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Small horned dinosaur from China, a Triceratops relative, walked on two feet

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11–16 of 16 posts

Re: Small horned dinosaur from China, a Triceratops relative, walked on two feet

#11
post #2

I'm glad with articles like this and others recently[1], academia is finally taking the possibility of lizardmen seriously. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19707426

And one day, we may encounter them as dramatized in Star Trek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distant_Origin

Re: Small horned dinosaur from China, a Triceratops relative, walked on two feet

#12
post #8

Kids these days get to grow up with much cooler dinosaurs. They've found like eight sauropods larger than the brontosaurus since I was a kid in the 90's. And now brontosaurus isn't even a species, they changed it to a genus!

No, brontosaurus turned out to be an incorrectly assembled/restored partial skeleton with incorrect skulls substituted when unavailable, including bones from two different animals (apatosaurus and diplodocus or brachiosaurus), to depict a single animal. This naming fiasco happened starting around 1969 and validity opinions became widely held toward the end of the 1980's.

That's why Jurassic Park went with brachiosaurus as the lead sauropod. Brontosaurus, for a period of time, was viewed as incorrect and the product of archeological errors.

Since then, naming conventions have re-adopted brontosaurus as a subtype of apatosaurus to alleviate some of the confusion as to whether brontosaurus is a valid dinosaur name. As of 2015, opinions have solidified with deeper context and better data. It's sort of like the rebellion against whether Pluto is the ninth planet or not. So many people just like the name, brontosaurus, that there's been a consensus to squeeze it back into a usable, valid place that doesn't leave the world confused and dismayed.

Re: Small horned dinosaur from China, a Triceratops relative, walked on two feet

#13
post #8

Kids these days get to grow up with much cooler dinosaurs. They've found like eight sauropods larger than the brontosaurus since I was a kid in the 90's. And now brontosaurus isn't even a species, they changed it to a genus!

Brontosaurus has always either been a genus or a younger sysnonym. The most prominent species of that genus has always been Brontosaurus excelsus, apart from the few years up to 2014, when it was Apatosaurus excelsus,

Re: Small horned dinosaur from China, a Triceratops relative, walked on two feet

#14
post #8

Kids these days get to grow up with much cooler dinosaurs. They've found like eight sauropods larger than the brontosaurus since I was a kid in the 90's. And now brontosaurus isn't even a species, they changed it to a genus!

JFYI ;-):

https://tinyapps.org/blog/200702250700_why_in_my_day.html

Re: Small horned dinosaur from China, a Triceratops relative, walked on two feet

#16
post #9

Looks bizarre at first, but then you start to see the similarities to a bird.

Yeah, add feathers and it'll almost look like a chicken. The question is if that's just the illustrator's bias, or if they actually did look like that.

Many dinosaurs had feathers, can it be ruled out for this critter?
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