg, at some point you would have a dinosaur about the size of a Velociraptor. It *could* be shaped exactly like a T. rex and go around biting things, but it seems like it would do much better for itself if its arms were proportionally longer and more useful, and it looked and acted more or less like a Velociraptor. (I.e., scratching and disemboweling its prey rather than simply grabbing it with the head.)

As it got bigger and bigger, my theory goes, its arms would not grow as much as the rest of it, leaving it with tiny useless arms when it got to full size. I think the hormonal system could make such a selective growth happen.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

It is in my house… ;)

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Piffle. I saw a documentary a few years back about scientists obtaining dinosaur DNA from insects trapped in amber. I think that it was filmed on an island off Costa Rica.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Yeah, that was the plot of Jurassic Park.

By: Roach

Roach — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This is seriously one of the coolest things I have ever read. Good commentary too.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I think that they’re referring to fossilized soft tissue, although the article is vague.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks, Legolas.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

In cases like this, when a name must be changed or eliminated, the older name takes precedence. O.C. Marsh named both Triceratops, and Torosaurus — Triceratops in 1889, and Torosaurus in 1891. So, the correct name would be Triceratops for all, and there would no longer be a Torosaurus (unless they recycle names and someone else uses it for a new dinosaur later on down the road).

By: nixiebunny

nixiebunny — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

So extinct insects would really trick these poor scientists. Caterpillar? Butterfly? How could those be the same species?

By: adonai

adonai — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Paleontologists: curse this sudden but inevitable betrayal!

By: efergus3

efergus3 — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

So Velociraptors turned into IRS agents? Makes perfect sense to me.

By: Jonathan Badger

Jonathan Badger — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

So, let me follow your analogy. Parmigiana is the adult stage of chickens?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

“when two dinosaurs become one”

dino-porn?

By: California Will

California Will — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Some of the earliest recognizable tyrannosaurid ancestors from China did have long raptor like arms. While a smaller t-rex with proportionately bigger arms would be cool, there have been a number of very young tyrannosaur fossils found and they still have puny arms, and actually proportionately longer legs instead. Since tyrannosaur bonebeds often contain individuals of all age classes, we now think that they probably hunted as a family group, with fleet footed youngsters running prey down and super powerful adults bitting prey like it was getting hit by a buick with teeth.

By: Markle

Markle — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Like with Apatosaurus/Brontosaurus, the first named example wins out. So it’ll be Triceratops.

By: Felton

Felton — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Ah, so not a dinosaur love story.

By: harpdevil

harpdevil — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

What?
TRICERATOPS is evolving!

—

Congratulations! You TRICERATOPS evolved into TOROSAURUS!

By: NoahApples

NoahApples — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

So basically triceratops evolves at level 22?

By: harpdevil

harpdevil — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

#8 I love we both had the same idea at the exact same time.

By: MrJM

MrJM — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

If paleontologists were wrong, then the creationists must be right, right?

By: lolbrandon

lolbrandon — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

A tadpole and a frog. A caterpillar and a butterfly. Yeah, I wonder if metamorphosis wouldn’t be totally unheard of on other planets, too.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

While we have bits of dino DNA, mostly from those insects trapped in amber, it’s like having a picture puzzle of a forest where most of the pieces are missing. There’s no way you can guess what the leaves on all those missing pieces would look like. In other words, we’re nowhere close to being able to clone a dino.

As for the theory on Triceratops being a Torosaurus, it’s cool. Horner is the guy who first theorized that T-rex wasn’t a predator but a scavenger. But then you have a guy like Bakker who totally refutes that. So I think it’s premature to say definitely that it is so. But it’s definitely a pretty cool idea.

Oh, and as for that T-rex “soft tissue”– it was proved to be a mistake three years later. There was no soft tissue inside a 65 million year-old bone.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Many people in long-term relationships experience this confusion and disbelief regarding the life stages of spouses.

By: Felton

Felton — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

So you’ve never seen the nature documentary Alien?

By: Markle

Markle — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

@#41 You haven’t seen the Nova episode? http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3411/01.html She first spotted what looked like red blood cells. Then her assistant demineralized the sample and it was squishy and resilient.

Oh, though they concentrate on the T-Rex in the video, they also got soft tissue from a Triceratops and a Duckbill that were even older.

By: extra88

extra88 — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Speaking of spouses, mine didn’t know the yellow flower weeds and white puffy flying seed weeds were both the same thing (dandelions) until she was in her thirties :)

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Cf. baby and adult eels. The juveniles look like silver leafs, and ichthyologists didn’t know what they grew into. They also didn’t know what a juvenile eel looked like. SCIENCE!!!

By: Felton

Felton — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Good point, well made, Kryten.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

You are awesome! Firefly forever!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Fair enough, and I love science, but where’s my pet dinosaur? It’s 2010!