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I Know Dino

I Know Dino

@iknowdino.bsky.social

510 followers 2 following 42 posts

We #podcast about #dinosaurs each week. I Know Dino has been downloaded over 4 million times. Subscribe & get your dino fix too! https://iknowdino.com/links/

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I Know Dino @iknowdino.bsky.social · 4d

All these features would have probably helped Sinosauropteryx stay safe, by throwing off or distracting potential predators

Want to know more about this cool dinosaur? Listen to episode 299 of our podcast, where we feature Sinosauropteryx as our dinosaur of the day!

I Know Dino @iknowdino.bsky.social · 4d

It turns out Sinosauropteryx had a reddish and white banded tail, a raccoon-bandit style mask on its face, and its body was darker on the top and lighter on the bottom. That’s called countershading, and it helps animals blend in to their environment

I Know Dino @iknowdino.bsky.social · 4d

That’s thanks to melanosomes, structures in a cell that determine the color of feathers (and other things). Melanosomes come in different shapes for different colors (we can see them in living animals too), so scientists can tell some dinosaur colors based on the shapes of fossilized melanosomes

I Know Dino @iknowdino.bsky.social · 4d

All the Sinosauropteryx specimens that have been described have evidence of feathers, and this little dinosaur was about was probably covered in feathers

What’s really exciting about Sinosauropteryx is it’s the first dinosaur where we know its colors

I Know Dino @iknowdino.bsky.social · 4d

This little dinosaur was about 3.5 ft (over 3 m) long and weighed a little over 1 lb (0.55 kg), although that’s based on the longest known specimen, which wasn’t fully grown

Sinosauropteryx walked on two legs, had a long tail (64 vertebrae!) and short arms, with large claws on its first fingers

I Know Dino @iknowdino.bsky.social · 4d

There’s still a lot we don’t know about dinosaurs but each year we learn more

A couple decades or so ago no one knew for sure the colors of any dinosaurs. That all changed with the small theropod Sinosauropteryx

I Know Dino @iknowdino.bsky.social · 11d

We talk about all this and a lot more (we get way more into sauropods and sauropodomorphs and how rapidly they grew, when sauropods got big, theropod growth strategies, and even talk about the duck-billed hadrosaurs) in episode 486 of our podcast, “How Dinosaurs Got So Big”

I Know Dino @iknowdino.bsky.social · 11d

Still, it’s interesting to think about…how were dinosaurs able to grow so big?

There’s probably a few factors: being egg layers, as well as (many of them) having lighter bones and having efficient respiratory systems

I Know Dino @iknowdino.bsky.social · 11d

Take Spinosaurus for example, the theropod with the crocodile-like head and the big sail on its back. The largest known specimen is estimated to be upwards of 50 ft (15 m) long

Although we know about some of these big dinosaurs, we’ll never know if we’ve found the biggest individual of any species

I Know Dino @iknowdino.bsky.social · 11d

If it’s height, the tallest known sauropod may be Sauroposeidon, because it could probably raise its head up to 59 ft (18 m) above the ground

Now even though the sauropods were the biggest, other dinosaurs grew to be very large too

I Know Dino @iknowdino.bsky.social · 11d

Maraapunisaurus may not even be the heaviest dinosaur. That award could go to Bruhathkayosaurus, the “huge bodied” titanosaur that one 2023 estimate suggested could weigh up to 190 tons (at the upper end)

But how do you define big? Is it length? Weight? Height?

I Know Dino @iknowdino.bsky.social · 11d

One sauropod, Maraapunisaurus (originally considered Amphicoelias) is estimated by some sources to be 190 ft (58 m) long and weigh 170 tons

For comparison, one of the longest known blue whales was about 110 ft (33.5 m) long and one of the heaviest known blue whales weighed about 210 tons

I Know Dino @iknowdino.bsky.social · 11d

How big were the biggest dinosaurs (and how did they get so big)?

We’ll start with the obvious big dinos: the large, heavy, four-legged animals with columnar legs, known for their long necks and long tails (a.k.a. the sauropods)

I Know Dino @iknowdino.bsky.social · 13d

oh, thanks for this link! I don't think we have mentioned it

I Know Dino @iknowdino.bsky.social · 17d

Hear about all these exciting discoveries in a special early access episode of the Dino Download! Just make sure you join our Patreon :)

(eventually we will release this episode on our regular feed, but you’ll probably have to wait a few months…)

I Know Dino @iknowdino.bsky.social · 17d

One was found with part of its voice box (it’s the second dino ever found with parts of its voicebox, so we’re getting closer to figuring out how some dinos sounded). Another one had an extra strong jaw. And a couple small ones show us there were way more types of dinos than we previously knew about

I Know Dino @iknowdino.bsky.social · 17d

Almost 40 new dinosaurs have been named this year (and we still have a few months left)!

Don’t worry, we're covering them all on I Know Dino. However, it’s hard to keep up, soooo good news for our patrons: we’ve got an early access episode for you, and it’s all about 4 of the new dinosaurs!

I Know Dino @iknowdino.bsky.social · 25d

We get into all the nitty gritty details of Deinonychus and other raptors in episode 500, “Raptor Renaissance!”, plus we have a special IKD A to Z segment that goes through common dino terminology and explains our inside jokes from the past 10 years

Listen now, wherever you listen to podcasts!

I Know Dino @iknowdino.bsky.social · 25d

It may have killed prey by jumping on to the animal, gripping tightly with its claws, and starting to eat its prey while it was still alive (then the prey would eventually die from losing blood)

I Know Dino @iknowdino.bsky.social · 25d

This dromaeosaur lived in the Early Cretaceous in what is now the U.S. It looked similar to Velociraptor but was a bit bigger. The name Deinonychus means “terrible claw” and refers to the “killing claws” on its toes

I Know Dino @iknowdino.bsky.social · 25d

The discovery of one raptor in particular helped us understand how active and agile dinosaurs were: Deinonychus

Paleontologist John Ostrom named Deinonychus in 1969, and he knew "we had stumbled across something very unusual and quite unlike any previously reported dinosaur”

I Know Dino @iknowdino.bsky.social · 25d

They’re called dromaeosaurs, and they’re closely related to birds. Some could fly, some could swim, some were stout, and some were lightly built

Raptors were smart, and fierce, and they had “killing claws”, large, sickle-shaped second toe claws, that they used to slash prey

I Know Dino @iknowdino.bsky.social · 25d

Our next milestone episode is coming up (550, all about the earliest dinosaurs), so it seemed like a good time to bring up our last milestone episode, which celebrated raptors

The most famous raptors are probably the ones in Jurassic Park

But did you know there’s a whole group of them?

I Know Dino @iknowdino.bsky.social · Sep 26

Some of them had hair-like filaments and some of them had webbed feet

Hear all the details and a deeper dive into pterosaurs (and their long pinky fingers) in our latest I Know Paleo episode, exclusively for our di-know-it-alls at the Triceratops tier and above!

I Know Dino @iknowdino.bsky.social · Sep 26

These pterosaurs had boxy heads with large eyes and “frog like” jaws, wide bodies, and short tails

One of our favorite descriptions of anurognathids are that they were “small, Muppet-faced, insect-catching pterosaurs” (thanks Mark Witton)