Well it's kinda bizarre amphibian, reptile, and dinosaur species (even a mammal species that were predecessors to whales) that lived a semi-aquatic lifestyle kept on evolving into crocodilian forms at least half a dozen times alongside "true" crocodiles.
If you knew the answer to everything, there would be no point in doing research... or making videos like this. I for one would go extinct from boredom.
The Triassic is one of the most interesting eras that no one talks about. There's the common stigma that dinosaurs were always large and in charge for their entire time of existence, and that assumption writes off all the other animals that lived alongside them that deserve more representation.
Ok folks if I discover a new animal as I will name it after this channel cause eons inspired me to become a paleontologist. Thanks to them I got basic knowledge for paleontology that people from my local University that specializes in geology and has paleontology based classes can't wrap their head around, and I am so damn grateful for that!
@@BonaparteBardithion yes and no. The vast majority of science work and research involves pushing at the boundaries of knowledge. However, this clip highlights the rare form of scientific discovery through serendipity. It takes the form of a significant leap beyond the boundaries.
People discover new species all the time, hell one trip to the amazon generally gets you at least 5 more species of something be it fish or insects. So it’s not hard to imagine people doing this during a project for school as we are discovering new things all the time in a variety of places
@@ekszentrik Maybe not completely featherless, but just a lot less feathered than the smaller ones, big mammals still have hair, just a lot less than the smaller ones
@@ekszentrik Keep in mind that wooly versions of both of these lineages existed alongside humans. It's just that all animals need ways to regulate heat. For many dinosaurs such as tyrannosaurs, there is evidence that the younger ones absolutely had feathers, whereas the older, bigger ones might have had fewer or even none- size itself helps retain and generate heat. But things would be different in colder places, and of course some species might retain sparse feathers for display or other purposes too. As it is, there are an awful lot more dinosaurs which are proven to have had feathers than ones which are proven to have had only scales; the latter group was definitely an exception, not the rule, even for larger types.
That's because we tried to analyse them by having a foundation of knowledge on reptilians . The word dinosaur comes from Greek meaning terrible lizard . So that's where it all starts . Good thing that changes and fits the data as it comes along.
@Ak Am God, I'd love if Fasolasuchus appeared in JP. It's got quite the title - the largest terrestrial predator aside from large therapods - and even among therapods, it would have been decently sized. It's a quadrupedal rex the size of an allosaurus, what's not to love?
To add to your confusion the animals we think of as crocodillians didn't appear until the Cretaceous the older croc like animals were at the closest cousins. And the recognizable subgroups like gators and crocodiles are far more recent not appearing until the Cenozoic
2:49 I have trouble believing that the artist who made this one was taking their work seriously! EDIT: The pose keeps making me think of Alice dancing on the manhole cover in the Cul de Sac comic strip. R.I.P. Richard Thompson.
@@tsopmocful1958 The Arizonasaurus design isn't what's funny, it's the goofy running pose it has, it looks like it was playing video games and then its mom yelled its full name from the other side of the house. XD
Today, not a lot of animals are bipedal. But in the Mesozoic, practically 50% of it were bipedal. It's also awesome to think how diverse life back then.
I'm really surprised these guys aren't more popular in pop-culture considering they look really similar to the "old school" scaly lizard dinosaur depictions.
How did I just learn about these animals now? I'm a huge paleo nerd and I like to think I know a lot about prehistoric animals, I guess I didn't know nearly as much as I thought lol. Great video.
Crocodylians/Crocodylimorphs/Crocodiliforms were/are the most successful and unique brand of animals - they adapted to every niche and Thrive successfully even today, a truly underacknowledged animal family
Do you know who else looks like a dinosaur but in reality is a more magnificent beast? Ma boy STEVE holding down STILL, Dude is committed to all our educations!!
Shame the episode didn't focus on more of the genuine weird animals that lived in the area, including more crurotarsian archosaurs besides Postosuchus. Half the animals in the episode (Peteinosaurus, Plateosaurus, cynodont) aren't present in the Chinle Fm.
