Things About Dinosaurs That Sounds Impossible But Are True

追加: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Dinosaurs. They're old, awesome, large, probably loud, lovable, famous, and then maybe ironically highly misunderstood.

[00:00:09]Over the years, be it thanks to a blockbuster movie, an inaccurate documentary, or what have you, the general person's idea of what a dinosaur is has essentially been molded into a mixed bag of inaccuracies. And this has partially led to a pretty big trend in the dinosaur space of clearing up said inaccuracies, or dinosaur myths.

[00:00:26]essentially things that may sound true about them but are in reality false. And this got me thinking though, what about the things that may sound false at first but are in fact actually true? The facts about our favorite prehistoric goobers which simply seem impossible yet are reality. And because this group is so crazy, it turns out there's not one but multiple statements about them that seem rather unbelievable. Including for a start that dinosaurs evolved before grass and before flowers. Yeah, let that sink in for a minute. Flowers and grass, something most people see every day and maybe even have in their house, did not exist when dinosaurs first showed up.

[00:01:03]And this seemingly out of whack timeline is simply a result of how insanely prehistoric this group truly is.

[00:01:09]Considering as far as we know, the evolution of the first true dinosaurs could date as far back as the middle Triacic, some 234 million years ago, or at the very latest 233 million years ago during the Carneian stage of the Triacic, which would depend on which species one considers as the first real dino. And to really put this time into perspective, that is so long ago that many dinosaurs technically also lived on the other side of the galaxy despite inhabiting the same Earth that we live on. Because if you didn't know, the Earth and the solar system is always flying through space like a bullet. And since that time so long ago, it has traveled through different galactic neighborhoods within the Milky Way. On top of this, dinosaurs evolved so long ago that none of the oceans and seas around now were a thing yet, and Earth's land masses would have been unrecognizable to you on a map. And it's not just how old dinosaurs are, period, but how long their reign would go on for. I mean, sure, the very first dinosaurs were not the most impressive bunch, and in general, they tended to be on the smaller side. were usually bipedal and possessed elongated tail-like appenages. Yet, they still were able to get their foot in the door metaphorically and were partially aided by a mass extinction event, which would cause them to diversify into a huge amount of varying groups and families, where they achieved a level of success that's never been seen before or since, as they essentially reigned as the planet's most dominant group for over 165 million years straight. For comparison, the reign of modern humans is less than 0.2% of that. So, we have some ways to go. And based on how that way is going right now, I don't think that's going to happen. And because of this long rain, it's actually the majority of non-avian dinosaurs that never experienced grass nor flowers, with flowers popping up between 130 and 140 million years ago. While for grass, it was no earlier than 100 million years ago. In other words, every dinosaur to have existed through the Triacic and the Jurassic would never have seen anything like flowers or grass and hypothetically maybe would have been quite confused by their presence. And because of their absurd age and duration of reign, there are a multitude of other almost impossible statements which would be true as well. For instance, it's also true to say that do you live closer in time to a T-Rex than it did to a Stegosaurus with a 76 millionear gap in between them? While for us in the Big King, it is just 66 million years. Now, this is one of the more common time facts regarding dinosaurs. So, you might have heard of it before. But another way of looking at it is that by the time the T-Rex showed up, many of the dinosaurs you often think of living sideby-sight it were not only gone, but already fossilized. For example, take the Allosaurus. It has been shown more than once in movies and in other media fighting a T-Rex. And yet, this brawl is about as accurate as an alien making a movie in which humans are battling a triceratops. So, yeah, pretty crazy. And on a similar note, it's not just the time relating to dinosaurs that's hard to wrap our heads around, but also their physical distance, so to speak. Because, and unsurprisingly, just like animals of today, the dinosaurs of old each had their own areas and environments that they called home. And this probably makes a lot of sense to you. But it does also mean that a lot of dinosaurs that people think lived together in fact did not, even if they did somewhat line up roughly on the timeline. And this is perhaps best showcased by the first Jurassic Park where in that final battle a pack of quote unquote velociaptors take on a Tyrannosaurus resulting in many considering the two to be arch enemies. And though these two species did technically coexist in time, they definitely never fought or even met for that matter. as the velociraptor was restrained to the Asian continent while the T-Rex was found in North America.

