The Gang of Five
Beyond the Mysterious Beyond => The Party Room => Ask Me => Topic started by: Pangaea on August 12, 2009, 12:23:56 PM
-
I’m usually not one to participate in trends, but I like answering questions and talking about myself, :p so I figured, “What the heck! It’s a great idea, and there’s room on the bandwagon for a Permo-Triassic supercontinent, ain’t there?” :p (If you'll pardon me for stating the obvious, Rat_lady7, you were definitely onto something with this concept. ;)) And so those of you who aren’t put off by my weirdness and eccentricity can ask me questions.
If anybody out there wants scientific advice on dinosaurs, prehistoric animals, and the like, (a service I have offered since first officially joining the GoF, exactly two months prior to this day) this would also be an ideal place to ask them. Though I should warn you that even I don’t know everything, and that what I do know is derived from my extensive collection of books, websites, and other secondhand sources (only the most up-to-date and accurate ones I can find). I also reserve the right to decline any questions about myself that I don’t want to answer (or at least send the answers by PM so I don’t have to share them publicly). I’m a bit paranoid when it comes to giving away certain personal information. :p But don't let that discourage you from asking questions!
P.S. The last thing I want is to sound arrogant or pretentious, which I frequently fear my colorful writing style and straightforward attitudeófueled by my eagerness to be useful and desperation to be noticedómay falsely and inadvertently impart. :angel
-
Do you like Star Trek?
-
What was the first dinosaur you actively researched to learn more about?
-
LettuceBacon&Tomato: I've never really cared for Star Trek myself. For a long time I wasn't into science fiction movies or TV shows, and even when sci-fi did become an interest of mine, it was mostly only because of the aliens, monsters, and other creatures that frequent the genre. (And I'm talking exotic creatures; not just humans with funny-looking heads or distorted facial features. :p) I guess Star Trek just never had enough aliens for me, and thus I never paid much attention to it.
Petrie: Oh boy...that's like asking me for the exact date I first watched The Land Before Time. I've been reading about dinosaurs and looking for information on them for so long that it's impossible for me to remember. :wacko I do recall, however, a project I did in fifth grade on Mongolian dinosaurs, in which I searched online for information on Therizinosaurus and Deinocheirus (two enormous and bizarre theropods known mainly from their forelimbs, which for both dinosaurs measured over six feet long and sported horrifically large claws). I also researched Avimimus (a small birdlike dinosaur related to Ruby) and I believe Tarbosaurus (the Asian version of T. rex), for that project, but I reported on them less extensively. That is my oldest recollection of a specific instance in which I actively looked for written information on a specific dinosaur, though I'm sure I had done so with other prehistoric animals on previous occasions. (Deinocheirus can be seen speculatively reconstructed in two paintings here (http://www.luisrey.ndtilda.co.uk/html/deinonew.htm), while the other three appear in this illustration (http://www.luisrey.ndtilda.co.uk/html/adino256.htm). Both works belong to one of my favorite paleo-artists of all timeóLuis. V. Reyóand the second link, in fact, was one of the resources I used for the aforementioned project.)
EDIT: I remember the first time I used Google, I searched for information on Diplocaulus, a Permian amphibian with a boomerang-shaped skull, and was disappointed by a lack of results. :rolleyes I don't remember how old I was (I know Google itself must have been very young at the time), but seeing as the critter's not a dinosaur, it probably doesn't count anyway. :p
-
What's your philosophy about life?
-
Uhh...I’m sorry, can you be more specific? (i.e., define “philosophy of life”) One other disclaimer maybe I should have included is that sometimes, if a question is too vague or far outside my zone of expertise, I find myself flummoxed by it unless I am given more details. :oops (It’s hard to explain, and I don’t think I did a very good job just now.) I don’t know if has to do with the convoluted wiring of my brain, or just plain stupidity on my part. :wacko
-
It's okay. :) Sometimes I get tired and I when I try to write something to people, they don't get what I am saying or they completely misinterpet it.
Basically, I meant what do you think the meaning of life is and what are your beliefs to what it is?
-
What is your favorite genre of music?
