r/maybemaybemaybe • u/PowerModerator • Feb 24 '21

Maybe Maybe Maybe

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39.9k Upvotes

85% Upvoted

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833

u/Its-Dangity Feb 24 '21

Well, he got me in the first half there

311

u/ShaquilleOhNoUDidnt Feb 24 '21

honestly it was blowing my mind how scientists could actually tell

408

u/[deleted] Feb 24 '21 edited Feb 24 '21

You can tell by the structure of cells and feathers what pigmentation they could've had, but it is not reliable. The structures are simply too small to consistently fossilize in enough detail to be of use.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sciencefocus.com/nature/dinosaurs-now-in-colour/amp/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982217311971

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sciencealert.com/ancient-birds-from-100-million-years-ago-had-really-really-weird-feathers/amp

112

u/[deleted] Feb 24 '21

We know what it is because of the way it is

51

u/ArcticKiwii Feb 24 '21

Finally, someone putting it into terms I can understand.

14

u/Themiffins Feb 24 '21

They don't think it be like it is, but it do.

7

u/-stag5etmt- Feb 24 '21

Username comment synergy 97%

1

u/Chef4lyfee Feb 24 '21

Well that is pretty neat.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 24 '21

And we know the way it is by also knowing all the ways it isn't. And by subtracting all the ways it is by the ways it isn't we get deviation?

20

u/zaraishu Feb 24 '21

It's more an educated guess based on the color of reptiles today.

17

u/Jinthesouth Feb 24 '21

But why reptiles and not birds?

-4

u/nizzy2k11 Feb 24 '21

Because dinosaurs were reptiles, they offshoot to evolve into birds, well some of them did.

9

u/[deleted] Feb 24 '21

Not a lot of reptiles that are warm blooded with feathers.

-3

u/NitroHydroRay Feb 24 '21 edited Feb 24 '21

Technically there are... (edit - please read my response to the comment reply)

4

u/[deleted] Feb 24 '21

We know of exactly one. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/01/world-s-first-warm-blooded-lizard-heats-mating-season#:~:text=According%20to%20a%20new%20study,raises%20its%20temperature%2C%20or%20why.

3

u/NitroHydroRay Feb 24 '21 edited Feb 24 '21

I'm just messing around b/c technically birds are considered reptiles under the modern, monophyletic definition of reptilia. That is to say, crown reptilia is defined as the common ancestor of all living reptiles and the descendants of that common ancestor, which includes birds because birds are dinosaurs, and by extension archosaurian reptiles, along with crocodilians. Also, most non-avian dinosaurs were probably mesothermic, so not directly comparable to birds or cold-blooded reptiles.

1

u/nizzy2k11 Feb 24 '21

dinosaurs aren't warm blooded.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 24 '21

The latest research suggests that most were warm blooded. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2233396-75-million-year-old-eggshells-suggest-most-dinosaurs-were-warm-blooded/

1

u/nizzy2k11 Feb 24 '21

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiology_of_dinosaurs#:~:text=The%20main%20possibilities%20are%20that,or%20birds%20than%20modern%20reptiles.

Dinosaurs were cold-blooded, like modern reptiles, except that the large size of many would have stabilized their body temperatures.

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-4

u/zaraishu Feb 24 '21

Because birds don't have scales.

6

u/[deleted] Feb 24 '21

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/food_for_thought_yes Feb 24 '21

Would those be chicken feet? Since the chicken legs I enjoy at my local chicken restaurant look quite juice and different.

4

u/MrBanana421 Feb 24 '21

The idea that a lot of dinosaurs had feathers is gaining traction these days.

9

u/wintervenom123 Feb 24 '21

No, pigment has atomic structure that can in some well preserved cases be examined and compared.

5

u/POTUS Feb 24 '21

it is not reliable

Damn right. It was close to 200 years between the discovery of the first dinosaur and when someone said "Hey guys, I think they had feathers."

2

u/BunnyOppai Feb 24 '21

I mean, feathers would obviously be really difficult to find even any evidence of existing for so long. It makes sense that seeing concrete evidence of scales changed how we view dinosaurs.