[00:04:32]And really the takeaway here is that dinosaurs lived all over the world, not just in one spot. With every single continent having some degree of dinosaur fossils in them and because of this range and their mind numbingly long existence, dinosaurs came in just about every shape and size and expanded to almost every niche you can imagine.

[00:04:48]Which is why I also find it quite hard to believe that during their entire reign, not a single one of them ever became fully aquatic. Now, you may know this already if you watch some of my other videos, but come on, that's pretty freaking insane. As across the entire board, none made the transition to being fully aquatic. Whereas other groups like mammals, snakes, turtles, and more have made the return, which is pretty odd.

[00:05:10]Now, in reality, their absence from the water comes down to a multitude of different reasons and chances that make things a bit more obvious. But simply said, if I had to put three reasons as to why, the first part is that their naturally buoyant bones don't act as good water weights to counteract buoyancy. Second, their egg designs are made very poorly to resist the effects of being submerged in water. And then third is that tough competition already occupied the water during the Mesazoic.

[00:05:33]Looking at you, Plesiosaurus. But what's also odd is that even now, no fully aquatic dinosaurs exist. You might be thinking, well, duh, there are no dinosaurs around. And yet, they are all around us. As again, against popular misconceptions, the group never died, as birds are in fact dinosaurs. Shocker, I know. And I don't mean they're dinosaurike or just heavily related to them. Rather, they are dinosaurs in every sense of the word, just as much as an allosaurus or Argentinosauruses.

[00:06:03]And part of this confusion surrounding birds stems from how we refer to them as aven dinosaurs and the extinct group as non-avian dinosaurs. But really all Aven means is that birds are avoid of living dinosaurs. It would kind of be like if Tyrannosaurus had survived and then you would hear that the Tyrannosaurus lived while non- Tyrannosaurs did not. So in the end they are still obviously both dinosaurs. It's just a taxonomic thing. And because birds are dinosaurs and again every sense, it also means that dinosaurs are technically still one of the most successful groups of animals alive. And while they don't rule the land per se, like they used to. Saying that dinosaurs rule the skies is a valid statement, especially considering that over the 11,000 known bird species, over 99% of them are flyers. So, in a way, their rule never ended. It just changed.

[00:06:50]Additionally, because those 1% of birds that still walk around part or full-time, you would technically still be correct in saying that dinosaurs still walk the planet this day, no matter how strange that sounds. Another fascinating thing about birds and their relation to dinosaurs is that they are all theropods who belong to the manaptor cate. The very same clay by the way that gave us theosaurus and overapraptors as well. Which also means that a bird is way more related to dinosaurs such as the therainosaurus than the therazinosaurus was to many of the quote unquote traditional dinosaurs it lived alongside. Additionally, just cuz it's so famous, you should also know that birds are more related to the T-Rex than the T-Rex is to either an Allosaurus or Jonotasaurus, no matter how hard that is to believe. I mean, they look very similar to some and are definitely more similar in size. And yet, a chicken is more related to a T-Rex than a T-Rex is to a Jiggonottosaurus. So, next time you see a chicken, put some respect on him.

[00:07:44]And understandably, some of you may be skeptical of this information, especially because at first it does seem like a bit of a stretch. However, this conclusion comes from years of research that involves many different independent pieces of evidence. Firstly, while dinosaurs were diverse across the board, birds did highly resemble numerous non-avian genre such as velociraptors or microaptors, while even their plumage and soft tissue matched what has been seen in other dinosaurs, suggesting a strong relation. Because while convergent evolution can explain feathers in multiple creatures, the exact details of the feathers are rarely the same unless two things are related, given how complex they are structurally.

