What is your favorite dinosaur?

hydroptic@sopuli.xyz to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 176 points –

After a certain age people stop asking you what your favorite dinosaur is, and I think that's sad.

My current one's the Anchiornis, because it's in the same clade as birds so it's in their family tree, and it really looks like a prototype of a bird. It had 4 wings for example, but it already looked very birb-y:

(Figured I'd just turn an earlier comment into an actual post because why not)

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Ankylosaurus! Tail club, armor plates, what's not to love?

Ah yes, when nature went "what if tank?":

My daughter is obsessed with dinosaurs right now and this is my go-to favorite, too. Hers was Parasaurolophus but now is back to T-Rex lol.

Came here to say Parasaurolophus. Apparently one well-preserved specimen allowed scientists to take a stab at what it sounded like... I wish I could hear what the soundscape was like 65 million years (or more) ago! https://piped.video/watch?v=QtpSOpUDCb8

Me as a kid, as I also loved turtles. This was the time when dinosaurs saw turtles and said 'hold my beer.'

Fun fact: the nubs on the tail club are called osteoderms and the tail spikes on a stegosaurus is called a thagomizer.

Yep, my favorite as well.

It just doesn't get any cooler than a literal living tank.

I'm boring, and still like Stegosaurus best. Gotta love that Thagomizer.

I’m boring

We'll have none of that here! Nothing wrong with liking an old classic, because I mean come on:

Solid choice.

There was a point in fifth grade when I was into plesioasurs after reading books about the Loch Ness Monster and Mokele Mbembe.

That Stegosaurus vs T-Rex scene in Disney's Fantasia is probably the reason why this is my favorite.

I just have a soft spot for triceratops.

Same. Because triceratops have none.
It's like a rhino with even more armor and horns, what's not to like?

Movie depictions of Triceratops rub me the wrong way. Never liked Sarah in Land Before Time and my daughter loves Ice Age Buck Wild and the triceratops is the bad guy in that, too. They do triceratops dirty.

Actually guy in buck wild may be a monoclonius 🤔

My favorite cartoon as a kid had a triceratops at a hero. I don’t remember much about it and can’t find it listed online but it might have been from 1970s and I really just remember the triceratops charging at the bad guys, shooting lasers out of his horns

Herculoids?

I Think you found it! THANK YOU

The name “Herculoids” seems familiar and the Wikipedia description of Tundro is right on!

However the thumbnails don’t seem to be quite the appearance I remembered, but maybe that’s just poor memory

Woo-hoo, go, Tundro

Edit: maybe my memory is conflating multiple shows but this must be part of it. Holy crap, how did I like this? Watching it now, it was so bad

And how did this pedo episode ever air? “Hey kids, come on into my white windowless van. I’ll take you far from here and make your wishes come true”. This could have used a little stranger danger!” Mania, but predates that

Dino Riders?

A triceraton from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?

Dinosaucers?

Beyond that, not sure what futuristic triceratops there was.

I used to think liking triceratops is dumb when there's likes of centrosaurus and styracosaurus, but over the years I've come to appreciate the classic design.

Patagotitan mayorum. I think that it's the largest that we know about - around 40m large. Herbivore, I can't help but think on it as a dino-giraffe: eating leaves, nesting its eggs, not giving too much of a fuck about the small critters nearby.

I love this question! This made me really happy. My favorite has always been (and remains) the brontosaurus. (Probably can blame "The Land Before Time" for its influence.)

I remember in the early/mid-90s being corrected that brontosaurus wasn't a dinosaur species, but was actually the same as apatosaurus. Being a stubborn child, I refused to accept this and always considered the brontosaurus, not the apatosaurus, my favorite. I felt so vindicated when the study came out in 2015 that brontosaurus and apatosaurus weren't the same.

Perhaps that's why I still stubbornly refuse to let go of Pluto: the minute hope that my favorite planet will be recognized again someday. Alas.

I had a plastic brontosaurus toy as a kid that I loved. It had a weird chemical smell to it. 30+ years later, when I hear "brontosaurus" I instantly and vividly swear I can smell it

Thunder lizard! Brontosaur's another classic, ginormous boyes

I also have brontosaurus as my favorite (probably also because of The Land Before Time).

Glad you're still holding out hope for Pluto too!

I know they're not dinosaurs, but I like pterosaurs a lot. Their wings look cool and I bet a flock of them in the sky would be a crazy sight!

The larger ones would have been absolutely fucking terrifying:

Chicken.

Duck beats chicken in every way except tastiness

A well prepared duck is much tastier than chicken. Chicken is just much easier to cook.

It also wins on tastiness! I'm my book anyway. Crispy fried duck. Peking duck. It's basically all brown meat. Delicious.

How is tastiness the thing ducks wouldn't be better at??

At the risk of sounding like a basic bitch, I'm going to go with T-Rex. Sure he has ridiculously silly arms, but he gets a pass because he could bite through a car. It's a prime case of be careful who you pick on in school.