-
Rat_lady7: To be honest, it’s not something I ever really think about. I’ve personally never seen a reason to apply a meaning to life. (The idiom “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” describes my philosophy quite well. :p) That’s not to say I don’t think our lives are pointless, though. I have a unique, ecologically-inspired philosophy on the “purpose” of living, the short version of which is that everyone and everything lives to ensure and/or improve the survival of others, but the full explanation is so bizarre and complicated to describe that I’ll leave it up to you to decide if you want to hear it. ;)
Serris: I don’t really have a favorite genre of music. I usually don’t bother to differentiate between the different genres, and as such my musical preferences are virtually impossible to describe. In fact, I rarely listen to music on its own at all. (I’ve never used a portable audio deviceóeven an iPodófor anything except recording school lectures, etc.) The soundtracks of audio-visual media such as movies, TV, and computer games represent most of the music I enjoy (the original The Land Before Time being an excellent example :DD).
-
If you could be a dinosaur, what dinosaur would you be? Why would you be that one? And would you let me put a dinosaur saddle on you and ride you around?
-
It depends on your definition of "dinosaur". :p If you're using the term broadly, to indicate any sort of large Mesozoic reptile, it would definitely be a pterosaur. Besides being some of my favorite animals ever, their ability to fly would be highly desirable in a world full of sharpteeth on the lookout for an easy meal. To be even more specific, I would probably choose to be one of the big azhdarchids (e.g., Quetzalcoatlus), as they had the greatest freedom of movement on the ground of any known pterosaur, and were so awesomely big (tall enough to make eye contact with a giraffe (http://www.flickr.com/photos/markwitton/1386125619/) :blink:) that they could probably FIGHT a large predatory dinosaur if they wanted to. In short, I would feel safest as an azhdarchid pterosaur. ;)
On the other hand, if you're using "dinosaur" in the strictest senseómembers of the group DinosauriaóI think my saurian form of choice would probably be a Therizinosaurus (a humongo relative of the yellow bellies). Again, part of the reason is that it was one of my favorite dinosaurs, but the fact that it was also roughly the size of a T. rex and sported claws measuring nearly three feet long means that the personal safety factor is also there. Also, despite its huge claws, Therizinosaurus was most likely a herbivore, so I wouldn't need to hunt anything (besides plants :p) to survive.
In either case, I probably wouldn't mind being ridden (though I'm not sure even a giant pterosaur could fly with a human on its back), provided I had a say in the matter. I'm an easygoing guy, but I don't like being bossed around. :p
-
It's like 6 AM right about now, so forgive me if im..my question is..you get it..
I've heard everyone say stuff about how raptors used to have feathers or something like that, and they evolved into birds, is any of true?
-
School question...how do you organize your thoughts to write such eloquent paragraphs?
-
Alex: An interesting fact about raptors (technically, they’re known as dromaeosaurid deinonychosaurs, but “raptors” is a much simpler and cooler-sounding name :p) is that among the dinosaurs, they are considered to be the most birdlike (though they lived too late in the age of dinosaurs to have been actual bird ancestors). The oft-toted “first bird”, Archaeopteryx, is actually very closely related to raptors, and even possessed small sickle claws on its feet. Incidentally, it has been suggested that raptors may have been able to fly at one time, and that Velociraptor and Deinonychus are actually the flightless descendants of Archaeopteryx-like creatures. The fact that many early raptors were arboreal and exhibited adaptations for gliding lends credence to this hypothesis. (If the theory is correct, then it could be said that, rather than evolving INTO birds, raptors evolved FROM them. :blink:)
Fossil evidence of feathers is not easy to come by, but there are numerous fossils of raptors and closely related dinosaurs preserved with skin impressions that definitively show that they were feathered. One specimen of the small Chinese raptor Sinornithosaurus shows that its entire bodyósave for the fingers, jaws, and feetówas covered in fuzzy unbarbed feathers (similar to what you would see on an emu or kiwi (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=6034&view=findpost&p=9129180)), with barbed, vaned feathers (similar to the feathers birds use for flight) on the arms, legs, and tail. Velociraptor was also recently discovered to have small bumps on its arm bones, similar to the “quill knobs” on the wings of birds, to which large flight feathers attach. Velociraptor certainly couldn’t fly, but the feathers could have been used to display to other raptors, for brooding its young (raptors probably sat on their nests like modern birds, and large feathers could have been used to help conceal the nest), or even for balance when the raptor was running on an incline.