[00:08:19]And then beyond outside appearances, they also share many internal traits, including wishbones, hollowed bones with airsacks, and more with birds actually sharing more characteristics with dinosaurs than any other living animals of today. And this same logic is also how scientists were able to conclude that bats were mammals instead of a bird or something else before we actually genetically tested them. And then the same rationale is also tied to how we know they're more related to the T-Rex than a jiggonottosaurus or Allosaurus.

[00:08:45]As of now, there are two main groups of therapods. the carnosaurs and solarosaurs. And the latter is the one that scientists say birds belong to, as members of this group could have feathers, whereas carnosaurs, the group to which the Jigonotaurus and Allosaurus belong to, were all scales. And then there's also many other little differences as well. And just for a nice little cherry on top, in 2007, a team of researchers were able to sequence a tiny yet impactful piece of collagen protein from a 68 million-year-old T-Rex, which closely matched the amino acid sequence seen in, wait for it, chickens. And of all the animals they tested, it was indeed chickens who had the closest match, showing that they had been on the right track all along. And frankly, this area, in other words, regarding how we know things about dinosaurs, is also an area where certain statements can sound impossible at first. To give an example, if someone finds a dinosaur tooth that is serrated and sharp, you probably wouldn't raise your eyebrows at them claiming that it belonged to a carnivorous animal. But if this tooth was the only thing found, and then they say something like, "Oh, it's a new species of dinosaur." let's say a spinosaurid, then you might start questioning things cuz I mean again it's just a tooth. But the reality is that dinosaurs can in many cases just be classified off of fragmentaryary remains alone. And this is primarily because bones are much more specific than one might think. In the case of dinosaurs, each group had unique characteristics that in some cases came down to the smallest details, such as, for example, the density of each individual bone.

[00:10:09]Which is why even now if you took a tiny sliver of say a hyena bone and put it next to a speck of a lion bone someone could likely tell them apart even disregarding any sort of genetic analysis. And this is especially the case in certain dinosaur species and groups that have traits which are autotopomorphic meaning it's a distinct feature only found in that group or species. Spinosaur teeth, for example, have autotopamomorphic features. Meaning that if you found a lone tooth with the same traits, you could deduce that it must have come from a spino. And then if it has those traits and then also other distinct ones that don't match anything seen previously, you might be able to conclude the tooth must have belonged to a new type of spinosaurid. Considering the shared features and the new distinct ones. And this works with non- teeth, too, as nearly every bone is special in its own way. And it's through these odd isolated features that it's possible to tell a dinosaur by a small piece of bone alone. Additionally, it also helps to match fragmented bones to other discovered ones, which can also serve as a method of identification. Now, with this said, there's also plenty more to dinosaurs beyond their general classification that we're able to find out. And new tech has a lot of especially pretty impossible sounding stuff, like for example, knowing some of their colors, which we can deduce from preserved melanosomes, understand the texture of their skin from fossilized skin impressions, and then even what some of their brains were like, as seen in the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Now, yes, no brain matter has actually ever been found belonging to the king, but exceptionally well preserved skulls have, which has in turn preserved as endoccasts. The internal cast created by the brain in life, which then based off the studies using still living animals, is surprisingly accurate and at least telling us the size of the brain and the general shape, allowing us to infer certain things, such as based off of the shape, if the shape suggests an intelligence more similar to that of a crocodile or a primate. And so this is some pretty nifty stuff and obviously perhaps a little bit controversial considering the statements made and it has taken a lot to prove true. But one area that doesn't take too much effort to verify is the general size of dinosaurs. At least in the sense if you find a big bone, you know that it's probably from a big dinosaur and a small one a small dinosaur, etc., etc. And perhaps the thing that documentaries and movies frequently get correct is that at the very least everyone knows that this group cooked up some pretty massive animals over the years. Yet, the one thing that I'll say about this is that even through movies and documentaries, their sheer size is still hard to stomach and in some ways defies what seems possible. For instance, if you made a list of the 10 largest animals to ever walk, they'd all be dinosaurs. If you up that to 20, they'd still all be dinosaurs. And then if the list was 30, well, that would be a dinosaur only invite with not even the largest terrestrial mammals ever, like the Paleolox or Paraserthetherum making the cut. Now, it has been said more than once that the average dinosaur was just about the size of a dog or a sheep. But this is really a myth stemming from the early 90s and actually a little bit from Michael Kryton's work, the man and legend behind Jurassic Park. And while this might sound true, it is um certainly not with the average dinosaur in reality being far far larger, making it an almost impossible challenge to randomly select a small species. With one meta analysis stating that the average dinosaur was a whopping 4,282 kg or 9,440 lb. So in other words, over 4 tons and similar to the weight of an Asian elephant. And to give you a bit of a taste on how crazy that is compared to now, the average North American mammal currently is about 590 times smaller. So in a way you could say that life in North America has shrunk 600 times since the Mesazoic. And you have to remember this was the average. Certain individuals got far larger. And it wasn't just the sarapods who were stupidly large. For instance, the largest duckbuilt dinosaurs, which we usually consider to be non-scary dinosaurs, were sometimes sarapod sized and could possibly weigh over 20 tons.

