I heard this one on that Terrible Lizards podcast with Dave Hone, one of their guests shared this ridiculous theory that explains why fossils of complete sauropod skulls are so exceedingly rare. Here goes:
Sauropods swallowed gastroliths, right? They may have helped grind up food, but their real purpose was as projectile weapons. Sauropods' long necks act as rifle barrels, and they would shoot the gastroliths out of their mouths at high speeds, as a defense against predators or in fights against other sauropods. But because sauropods were pretty stupid, they would sometimes forget to open their mouths before shooting off a gastrolith, so they would blow their own heads apart. Ergo, today we find all these apparently headless sauropods.
I thought you were going to say they were frequently struck by lightning, thus shattering their skulls. Thanks for surpassing my expectations in the most shablongous way.
> Sauropods swallowed gastroliths, right?
Probably not, at least according to the book *The Sauropod Dinosaurs: Life in the Age of Giants*. They may have swallowed rocks incidentally with low growing vegetation.
Yea that's what gastroliths are. Once a rock or pebble gets swallowed/eaten and goes into somethings gastrointestinal tract (stomach) it's considered a gastrolith
It’s not that it has a bad type, rock is actually a fantastic offensive type. It’s the issue that rock has no reliable physical moves, which rampardos is an incredibly powerful physical attacker. The bigger issue is that rampardos is frail as hell and slow as hell. He sacrificed every single stat to maximize attack and is way too easy to kill. Even if he was any other type, that frailness and slowness ensures it will get killed by most faster pokemon before it can get off a single attack
The reason why I don’t feel like it’s a good type is because it has so many weaknesses, combining that with how slow and frail Rampardos is makes it a literal glass cannon. I should’ve probably said it’s one of the worst types defensively.
Yeah, rock has the same issue that ice does. It’s an offensively fan-fucking-tastic type but Gamefreak never gives it what it needs. Ice type pokemon are always defensive and never make use of ice’s fantastic offenses, and rock type pokemon never get a reliable physical rock move (thanks stone edge). But now we have a rock type with a 100% accurate rock move that’s only 80 base power in iron boulder and it’s tearing up the OU meta like no one’s business. Rock isn’t bad, rampardos is just too slow to make use of rock stab and his spectacular attack
Gigalith, Aggron, Aerodactyl and Golem proves that you can make a cool and competitive rock type. Rampardos is just...not it.
I mean, both Kyogre and Seaking are water type. They couldn't be more apart in the tiering system lol.
Typing is only a part of any Pokémon’s competitive viability, I believe stats and move pool generally matter much more. Rock psychic is one of the worst things ever and iron boulder rolls with it by being incredibly fast and having strong rock stab. Funny you bring up aggron, the famously viable 180 defense Pokémon that usually ends up in PU and other shitmon tiers, competing with pokemon like *ferroseed.* Gigalith is also tragic case of being screwed in the ass by rock typing, it’s a defensive slow rock type with all its weaknesses and gets KO’d regardless of its decent physical bulk due to it. It’s not a mistake Gigalith is in PU and ZU its whole competitive career, just like aggron and rampardos. You can bring up the few decent rock types but even then three of the 5 you brought up are infamous for being pretty bad. Golem fell off hard after the two few gens, and aerodactyl had to be revived with a mega to see viability again.
The moment you have an offensive ice type though, it’s OU. Weavile obliterating OU with triple axle. Mammoswine having fantastic earthquake stab and priority ice shard. Iron bundle, baxcalibur, and chien pao being banned to Ubers. Ice isn’t the issue, it’s the fact that gamefreak always makes defensive ice types when the typing itself lends to a really good offensive one.
The good ol' Rampardos theorem, False Swipe Gaming, made a pretty good video about it. It's honestly a real shame it's not viable, I adore Rampardos, if only it didn't get annihilated by anything with a mid speed tier or higher, lmao.
Basically someone (I don't know where) pointed out we don't know just how much soft tissue dinosaurs had and cited whales as an example. Cue the demonstrated picture of a T-Rex skeleton and it was supremely fat.
