tall tails

I don't think dinosaurs were taking x-rays of beaver tails, my dude. Go read a book sometime.

Don't velociraptors have xray vision though?
- That's why they're called velociraptors.
- Only on weekends
This may seem cheesy or pathetic, and I apologize for that, but I want to say: thank you for catching me off guard with your silly comment and giving me a badly-needed smile and laugh when I'm fucking miserable and in a lot of pain. It's been a while. Seriously, I appreciate it. You're a hoot :)

So one of the biggest leaps they have made in reconstruction over the last few decades is matching similar bone structure that supports soft tissue. It doesn't work for all soft tissue, but if the beavers tail bones have bumps or other features that hint at supporting extra soft tissue there is a chance.

All the stuff birds have, like inflatable neck sacks and feathers that move with muscles are examples of things we absolutely wouldn't get with fossils that are even better than a beaver tail.

Well, now I want to see an artist's rendition of a T. rex doing this:
- The Prehistoric Planet documentary series does it with sauropods, it’s pretty sick.
The idea of non-avian dinosaurs with the diverse features and behaviors birds have is very fun to me, and I hope fictitious depictions of birdsaurs becomes as common as classic dinosaurs's.
- I want to see a T. Rex do this.
I always appreciate an enthusiastic and educational response to situations like this.
Also, in 40 million years, you can match the beaver fossils to the bones of their still living descendants and find similar features.

I mean… you can see the processes (bony protrusions on the vertebrae) are long and flat and only transverse (sticking out the sides, not up/down) so… it would be pretty obvious it was a flat tail? Sure maybe they might not get that it wasn’t fuzzy without any fossils if it, and maybe they make it slightly less round, but they’re scientists not idiots. Yeah some has come a long way and some older models sucked sure but it ain’t like we are vibe coding their appearance.

Vibe coded lion:

This is some real RFK level science here.

It’s sneaking up on creationist levels of ‘science’, like where they argue recreations of Australopithecus are just ‘imagination’ and present their own version of Lucy as as a quadriped, completely ignoring the overwhelming evidence from her skeleton that she could not have walked that way (and also ignoring that we have hundreds of other specimens of her species).
It really seems that lots of people’s conception of these fields is based on very outdated concepts, either unaware or ignoring all the evidence and advancements of the past 50 years or so.

All dinosaurs had beaver tails, got it!

That is one cute beaver pic on the left. PM more of your beavers.

They always use mammals for that kind of comparison. Show me a reptile with that kind of muscle/fat composition.

The phylogenetic definition of reptile includes birds, so... Penguins, I suppose?
- Birds? You mean the last remaining dinosaurs?
Dinosaurs were not reptiles. They were warm blooded, and birds descended from them.
- Birds are reptiles. Commonly, we wouldn't say so, but they're in the same clade. The avians are closer related to the crocadilians than the crocs are to other reptiles like the squamates - lizards and snakes.

Sure but also there are some fossils that DO have skin, and some even have preserved organs. And some have feathers, which is a pretty good indicator that there wasn’t some large feature we’re missing.

No doubt we are wrong on lots of counts, but I think we have good evidence for a lot of it as well.

One thing I wouldn't mind AI to do, train a model with standardised data like this, and have it match the reconstruction. After that it can use common and less common reconstructions. After that try to map as much info from a dinosaur fossil to said standardised data structure and generate possible reconstruction for said dinosaur

Oh. I like this idea. This is the kind of thing AI would be good for.

Do beavers enjoy..... Uppies??

Seems so.

I like to imagine T. rex arms were small because that's how they communicated with their octopus rider.

They evolved to be small so they cold more easily fit into the actuator gauntlets that controlled the Gundam.

What a marvellous time for paleobootyology.

Now I want to see some pics of dinosaurs with beaver tails

We do now know that dinosaurs were the forbearers of birds. Those that told us they were reptiles still continue to push that however. They were warm blooded and it is now thought they had some sort of pre feathers.

I believe the same thing applies to archeology, The Experts claim to have an answer to every question and impute things on the ancient cultures that they have no way of knowing.

The Experts claim to have an answer to every question
That's not my experience at all. "The Experts" are extraordinarily cautious to make assertions even when they're well supported. They talk about "models" and are happy to revise and update their positions when contrary evidence emerges.
Pseudo scientists have answers for everything.
- At every period of human history experts have claimed to have all of the answers to every question. They've never been right about that but people assume now they are. Dinosaurs are a case in point, as egypt, peru, et al are.

They look at related and similarly adapted modern animals when trying to make visualizations of fossils, it's not all just guessing.

This was a problem, which is nowadays accounted for.

I've just watched the new movie and damn it's so stupid compared to the original ones.

Beaversaurs

now think about apple fossils

Steve Jobs?

i saw someone draw a hippo based solely on the skeletal remains. they looked nothing alike.

Dinosaurs were probably chonky birbs.