• Pilon23@feddit.dkEnglish
      1·
      6 days ago

      dinosaur mummies

      6 year old me would’ve been scared shitless with this information

  • iheartneopets@lemm.eeEnglish
    2·
    6 days ago

    So tired of this meme, especially in a science themed sub. It’s just wrong and thusly promotes disinformation because it takes seconds to read a meme like this and move on without question. Meanwhile it takes (comparitavely) ages to actually research how fossils are reconstructed. If people even think to research it in the first place, because, hey, it’s in a science-based sub, right??

    Remember kids, the best memes are those based on truth 😎

    • Anomalocaris@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      6 days ago

      ok, but can we make fun of old “skin wrapping” reconstructions?

      because for most people, Jurassic park are still their standard version of dinosaur reconstitution.

      • iheartneopets@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        6 days ago

        Right, and that’s why most people would believe this meme and take it as 100% truthful. The meme doesn’t specify that that’s the way we USED to do it, it says that’s how it would be done

  • But_my_mom_says_im_cool@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    6 days ago

    Fossils are more than just bone in many cases, and study of bones can reveal what they were. Example is that T. rex had lips. How would they know that? By looking at the teeth and how they wear down compared to other animals like alligators, etc.

    • Firipu@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      6 days ago

      You can also see where the lip muscles attach to the jaw.

      The memes that our current Dino images are wrong are very outdated. Our images are probably surprisingly close to reality.

  • jonsnothere@beehaw.orgEnglish
    1·
    6 days ago

    This is actually doing a disservice to all the work paleontologists do in reconstructing. There was indeed a time where there was too much stretching over bones, but this is something they are now very aware of. Also keep in mind reptiles, avians and and mammals have a very different relationship between bones and body. It’s mainly mammals that tend to add a lot of bulk like that.

  • squaresinger@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    7 days ago

    There’s a website (can’t be bothered to google it right now), where they reconstruct modern-day animals from their bones as if they were dinosaurs. It’s ridiculous.

    That’s why I think that most of paleontology is just speculative nonsense. You get these nice pictures of dinosaurs in their natural habitat, then you read the paper and it turns out, all they have of that dinosaur is an imprint of half a knuckle bone.

    Astronomy is similar. You get pretty images of exoplanets with clouds, continents and oceans, and then you read the paper and all they had was periodic flickering of a star when the planet orbits in between the star and us.

    At that rate, they could just also invent a space faring dinosaur civilization from the same fragments of information and it would be just as grounded in reality.