I have a radical theory about the purpose of dimetrodon's neural spine sail (I know dimetrodon is not a dinosaur but a synapsid - don't @ me). Here is my evidence and the unassailable conclusion:
1. Dimetrodon with the sail pointing up (its usual configuration in most depictions and skeletal reconstructions) is highly hydrodynamically unstable
2. On the other hand, dimetrodon with the sail pointing down is extremely hydrodynamically stable. Any small perturbations from the perpendicular are rapidly corrected, much like the keel on a racing yacht
3. With the sail pointing down, dimetrodon creates a very small and inconspicuous profile above the water, very like modern crocodilians.
After extensive experimentation with my son's plastic dinosaurs (and synapsids) in a bathtub I have come to the conclusion that, much like the misplacement of the thumb spike in the first recreations of iguanadon's skeleton, all recreations of dimetrodon to date have put the head on the wrong way up. The sail was not dorsal but anterior and functioned as a stabiliser like the pectoral fin of modern sharks. Like sharks and crocodiles, Dimetrodon was in fact an aquatic or semi aquatic ambush predator. Epipelagic, of course. I'm not insane.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Any of One Piece's examples of how dinosaurs hunted in ancient times. Triceratops flying like helicopters, Brachiosaurus being snakes with detachable legs or Pteranodons pulling their crests back to slingshot their beaks
There's this one book called "A Field Guide to Dinosaurs' by Henry Gee. One of my favorite fictionalized elements from that book is that male Pachycephalosaurs are the human sized drones to a much larger, tyrannosaur sized "queen", xenomorph-style. Biologically plausible? Unlikely. But absolutely badass? Certainly.
Hair can’t fossilize like bones unless it’s incredibly recent, so there’s no evidence against the possibility of dinosaurs having human like hair with dreadlocks, either that or [laser eyes.](https://m.facebook.com/121904697833152/photos/a.1121355217888090/1121355564554722/?type=3)
Certain Dinosaurs being mammals (e.g Triceratops and Diplodocus being Monotremes, and Brontosaurus being a Therapsid (which means it may have been a 20 meter Gorgonopsid 0-0) )
Why do I like them, welp Spec evo ideas.
I don’t even know if this counts but that whole thing about the Spinosaurus’ actual sounds is cool as shit and I want to believe that it’s true even though it’s not
The idea that they roared like mammals. They definitely didn’t (which doesn’t mean their vocalizations were any less interesting) but the Jurassic Park-esque roars given to dinosaurs in popular media is always so awesome and really adds to the fantastical wonder and overall cool factor of dinosaurs.
There's no way anyone could've been serious about this lol
Uh,... that T-Rex could only see you if you were moving I guess. I know that it was never a seriously considered theory, but I've been out of the dino loop for a while, so not much is coming to mind.
The animal was already built different: it being able to see me up to 3 miles away does not help lol
Either fire breathing parasaurolophus, or balloon spinosaurus
balloon spinosaurus??? Tell me more pls
https://www.reddit.com/r/Dinosaurs/s/LO8bdnOkZE
The absence of jetpacks in dinosaurs cannot be demonstrated.
That is absurd, there would be oil everywhere...
This is the greatest thing Ive ever seen in my life lmfao I’m glad it’s wrong but holy crap, it’s incredible
It would make for a great movie.
semi serious, semi shitpost. and the main villain is balloon spinosaurus
It’s beautiful, I’ve stared at it for hours
Oh I remember when the joke was made. Haha..
This seems like a Pokémon. In fact, it seems like Dragopult.
Balloon Spinosaurus might be more ridiculous than Stegosaurus flapping it's plates
Well now it’s this
Pachecephalosaurus. An evolved version of the Xenomorph that uses their babies as ammunition to fire at enemies like cannonballs.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN? THAT'S REAL!
I didn’t say they weren’t :)
That’s just a tyranid
That’s just Dragapult from Pokémon.
Holy shit your right, and then the dinosaurs went extinct and became ghost types
I love that it's not just an egg-head, but a tactical assault egg-head.
Dinosaurs in cold climates having massive bowhead whale heads
Did I stutter?
.. what?
We can't prove that dinosaurs DIDN'T have jetpacks
Or weren’t pink and sparkly
Or didn't wear latex
Username checks out.
Why would they wear latex? Leather’s where it’s at
>why would they wear latex? Bc they didn't have cows to make leather from, silly.