[00:13:54]Then the largest therapod, the T-Rex, was a walking, crushing machine that could be over five times heavier than a giraffe. And by the way, giraffes are already the largest land animals we have besides hippos, rhinos, and elephants.

[00:14:07]So, the Rex was one big boy. Of course though, with this said, it was truly the sarapods who were the real freaks of nature with the clay reaching its pinnacle through the evolution of the titanosaurs. A group of related sarapods that emerged in the Cretaceous and were found across the entire planet. Now, I will preface this with saying that sarapod size as far as specifics go has always been somewhat of a finicky topic.

[00:14:30]But in the titanosaurs, it is believed that the largest members were possibly over 80 metric tons with what are termed as megasar pods possibly even getting bigger than 100 tons. And of the lot, one of the more well-known genre is the Argentinosaurus. And guys and girls, these animals were so big that a single leg without flesh or muscle was already taller than any elephant alive today.

[00:14:54]And things only get crazier with those megasarapods that might have existed such as the Bruhafosaurus or in the larger estimates given to already well-known giants including again the Argentinosaurus. And in this realm as we go past 100 tons, we start to see sizes where a single freaking SAR pod is somehow heavier than a entire subspecies. And what I mean by this is that going off of a 2023 study that suggested that Bruhafosaurus weighed up to 170 tons, we were then talking about a case where a lone individual could weigh more than the entire population of Siberian tigers. The population of the entire planet that is so kind of nuts.

[00:15:31]Now to be clear, this study is not set in stone. So there is quote unquote wiggle room for that impossible sounding statement. But the point is that dinosaurs were stupidly big. To such a point, in fact, that one of the main mysteries that scientists care so much about is how they were able to get so big in the first place. Obviously, whales of today are mammals that can rival or beat the largest dinosaurs, but they're kind of cheating as they had live in water, which helps to support their weight. Whereas dinosaurs lived on land, making the interest that much greater. And because so many of them were so large, it was actually once thought that their size had to do with the planet itself. With one idea being perhaps that the planet had lower gravity during the Mesazoic. This has obviously been debunked and instead a new growing idea is that it was a blend of various factors that allowed for the dinosaur size that unsurprisingly had to do with their own physical adaptations such as hollow bones and birdlike breathing. And then there was of course ecological reasons as well. But again, the bottom line is we're still not 100% sure on how they did it. And that's pretty metal when you are so freaking big. The scientists are pretty much like, "Well, beats me." And I think that's a great wrap-up for dinosaurs as a whole and this video. Thanks for watching and until next time on Extinct Zoo.