Darn right a lot has been learned, it's gotten to the point where I can't even look at a dinosaur picture and ask myself "Is this accurate? Should it have feathers? WHAT'S WRONG WITH IT!?"
Absolutly. I tried to question the authenticity of reconstructions before, but within the last years it got really interesting - it is incredible what details can be found out. And I like the little channel YDAW ("Your dinosaurs are wrong") which evaluates popular reconstructions and especially toys - a wonderful way to teach the youngest dinosaur enthusiasts, and I wish something like this had existed when I was young - but its content is absolutly suited for adult dinosaur fans too.
@@PandorasFolly What do you mean? Such bags are not unlikely, but pure speculation. If sauropods had colourful patterns or displays is unknown - again not totally unlikely, but a speculation.
@@kai_plays_khomus pure speculation entirely. But the thought of little velioceraptors, not Jurassic Park sized ones, with brightly colored baboonlike butts makes me laugh. Also I know there is no evidence that I know of for it, but I always wondered if one of the potentially warmblooded species developed a.....marsupial like pouch for their eggs. Replacing the nest with a warm body pouch. Like I said. No evidence but in the entire mesozoic era I can see it happening.
It’s so weird looking at the tiny pillar legs they’re represented with nowadays. I like it but it’s also crazy how they supported their weight with them.
@@Tonius126 Yes see it's animals like giraffes that show how lazy they are, in their natural state, they let themselves look skinny and disgusting and unattractive. Only the best creatures will actually take the time to work out and build up our muscles so we can look healthy and attractive, you know?
As an artist with special interest in creature designs, this type of episode really excites me. I have a million questions about prehistoric animal anatomy and how it most likely functioned. This is awesome
I know, right? It looks so...WRONG! Looking at them makes me.....anxious, for some reason! Almost like im expecting them to break or collapse any moment!
So basically this how the saurobod evolved. Saurobod: yo this tree is tall, lemme tip toe a bit (eats) you know what this is actually useful. Years later every saurobod wearing high heels.
That will be very helpful! I just started volunteering at dinosaur ridge in colorado. It's apart of the morrison formation. We do have sauropod track casts which do show some of this as well! I've watched a lot of your videos and it has helped tremendously as a volunteer! Thank you!
I spent most of my childhood in Colorado, and visited Dinosaur Ridge on more than one occassion. I remember the sauropod tracks. Its on my list of places to visit, once travel to the US becomes practical again.
The way that the toes (or rather fingers) on the front limbs of these sauropods is arranged, strongly reminds me of how I locomote when on all fours. I have a very bad back, and in my flat it is sometimes easier to go on all fours to get about a room, rather than try to find my walking stick. The most comfortable way to place my fingers, is to have the top two bones of each of my fingers facing inwards, with the back of the fingers flat on the floor, with most of the weight actually resting on the forefinger and middle finger. The thumb is for balance, and placed facing backwards and slightly to the side. This results in the fingers forming a column, with the palm forming a hollow at the back. This is the most comfortable way to place my hands when I am on all fours, and I suspect that this might have been the case when the ancestors of sauropods first went down on all fours. It could also explain why some sauropods lost the tops of their fingers over time, as you say, since they are not really needed when you place your hands and fingers in this way.
In most animals, its easier for them to walk on all fours by our definition of knuckles. It allows even distribution of mass and pressure when in locomotion.
"What were extinct dinosaurs lineages like? They were like X, and Y, BUT in many ways they were simply unique and unlike anything alive today." I guess many of us laymen sometimes forget they weren't some giant chimera of extant critters.
Many animal groups often take an adaptation and push it to it's extreme (giraffe necks, elephant trunks), titanosaurs loosing their fingers is the logical extreme of finger reduction in other sauropods
Wow I had no idea about the forefeet. That's amazing and looks incredibly weird to me at first glance. I want a coffee table book of the evolution of paleo art.
Often dinosaurs are reconstructed in the way we would want them to look rather than the way they probably actually looked. Which is a shame because the reality is much more interesting than the fiction.
It's people doing the best with the info at hand in a particular moment in time, it's not necessarily a biases. Although in the past 10-15 years dinosaurs have become truly freakishly unfamiliar to what we became accustomed to in the previous 50 years.