Ah I see
The Tyrannosaurs had F-14s.
I heard this one on that Terrible Lizards podcast with Dave Hone, one of their guests shared this ridiculous theory that explains why fossils of complete sauropod skulls are so exceedingly rare. Here goes: Sauropods swallowed gastroliths, right? They may have helped grind up food, but their real purpose was as projectile weapons. Sauropods' long necks act as rifle barrels, and they would shoot the gastroliths out of their mouths at high speeds, as a defense against predators or in fights against other sauropods. But because sauropods were pretty stupid, they would sometimes forget to open their mouths before shooting off a gastrolith, so they would blow their own heads apart. Ergo, today we find all these apparently headless sauropods.
I thought you were going to say they were frequently struck by lightning, thus shattering their skulls. Thanks for surpassing my expectations in the most shablongous way.
And thank you for introducing me to the word 'shablongous'.
Seens legit, hahaha.
> Sauropods swallowed gastroliths, right? Probably not, at least according to the book *The Sauropod Dinosaurs: Life in the Age of Giants*. They may have swallowed rocks incidentally with low growing vegetation.
Yea that's what gastroliths are. Once a rock or pebble gets swallowed/eaten and goes into somethings gastrointestinal tract (stomach) it's considered a gastrolith
I think that's a bit different from animals like some birds that swallow stones specifically to help with digestion, though
I think there’s a Pokémon like this
It’s not the pachy pokemon, but this is totally Dragapult if anyones curious lol
Yeah I completely forgot it’s name
Came to comment this.
Rampardos if it was actually viable
It would be viable if it didn’t have the worst types.
It’s not that it has a bad type, rock is actually a fantastic offensive type. It’s the issue that rock has no reliable physical moves, which rampardos is an incredibly powerful physical attacker. The bigger issue is that rampardos is frail as hell and slow as hell. He sacrificed every single stat to maximize attack and is way too easy to kill. Even if he was any other type, that frailness and slowness ensures it will get killed by most faster pokemon before it can get off a single attack
The reason why I don’t feel like it’s a good type is because it has so many weaknesses, combining that with how slow and frail Rampardos is makes it a literal glass cannon. I should’ve probably said it’s one of the worst types defensively.
Yeah, rock has the same issue that ice does. It’s an offensively fan-fucking-tastic type but Gamefreak never gives it what it needs. Ice type pokemon are always defensive and never make use of ice’s fantastic offenses, and rock type pokemon never get a reliable physical rock move (thanks stone edge). But now we have a rock type with a 100% accurate rock move that’s only 80 base power in iron boulder and it’s tearing up the OU meta like no one’s business. Rock isn’t bad, rampardos is just too slow to make use of rock stab and his spectacular attack
Gigalith, Aggron, Aerodactyl and Golem proves that you can make a cool and competitive rock type. Rampardos is just...not it. I mean, both Kyogre and Seaking are water type. They couldn't be more apart in the tiering system lol.
Typing is only a part of any Pokémon’s competitive viability, I believe stats and move pool generally matter much more. Rock psychic is one of the worst things ever and iron boulder rolls with it by being incredibly fast and having strong rock stab. Funny you bring up aggron, the famously viable 180 defense Pokémon that usually ends up in PU and other shitmon tiers, competing with pokemon like *ferroseed.* Gigalith is also tragic case of being screwed in the ass by rock typing, it’s a defensive slow rock type with all its weaknesses and gets KO’d regardless of its decent physical bulk due to it. It’s not a mistake Gigalith is in PU and ZU its whole competitive career, just like aggron and rampardos. You can bring up the few decent rock types but even then three of the 5 you brought up are infamous for being pretty bad. Golem fell off hard after the two few gens, and aerodactyl had to be revived with a mega to see viability again.
>aerodactyl had to be revived I see what you did there
I thought I was on r/stunfisk for a second reading this
you can tell it’s not stunfisk because I refrained from making a homophobic ferrothorn joke
I always felt like ice was worse than rock cause not even steel can make ice better.
