Raptor Chatter here, giving you up to date information on paleontology! We will post updates on important finds, changes to the public perception of prehistoric creatures, new studies being done, and why it is important we learn about the past to help ourselves now.
Currently a student pursuing a degree in Paleontology, I, Ezekiel O'Callaghan, will present you with the most up to date paleontology news in an accessible and easy to watch format.
Also major thanks to my editor, videographer, and wife. Danielle O'Callaghan.
Superb as always. I enjoy the short-form and focused videos too, but I can't think of anyone else who does this kind of tour of current research, and it never fails to be interesting.
Total layman here: I understand fish proportions might not be every scientist's wheelhouse, but the Square-Cube law has been eating paleontology's lunch for decades (particularly for land creatures), and it absolutely makes the profession look bad. It isn't like you need years of schooling to grasp the concept.
Here's why I think a lot of sizes based of a few bones or bone fragments are dumb. "We found a leg bone of a new great ape. We'll call it Homo Sapiens. Now, based on the comparison to the leg bones of other great apes, it should be about 4 tons in weight as be able to rip trees right out of the ground with its hands." Hell, you shouldn't even declare a new species if you don't have intact DNA or a decent percentage of a skeleton. There's just too many people sensationalizing their discoveries.
I really appreciate how you avoid sensationalizing, and rather stress the incremental, investigatory, hypothetical nature of science. Bombast is so tiresome. Thanks!
I really appreciate the work you do on these videos. I remember when we had infants and the time they required so I understand some of what you are going through. Hang in there and thanks
This isn't that big of a deal is it? We all understand animal estimates based on skeletal remains are only so accurate: there have always been parts of an animal that isn't preserved in fossil. And even then unless we have the complete fossil we can't even be sure how large the entire skeleton would have been. And even then most animals have variable body sizes within the species. Movies and documentaries serve only an expository purpose and aren't meant as rigorous information.
Ignoring the likely incorrect bodily proportions with Dunkleosteus, I have seen this happen multiple times, particularly with Spinosaurus, and I think this is a real issue: Paleontologists don't like to actually examine the fossils. As in, they seem to trust descriptions and replicas of fossils more than fossils themselves. Problem is, descriptions are prone to inaccuracies, replicas can be really deceiving, and descriptions don't always contain obvioud information that could be conveyed by just looking at the real deal. With Dunkleosteus, not only was the length estimate revised - it appears even the hard, bony skull of the fish - which is as easy to measure and replicate as can be - was MASSIVELY overestimated before. Now, you tell me what place estimation has with regards to concrete measurements... none whatsoever. Simply put, paleontologists are playing a dangerous game of telephone, where the further away info gets from the source, the more outlandish the claims become. Another place where this is particularly prominent is the bulk of bones. Understanding the LENGTH of bones is intuitive. Comprehending their BULK, their thickness is not so intuitive. Replicas and casts massively distort this, adding further confusion. The fundamental difference between bipedalism and quadrupedalism in an animal can be the weight bearing of the front limbs, yet there doesn't seem to be an effort to have a solid understanding of roughly what bone correlates to what weight. Outside of the occasional finite element model, weight and size estimations are thrown around like the actual calculus of determining a bone's weight bearing capacity is some arcane science. And that's how you get a bipedal Spinosaurus with legs that can't even support its weight. Dilophosaurus fell victim to the "bone bulk" mistake as well. The skull was described incorrectly initially, with a weakly fused premaxila, and every iteration afterwards followed this pattern... until someone decided to actually look at the fossil, and realized the premaxila is actually quite sturdy. Why this took several decades is a mistery. So yeah. Before making size estimates, maybe look at the actual fossils.
Still have a perpetual bet going that the largest pterasaur, Quetzalcoatlus, was not capable of sustained flight. There have been very smart experts that have argued it is just barely plausible. But it requires a lot of assumptions that are unlikely at best.
