Do you have a favourite dinosaur?

[AliasBot]

I remember having one of those massive books of dinosaurs when I was a little kid - learned enough species from that to make picking out a single favorite tough. But off the top of my head...I always liked Baryonyx. Part of that's just that the name is very cool, but those sick claws don't hurt, either.

Also rad: the classic T-Rex, Utahraptor, Deinonychus...hard to go wrong with a big, carnivorous theropod. As far as sauropods go, Ankylosaurus is the top of the heap for me. Mosasaurus wasn't technically a dinosaur, but a notable appearance in one of those ancient-nature documentaries left a big impression on me, and as a giant reptile from the Cretaceous, it's close enough in spirit to at least rate a mention.

 

[niklinna]

Hey kids!

Hot-blooded T. rex and cold-blooded Stegosaurus: Chemical clues reveal dinosaur metabolisms

 

[Tonguez]

But then turned out the body was actually distinct from an Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus was real after all.

I always thought that Apato sounded dumb, so never stopped calling them Brontos. Of course we also have Brachs, Diplodocus and Titanosaurs added to the sauropod list, but Bronto will always reign supreme!

 

[niklinna]

Sadly the whole thing had to come to an end.

Dinosaurs: The Final Day with David Attenborough

This looks to be the BBC version, which I cannot view from outside the UK (and I still haven't bothered to set up any kind of proxy). But Nova did a version in two episodes that's 20-some minutes longer. Don't know what they padded it with.

Dinosaur Apocalypse: The New Evidence (episode 1)
Dinosaur Apocalypse: The Last Day (episode 2)

 

[hamishspence]

But then turned out the body was actually distinct from an Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus was real after all.

The "wrong head" thing had nothing to do with the decisions to merge the two genera, in 1903, and split the two genera again, in 2015.

Bully for Camarasaurus

Note: This post was written in 2014. It predates Emanuel Tschopp and colleagues’ landmark paper which, among other things, resurrected the genus Brontosaurus. I’ve attempted to update t…

extinctmonsters.net

So how does the mismatched head fit into all of this? The short answer is that it doesn’t. The fact that some Apatosaurus mounts had incorrect heads for much of the 20th century has nothing to do with which name was being used at any given time, although the two issues have often been conflated in popular books. I suspect the two stories got mixed up because paleontologists were pushing to correct both misconceptions around the same time during the dinosaur renaissance.

 

[Haiku Elvis]

So how does the mismatched head fit into all of this? The short answer is that it doesn’t. The fact that some Apatosaurus mounts had incorrect heads for much of the 20th century has nothing to do with which name was being used at any given time, although the two issues have often been conflated in popular books. I suspect the two stories got mixed up because paleontologists were pushing to correct both misconceptions around the same time during the dinosaur renaissance.

Sorry I'm just picturing a veloceraptor wearing a berret painting a ceiling now.

 

[Deset Gled]

Sadly the whole thing had to come to an end.

Dinosaurs: The Final Day with David Attenborough

This looks to be the BBC version

The Henson version:

 

[trappedslider]

 

[Fenris-77]

The only answer to this question in Stegosaurus. At least that's what 10 year-old me would have said when my highest hope was to be an archaeologist (because I didn't know that paleontologist was a different thing and Indiana Jones was a big deal for me in 1986 ).

 

[Yora]

Sorry I'm just picturing a veloceraptor wearing a berret painting a ceiling now.