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Dinosaur

Rob Beschizza at 3:30 pm Sat, Sep 29, 2012

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The correct answer is, of course, Ankylosaurus.

⟿ Follow Rob Beschizza on Twitter.

MORE:  dinosaurs

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  • Ashen Victor

    Why no one says “Psittacosaurus” ever?

    • Jason Baker

      Because they don’t know IPA?

    • Patsy Cline

      Because Psittacosaurus is, lets face it, a parrot.
      A really big, mean, and nasty parrot, mind you.

      • KBert

         Yes?

    • http://twitter.com/alaskanime Raven Amos

      Because they’ve never seen Psittacosaurus sibiricus.

    • http://twitter.com/abstract_reg Reg Robson

       Because it is very difficult to say.

  • Vanwall Green

    Gertie.

  • oldtaku

    Sir, I’m afraid the Best Dinosaur is Utahraptor: http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=124

    It’s Science Fact!

    • NordicNinja

      I logged in to also voice appreciation for Utahraptor.

  • http://twitter.com/AbelUndercity Abel Undercity

    Ankylosaurus had a turtle shell with spikes and a club for a tail.  It was the honey badger of the Late Cretaceous Period.

    • bzishi

      A tail club is nice. Not quite as nice as a thagomizer, but it is still respectable.

    • Thad Boyd

      I saw one of those club tails in the Museum of Natural History once.  It was as big as my torso.  Definitely pretty amazing.  Wish they’d had a whole specimen, but hard to bitch when they had a tyrannosaurus and several triceratopseseses.

  • http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns

    Atleast she didn’t say Dinosaur is under the sea.

  • professor

    In the words of the immortal Benny Hill : “Siri Iriot!”

  • Aeron

    Siri, what’s the best way to walk?

    • ocker3

       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gx5MB-FvpDA&feature=related

      Everybody walk the Dinosaur!

      • KanedaJones

         http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=733O0xJDx8o

  • http://twitter.com/BilliamJ Bill McClusky

    The correct answer is BBQ http://www.dinosaurbarbque.com/

  • gauch0

    Actually, I think Ankylosaurus and Dimetrodon are locked in an eternal battle for the title of best dinosaur. This is, of course, the best dinosaur fight.

    • http://twitter.com/Theranthrope Theranthrope

      Except Dimetrodon is NOT a dinosaur; it’s actually more closely related to mammals, including humans, than archisaurs, which include birds and non-avian dinosaurs.. 
      You might as well call a woolly mammoth a dinosaur…

      • gauch0

        Dammit, I knew somebody was going to go there. Fine. I will also call a woolly mammoth a dinosaur. And dimetrodon and ankylosaurus are still tied for most awesome.

        My plastic dinosaurs when I was a kid always had dimetrodon. I am fine with dinosaurs having feathers now, but DON’T MAKE ME CHANGE MY TIED-FOR-FAVORITE DINOSAUR ON A TECHNICALITY!

        • Thad Boyd

          I will also call a woolly mammoth a dinosaur.

          God dammit, this is what Power Rangers has done to my generation.

          That’s when the show lost me: halfway through the first episode, when Zordon referred to “the Sabretooth Tiger Dinosaur and the Woolly Mamoth Dinosaur”.

        • ldobe

          While I absolutely love the Dimetrodons, I have come to peace with the fact that they indeed are not dinosaurs.  Going extinct 70 Million years before the first (or next) dinosaurs showed up on the scene means they aren’t really dinosaurs.  If we humans go extinct tomorrow, and in 70 Million years salamanders have evolved into things similar in appearance to humans, you wouldn’t call them primates would you?

          Just a little exposition.  I think the deep time makes the perception of the key differences hard.  They all existed (shoutout to Sagan) billions and billions and billions of (let me do the unit math) picoseconds ago (160MYA ~ 10^27 picoseconds ~ (10^9)^3).  And the fact that Dimetrodons have been lumped in with dinosaurs in the popular media for around 100 years.

  • TwilightNewsSite

    Rob, typo alert, I believe it’s spelled “stegosaurus.”

  • acerplatanoides

    On the upside, they got the map right.

    • retepslluerb

      At least the data isn’t over 70 million years old.

  • http://celesteagnes.blogspot.com/ Sekino

    Stegosaurus all the way!

    Although my 2 year-old has an obsession with Pachycephalosaurus, of all dinos she could go for, because it’s wearing a tuque.

  • http://twitter.com/alaskanime Raven Amos

    I would have to go with Therizinosaurus. Huge goose with enormous scythe-like claws.

  • http://twitter.com/Theranthrope Theranthrope

    3D (armored) PIG DISGUSTING!

    Triceratops is clearly the best dinosaur!

    • Felton / Moderator

      Triceratops is clearly the best dinosaur!

      Hear, hear!

      • TheKaz1969

        Another +1 for Triceratops!

    • acerplatanoides

      Correct. Even if it is a torosaurus.

      • Thad Boyd

        Nope.  Triceratops was the first name and therefore the canonical name.  Even if it IS decided conclusively that the Torosaurus is the adult form of the same animal (and there’s currently some debate on that).

        • acerplatanoides

          yes, even IF it is torosaurus. 

  • http://BrianEaston.net/ Brian Easton

    Diplodocus all the way.

