Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fossil shows mammal sinking teeth into dinosaur

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 55 posts

Re: Fossil shows mammal sinking teeth into dinosaur

#41

Post by Tao3300 »

jameshart wrote: post #6

Seems dangerous to infer too much about the general behavior of entire species based on the observed behavior captured in two individuals at the moment they were being entombed in the lava flow from a volcanic eruption. Like assuming that based on some skeletons found under a volcanic ash flow that the normal behavior of humans was running with your hands in the air and screaming really loudly.

It was a mud flow. It likely came on extremely fast while they were distracted by their life and death struggle, and not necessarily during a dramatic eruption.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lahar

Re: Fossil shows mammal sinking teeth into dinosaur

#42

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

bitwize wrote: post #38
karim79 wrote: post #31

> Experts revealed the 125m-year-old fossil that froze in time after being taken on by a small mammal a third of its size. They are tangled together, the mammal’s teeth sunk into the beaked dinosaur’s ribs, its left paw clasping the beast’s lower jaw. I'm pretty sure my little dog would do something similar if she encountered a wild boar in the forest. I'm quite sure that if I were successfully chased down by a veloc…

Velociraptors were roughly turkey sized. I doubt one could eat a healthy human. The Jurassic Park "raptors" were badge-engineered Deinonychus. There's a smaller predator, larger prey phenomenon I find fascinating, and it has to do with how a modern dinosaur -- the peregrine falcon -- takes its prey. It literally falcon-punches its victim -- diving at high speed to strike with a closed talon. It can make a meal of a b…

It’s always fun, watching small hawks and falcons, trying to fly off with their kills.

It’s a series of “hops.”

As for nasty small critters, look at pretty much anything in the mustelid (weasel) family. Pound for pound, the nastiest critters on Earth.

Wolverines have been known to hunt caribou.

And, of course, we have the honey badger: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4r7wHMg5Yjg

Re: Fossil shows mammal sinking teeth into dinosaur

#43

Post by ethanbond »

Kamq wrote: post #37
wredue wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I think you misread my comment. I'm not anti-science. I'm saying we screwed up bigtime trusting people within the institutions we put up to manage science. Especially in the soft sciences. We let things go without serious peer review or replication far too long, and allowed far too dodgy statistics, resulting in the replication crisis we see today. Science is amazing, but we haven't been doing science in certain area…

So if I’m understanding correctly: no structured sharing of scientific ideas until they’re replicated? By what mechanism do you propose people find novel studies that seem interesting enough to replicate?

Re: Fossil shows mammal sinking teeth into dinosaur

#44

Post by Sparkyte »

bitwize wrote: post #38
karim79 wrote: post #31

> Experts revealed the 125m-year-old fossil that froze in time after being taken on by a small mammal a third of its size. They are tangled together, the mammal’s teeth sunk into the beaked dinosaur’s ribs, its left paw clasping the beast’s lower jaw. I'm pretty sure my little dog would do something similar if she encountered a wild boar in the forest. I'm quite sure that if I were successfully chased down by a veloc…

Velociraptors were roughly turkey sized. I doubt one could eat a healthy human. The Jurassic Park "raptors" were badge-engineered Deinonychus. There's a smaller predator, larger prey phenomenon I find fascinating, and it has to do with how a modern dinosaur -- the peregrine falcon -- takes its prey. It literally falcon-punches its victim -- diving at high speed to strike with a closed talon. It can make a meal of a b…

Their noodle necks would only be strong enough to draw blood and maybe slowly tear flesh. They looked to rely on their razor like teeth more than jaw strength. A human could beat them with kick.

Anyone says they have a strong bite doesn't pay attention to other animals with similar jaws. Crocodiles for example can do 3700 PSI but is supported by a rigid neck and doesn't have to deal with the weight to support its jaws. This is also support by a jaw snapping mechanism. You could effectively hold a crocodiles mouth shut with no force at all. This would say the Jarasic Park ones had 1000 PSI, but real life ones 100 PSI and the teeth did all the work. Yeah I think humans have a stronger jaw, further the mouth extends from the jaw the more muscle it needs.

Looked up a caiman bite force it about 400 PSI. There are some that can do more but it makes sense crocodile bite force is how much it can do with its weight. Slightly larger than a chicken Dino isn't going to compete with a caiman.

Re: Fossil shows mammal sinking teeth into dinosaur

#45

Post by Kamq »

ethanbond wrote: post #43
Kamq wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misread my comment. I'm not anti-science. I'm saying we screwed up bigtime trusting people within the institutions we put up to manage science. Especially in the soft sciences. We let things go without serious peer review or replication far too long, and allowed far too dodgy statistics, resulting in the replication crisis we see today. Science is amazing, but we haven't been doing science in certain area…

So if I’m understanding correctly: no structured sharing of scientific ideas until they’re replicated? By what mechanism do you propose people find novel studies that seem interesting enough to replicate?