(This is a big and complex topic, and I left out a lot of what I was originally going to say; if you want me to tell you more, just ask. ;))
Petrie: You think my writing is eloquent? Thank you! :) My thoughts are much less organized than they come off as being in my posts, and the main reason they get that way is because I’m so overbearingly perfectionistic when it comes to writing. You know how I call myself a nitpicker, well, no one is more heavily oppressed by my nitpicking than myself. I like to make sure I explain things clearly, to avoid misinterpretation, but I also want my writing to sound good (both to me and the people who read it :p). I rarely post anything unless I’ve looked it over and decided for sure that I’m satisfied with the way it’s written. In most cases there’s an immense amount of editing involved during and after the writing process. Sometimes, if I’m lucky, when I start writing, I already have an idea of what I want to say, and I only need to copy the words in my head onto the computer, with minimal editing afterwards. Then there are the times where my creative juices coagulate, and I have to wrack my brain to come up with the right words to say. (I often turn to the thesaurus when can’t come up with the appropriate word.) Even in cases where the words just come to me, I often have a number of different ideas on how to say something, and I have to choose between them. All this means that I can take a very long time deciding on how to word a particular statement; even a single sentence. And a large paragraph on a complicated topic (like my response to Alex’s question) can take well over an hour.
Like my signature implies, I am far more eloquent when I write than when I speak, because when I’m talking to someone, I have less time to come up with the right words to use, and so I often blank out in the middle of a conversation if I’m trying to explain something complicated or difficult. :wacko
-
Huh..
You planning to work in a museum?
-
As a paleontologist, you mean? Probably not. I'm not very good at delicate, meticulous work like preparing fossils, and I'm so indecisive when it comes to identifying details that I would most likely be useless for studying them. :p
As much as I like talking about prehistoric life, I probably wouldn't make a very good museum tour guide, either. I'm too absentminded, and my social skills are lousy. :p
-
Have you visited any paleontology digs? If so, then how many?
-
What has been your most embarrassing moment in life thus far?
-
Mirumoto_Kenjiro: I'm not as well-traveled as I'd like to be, and have never visited a dig site. I'd certainly enjoy going fossil hunting, but from what I've heard, excavating a large fossil is incredibly tedious business, and if I visited such a site, I would probably either get in the way of the paleontologists working there, quickly become bored, or both. :rolleyes
Cancerian Tiger: I'm bad at isolating and choosing superlatives, and when it comes to embarrassing moments, I've had too many to count. (I'm very easily embarrassed.) Frankly, I'm not very keen on recounting my embarrassing moments either (especially online :p), but there was one incident I'm willing to share, involving an e-mail I sent to the makers of a TV show called The Future is Wild (a documentary of sorts about how animals may evolve in the future), in which I overzealously asked tons of very specific questions about the hypothetical animals in the show. Afterwards I realized that I must have sounded like I was blatantly attempting to plagiarize their work. :slap If the recipients of my message thought the same, they didn't indicate it in their response (the producer, who did the responding, stated that he did not have the information I had asked for). So maybe I'm just paranoid, but still...
-
What do you think should be in a GOOD Land Before Time video game?
-
I don’t play a lot of video games, but I have played the LBT games for the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance (both of which I found enormously frustrating). Based on my experiences with those, I think a good LBT game should have the following features:
ï More than one character should be playable, or, at least, the non-playable members of the gang should have significant roles. (The GBA game follows this, but the GBC game does not.)
ï The characters should be...in character :p (in the GBA game, Spike and Petrie appear to speak perfect English :slap)
ï Enemies should be realistic. (In the cave level of the GBC game, falling drops of water can hurt you. :bang)
ï The player should be able to regain lost health.
ï If there is an option for the game to be played at higher levels of difficulty, the harder modes should NOT be made thus by merely having the player start out with less health (especially in a game where it’s impossible NOT to lose health).
Please tell me if I at all misunderstood your question or did not answer it to your satisfaction. (That goes for everyone who asks me questions, by the way. ;))
-
How long have you been interested in dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures?
-
Longer than I can remember. :rolleyes:
I think I was interested in dinosaurs before I first saw The Land Before Time, but that itself was so long ago that I can't say for certain. (Same principle as the "chicken–egg" conundrum. :p) My favorites back then were Pteranodon and Tyrannosaurus rex, though again I can't recall whether I liked them so much because of Petrie and Sharptooth, or the other way around. :rolleyes
My interests have shifted and fluctuated repeatedly over the years (though, until recently, they always had something to do with animals of one kind or another), and there were times when I wasn't interested in prehistoric life at all, as well as times when I was interested in nothing but. Nowadays, however, my range of interests is much broader, encompassing multiple subjects rather than just a few at once, and prehistoric animals are one of them.
