The structure of their skulls also resembles those of elephants, so it's possible they also had long trunks.
This is an old theory that is no longer supported by most paleontologists AFAIK. Trunks require specific musculature, more blood vessels, and more nerves than a regular nose does, and those things leave evidence in the structure of the facial bones.
Snuffleupagus.
Does anyone know if this is something that was actually possible? Like, how sure are we they looked one way and not the other?
“Every reconstruction involves some level of inference and speculation to literally ‘flesh out’ details not preserved in the fossil record,” Celeskey explains. “In the process of creating paleoart, artists and the researchers have discussions about how to fill in these missing pieces, which helps everyone involved to think about how they are interpreting the actual evidence at hand.” From a NatGeo article I found
Of course it's possible. It's highly improbable due to weight, of course, but it's not impossible.
There's a lot of information that was not recorded in fossil, and we have very few fossil recorded, compared to how many animals of a species lived. How we reconstruct existinct animals keeps on changing with every new information, so it's always cool to challenge the way we view a creature.
Not very likely due to the weight. Same with the trunk suggestion, there was a lot of air space and gaps in the few skulls that were preserved to make them weight less.
Is that a long neck between your shoulders or are you just happy to be a skeleton?
Reminds me of an XKCD strip about spiders. A time traveler comes to the present to see a live spider since they only had remains to look at. They're astounded that spiders can make webs.
This honestly reframed dinosaurs for me forever. Science is extremely conservative with its interpretation, but the reality is that we only know very basic details. Millions of years is a long time to develop some really strange physiology.
Your overall point is super valid. Sort of a, "We don't know what we don't know."
However, I think that at this point, scientists have gotten good enough at analyzing skeletons of animals to pretty accurately predict musculature to know what ancient animals mostly were built like. The spider web stuff is things like skin texture, color, were there feathers, cartilaginous frills, etc. It seems like a few times a year I see an article about a feature like that being found in remains, and that's super cool.
C H U N K Y B O Y
Big big Chungus!
Chonkosaurus
I can't believe people care about dumb shit like someone's height in fields where it doesn't actually matter. That 5'1" little brown woman in office with her finger on the big red button is always going to be much more of an actual objective threat than some 6'11" massive chungus of a dude with no real charisma to speak of.
Hell, just give the little brown woman a gun and pit her against Big Chungus on the street and see who comes out on top.
People who analyze each other's body condition and size and prioritize it for everyone other people do are such worthless fucking knuckledraggers.
Go off, sis
Cuz, but I deleted it. Is the post still showing up for you?
EDIT: I just checked and my comment still shows up for everyone else even though I deleted it. What in the actual fuck? Lemmy is fucking worthless garbage.