@@Veldtian1 That certainly plays a role but I would also say its definitely the case that dinosaurs especially in pop culture are generally presented as monstrous oversized caricatures of themselves. Even when depicted in more educational media we still often see large predatory theropods with shrink wrapped faces, large easily visible teeth and a mammalian inspired roar.
@@SimonWoodburyForget "The purpose of art is to make things appear nice to the human eye. " That's a very short-sighted and completely wrong definition of art.
@@SimonWoodburyForget There's literally entire genres of art that havef to do exactly with being ugly. Scientific art 's purpose is to give us a visual of what those living things _were_, not what they want to be. While some definitions of art, like "the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power. " specify beauty, most others don't, just being "works produced by human creative skill and imagination" "creative activity resulting in the production of paintings, drawings, or sculpture. " "subjects of study primarily concerned with the processes and products of human creativity and social life, such as languages, literature, and history (as contrasted with scientific or technical subjects). " The end result of art is not just to look good. It is very, very often to represent something and to communicate knowledge. Your definition of art is archaic and neglectful in a multitude of areas. Scientific art is itself a genre.
Both people here arguing about art are right in different ways, as is often the case with art haha. I find it amusing as someone who is quite fond of art of all types.
ironically enough i had been pondering the shape of a sauropods foot recently how convenient and eye-opening this is information that i never would have guessed thanks for the video
In Summary: *Sauropod are quite unqiue among the many other dinosaur speices that they would have live alongside,and if Plaeoart grow by the plenty,we start to understand alot more on the unqiue shapes of these reptilian giants.* Also nice new background,Ben it very nice and thanks again for solving the world's most important question ( in Paleontology. )
So they have armored bird like feet designed to hold heavy weight. Probably had scale like coverings on the feet and lower legs like birds often do too.
The one front claw has to be just for general utility I'd say. I sincerely doubt it was for combat. I imagine it'd also greatly help their hoof in going up slopes or on uneven ground of any type.
Many years ago i read an article about sea turtles. At least one species had the males wearong a forelimb claw in the thumb position, corresponding with marks om the carapace of females , ensuring a firm grip. This could be at least a partial explanation for What we see. But then females do not need them. Have we enough material to observe this?
it reminds me of your old video about "living dinosaurs" especially mokele mbembe and it's "footprints" in which they don't look like the actual footprints of an real souropod dinosaur.
As a dusty academic who always dreamed of becoming a palaeontologist I absolutely love your channel! Your knowledge and your presentation of that knowledge is very impressive and a reliable source of delight and wonder.
Sauropods were utter terrifying badasses. Think of it this way: Imagine how dangerous an elephant or hippo is. Now imagine an animal 2-6 times as heavy as the largest bull elephant. Now imagine this animal’s entire life history is based around starting at the size of a football (With likely minimal parental care) and hopefully surviving and growing until it’s big to fend for itself. Most of its siblings will he picked off at an early age. Even when the sauropod outgrows the predators it feared as a baby, it will still have to ward off attacks from large theropods. Now imagine that this adult animal, which can easily weigh more than 50 tons, which spent its entire life fearing attacks from predators and has to be temperamental at the sight of anything that even mildly resembles danger to survive, has a whip-like tail that makes up half its length. Said whip-like tail is powered by the largest muscles of any land animal ever. An iguana hitting you with its tail can cause lacerations. A sauropod hitting you with its tail would make you explode.
Ben, I always enjoy your videos. You always manage to combine serious information with real enthusiasm. You avoid the droning monotony one the one hand, and the stupid silliness on the other that characterize too many of the science videos out there.
I always find it strange when people talk about extinct animals and are like "What was that claw for? Defense? Digging?" I mean what do cats use their claws for? Only hunting? Only climbing? Only fighting? No of course not. They use it for everything. So in my opinion we can safely say that dinosaurs also did not use their claws for only one thing either.
I love learning about all these changes. Idk If this is true for anyone else but the more we learn about these animal's appearance the more earthly and less alien they look for me, which weirdly makes me even more excited about them.
Gods, I love the scientific community for their passion to understand other animals, their evolutionary history, incredible cognitive functions, anatomy and so on, but something that makes me inexplicably happy is the fact that this community fully understands when I say "front limbs on vertebrates are anatomically arms and those 'feet' are actually hands" Bless you, peeps, I adore you and your content.
