Dinosaur? I hardly nodosaur!

[Dannyalcatraz]

A museum in Alberta, Canada is going to be displaying what may be the most well-preserved dinosaur fossil ever found. No bones about it, this looks ore like a SFX model than a fossil because so much of the skin and body armor has been preserved intact.

Nodosaur looks like anklyosaur and other armored herbivorous dinos, but is apparently a new genus & species to science.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/14/americas/perfect-dinosaur-fossil-alberta-canada-museum-trnd/index.html

 

[Tonguez]

the quality of preservation on that thing is remarkable, certainly not the kind of turtle you'd find in the back pond

my take home though is that those FX and GGI guys in Hollywood are amazing in how lifelike they can get their models

 

[Jhaelen]

There's been some amazing fossil finds in recent years. For a few species they've even been able to tell what the coloration of their skin was - if it was skin: apparently several kinds of dinosaurs were covered in feathers to help them deal with colder climates.

 

[Joker]

Yeah, these dino's are really good for harvesting metal and flint.

 

[Istbor]

Looks great.
I wanted to make a joke about how old they are, but remembered to stay away from Religion and politics.

I still love Dinosaurs. Also ouch Danny, that thread title...

 

[Tonguez]

There's been some amazing fossil finds in recent years. For a few species they've even been able to tell what the coloration of their skin was - if it was skin: apparently several kinds of dinosaurs were covered in feathers to help them deal with colder climates.

The term Dinosaur is problematic in as much as it is applied to a diverse variety of entirely different and unrelated species. Their common ancestor may have been a bipedal reptile but the term covers both Biped and quadruped forms. Generally though Dinosaurs are classified according to their hip structures ornithischian (bird hip) and saurischian (lizard hip), ironically Birds are saurischian!

As to feathered dinosaurs, the saurischian Theropods are the classic feathered 'avian dinosaurs' and include Tyranosaurus, Velociraptor, Modern Birds, Troodon and also the weird Therizinosaur with its gigantic hands. Nowadays the smaller varieties of theropods are usually depicted as feathered with artist speculating on colours and display characteristics inspired by the variety of modern birds including wattles and cocks combs (Velociraptor may have looked like a Turkey with sharp teeth)

There is also evidence that some ornithopods (which is a a catch all for bipedal herbivorous ornithischian) were also feathered and indeed it appears that quill structures were an early feature in all dinosaur species. Because of this there is even speculation that other types - for instance Triceratops - may have had quills as displays on their tails or as juveniles, although rough hides and scales seems to be the standard them.

 

[Hussar]

Saw this in the news. So cool.