(I suppose not all of this is relevant, but if I had left it at the initial sentence, I figure my answer would have been unsatisfactory. :p)
-
How's Sasquatch doin'?
-
He's doing pretty well, as far as I can say (having never owned a kitten before). :) He bats at just about every loose rope-like object in sight (pieces of yarn, shoelaces, telephone cords, computer cables; you name it :p), occasionally spooks me by brushing up against me or jumping on me unexpectedly, and moves around the house so fast that you'd swear he's got teleportation powers. :lol Just the other day none of my family could find him; we looked all over the house, and worried that he might have gotten outside (we had planned to keep him an indoor cat so he doesn't get lost or harm the local wildlife; he's afraid of doors anyway), and after several minutes of nearly panicking, found him asleep under an end table. :lol
(For those of you reading this who don't know, Sasquatch is the new kitten my family adopted a couple weeks ago. Pictures of him can be seen here (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=644&view=findpost&p=9132995).)
-
Do you like heavy metal?
-
No. :p I actually don't really listen to any kind of music.
-
Where did you get your avatar?
-
I drew it myself. :smile
It's meant to be an LBT-style Lystrosaurus, a dicynodont, and the most abundant and widespread large land animal in all of prehistory. It was one of the few survivors of a mass extinction 250 million years ago (even bigger than the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, killing off up to 70% of all land vertebrates and 96% of all marine species), and as a result it basically had the world to itself. Lystrosaurus was long gone before the first known dinosaurs appeared, but the fact that in its heyday it lived literally all over the continental amalgamation from which my screen name is taken meant that it was a fitting creature to use as my avatar.
Realistically, I probably shouldn't have colored it green, as dicynodonts were more closely related to mammals than reptiles, and probably had glandular skin (possibly even with hair) rather than scales. But I thought green looked good. :p Initially I wasn't sure what to color the eyes, but settled on brown because that's my own eye color. (Other than that and the Lystrosaurus's expression, it doesn't look much like me. :p)
-
What about "The Three Stooges" caught your interest, aside from the funny as Hades slapstick humor :lol?
-
Only a few years ago, all I knew about The Three Stooges was that they were outrageously stupid, hit each other a lot, and that one of them (Moe) had a penchant for clunking the others’ heads together. :lol But when I watched my first Stooge short (“False Alarms”, still one of my faves), I quickly discovered another aspect of their comedy that was often just as funny as the physical humor: the language. You’ll notice that in the “Funniest Quotes You've Heard (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=3506&view=findpost&p=9114892)” thread, I’ve made no less than four posts devoted to Stooge quotes. Let them do the talking. :p
There's also the Stooge quote in my signature (the only quote at this time which is not my own). While the quote is itself hilarious, my real reason for including it is becauseóas someone who suffers from chronic Writer's Block, frequently draws a blank in the middle of a conversation, and whose brainstorms often fail to whip up more than a light breeze :póit reflects how I feel a lot of the time. :P:
Then there are the insults. While Moe’s put-downs and one-liners are not as elaborate as those of Groucho Marx (my other favorite old-time comedian apart from the Stooges), I often find them to be equally hilarious. One of my all-time favorites was in The Three Stooges Meet Hercules, in which, after hearing a knock on the door, Moe says to Larry:
Open the door, Squirrelbait!
I love this insult not just because it cracks me up on its own, but when you stop and consider what one would use to bait a squirrel, you realize that Moe is actually calling Larry “nuts” in a much funnier way. :lol (Some of my other favorite Stooge insults include “mophead”, “beetlebrain”, and “overstuffed baboon”.)
And, of course, there are the Stooges’ catchphrases. Those are fantastic. :smile I can actually do a pretty accurate imitation of Curly’s “n’yuk-n’yuk-n’yuk!” and “woo-woo-woo!”, :P: and when I want to affirm something, I often say, “soitenly!” :lol Some of my other family members have picked up the same habit. Evidently there’s such a thing as Stooge-itis, and it’s contagious. :p
-
Um, has anyone ever mistaken you for a girl? (I did when you first joined here :oops )
-
I have, actually, :lol by at least two other members. (I won't give their names as I do not wish to embarrass them.) Not sure why that is. :confused I guess I just don't indicate my gender very much.