Parasaurolophus has been my favorite since I was 6 years old. I've always thought their cranial crests were very cool.

If the Ankylosaurus was nature going "what if tank?" then the Parasaurolophus was nature going "what if dinosaur but cow?"

I grew up in the 80s and 90s, so probably one that isn't considered a dinosaur anymore.

Chicken.

I just killed my back for the day making a barbeque bath for their little fingers...

Wicked Barbie Srirachasaur

Archaeopteryx - apparently the first bird ever

One of the first we know of at least! And they looked much more bird-y than my fave Anchiornis:

One of the first we know of at least!

Nah, it's the first one because that's exactly where we decided to draw the line. Birds have to start somewhere, so why not with archaeopteryx? So it will never change no matter what other species we find.

Euoplocephalus, because I like me some ank memes, but I wanna be special.

If we included pterosaurs, then anurognathus, because look at him!

Mine is the Pachycephalosaurus. I love it so much I use it as my profile picture. I got attached to it because cranidos is my favorite pokemon.

If we are accepting non-dinosaur but ancient creatures, my favorite is the anomalocaris :) it's just a goofy lil guy with a mouth snoot. Plus, they never say no to a snack. (They're at the end.)

Therizinosaurus! When I saw the previews for the new Jurassic World movie and they teased it, I got chills. I was so stoked.

This post made me think of Napoleon Dynamite for some reason. And I loved that movie.

I've always been partial to the Spinosaurus. Ain't no cowboy gonna ride ol' spiney.

Ain’t no cowboy gonna ride ol’ spiney.

"Semiaquatic dinosaur rodeo" is an underappreciated theme. Maybe we'll see it in the next Jurassic Park.

Ain’t no cowboy gonna ride ol’ spiney.

Ark players: Hold my beer.

Stenonychosaurus (née Troodon) because as unlikely and silly an idea as it was I always found the whole "how intelligent could they have become if they hadn't gone extinct" thought experiment fascinating.

I also have a soft spot for Struthiomimus just because it's such a fun word to say.

Oviraptorosaurs!

They're basically giant turkeys!

And their name means "egg thief"!

And turns out it's slander!

Oviraptor was originally found together with a big nest of ceratopsian eggs, so it was assumed they fed by stealing those. Years later it was discovered the eggs actually belonged to the oviraptor who was protecting them till death.

Yeah those poor little dinos now get called thieves by everybody just because of an initial misunderstanding

I still can’t believe the fact that they used to exist

Right? And what's really wild is that birds are literally dinosaurs. Not just descended from dinosaurs, but classified as feathered theropods and the only known living dinosaurs

But haven't they extincted by the astroid?

Most dinosaurs did go extinct! Now there's only the avialan "branch" left which includes all modern birds, and their extinct ancestors like eg. the Archaeopteryx

Cryolophosaurus They have a hat and that's pretty cool.

Didn't even know about that one.

Diet: carnivorous
[…]
Food: other animals

Yes that's usually where meat comes from.

My daughter has an awesome dinosaur book that includes several I had never heard of, like the Nigersaurus which had hundreds of teeth. Crazy stuff!

This has to be one of the most hilarious recreations I've seen:

Oof tough question. I've always had a soft spot for Parasaurolophus and deinonychosaurians.

If I have to pick a favorite among the heavy carnivores though, I'll be torn between Carnotaurus and Giganotosaurus.

Ahh the Giganotosaurus, giving good 'ol t-rex a run for their money when it comes to size.

Kiwis! They look so unusual and almost mammal like, and on top of this they're absolutely adorable little birbs!

Ha, great answer! Kiwis are definitely strange birbs, they sort of feel more ancient than your regular average tiny dinosaurs

Parasaurolophus. I just think they're kinda neat and kinda cute.

Aside from that, pretty much any raptor. (I am not a paleontologist, I mostly just mean anything with feathers)

Oh yeah somebody else had Parasaurolophus as their fave too earlier, and they (well, the reconstructions anyhow) really do look super cute. Dinocows!

They've recently discovered that their large nasal cavities could have been used to make a tuba like noise

Argentinosaurus. Biggest Tree Star eater ever. I think it would be the coolest thing ever to like, mount a dwelling on its back, live on and take care of it.

Trex!

You should play Arc Survival Evolved it's an amazing game for dinosaur nerds 🤓

That's not a dinosaur though.

Crazily enough Anchiornis are dinosaurs, specifically paravian or possibly avialan depending on whose classification you believe, but dinos in any case

Why pterodactyls aren't consider dinosaurs then?

Same reason bats aren't considered birds.

Because they don't descend from those ancestors. Instead they evolved from some other, much earlier, reptile ancestor. They are about as dinosaurs as crocodiles or snakes are dinosaurs.

Honestly I find it a bit weird how you're clearly very insistent on being right but you apparently refuse to actually read about any of this instead of assuming that what you know is the truth. Wikipedia is right there you know

The Idon'tgiveafucksaurus. Just does what it wants with no worries.