Merch idea. A block of sticky notes, have it look like that cube sticker. Maybe on different sticky notes have different fossils? So then it could feel like you are unearthing new things as you use up the sticky notes? I would buy the hell outta that
Dinos survived because they like Birds today have air scaks inside their bodies that along with their lungs absorb O2 from the atmosphere. Irds have them today inside their bones as did some dinos like the sauropods, and some dinos also had them inside other connective tissues like muscles andcartiledge.. Having extra ways to breathe is helpful when the air becomes hot and filled with fine sharp particles of ash. It helped the protodinos survive the Permian Mass extinction and the extinction event at the end of the Jurassic.
Mighty interesting hypothesis, sir! Hope that will catch some eyes in scientific community to do some research and publish papers. Or is it already done, beyond my modest knowledge?
This is the comment I was looking for. The emergence of dinosaurs also seems to correspond to the time where atmospheric Oxygen was at it's lowest since the great oxygenation. Although I'm not too sure of how accurate the readings are for atmospheric CO2. As someone who isn't a scientist, it seems to me like that would explain why early dinosaurs and pterosaurs would have out competed crocs, especially in active niches. It also explains why the air sac system may have evolved in the first place. I'm not aware of any papers on the subject though
I saw your recent statement about racial equality, so while watching this, I thought of an episode idea: do an episode highlighting the contributions of POC to paleontology. It would be educational & provide inspiration to young POC to consider careers in science.
When you show a map of where the fossils were found. Could you please also show a map of the continent's from the fossils time period. It would give me a better understanding of just where they were rathe than where they were found.
Crock won their even after extinction maintaining their original traits like skulls, jaws, etc. and dinosaurs forced to become birds... Even after 250 million years crocks are still roaring... Kind of ultimate survivors evolution
Would be interesting to see a video on predatory whales you briefly mentioned in the video on Megalodon, maybe spotlight the big boi Basilosaurus? Interesting as always, love you guys vids
The thing is, predatory whales were not newcomers that outcompeted megalodon but old rivals of otodontid sharks that the sharks successfully coexisted with; this really needs to be addressed.
Great video like always! Could you do a video on the evolution of the beak? I’m curious how jaws and teeth changed to beaks, as well as the origin of beaks in cephalopods.
They did an episode on how some species of birds had teeth but lost them in favor of a beak, maybe that would answer some of the questions you have? It was a good episode.
Also, the super efficient breathing apparatus of dinosaurs, which is identical to what birds have, STRONGLY suggests that dinosaurs were hotter blooded than we are.
I wanna see a video on prey and predator relationships between sauropods and large theropods. (There's evidence of these interactions on EVERY continent)
@@eliburry-schnepp6012 I think it largely is a consequence of the K-Pg extinction up until that point croc line archosaurs were globally distributed occupying a large amount of the midsized to small herbivores, omnivores and the likes in addition to the aquatic ambush predators after the K-Pg extinction only the ambush predators (and a few land crocs but not sure if they directly correspond to the pre extinction analogs) really survived. I think their ability to go months to a year without eating due to their low metabolism is probably what allowed them to survive the extinction when nearly all other archosaurs (and mammals for that matter!)
I do enjoy learning about all types of history! This channel has given me a trove of knowledge about the world before human history and I greatly appreciate it! Keep up the stunning work!
I'd like to hear more about our ancestors and how scientists think they survived these changes. How did they continually adapt to each era? if that makes any sense.
Lately they proposed that there were long cold periods of these changing temperatures, and the higher co2 wasn't enough to offset. At this time, dinosaurs were mostly living at the poles and had already evolved feathers. Feathers are great insulators, along with their higher metabolism.