-
Are you enjoying playing in your first rp? ^^
-
If you were to be a dinosaur, what kind would you be? (Unrelated to LBT, I mean in the real world)
-
Rat_lady7: Immensely. :yes I find that I'm having a difficult time anticipating other RPers' posts, and I still find that I become nervous every time another player addresses my character, but I don't plan on quitting the RP any time soon. :smile
Littlefoot1616: I've previously been asked a virtually identical question:
If you could be a dinosaur, what dinosaur would you be? Why would you be that one? And would you let me put a dinosaur saddle on you and ride you around?
You can see my answer here (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=6185&view=findpost&p=9129114). ;)
-
Did Pteranodons have fur? :p
-
To my knowledge, there is no actual fossil evidence (e.g., skin impressions) that Pteranodon had hair, but seeing as many other pterosaurs are definitively known to have had it, it probably did. :yes
On a related note, LBT should be proud of itself, because as far as I know, it was the the first (and so far the only) non-scientific film to portray pterosaurs with this characteristic: the small black flyers seen among the spectators at the scene of Littlefoot’s birth in the first movie sport bushy white manes, and in LBT IV, when Petrie puffs himself up with air in a comical attempt to look intimidating in front of Ali (“Petrie verrrrry scary!”), he reveals that the orange ring around his neck is in fact a ruff of bushy fur.
-
So what was a Pteranodon exactly?
-
It was a diapsid (a reptile with two openings in the skull behind the eye socket), and, specifically, a member of the suborder Pterodactyloidea, or short-tailed pterosaurs. The exact position of pterosaurs on the reptile family tree is a matter of debate, however; they are most often argued to have been archisauriforms (a group of reptiles that includes crocodiles, dinosaurs, and the specialized feathered dinosaurs we call birds) or relatives of prolacertiforms (a group of vaguely lizard-like reptiles, some of which were capable of gliding). Pterosaurs were not, however, in any way related to birds or bats, though they may have shared a common ancestry with dinosaurs.
-
How's your new kitty? :D
-
Pretty much the same as when Cancerian Tiger asked that question before: :p completely hyperactive; constantly darting around everyone's feet such that you have to be careful not to step on him; occasionally latching onto someone's foot and treating it like a catnip mouse (it hurts, but more so it tickles like you wouldn't believe :lol); batting at every loose object in sight; sprinting around the house at supersonic speeds; attempting to climb up on the dinner table at every meal :rolleyes:; occasionally meowing when he wants attention; and exploring the ready-made labyrinth/obstacle course of my still-very-messy room at every opportunity.
I'm also amazed by how much he's grown since we first got him. My mom predicts that he's going to be a pretty big cat. At any rate, I absolutely adore him. :wub
-
Cats are awesome Period. :D Hehe *hugs kitty*
Have you read any good books lately?
-
Over the summer, I've read a number of books, most of them dinosaur related (surprise, surprise :p). These included virtually all of the Dinotopia novels, as well as Dinosaur Wars (a book DarkHououmon introduced to me).
Most recently, I finished Far-Seer by Robert Sawyer, and now I am in the process of reading its sequel, Fossil Hunter.
Unfortunately, since my fall college semester started, I haven't had much time to read books I like, because of all the reading assignments I get. :rolleyes
-
Do you like the Lion King?
-
It's probably my favorite traditionally animated Disney film, but I don't watch it very often.
-
What LBT fan fictions have you read?
-
Let's see...
