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Evidence Dinosaurs Are Like Giant Chicks

ZeroExistenZ writes "timesonline reports the new "irrefutable" fossil evidence of dino's resembling "giant chicks" more then reptiles as formerly accepted. Gareth Dyke: "The way these creatures are depicted can no longer be considered scientifically accurate," he said. "All the evidence is that they looked more like birds than reptiles. Tyrannosaurs might have resembled giant chicks.""

15 of 302 comments (clear)

  1. I, for one... by mattcurrie · · Score: 5, Funny

    I, for one, welcome our new Giant Chick overlords.

  2. Damn... by Brandon+K · · Score: 5, Funny

    So it looks like I wouldn't have been able to score with a dinosaur, either...

  3. Ahh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's why snakes taste like chicken.

  4. Artist Rendering by Comatose51 · · Score: 5, Funny

    And here's an artist rendering of how they might have looked.

    --
    EvilCON - Made Famous by /.
  5. Scientific discussion by Centurix · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Upon discovering the new fossilised remains of this giant 50 foot high chick, we've decided to name it the Darylhannansaur"

    --
    Task Mangler
  6. Re:I dated a giant chick once... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
    I wonder what she's doing now....
    So sorry you have to learn it this way, but she's extinct. BTW don't you worry, just about everyone here on /. hasn't had a date in eons...
  7. Re:Scientists were mistaken ? by EnsilZah · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Infallible?
    Ah, you must be thinking of religion.
    Scientific ideas change all the time.

    I'm sure people get the two confused all the time.

  8. square got it right. by aircheck · · Score: 5, Funny

    So they're like chocobos then? Chocobos with sharp, pointy teeth.

  9. Ontology / Phylogeny by Fractal+Dice · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's an old saying: "Ontogeny recapitulated Phylogeny" (or, "baby/fetal X usually looks like X's evolutionary ancestor" - since it's easier for a mutation to successfully edit the adult form than the infant form without causing something else to break).

    So if dinosaurs and birds are related, one would expect there to be a lot of similarities to baby birds to down is not surprising. However, I'm not convinced about the immediate leap to a theory of multi-coloured down when chicks are usually mono-unicolour.

  10. Oh - the poor T.Rex by sbaker · · Score: 5, Funny

    Oh the poor T.Rex...gone from being the most powerful and vicious creature imaginable - chasing down jeeps and eating lawyers and shaking the ground as it runs...then we hear that if it ran at more than 8 mph, it would fall over...then that if it ever did fall over, it couldn't get back up again...then they told us that it was merely a scavenger and not a hunter at all.

    AND NOW IT LOOKS LIKE A GIANT, FLUFFY YELLOW CHICK?!?

    Nooooo!

    T.Rex's had laser eyes, breathed fire and had enormous leathery batlike wings that don't show up in the fossil record because they were shed every year to grow new ones. They could run at 80mph and ate several Diploducus for breakfast every morning before having violent terratorial disputes that took up the rest of their days. At night they tracked down and ate cavemen. Their advanced (but brutal and inhumane) society dominated the earth for 20 million years and was only brought down by alien civilisations hurling giant flaming meteors at them from the safe distance of the Kyper belt.

    OK - maybe I lost a bit of scientific detachment there - but..*REALLY*.

    --
    www.sjbaker.org
  11. Alton Brown beat them to it... by phillymjs · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...on the "Fry Hard 2" episode of Good Eats.

    He used one of these, minus skull, tail and the bottom half of the legs, to demonstrate the proper way to dismantle a whole chicken for frying.

    ~Philly

  12. Ever seen chickens attack a bug? by HangingChad · · Score: 5, Insightful
    If you've ever lived or worked on farm with chickens you've seen how relentless and brutal they are chasing insects. Even stinging insects like bees and wasps are no match for that lightning fast beak. Free range chickens are quick and intelligent hunters.

    Now imagine a 50 foot chicken...and you're the bug.

    --
    That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
  13. More information by JayBlalock · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Running a Google search on Liaoning dinosaur brings up a number of useful articles.

    This one at the BBC discusses the find in more depth and also mentions that the feathers were primarily on smaller dinosaurs, but even our beloved T-Rex may have hatched cute li'l chicks.

    And this American Museum of Natural History article discusses a diorama they're putting up based on the find, including pictures of their conceptions of the dinosaurs today.

    Really, submitter could have contributed a lot more information with a little basic research.

    --
    Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
  14. Obvious? by Sensible+Clod · · Score: 5, Interesting

    reporting the obvious

    Oh, well, now, I wouldn't say that.

    This article is from February 2003. The guy is an evolutionary biologist, but search for the word 'factory' and notice where this factory is rumored to exist. You guessed it, Liaoning Province.

    Very interesting read.

    --

    The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
  15. Re:Hollywood movies are made to generate profit. by LnxAddct · · Score: 5, Informative

    The way I've understood it, and the way I believe most have understood it for decades was that dinosaurs were originally reptilic but as time went on and the species diverged through evolution, a good chunk became somewhat primitively feathered. Here are 2 depicitions that I pulled off of wikipedia( 1 and 2), but I mean this isn't news, the article is just talking about more recent dinosaurs rather then the oldest (we have fossils of the crocodilia from the late triassic period that nearly match today's crocodiles, implying that at least some were reptilic) and we already know that in the Jurassic period birds and dinoaurs with feather-like features started appearing around the same time that small mammals became abundant. This aritcle isn't news, its stating what is already known, or at the very most, taking what is known and claiming that it possibly applies to a few more dinosaurs.
    Regards,
    Steve