@@useodyseeorbitchute9450 I can make some recommendations for reading if you like, it's almost impossible to have your opinion and have actually delved into politically engaged research in any meaningful way. TL;DR Your opinion; probably wrong. In principle the word "politics" just means 'of or relating to power'. All science incorporates political factors in its execution and practice, these factors become more important but also more arbitrary the closer you get to people and the cognition and research of ideas, categories, and concepts (e.g. social behaviour, language, nation/states, qualia). Maybe this does not occur as much in physics, but even there we see factionalism that goes beyond science; for example, we have a rather arbitrary preference for base-10, other bases can reveal underlying relationships we can't easily see in base-10, this choice is political. All languages and cultures die or change, these words and all the data from the natural sciences combined will mean absolutely nothing to a future observer. Denying these political factors exist makes you worse at "hard" science and prevents you from understanding other areas of research you think are "easier". If you cannot admit that you even hold a bias, you'll hardly be able to keep it chained where it really matters, I propose that in not doing this, you are set to a political "status quo"-default of best-guessing, hypothesising, and data-mining without any controls. I'm not a leftist, I think left-right politics are becoming more and more irrelevant, oversimplified, and token. I use my own more anarchic sensibilities to propose questions you wouldn't think of and rely on observers like you (perhaps not as trolling) to offer the perspectives I cannot see and correct my work if they can see it. I believe that those who feel themselves to be the most objective are usually the least objective and most affected by bias in whatever they do as well as least capable of reaching their own potential. Einstein tells us there is no such thing as a view from nowhere in the physical world, no objective view. Therefore, context, perspective, and situation are the cornerstones of any good science or research. Without context you know nothing.
the simplest answer would be weight distribution. as all terrestrial vertebrates have evolved from creatures that crawled on four limbs, any evolution towards bipedal locomotion would logically start at lifting, what is in front of the hind limbs, off the ground. doing so requires a counter balance in form of an equally as massive tail. dinosaurs could do that because of their light weight bone structure, with that it would have been easy to develop bigger hind legs to lift themselves off the ground and a longer tail to balance out the upper body, additionally the reptilian spine, swings side to side and is rather stiff in the up and down so holding the spine straight while affixed at only one axis wasn't too big a problem. for a mammal to do that, would mean developing huge hind legs to lift the massive tail needed to balance out that upper body, additionally, due to the mammal spine bending up and down instead of left and right, the back muscles would be constantly fighting gravity to keep the tail and neck straight. if you look for mammals to go bipedal, they first had to become climbers, the adaptations to a vertical lifestyle (mainly the long forelimbs) allowed mammals to assume an increasingly upright posture, first through knuckle walking, like ground sloths and great apes, followed by fully bipedal motion and having to become climbers first meant getting smaller at least for a while. both groups are actually quite the opposite if you think about it, dinosaurs went bipedal by growing the hind limbs and tail, while shrinking the forelimbs, mammals did the opposite by growing the forelimbs, while shrinking the hind limbs and loosing the tail.
Could you do an episode breaking down the eras of time? I find it difficult to remember the order of eons and eras and all the nesting subsections and what happened in each one and...
I so loved dinosaurs when I was a kid. I would stare at pictures for hours. I became a bit of a fossil hunter for a while, and there were plenty to be found in Oregon.
Hi I'm marnez, I have probably watched 90% of the videos on PBS Eons and I feel that the only thing you guys are missing is the rise of Arthropods.(see I gave you a name for a future show 🤗) I would LOVE to see what the split between these invertebrates and the thing more closely related to what turned into the first fish.. I'm sure it was some sort of worm or slug like thing based on the fact that almost ALL bug come from a childhood where they are basically maggot worms, I'm almost certain something like pikia ( I hope I spelled it right if not I hope you know the creature I'm thinking of ) could have come from something similar but just decided not to go through metamorphosis and eventually went from maggot to worm then worm with a fin like sail on its back towards the back of the body, then a million years later Pikia... Just speculation but I would LOVE to hear you guys opinions on this topic. Oh yeah shout out to Hank I know you don't know me but I feel like I know you I've been watching you guys for YEARS and I love what it is that you do. Please never stop I mean ofcourse unless better opportunity rolls your way. Be well PBS team 😃