Journey to the Island by BabidiKrakenGuard
Someone Like Me by Bardock92
A Day of Remembrance by Cancerian Tiger
Rise of Storm Tide and Far Away Home by Caustizer
Quest for the Energy Stones by The Chronicler
Out of the Shadows by DarkHououmon
War of the Worlds by Falcon88
One Time Thing and Betting Game by Flipper Boid Skua
One Long Tail by The Great Valley Guardian
Quest for the Lost Souls by Green Dragon SWBF
Voyage Through Time by H.G. Wells
Two From the Past and The Devil’s Return by HM-SC
The Worlds Connected series by JFalcon
The Land Before Time XIV and other stories by Just loves anime
The Time of Great Need and Cera's Mysterious Sickness by karkovice
A Time Before Twilight by KingdomKey23
The Biggest Day of Their Lives, We Never Do Anything Together, Take Them For All They’ve Got (A.K.A. A Bad Pairing) and Something More Dangerous by Kit12
Revenge and Revenge II by LBTFan13
Battle of the Sacred Essences and Battle of the Sacred Essences II by Littlefoot1616
The Cold Time and Old Threehorns by Malte
The Land Before Time Onehalf and A Traitor in our Midst by naturalist
My New Son by nintendofreakgcn
The Adventures of Littlefoot and Ali by pokeplayer984
The Eternal Bond by raga
The Return of Sharptooth by Red Eyes Black Dragon Master
Hunger by Refia
Reign: Survival by RFZT
Twilight Valley by Serris
The Happy Threehorn, The Journey to the Great Lake, and The Mysterious World by Threehorn
(Given the presence of one particular fanfic on this list, I think I know what the next question I'm going to get from you will be. :p)
-
I thought I was the only who even knew of A Traitor in our Midst's existence. It is pretty good but the author seems to have vanished.
And you are correct.
This is a standard question: What got you interested in Twilight Valley? Do you have any suggestions/critiques for me?
-
It doesn’t really take all that much to get me interested in reading an LBT story. :p Provided it is not a hatefic (I shun those on sight), is reasonably well-written, and not too depressing or R-rated, I’ll usually take it. That’s not to say I’m not picky about which fanfics I like (and like most things about me, there is not really any predictable logic behind my preferences for LBT stories, :P: besides those few guidelines I already mentioned).
While I can’t say I like the concept of wars in LBT, your fanfic is a very organized and well thought-out story. I like fanfics that put the gang into new and interesting situations (while stillócriticallyókeeping them in character), and yours abounds with examples of this. Also, while this doesn’t have to do with the story exactly, I particularly like the footnotes you post along with each new chapter, describing where you got your inspiration for certain details and elements of that chapter. (If I ever complete any of my own LBT fanfics and post them here, I think I may do the same thingóassuming that’s okay with you. ;))
As for feedback, one thing I would suggest is perhaps a guide to the named characters of Twilight Valley. You have so many OCs in your story that I have had difficulty keeping track of who’s who. Something like a list of character names, with brief descriptions telling what species they are, whose side they are on, which chapter they were introduced in, and what role they play in the war, would be extremely helpful. (PM me if you want me to go into greater detail.) Perhaps a guide to the different herbs and their properties would also be helpful.
I also have a small nitpick for the beginning of Chapter 20. When Archie appears, Cera reacts as if she’s never seen him before, when the entire gang (along with Ali) met him in LBT IV. (If your intention was that Cera doesn’t recognize or remember him, maybe you should explain that.)
-
When was the last time you read a hatefic?
-
I don't think I ever have. :p I make an active effort to steer clear of hatefics, and whenever I find myself beginning to read one by accident, I metaphorically slam the book shut and hastily return it to the shelf the instant I become aware of its identity. I don't want that kind of stuff in my head. :x
-
What's your favorite type of music?
-
I think I've been asked this before... (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=6185&view=findpost&p=9129053) :p I don't really have a specific type of music that's my favorite. It's something I so rarely think about that it's difficult to describe, but I usually decide whether or not I like a particular song, etc. without any knowledge of what style or artist it belongs to. (There are a few genres that I can definitely say I DON'T like, but I'm so unfamiliar with the different names that I can't say for certain which ones they are. :wacko Except rap. I find rap REALLY annoying.)
-
I think you mentioned that red was your favorite color, so what's your least favorite color?
-
Red’s one of my favorite colors. I’ve always liked green a lot too. Generally, however, I think different colors look better on different things, and as a result I can’t really say which color I like least. :oops
If I may tweak your question a little so that I can answer it, the color used for the dinosaurs in LBT I am least fond of is probably light brown. (Think Red Claw and the other brown sharpteeth that have appeared in recent movies and TV episodes, as well as pretty much all the background flyers we have seen since LBT VII.) Although one of my favorite characters (Mr. Thicknose) is that color, I consider it (along with pink) to be overused. I’d like to see more reds and blues in LBT, and as such many of the fancharacters I design will probably have those colors.