The Titanoboa had larger vertebrae than the Vasuki Indicus. This indicates that the Titanoboa weighed slightly more than the Vasuki Indicus. The Vasuki Indicus is closely related to a Python, while the Titanoboa is related to an Anaconda. To put this in perspective, the Reticulated Python and the Green Anaconda are the largest serpents of their kind. When speculating the winner, although the Reticulated Python is much longer than the Green Anaconda, the Anaconda is much wider and has thicker skin. The Anaconda is also much faster, moving at 5 mph compared to the Reticulated Python's 1 mph on land. Both are constrictors. Ultimately, the winner is the Titanoboa due to its thicker skin and greater weight. This was a close comparison, and the outcome might be different with snakes of different lengths. Hope this helped ❤
Simple answer is there are not enough specimens in the fossil record to make an accurate guess at how large these animals could become, it would be like digging up fossilized human remains 65 million years from now and from a few dozen specimens extrapolating that humans only grew to about six feet tall because thats the largest known specimen. I imagine species that were around for several million years would have even greater outliers when it came to extreme examples.
Yes and no. In the case of things like the Mallon and Hone paper yes. In the case of this, no. This is about how to use the largest specimens to estimate their sizes better, not about the statistical likelihood of a larger individual having existed at some point.
How are the size discrepancies that massive when working with bones? They dont expand or shrink so how would the skull size and spine length change unless its not a complete skeleton and I just answered my own question.
It's because most fossils are partial and disarticulated. So rather than being a nice pretty fossils like in museums, it's a smattering of bones across a few square meters, coming from the same animal, with some bones missing, and often damaged, so it's a matter of putting broken bits together, and then figuring out what's missing and then making the size estimates.
Many of the size estimates were and are being disputed as soon as the papers come out. Researchers are not interested in putting out best estimates in many cases. Big animal- big waves. Your paper gets disputed? Better for you, better for the journal.
It may be a small detail, but most of the graphics used as illustrations don't properly represent the changes you're talking about. The easiest example is the Dunkleosteus; we've all seen the actual fossils of skulls and jaws, and know their absolute size. The difference comes in using a better estimate for the remainder of the body -- it's size, or it's shape -- given the actual skull. But in the 'before and after' estimates of dunky's size (around 30 second mark), you absolutely show different size skulls and jaws on the two models. Yes, the new model has a differently proportioned body.... but it also has a much smaller head. That's inaccurate. The head stays the same, because we have an actual head to measure. Only the *rest* of the body changes. This is true for any animal; the bones we have are accurate but our picture of the rest is wrong. But in the other cases illustrated (aside from Megalodon), it's not clear what bones we have and what bones we lack and how that affects the estimates for each animal, e.g., if we have toe bones that we assumed are from a huge frog, then maybe we've actually found a much smaller frog with relatively enormous feet. *Some* part of each animal has to be correct (the part for which we have fossils) and must remain the same size, but other parts -- perhaps all, perhaps just some -- apparently shrink. You even point it out when speaking of Megalodon.... you can't just grab a corner in Photoshop and stretch the picture, but that is pretty much exactly what was done in the big comparison picture containing many misrepresented animals. It would have been much more informative to see more accurate examples of what's actually going on with these revised size estimates. For the most part, the graphics hindered getting the idea across instead of helping. The Meg example made the point, and the dunky example would, too, if it was made more carefully. But it wasn't.
I may not be your target audience, since I'm a bio person rather than a paleo person, but I enjoy this format very much. After the algorithm recommended me your overestimating size vid, this is what drove me to explore your channel more.
Thanks for sucking all the wonder out on my childhood. I know its very smart and the truth matters and all that but I really didn't need to know any of this. Damn you RU-vid algorithm!!!
We can accept the science of dunk and still be upset guys. We don't have to like it but we got to accept the science. For the people who are saying its cooler because it got shrunk are annoying. Come on guys people are entitled to their feelings there is no reason to invalidate our feelings. People are upset about recent megladon size estimations. People are emotional animals and that's ok though, that's reality
