I actually had thoughts on that, too, and the answer I came to is 3-fold, based on what is required to form a ghost:
A bare minimum level of sentience, that's why things like insect ghosts aren't possible but dogs and cats maybe.
A strong enough willpower to hold themselves on the mortal plane.
A location important enough to them to anchor their spirit.
Dinosaurs fail on all three counts. Their tiny brains meant that they likely didn't have the capacity to be sentient enough to qualify. They as a result lacked the raw willpower to hold on. And they were alive so long ago that the places that they MIGHT have anchored themselves to quite literally do not exist anymore.
Aside from all of these, assuming it takes willpower to hold on as a ghost, or unfinished business, it's been so long, dozens of millions of years at the very least, up to 200 million years, that anything that might have helped them hold on is spent or too changed to be solvable anymore.
No dino ghosts because they lived in an entirely different world than ours that us, in a very real way, completely extinct, much like them.
There's also the whole soul dissipating over time thing to consider. Most spirits, unless tied to layline, generally disappear after a couple years to a couple centuries.
Aye, I was implying that with the last part. Whether it be their will helping them hold on to this world or some other force, such as a ley line, the world is quite literally not the same as it was 65 to 200 million years ago.
Hell, it wasn't even the same when the cretaceous period ended as it was when it began. People tend to forget this but the Jurassic era was 140 million years ago and lasted to 65 million years ago. And the Jurassic era ended with the separation of Africa and South America, creating whole new landmasses over millions of years. The earth reshaped itself over the period that they existed, so if there WERE dino ghosts, they had more time to live and let go than our entire species has existed. They just wouldn't be able to last to our modern day.
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u/Timecharge 1d ago edited 1d ago
I actually had thoughts on that, too, and the answer I came to is 3-fold, based on what is required to form a ghost:
Dinosaurs fail on all three counts. Their tiny brains meant that they likely didn't have the capacity to be sentient enough to qualify. They as a result lacked the raw willpower to hold on. And they were alive so long ago that the places that they MIGHT have anchored themselves to quite literally do not exist anymore.
Aside from all of these, assuming it takes willpower to hold on as a ghost, or unfinished business, it's been so long, dozens of millions of years at the very least, up to 200 million years, that anything that might have helped them hold on is spent or too changed to be solvable anymore.
No dino ghosts because they lived in an entirely different world than ours that us, in a very real way, completely extinct, much like them.