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How did a brachiosaur get its head to ground level for drinking

RaptorLover0823 wrote:

What is the resting position of an Allosaurus' arms? Like, where in between a tyrannosaur and a raptor?

More like a tyrannosaur.

tigris115 wrote:

How did a brachiosaur get its head to ground level for drinking

It may have bent it's legs like a dog does when it stretches.

If the claim about finding DNA from B-Rex is real, then is it possible that we can clone a T. rex via the Jurassic Park way, but with adding bird DNA? Also, are chickens, roosters, and pheasants really the direct relatives of T. rex?

There would be a whole host of problems even if we could reconstruct a viable DNA strand. What cell would we put the DNA in, how would we initiate the growth of the embryo? How would we gestate it, under what conditions, for how long? There is a very long list of issues associated with cloning an extinct organism that isn't a mammoth.

As for part 2, they are not the direct relatives of T.rex. The most basal birds alive today are the ratites, but even they are relatively distantly related to T.rex (although that is hard to quantify). Their closest non-avaian relatives would be the Troodontids. T.rex, being a ceolurosaur is more closely related to birds than say Allosaurus, and quite a few other dinosaurs, but it is by no means the direct ancestor of birds.

How did they somehow 'become' the direct relatives of T. rex then? Bad media reporting or something? Random guesses?

Also, if it's not too much to ask

Rhedosaurus wrote:

If crested theropods grew larger then those without, then how did Gigantoraptor get so...gigantic when compared to the other oviraptoriods? Could it be that the one that was found was a crestless female and the male which, if sexual dimorphism applies here, has yet to be found?

^This please.

Bad media is exactly what it is. People try to explain that birds are dinosaurs and it happens to be that T.rex is also a coelurosaur, and because everybody has a concept of what a T.rex is, it's a useful dinosaur to use. But the nuances of evolutionary relationships seldom make it into popular media.

Regarding your second question about Gigantoraptor the only known specimen of that dinosaur only had the lower jaw, so reconstructed skeletons have an inferred skull based on relatives. Whether or not it had a crest remains to be seen.

What's the consensus on Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus? Juvenile, female of wakeri, own species, what?

It's probably its own species. Given that it is older than all of the other Parasaurolophus species, and it apparently has variation in the internal structure of the crest (though I haven't read exactly what that is).

What was the maximum size of S. stenops

Depending on what you read:

28-33 ft long, 12-14 feet high including the plates, 3-5 tons.

And how about ungulatus

this question doesn't relate as much to paleofauna themselves, but to prehistoric geology

does anyone know if there were other Jurassic strata that could've been observed before that in the Jura Mountains? i'm looking into possible alternate etymologies for geological periods.

tigris115 wrote:

And how about ungulatus

Ungulatus is considered the same as Stenops by most.

Oshronosaurus wrote:

this question doesn't relate as much to paleofauna themselves, but to prehistoric geology

does anyone know if there were other Jurassic strata that could've been observed before that in the Jura Mountains? i'm looking into possible alternate etymologies for geological periods.

Considering they are both in Europe, the Portugese Lourinhã formation comes to mind, and it is very similar to the Morrison. So it could have been called the Lourinian?

Paleoman wrote:

Oshronosaurus wrote:

this question doesn't relate as much to paleofauna themselves, but to prehistoric geology

does anyone know if there were other Jurassic strata that could've been observed before that in the Jura Mountains? i'm looking into possible alternate etymologies for geological periods.

Considering they are both in Europe, the Portugese Lourinhã formation comes to mind, and it is very similar to the Morrison. So it could have been called the Lourinian?

Lourinian Park? Doesn't have that good of a ring to it.

Jur-ass-ic Park...Lour-in-i-an Park...yeah, you're right, it doesn't have as much of a ring to it. (unless it's pronounced like lou-rin-yan) i guess four syllables is one too many  it's a cop-out, but "Lourinhic" could be another.

more seriously, i want to eventually do this for all the geological periods, even minor ones within larger eras like the Pennsylvanian period of the Carboniferous (some will be easier than others, of course, just coming from different place names)

I remember reading that Appalachiosaurus was part of the Albertosaur branch of the Tyrannosauroidea superfamily, but after reading David Hone's new book, 'The Tyrannosaur Chronicles' during Christmas. (It was one of my gifts and I love it.) I found out it was no longer the case. What are the reasons and can it still be reclassified as an albertosaur in the future?

