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Friggin' Huge Utahraptor?!!?!?!?

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  • 17-04-2011 7:24am
    #1
    Rubecula
    Registered Users Posts: 8,551 ✭✭✭


    Mod: Discussion moved from Dino LOL. I think this warrants it's own thread :)

    Well, feathered arms anyway.:pac:

    That Utahraptor ostommaysorum is an absolute monster isn't it? 11 metres long? I am sure I wouldn't want to meet that thing on a dark night.
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    #2
    Galvasean
    Registered Users Posts: 30,746 ✭✭✭✭Galvasean


    I'm not sure where that 11 meter specimen is from. ever heard of it myself...


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    #3
    Capt'n Midnight
    Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 90,700 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    Rubecula wrote: »
    Well, feathered arms anyway.:pac:

    That Utahraptor ostommaysorum is an absolute monster isn't it? 11 metres long? I am sure I wouldn't want to meet that thing on a dark night.
    If the wings worked then there wouldn't be much point climbing a tree to avoid one. Then again at 11m it would probably just take the tree out.


    Baryonyx is another of those big clawed muggers
    it's as if someone pimped up a crocodile , lets give it 25 cm long claws and the ability to run on it's hind legs ( and a fully grown adult may have been bigger ) - still not as big as spinosarus though


    http://theropoddatabase.blogspot.com/2010/05/utahraptor-ostrommaysorum.html
    New material was announced by Britt et al. (2001) in an abstract, but has yet to be described in detail. This consists of one individual from the Yellow Cat (=Gaston) Quarry (CEU coll.) and at least eight from the Dalton Well Quarry (70 elements in the BYU coll.). Anatomical information on these specimens can be gleaned from the matrices of Senter (2007b) and Longrich and Currie (2009). Of particular interest are caudal vertebrae about twice as long as those belonging to a specimen with a 565 mm long femur. If this turns out to be correct and not due to misidentification or unusual proportions, it could indicate individuals over ten meters long.

    Buses are 10m long


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    #4
    Adam Khor
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,279 Mod ✭✭✭✭Adam Khor


    Well, I had the chance to ask Jim Kirkland (leading expert on Utahraptor) about the new Utah fossils. He says that indeed, new Utahraptor remains are being studied right now and that the skull looks very different from what we had imagined, and that the animal was probably not a runner after all, but relied more of brute strength and "would be able to knock a house down". Supossedly, the new study is published in October, so expect a very bizarre but cool new Utahraptor reconstruction :D


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    #5
    Galvasean
    Registered Users Posts: 30,746 ✭✭✭✭Galvasean


    Not a sprinter eh? Wonder if it's related to the Uber raptor...

    So, how were you talking to Jim Kirkland?


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    #6
    Adam Khor
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,279 Mod ✭✭✭✭Adam Khor


    Galvasean wrote: »
    Not a sprinter eh? Wonder if it's related to the Uber raptor...

    So, how were you talking to Jim Kirkland?

    Well, I'm an amateur artist who never misses a chance to ask paleontologists about new finds... of course, many paleontologists hate that and refuse to say anything unless you are a scientist yourself. Can´t say I have a good relationship with many of them.


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    #7
    Galvasean
    Registered Users Posts: 30,746 ✭✭✭✭Galvasean


    I should have been more specific. Did you email the guy or meet him in the flesh?


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    #8
    Adam Khor
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,279 Mod ✭✭✭✭Adam Khor


    Erm, we were "Facebook friends", as lame as that sounds. I unfriended him tho XD


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    #9
    Galvasean
    Registered Users Posts: 30,746 ✭✭✭✭Galvasean


    :O


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    #10
    Rubecula
    Registered Users Posts: 8,551 ✭✭✭Rubecula


    Rubecula wrote: »
    Mod: Discussion moved from Dino LOL. I think this warrants it's own thread :)
    .

    Thanks for making this a separate thread. Nice thought and kind of you.

    I don't think it was closely related to Uber raptor. There seem to be too many differences. However even a small blighter like Uber raptor would give me the heeby geebies if it was in front of me. And it looks sort of horrifying too.

    I do wonder just how big these raptor types could actually get. Can you imagine what a T.rex sized raptor could eat... apart from anything at all it wanted to? As close to the perfect predator as nature could make?


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    #11
    Capt'n Midnight
    Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 90,700 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    Rubecula wrote: »
    As close to the perfect predator as nature could make?
    Sharks are pretty perfect


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    #12
    Adam Khor
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,279 Mod ✭✭✭✭Adam Khor


    Capt'n Midnight wrote: »
    Sharks are pretty perfect

    So are crocodiles... and big cats... and birds of prey XD

    I don´t think its impossible that raptors got to T-Rex size (although probably not as massive)... after all, if ornithomimosaurs and therizinosaurs practically got to T-Rex size (Deinocheirus and Therizinosaurus respectively), why not dromeosaurs? (Sure, these are herbivores, but still...)

    I remember a book about King Kong that had a HUGE raptor as Kong's nemesis, Gaw. Now that should have been in Peter Jackson's movie!


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    #13
    Alvin T. Grey
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,169 ✭✭✭Alvin T. Grey


    But would it still be a raptor? Agile? Mobile? Hostile?
    How and what would it hunt?

    It's like if you scaled up a Golden Eagle to the size of a fighter plane and dumped it in the same habitat. You have to re-assess everything you knew about the type because the old paradigms about Raptors don't scale with it.


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    #14
    Adam Khor
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,279 Mod ✭✭✭✭Adam Khor


    Alvin T. Grey wrote: »
    But would it still be a raptor? Agile? Mobile? Hostile?
    How and what would it hunt?

    It's like if you scaled up a Golden Eagle to the size of a fighter plane and dumped it in the same habitat. You have to re-assess everything you knew about the type because the old paradigms about Raptors don't scale with it.

    It would still be a raptor, the same way a panda is still a bear even if it feeds on bamboo instead of campers :D

    Thing is, raptors seem to be much more diverse than we imagine. Velociraptor and Deinonychus (the Jurassic Park raptor) are the "classics", but then you have Austroraptor, a gigantic, short armed fish-eater (possibly), or the semi-arboreal Sinornithosaurus (the one believed by some to be venomous), or even more amazing, Archaeopteryx (which was recently re-classified as an unenlagine dromeosaur itself, making it a mini-flying raptor and not "the first bird" as many insist on calling it).
    So, Utahraptor perhaps was simply the raptor version of a T-Rex in a family that explored many different niches and lifestyles. :D


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    #15
    Galvasean
    Registered Users Posts: 30,746 ✭✭✭✭Galvasean


    Much like the way the tyrannosaurs were previously thought to all be massive big-headed, short armed monsters. We now know that they came in many differet shapes and sizes.


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    #16
    Adam Khor
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 5,279 Mod ✭✭✭✭Adam Khor


    Exactly.


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