“Dinosaurs did not walk with humans. The evolutionary record says different. They gamboled”*…
Emily Graslie, host/writer of the educational YouTube series The Brain Scoop, has branched out to manage the wonderful Tumblr “…is not a dinosaur.”
This blog is a result of an erroneous mistake; one day I referred to Dimetrodon as a mammal-like reptile in front of a vertebrate paleomammalogist. These animals are not at all members of Reptilia; they are Synapsids – four-legged, back-boned animals that span back 315 million years on a completely different evolutionary branch on the tree of life.
Since then, I’ve found Dimetrodon partying with members of Dinosauria across the pages of coloring books and frolicking in the aisles of toy stores, surrounded by lifeforms which evolved some 66 million years after those ancient mammalian relatives…
And she’s shared; for example…
This is one of my favorites – I’ll reblog whomever points out all of the discrepancies in this one image. You’ll also get a puppy*
*probably notUpper-left feathered thing: probably an Archaeopteryx, but they have been proven to have black feathers. Although kudos to the authors/artists for allowing feathered dinosaurs to somewhat grace the cover! (Darn publishing logos)
Left green thing: an aetosaur, most likely. NOT DINOSAURS
Dimetrodon: PELYCOSAUR, NOT A DINOSAUR, SYNAPSID NOT A DIAPSID, UGHHHHHHHH. DIDN’T EVEN LIVE IN THE MESOZOIC.
Stegosaurus: head shape wrong, and dopey tail is not anatomically correct
Blue Ornithomimus thing: FOUR TOES ON THE GROUND? I don’t think so! And pronated wrists, not to mention the lack of feathers…
Protoceratops: legs sprawled out to the side instead of underneath, also missing the lower beak
Velociraptor pair: NO FEATHERS, TOO BIG, BROKEN HIPS (Sauruschian hips followed a 90 degree rule, meaning the femur does not bend back more than 90 degrees), more pronated wrists, wrong skull shape, and what are toe claws
Assumed Pteranodon: wimpy arm and shoulder musculature, missing pyncofibers, and wrong skull shape (although it might be viable, I’m scared to continue going through and trying to find pterosaur skeletals right now because of David Peters and his misleading work).
Also, many of these creatures are geographically misplaced, so even if they weren’t all from different time periods (Permian-Cretaceous), they probably wouldn’t have interacted much.
And, of course, the slightly off-center type of the title of the book is bugging me as a graphic design freak, but oh well.
ETA: More about the Dimetrodon: This illustration shows it with erect legs when it actually had sprawling legs, and the skull/mouth shape is not accurate either.
They just messed up bad with this one.
ETA2: While I do not know that much about paleobotany, I believe that most of the plants presented are fairly accurate.
I’m so proud I could cry.
More disambiguation of the distant past at … is not a dinosaur.
* Steve Martin
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As we make Jurassic judgements, we might spare a thought for The Right Honorable John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury PC FRS DCL LLD; he died on this date in 1913. A banker by trade (and family tradition), Lubbock was an avocational scientist who made significant contributions to ethnography, several branches of biology, and– as a friend and advocate of Darwin– the debate over evolution, and was a central force in establishing archaeology as a scientific discipline.