According to the formal 2005 description of Appalachiosaurus:

"The basal position of Appalachiosaurus is supported by three unambiguous character states: the apex of the dorsolateral ridge of the lacrimal is rostral to the level of the ventral ramus, the lacrimal pneumatic recess is small, and the accessory lacrimal recess is proximal in position." (Carr et al. 2005) From:A NEW GENUS AND SPECIES OF TYRANNOSAUROID FROM THE LATE CRETACEOUS (MIDDLE CAMPANIAN) DEMOPOLIS FORMATION OF ALABAMA

In short, some key features of the skull place it outside of Tyranosauroidea, and more recent analyses that include more Asian Tyrannosaurs continue to find it there. Older analyses were more informal, failed to include asian taxa (which to be fair many of which had not been discovered at the time), and were less informed on the nature of Tyrannosaur growth.

We definitely need more material to gain a better understanding of Appalaciosaurus, but I don't think it is likely that it will be reclassified as an Albertosaur.

I know that the holotype was found in Northern Alabama and that some material was also found in SW Georgia, but what other places would be good places to look to find more skeletons?

I'm not super familiar with the geology of the eastern US, but it looks like the unit that has yielded Appalachiosaurus outcrops in Mississippi and Tennessee as well. It looks like it is found in Northeastern Mississippi and in a thin band that travels N-S on the West side of Tennessee.

I never heard of Appalachiosaurus remains being found in those states. That said, I'm not surprised that fossils of that dinosaur have been found there. After all, if T. rex had a range from Saskatchewan, Canada down to New Mexico and Texas, then I don't see why Appalachiosaurus had a short range.

I just find it a bit odd that between Appalachiosaurus and at least 2 duck-bills/hadrosaurs being found that it would have launched a massive interest in finding dinosaurs in the South.

Sorry, that was unclear. Appalchiosaurus hasn't been found there, but the rocks that it has been found in outcrop in those states. So there is potential to find more specimens there. But it is harder to do paleontology (or any geology really) in the southeast because it is so forested.

No problems. We all make blunders on sentences and grammar sometimes.

It makes sense that all the forests makes it harder to dig for dinosaurs. Back when my family went for a vacation to Kentucky back in 2004 (which was a disaster since nobody planned anything) I saw a ton of trees in Tennessee and Kentucky. The fact that a lot of the SE is also swampland makes things harder too.

Has any skeletons of Deinosuchus or a similar sized crocodilian been found in the same formations that T. rex and Triceratops have yet?

To the best of my knowledge there has not. Deinoschus remains have been found as far north as Montana, but those are earlier than T.rex (though they are contemporary with Daspletosaurus). I wouldn't necessarily expect to find a similarly large crocodilian in the hell creek, because it seems that Deinosuchus liked estuary type environments and the hell creek might have been too marshy. But the fossil record is full of surprises, and It's possible that large crocodilians were still hanging around in the south during the end of the Cretaceous.

I have some questions about the robust and gracile morphs of T. rex

1. Does it have to do with anything like gender or distribution throughout time
2. What specimens would fit under each category?

tigris115 wrote:

I have some questions about the robust and gracile morphs of T. rex

1. Does it have to do with anything like gender or distribution throughout time
2. What specimens would fit under each category?

1. Gender may still play a part, but a lot of that has been disputed since the late-2000's.
2. Sue and Scotty are under the robust while Stan, Duffy, and AMNH-5022 are gracile.

So technically speaking, one could just make a model of sue and stand and be done with

Pardon the double post but can I get some scientific feedback on Sue here?

Spoiler:

We need more then just one model. As for that 3d model, it's not bad, but it needs teeth (of course) and a bit more detail.

Thanks. I'll whip up a better Sue asap

It's hard to compare to photos with the way that she is looking down, but I'd say that her head is probably too narrow. Also, and this might come into play when more detail is added, but the bottom of the feet were probably thicker as they had to cushion a lot of weight. Take a look at ostrich feet to see what I mean, and what is going to work with your style.

Otherwise I think you're off to a great start.