Therizinosaurs are some of the strangest dinosaurs to have ever existed - so strange that for a long time palaeontologists just didn't know what they were or how they evolved.
Extremely interesting. I can understand why they are your favorite. Was it feather and down; or is there a possibility of fur. The Therizinosaurs may have been more common than the existing evidence shows so far. Keep up to date with this, for later videos, as more discoveries are made. Do a video on Simosuchus if you can. Also Birds are warm blooded, and yet descendants of Dinosaurs. Very interesting how and when they made this change, and obviously there is now proof of cold climate dinosaurs, who must have been warm blooded. Dinosaurs and mamamls do have common ancestory, so wonder if genetic capability is shared for this adaptation.
I have issue with nearly every single depiction of therizinosaurus I have ever seen. Why on earth are they always depicted with RIDICULOUS amounts of feathers. Like people complain about t-rex having too much feathers (even though I have a book from 2012 which has a feathered t-rex) but never a pigeon looking therizinosaurus, or one that looks like a zebra, for no reason. Like do people just forget the fact that as an animal gets bigger, it gets hotter, or that nearly every terrestrial animal is evolved to be at least slightly camouflaged, even zebras. The only exception to that are birds, conveniently, but they can fly. So just depicting any dinosaur with exaggerated bright bird plumage is just as bad as shrinkwrapping or pronated wrists in my opinion. I find most depictions of therizinosaurus are apparently done by people who advocated feathered dinosaurs so much that they're less accurate. I mean we're talking about a creature that lived in a semi-arid environment and was the size of an elephant, but people act as if it is literally just a scaled up chicken. And it annoys me so much when people act as if their using modern birds as analogues to excuse their stupid profeatherbias (which in my opinion is as bad as a proscalybias, both ignore evidence and basic science after all), because they forget point out the fact that the largest bird in the world, which is probably the best analogue for non-avian dinosaurs, lacks feathers in numerous places across its body and has less dense feathers than many other species. Also, other ratites are well adapted for camouflage, like emus or kiwis. So if people wanted to be accurate with using birds as analogues, we'd see a lot more brown and reddish therizinosaurs with less or shorter body feathers, but still display feathers. Rather than just making it look like a bloody pigeon or giant ground sloth because it looks neet.
Really interesting! What strikes me is the artists in representing these creatures seem to be obsessed with allowing space for the claws first and foremost. If you or I had claws of this size, we would wish to avoid them snagging on things as we moved about within vegetation. Therefore they were probably tucked away in some fashion (as birds wings do?) as opposed to just dangling down.
Additionally, we know that they possessed a broad pelvis. If the pelvis is broadened, allow more room for intestinal processes then the amount of food material (and therefore its weight) in the gut would have been increased also. When one looks at most representations, the creatures would have fallen on their faces if not constantly running forward as the fulcrum point is not represented at the pelvic girdle. Consequently the weight in the tail should offset this. It would make sense for the Therazinosaurs to have the ability to rear up, but a more horizontal spinal stance would be much more efficient for day-to-day movement.
When we see animals with developed evolutionary eccentricities, often this is to do with display and sexual attractiveness (antler size in deer, birds of paradise). Might the claw size be related to this as opposed to purely food collection or defence? We have no evidence of a lek system in dinosaurs but........
Almost everything you think you "know" about dinosaurs is likely to be proven false. Consider how wildly wrong people were 100 years ago. Now consider how in 100 years people will scoff and sneer at today's backwards and misguided knowledge of dinosaurs. The funny thing is that today's generation somehow have the arrogance and the utter lack of humility to think that somehow the buck stops with them, that they just happen to be the first generation to get most everything right. The ego needed for such a belief is astounding. You guys do not actually "know" all the things you claim to know. You generation hardly inspires confidence so it is almost unthinkable that you will be right on even 10% of your predictions, predictions you like to pass off as absolute fact in the breakdown of the scientific method. Even the most basic and in your eyes indisputable things will almost certainly be proven false over time. In 2134 they may use new technology and newly discovered evidence to determine that trex wasn't a meat eater at all or that triceratops was actually a meat eater. So please remember that you all are just a group of people peddling inaccurate information and all the things that you think that you "know" beyond all doubt and almost certainly wrong. Your generation is not going to be the one to finally get it right.
You generation can hardly be trusted to use the bathroom y yourselves. You are not so great and advanced and intelligent that the trend of of new generation being wildly wrong on almost everything somehow stopped when it hit your generation because you guys are just so epically awesome and great. So the next time you are temped to use phrase like "We now know that blah blah blah", please remember that you do not actually know anything and that you people are just blindly flailing about with inaccurate theories and almost everything that you consider indisputable will actually be disputed in 50 years or 150. You guys are similar to the group who went around co convinced in their greatness that their theory of the earth being flat is indisputable and inviolate. It's pretty sad to consider that there is a whole profession whose work is almost exclusively wrong. A whole profession who only contributes misinformation and who almost exclusively deals in falsehoods. It really makes one wonder if said profession is even needed or if it is more of a social club for rich, white, elitist white guys. They might as well change a degree in paleontology from years at a university to perhaps a 6 month certificate program. It's not like a vetted paleontology major is going to be wrong in a better way than some guy with a certificate. If both are simply going to get everything wrong and twisted anyway, why both with the years of study?
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