> So if I’m understanding correctly: no structured sharing of scientific ideas until they’re replicated?

No, you don't. I'm actually struggling to think of a more extreme interpretation of my words.

Trying something novel is fine. But trying something out, getting a single result, treating it as gospel, and not even trying to find the flaws in it isn't doing science. A lot of federal grant money has gone into institutions that do just that, and I think it should be re-directed elsewhere. To, y'know, institutions that are actually going to do science.

Re: Fossil shows mammal sinking teeth into dinosaur

#46

Post by mertd »

karim79 wrote: post #31

> Experts revealed the 125m-year-old fossil that froze in time after being taken on by a small mammal a third of its size. They are tangled together, the mammal’s teeth sunk into the beaked dinosaur’s ribs, its left paw clasping the beast’s lower jaw. I'm pretty sure my little dog would do something similar if she encountered a wild boar in the forest. I'm quite sure that if I were successfully chased down by a veloc…

I feel like it is impossible to prove that the mammal wasn't simply scavenging on an already dead dino.

Re: Fossil shows mammal sinking teeth into dinosaur

#47

Post by maxbond »

Tao3300 wrote: post #41
jameshart wrote: post #6

Seems dangerous to infer too much about the general behavior of entire species based on the observed behavior captured in two individuals at the moment they were being entombed in the lava flow from a volcanic eruption. Like assuming that based on some skeletons found under a volcanic ash flow that the normal behavior of humans was running with your hands in the air and screaming really loudly.

It was a mud flow. It likely came on extremely fast while they were distracted by their life and death struggle, and not necessarily during a dramatic eruption. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lahar

Additionally, it's a pretty solid prior to assume that, when we find rapidly forming fossils like this, the behaviors they capture were common behaviors. Fossil formation is rare, so a fossil capturing a rare behavior is pretty darn unlikely. A behavior would have to be ellicted many, many times to have a likely chance of being preserved in a fossil.

Surely they exist, and this could be one of them, but until we find evidence to the contrary our best guess should be that this was a common behavior.

Re: Fossil shows mammal sinking teeth into dinosaur

#48

Post by stephen_g »

Kamq wrote: post #12
23B1 wrote: post #2

But Brusatte said there remained some legitimate concerns about the integrity of the fossil. “There have been doctored fossils from this part of the world before, and the scientists did not dig up this specimen themselves. The skeletons are no doubt genuine, but I suppose the poses of the bones could have been altered, although I have no direct evidence for this,” he said. The downstream effects of a post-truth post-…

> The downstream effects of a post-truth post-trust era. All this era has shown us, is that we should never have been relying on trust in anything even close to science. Trusting people to put the truth their own career advancement is how we got into this mess with the replication crisis.

All science is based on some kind of trust unless everybody personally replicates every single study and experiment...

Re: Fossil shows mammal sinking teeth into dinosaur

#49

Post by midoridensha »

Sharlin wrote: post #40
karim79 wrote: post #31

> Experts revealed the 125m-year-old fossil that froze in time after being taken on by a small mammal a third of its size. They are tangled together, the mammal’s teeth sunk into the beaked dinosaur’s ribs, its left paw clasping the beast’s lower jaw. I'm pretty sure my little dog would do something similar if she encountered a wild boar in the forest. I'm quite sure that if I were successfully chased down by a veloc…

Uh, except that this was a herbivore dinosaur.

Was it really?

Are horses and cows herbivores or carnivores? You'll probably say they're herbivores, but there are plenty of videos of them eating small animals (like baby chicks).

Re: Fossil shows mammal sinking teeth into dinosaur

#50

Post by ethanbond »

Kamq wrote: post #45
ethanbond wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if I’m understanding correctly: no structured sharing of scientific ideas until they’re replicated? By what mechanism do you propose people find novel studies that seem interesting enough to replicate?

> So if I’m understanding correctly: no structured sharing of scientific ideas until they’re replicated? No, you don't. I'm actually struggling to think of a more extreme interpretation of my words. Trying something novel is fine. But trying something out, getting a single result, treating it as gospel, and not even trying to find the flaws in it isn't doing science. A lot of federal grant money has gone into institu…

Putting something in a journal is literally just publishing a result. It explicitly does not intrinsically carry notions of validity for the exact reasons you point out.

How are scientists supposed to share results in a way that doesn’t run the risk of someone else taking it as gospel, or even more likely: of someone on the internet thinking that the scientific community is taking it as gospel (which they’re generally not… again for the exact reasons you mention).

Post reply on HN