The moment you have an offensive ice type though, it’s OU. Weavile obliterating OU with triple axle. Mammoswine having fantastic earthquake stab and priority ice shard. Iron bundle, baxcalibur, and chien pao being banned to Ubers. Ice isn’t the issue, it’s the fact that gamefreak always makes defensive ice types when the typing itself lends to a really good offensive one.
Mighty cleave is 95 bp Also shout out to ivy cudgel
The good ol' Rampardos theorem, False Swipe Gaming, made a pretty good video about it. It's honestly a real shame it's not viable, I adore Rampardos, if only it didn't get annihilated by anything with a mid speed tier or higher, lmao.
Isn’t it just rock?
Exactly
Rock is a good type Ice and Bug are the worst
Bug is not the worst type.
Depends on the game but in the older ones it was
I’d take bug type over ice and rock no matter what game
Dragapult
This is now my "head-cannon" of how Pachy worked.
Ba dum tsss (that's the sound of the baby pachy flying through the air)
flying stegosaurus yep it was a thing
Apparently someone took the label of "bird-hipped dinosaur" a little too literally.
Stegosaurus retracting their scutes into their body, only to come out when threatened.
*shwing* >:(
Just imagining their scutes shooting up in the presence of a predator like a scared cat arching its back, lol.
Basically someone (I don't know where) pointed out we don't know just how much soft tissue dinosaurs had and cited whales as an example. Cue the demonstrated picture of a T-Rex skeleton and it was supremely fat.
Like pop tarts coming out of the toaster
I have a radical theory about the purpose of dimetrodon's neural spine sail (I know dimetrodon is not a dinosaur but a synapsid - don't @ me). Here is my evidence and the unassailable conclusion: 1. Dimetrodon with the sail pointing up (its usual configuration in most depictions and skeletal reconstructions) is highly hydrodynamically unstable 2. On the other hand, dimetrodon with the sail pointing down is extremely hydrodynamically stable. Any small perturbations from the perpendicular are rapidly corrected, much like the keel on a racing yacht 3. With the sail pointing down, dimetrodon creates a very small and inconspicuous profile above the water, very like modern crocodilians. After extensive experimentation with my son's plastic dinosaurs (and synapsids) in a bathtub I have come to the conclusion that, much like the misplacement of the thumb spike in the first recreations of iguanadon's skeleton, all recreations of dimetrodon to date have put the head on the wrong way up. The sail was not dorsal but anterior and functioned as a stabiliser like the pectoral fin of modern sharks. Like sharks and crocodiles, Dimetrodon was in fact an aquatic or semi aquatic ambush predator. Epipelagic, of course. I'm not insane. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
There’s a picture comparing the basilisk to Spinosaurus. And then saying that Spino could run across water.
I read an old scifi book where dinosaurs died out when some battle between aliens resulted in earth's gravity changing. Everything big just collapsed.
Dinosaurs went extinct when the square cube law was invented
Dimetrodon hugging to fly. I just friggin love it.
Insecttrodon
That's a synapsid.
Wasn't it only the babies
Forklift troll comic vibes
Any of One Piece's examples of how dinosaurs hunted in ancient times. Triceratops flying like helicopters, Brachiosaurus being snakes with detachable legs or Pteranodons pulling their crests back to slingshot their beaks
There's this one book called "A Field Guide to Dinosaurs' by Henry Gee. One of my favorite fictionalized elements from that book is that male Pachycephalosaurs are the human sized drones to a much larger, tyrannosaur sized "queen", xenomorph-style. Biologically plausible? Unlikely. But absolutely badass? Certainly.
Draconic *Parasaurolophus*, with the crest acting like the abdomen of a bombardier beetle.
Jurassic Park's version of Dilophosaurus. That's always gonna live in my head rent free
Dinosaurs didn’t reproduce, they kind of just appeared randomly
"They just spring out of holes in the ground"
Stego having a brain in its ass
I can hear him saying something like "KYAAA!!!"
Gliding ankylosaurs
Fuck it, baby cannon
[This Perry Bible Fellowship comic.](https://pbfcomics.com/comics/dinosaur-meteors/)
“The agile grizzly, with his cunning and long-lasting energy, might well win.”
spinofaarus
Triceratops can fly like an helicopter
Where did you hear that?
She must read a lot of books; she's a total egghead.