  • jonathanhl

    Dude, if you like it then you shoulda put a link on it.

  • http://www.facebook.com/dhosek Don Hosek

    You’re all wrong. Best dinosaur is Triceratops. No contest.

    • http://www.ikaink.net Itsumishi

      Everyone is wrong? Even the the three other people that already said Triceratops was best??

      • Felton / Moderator

        Triceratops tops triceratops.

        • Antinous / Moderator

          Tricerabottoms look on jealously.

          • TheKaz1969

            Tricerabottoms! Yes!

            Killed other dinos by sitting on them…

          • http://www.lightning-rose.com/ LightningRose

             Tricerabottoms top from the bottom.

        • retepslluerb

          We should settle this wither paper scissor rock dinosaur spock 

  • http://twitter.com/dantelfer Dan Telfer

    You’re goddamned right it’s ankylosaurus.

  • Daneel

    Styracosaurus. Triceratops, only better.

    I always liked Moschops too (even if it’s not a dinosaur).

    • TheKaz1969

      isn’t that a pokemon?

  • http://www.ikaink.net Itsumishi

    Aherm, Argentinosaurus. When it comes to dinosaurs. Bigger is better.

    • ldobe

      If you’re willing to cast your faith out further than absolute reason, perhaps Amphicoelias Fragillimus is the dinosaur for you.

      Only one specimen found and described in 1877.  The find included two vertebrae and a femur.  It’s all gone missing now, and all that remains are the descriptions and illustrations made by the discoverer, Edward Drinker Cope.

      So there’s no evidence other than a described, but lost (or never existed) fossil.

      It would have been twice as long as Argentinosaurus based on the Diplodocus scaling models, and would have weighed 122 Metric Tonnes.

      But I’d say Argentinosaurus is definitely the largest known dinosaur that is proven to have existed.

  • professor

    Does Megalodon count as a dinosaur? If so, it gets my vote; if not, it still gets my vote!

  • Neuron

    >>What is the best dinosaur?
    >Ankylosaurus

    I saw this conversation among Twitter users 3 days ago.

    • Thad Boyd

      It was a better conversation before it was trending.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1150977900 Gary Peacock

    Best is Maratusvolanus…the spider raptor. Australia’s ‘peacock spider’ ..still around ;)

    • Antinous / Moderator

      We had a post about that a couple of weeks ago.

  • Stephen Anderson

    Pentaceratops is two better than triceratops.

  • Stephen Anderson

    Although I think Spinalsaurus goes to 11.

  • sehro von rautenkranz

    having been to Dinosaur, CO, I can vouch for the fact that it is not, in point of fact, the best dinosaur

  • http://deansli.st/ Dean Putney

    I believe this was one of the questions you asked me when sizing me up for BB. I remember getting it correct.

  • retepslluerb

    I’m way traditional here. Tyrannosaurus rex rules!

  • MarcVader

    My favorite dinosaur has to be the Chicken. Just look at their feet when they’re walking! I just read parts of the Wikipedia article on chickens, quite fascinating. Plus they taste like chicken.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken

    Edit: The Emperor Penguin is also cool. But I don’t know what that tastes like.

  • TheKaz1969

    The thing is, if Siri had actually names a dinosaur, Apple would have claimed copyright on dinosaurs…

    • acerplatanoides

       that line is older than a triceratops.

  • technogeekagain

    Actually, I don’t think Siri is far off. Dinosaur National Monument is pretty darned cool. First, there’s the desert environment, with rock outcroppings carrying some really neat cliff paintings. Then there’s the museum, where they have left a fossil bed exposed/cleaned but in situ so you can see what a rich cache of bones actually looks like in the field. Then there’s sometimes news about the latest discovery — this is still an active research area. Finally, there’s the risk/hope that you might discover a fossil yourself while wandering the grounds. (If you do, they ask you to PLEASE leave it exactly where you found it and report it to them — context is important data and might point them toward further discoveries.)

    And to top it off, they have a technocolor Stegosaurus.  No, they don’t know that dinosaurs were brightly colored and patterned — but many critters are (consider birds, the “surviving dinosaurs” — and reptile scales as well), and there’s certainly no reason they had to be boring. It’s not as if an adult stegosaur spent a lot of time hiding…..

    • Robert Cruickshank

       I had an awesome Grade 8 Science teacher, trained as a geologist, who made us colour all of the handouts she gave us. If we were colouring, we were looking at the pictures, she reasoned. When we did dinosaurs, I went nuts with the colours, and argued that I hadn’t used any colours that could not be found on a modern reptile. “You have a point, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t look like THAT.” she said.  Decades later, science is proving me right.

  • Robert Cruickshank

    I’m pretty sure this was linked from BB a while back:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vSY_rB928c
    (language NSFW!) 

    • ryan4isu

      Did you see Dan’s comment?

  • BirdBot

    I believe the website http://www.thebestdinosaur.com/ gives us the clear definitive answer to the question of which is the best dinosaur. 

  • oasisob1

    Dinosaur Jr. is the best modern (relatively speaking) dinosaur.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z81LcFhmqP4

  • http://www.adamfields.com/ Adam Fields

    Don’t know where you heard this one, but I’d like a little credit here: https://alpha.app.net/fields/post/517493 ( or if you prefer: https://twitter.com/fields/status/249958335296700416 )