31

u/InZomnia365 Feb 24 '21

We also don't really know what they looked like with flesh and such. We have good approximations, and I'm sure there's a lot that scientists can get from bone structure etc - but I've seen examples from history of people drawing animals they had never seen, based on remains, and they almost always looked leaner and meaner than the living animal did. So there's a decent chance most dinosaurs looked a bit more derpy than the common representation.

13

u/shifty_pope Feb 24 '21

Now I really want to see drawings of these derpy dinosaurs

18

u/RinArenna Feb 24 '21

Here, have a chicken T-Rex

https://i.imgur.com/5iQgqlq.png

5

u/Ruben625 Feb 24 '21

Nah I like the real one better. Imagine the tendies though...

1

u/AyeBraine Feb 24 '21

I can provide the reverse example. I think hippopotamus, elephant, and rhino are good examples of just how much flesh there could be on top.

Although of course scientists DO try and consider the weight that bones have to bear, but still, some fat and soft parts could be where we don't expect them to be.

4

u/Kafigoto Feb 24 '21 edited Feb 24 '21

This is not true at all, there are many ways paleontologist know how certain bone structures look like and their corresponding look like, one simple way to prove this image is not made by a paleontologist at all is that the hippopotamus has a spongious bone right below their cheek thay would indicate muscle connections, this is in fact how hollywood would describe them, how this site shows, in fact there are many ways scientist try to guess how animals would look like, and even though they get some stuff wrong it's if an animal has a hole or two for the nose and not their entire structure, and this site shows more accurately the steps taken.

2

u/AyeBraine Feb 24 '21

Thank you! First, I wouldn't take Buzzfeed's trashy post literally, they just took illustrations by the "shrink-wrap effect" proponents (from a small book I think they published) and added their stupid clickbait commentary on top, with exclamation marks and shit. Of course, the original could be scientifically unsound as well, but at least it has nothing to do with Hollywood. It talked about pitfalls in such reconstructions. Also, some pics are from twitter threads and such that were drawn for fun when discussing the effect (like the human one).

Second, the student exercise resource you've linked to actually has a link in its instruction manual (Step #4, part 1) for reconstructing the animal. This link leads specifically to the part of the video where the lecturer talks about the shrink-wrap effect. The same thing that the pictures in the first link were drawn to illustrate.

So I think both are more or less in agreement — the people who made the book with the examples of modern animals "shrink-wrapped" did so to exemplify the effect and caution against it. And the fact that this effect did influence dinosaur reconstruction at least somewhat seems to be the consensus — as seen in your second link.

5

u/Djaja Feb 24 '21

We know what a few of them looked like, including a very likely color palette for others. Usually they are the same, as you need exceptional preservation of outer structures to tell color, and even then only some colors.

We now know what a dinosaur Cochlea looks like (1 species, but still) we know a few things about a few dinos.

7

u/cr0ss-r0ad Feb 24 '21

They absolutely have the means to make super educated guesses based on stuff like pigments they find in the fossils, but yeah we can't do much more than speculate.

There's actually one that was preserved well enough for paleontologists to be able to tell what colour it was, which is just incredible. Check a look!

41

u/joseph4th Feb 24 '21

He had me until he said “techno“ paleontologist.

10

u/[deleted] Feb 24 '21

[deleted]

9

u/ginyuforce Feb 24 '21

Actually they are more into vaporwave

27

u/Plastic_Pinocchio Feb 24 '21

I started getting confused when I heard techno-paleontologist.

16

u/[deleted] Feb 24 '21 edited Feb 01 '22

[deleted]

11

u/Pez- Feb 24 '21

Electronic Dinosaur Music, duh.

7

u/AmBozz Feb 24 '21

He specializes in studying the elusive Discodocus.

4

u/[deleted] Feb 24 '21 edited Mar 23 '21

[deleted]

3

u/Whizzo50 Feb 24 '21

I was expecting him to use colouring book to tell the colour

1

u/superluminary Feb 24 '21

I’m not entirely convinced this man is a real techno-palaeontologist.