Amazing video. Although I am familiar with the overall anatomy of sauropod feet this video covers many important details which for sure will be helpful. It also got me thinking that I probably should draw some sauropods in the near future, cause I feel like I draw too much theropods. I am currently in a mammal-mood and I'm doing a bunch of proboscideans, but I may as well jump onto sauropods after that
Nice! feels like it's been a while since we got video that focuses on dinosaurs from you. Always a welcomed addition to a Sunday. Even though dinosaurs are the most awesome prehistoric animals they tend to overshadow other magnificent dynasties like the Therapsids.
The Jurassic and even moreso the Cretaceous are given too much of a spotlight when it comes to paleontology. Triassic needs more light and the Permian as well
Great timing! I am currently making my way through Dinosaurs Without Bones, all about trace fossils. Highly recommend. This video is a great compliment .
You make a good argument for every reconstruction in ay medium to have a date when it was created, Ben. Wonderful video with plenty of food for thought. More remains to learn!
Another fantastic video, and it acts as a good example of the sort of in-depth but still approachable content this channel offers. One thing I would have liked though, would have been a sketch of what you think their feet might have looked like.
This was an awesome video. Sauropod feet are weird, and this is the first video I see that explains them in a way that is understandable to a layman. It reminds me of an equally awesome video I saw recently explaining just how weird horsehoof anatomy really is.
Yes, agreed- really well explained, with well chosen diagrams. It's helped solidify my mental image of sauropod foot anatomy after watching videos from _Your Dinosaurs Are Wrong_ . It's almost a miracle when someone sends a sample sauropod toy for them to dissect/correct with _already_ correct feet (as of our current understanding)! Lol
Ah, Diplodocus: Could whip you into next week with it's tail. Had an Apatosaurus skull put on it's neck and was called brontosaurus for decades, and now being one of the first four legged animals to give anything a thumbs up.
I really like your enthusiasm, sophisticated and intelligent way of speaking. I really enjoy your videos, and I see that you are working on your presentation skills. Keep it up!
Fellas, if your Sauropod has: ~ a bipedal gait. ~ a crocodile-esque face ~ a large dorsal spin. That isn't your Sauropod. That's _Spinosaurus Aegyptiacus._
This was an incredible interesting video, thanks! There are so many videos repeating the same well known information again and again, but here you dealt with an interesting detail which is almost obscure although the particular dinosaurs are so widely known. Thanks again for this great video idea - I hope that many similar vids will follow. 💋
Wow, those fully fleshed out front feet r actually kinda creepy looking for some reason. Not sure why, but they definitely have a very weird and freaky look about them.
I must say I generally dislike seeing the person behind the voice, but you are engaging and very attractive, so it was a pleasant surprise for a long time subscriber. Thank you always for the thorough yet concise information on new findings and humility to offer multiple ideas and to be able to acknowledge how much we don't know and yet are eager to learn. Many thanks
Thank you Ben, My oldest grandsons and granddaughter love your videos ❤️ since they are doing school at home, I've been sending things I know they like, cause granny likes your channel as well😏😁 cheer's
I never really paid any attention to sauropod feet, so this is news to me. Really cool news, actually. Didn't realize how strange and unique they were.
The arc makes sense because the arc would be easier to extract from mud unlike a cylindrical shape would be stuck due to suction. That's how cows get stuck in mud. Supporting the weight is one thing but surface area is important to distribute the weight at the point of contact.
Dealing with dinosaurs for whole my life, only now I pay attention to the shape of sauropods forelimbs. And I'm absolutely shocked. What? It is wierdest thing ever. It is perfect!
Good work. Why no discussion about tongues of Sauropods? The teeth of the Apatosaurus, for example, are good for clipping, but NOT chewing. SO, I think the Apatosaurus had a long tongue, like a giraffe, and used it to grab foliage, pull it into the mouth, clip it off, and swallow it whole, letting gastroliths to process it. Have yet to see a drawing of a Sauropod with prehensile tongues to feed. I think they are pretty obvious, and must have existed.
I think that it is clear that sauropods and especially eusauropods were not the defenseless giants that they are often portrayed as being. They had offensive capability other than their giant size as adults although still must have been extremely vulnerable as pre-adults as is commonly understood and therefore needed to grow as fast as they could to avoid being killed before adulthood. I have long remarked the long toenails on what is now explained to me as being on the hind limbs of some sauropods. It is remarkable that the greatest animals to ever walk the Earth were not plantigrade but semi-digitigrade and yet graviportal!