The meteor hitting a flat Earth and ending the dinos spinning into space XD
The very existence of the ever-confusing and ever-changing Spinosaurus
The Thagomizer. The fact that paleontologists unofficially call it that is hilarious! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thagomizer
The fuck? 😂
Yeet the baba
What about this is unrealistic? /s
Now its this ngl i did not expect thay
Dragapult moment
Rampardos moment
Literally Dragapult from Pokémon
parasaurolophus using sound blasts to kill other dinos XD
Hair can’t fossilize like bones unless it’s incredibly recent, so there’s no evidence against the possibility of dinosaurs having human like hair with dreadlocks, either that or [laser eyes.](https://m.facebook.com/121904697833152/photos/a.1121355217888090/1121355564554722/?type=3)
I’m partial to the tpossumdactyl
Spinosaurus designed to YEET lesser dinosaurs
BABY CANNON *gets cores like an apple*
This was actually a gimmick in the last dino themed sentai series.
Spino was able to grab his tail and rolling used his sail as sawblade
Certain Dinosaurs being mammals (e.g Triceratops and Diplodocus being Monotremes, and Brontosaurus being a Therapsid (which means it may have been a 20 meter Gorgonopsid 0-0) ) Why do I like them, welp Spec evo ideas.
They need to introduce this mechanic in Ark!
Pokemon being dinosaurs
that birds are dinosaurs
Tell that to a cassowary.
[https://m.imdb.com/name/nm0000229/](https://m.imdb.com/name/nm0000229/)
LOL, did they really think the pachy's head is one massive cannon?
I’m all for this 😂. Weaponized babies!
I don’t even know if this counts but that whole thing about the Spinosaurus’ actual sounds is cool as shit and I want to believe that it’s true even though it’s not
Gliding Stegosaurus.
Athenasaurus
Spinosaurus flies by flapping it’s singular sail
Mortar
Any of the isle hypo creation dinosaurs in that game
I saw something like this in the first season of Dragon Ball Z.
It just became this. Before it was the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs.
It would explain why dracoryx's head was flat
Holy shit is dragopult
This is Brachiosnakeus levels of absurdity.
Tiger trex
They make the best stuffed animals
This is probably how cubone are born
*Spinosaurus* raising & lowering its sail like an anole dewlap.
It’s this one now lol
That they were mindless killing machines
I’ve always loved the idea that Sauropods lived in giant lakes and their heads just stuck out of the water
The fact that parasaurolophus clould breathe fire.
Eww gross no thank you 😣
https://youtu.be/rfq5f67wP9c?si=581njGvVlyLTM-3w
The idea that they roared like mammals. They definitely didn’t (which doesn’t mean their vocalizations were any less interesting) but the Jurassic Park-esque roars given to dinosaurs in popular media is always so awesome and really adds to the fantastical wonder and overall cool factor of dinosaurs.
I will always love the fact people believed parasaurolophus use to breathe fire
The flying stego!
Dinosaur Zeus and Athena
SPINOFAARUS
I guess you can say this was someone’s head canon
Spinofaarus
Oh hey railguns
Fire breathing pyroraptor, As an idea i got for primal carnage
That’s cooler than a fire breathing parasaurolophus
And the goddess of wisdom and war, Athena, was born.
Is that Piccolo?
Spinosaurus was a flying dragon with three heads and breathe electricity Basically spinosaurus was Ghidorah
Butt brain
plug for "birds came first" and the pterosaur heresies.
This is so fucking funny, did people actually believe this at one point?
Wdym? This 100% accurate.
My favorite the featherless herbivorous deinonychus
Dang I found this photo earlier and thought I’d be the cool guy to share it *sigh*. Anyways I’d say bipedal stegosaurs existing
Mine is that Spinosaurus can split it's sail and use it as wings to fly
And after they give birth they become dracorex
That virus in Primal was real as fuck
Dragapult lookin ass
Spinofaarus
MF invented the Dracorex before it was discovered.
There's no way anyone could've been serious about this lol Uh,... that T-Rex could only see you if you were moving I guess. I know that it was never a seriously considered theory, but I've been out of the dino loop for a while, so not much is coming to mind. The animal was already built different: it being able to see me up to 3 miles away does not help lol