Quote from: DoomRulz on Feb 13, 2014, 10:48:49 PM
Well, keep it up. Knowledge is power. I'm guessing you're like me when you go to a museum. You give your friends tours in the dinosaur gallery, say waaaaaaaaay too much, then have strangers come up to you and ask if you're a guide?
Well, you're not the first person to ask if I'm a palaeontologist... When I'm at a museum looking at an extinct animal though, I'm generally occupied reconstructing my mental picture of what it was like, and searching for any new observations I can add into that picture; I tend to forget I'm with anyone.
It is great having that information though, isn't it? You see these places in a whole different light.
Quote from: Crazy shrimp on Feb 13, 2014, 09:34:02 PM
I like big dromaeosaurs like Utahraptor or Austroraptor
http://i.imgur.com/S528QQd.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/7MKrew7.jpg
Interesting to note, Austroraptor (which I think those are illustrating) is part of a highly distinct dromaeosaurid group exclusive to South America (and possibly Madagascar, though I think that particular animal is a bit of a reach). All of them had
very shallow and long snouts, and lived (highly successfully) alongside a wide range of other predators.
I've just been reading Matthew Martyniuk's book about Mesozoic birds and advanced maniraptorans, and it did a great job of putting the group (unenlagiinae) into context. It seems these dromies were specialised for preying on fish - explaining their spearlike jaws. They were originally small enough to avoid competition with the spinosaurids that dominated waterways in the region, but after the spinos went into decline, some unenlagiines like Austroraptor grew vastly larger, to fill the vacant niche that the superpredators left behind.
It's a similar story with Utahraptor, which appeared to take advantage of allosaurid extinction in the area; the giant dromies then disappeared from North America when carcharodontosaurids moved in.
Seems to be paralleling the more recent story of large flightless birds, which take up the apex predator role if it's left empty, but tend to vanish quite quickly if another group of predators move in (big cats and wolves outcompeting the terror birds in South America, for example). The impression is that they can fill the niche, but their ancestral evolution is too derived and specific for them to excel at it.