P.S. Just so you know, I’m not against brown entirely. I like the shade Petrie has on his head and wings, and I have no problem with the colors you chose for your dinosona (cream and dark brown). ;)
-
Ah I see. I kind of see color in that way also. :)
What are your favorite movies besides LBT?
-
Come to think of it, I haven’t watched a lot of non-LBT movies lately (assuming the definition excludes TV series and nature shows). Listed in approximately the order they came to mind while I was considering this question, here are several films and film series I enjoy:
Ice Age
Kung Fu Panda
Wall?E
Up
The 2005 remake of King Kong
Hellboy
All of the Indiana Jones films besides Temple of Doom
The Lord of the Rings
Dragonheart
Coraline
Tremors
Pirates of the Caribbean
Several of the Marx Brothers’ movies
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
The Lion King (haven’t seen it in ages, though :blink:)
-
Oh man, I want to see Coraline! :D
Have you seen the musical, "Phantom of the Opera"?
-
No. I don’t care much for “Phantom of the Opera”, or plays, or most musicals. :p
-
Ah ok. :)
Do you know anything about the "miacis"?
-
Are you a he or a she? :smile
-
Rat Lady: Miacis, let’s see... *racks brain for basic information, then does research* It was a small (my sources give a body length of eight inches) predatory mammal, with appearance and habits probably similar to a modern pine marten, that lived from the Paleocene to the mid Eocene in Europe and North America.
Its family, Miacidae, is one of the oldest known groups in the order Carnivora, and is likely ancestral to both lineages of living carnivorans: the feliforms (cats, hyenas, mongooses, and civets) and the caniforms (dogs, weasels, bears, raccoons, skunks, and seals). Of course, Miacis itself may not be the direct ancestor of all carnivorans; as with any proposed “ancestral” species known only from fossils, it’s impossible to tell for certain whether it was THE direct ancestor, or simply a close relative of the “true” direct ancestor.
Miacis was primitive for its group in that it had 44 teeth, including three pairs of molars in each jaw (later carnivorans lost the third pair). It also had retractable claws (a basal characteristic of carnivorans) and probably spent much of its time in trees.
By the way, if you like Miacis, there’s a novel set in the PaleoceneóDarkwing, by Kenneth Oppelóin which one is a major character (albeit a villain, unfortunately :rolleyes).
Mumbling: A he. Did you think I was a she? You’d be the fourth GOF member to do so. :lol (I’ve got to remember to post in that “age and gender” thread.)
EDIT: There. I've done it. (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=973&view=findpost&p=9144866) Finally. :smile
-
How are you doing in your classes?
-
At this point, I'm doing pretty well in all of them. :) I shouldn't have much difficulty finishing with an A or a B in two of my classes, provided I do well on the tests; however, for the other two, I have a number of rather difficult assignments due in the next month; I am more uncertain about those courses. :unsure:
-
Are there any prehistoric creatures that you DON'T find interesting?
-
How's the updates in the LBT Glossary coming along? :P:
-
Rat Lady: Sure there are. :P: I’ve never had much interest in hominins (the ancestors and close relatives of humans). I’ve never paid much attention to brachiopods either. Also, in general, I’m more interested in prehistoric creatures that have no living descendants, or those that are most different from modern animals. For instance, I tend to research creatures like pterosaurs, trilobites, therapsids, and non-avian dinosaurs more fervently than extinct dragonflies, horseshoe crabs, rhinoceroses, and crocodilians, even though I like those creatures (both prehistoric and modern species) as well, because the fact that they have similar living relatives from which details of appearance and lifestyle can be easily extrapolated means that they are somehow not as much fun to learn about.
pokeplayer: I’m afraid to say there hasn’t been much progress lately. No one’s made any new suggestions in the past few weeks, and I’ve been pretty dry on ideas as well. I had one idea for a new term to addó“neckshield” (referring to the frill of a ceratopsian)óbut if I add it to the “Miscellaneous” section, I’ll have to change the order of the category’s entries from “definition – term” to “term – definition”. Otherwise I could add it to the “Descriptive Terms” section, but that would logically necessitate that I move the other anatomical terms that are presently grouped under “Miscellaneous” to the “Descriptive Terms” section. (It’s a LOT easier to understand my dilemma if you have the Glossary in front of you.) If you have an opinion on what I should do, please tell me about it. :)
EDIT: Never mind. I decided to just bite the bullet and incorporate the term into the glossary by reorganizing the "Miscellaneous" section.
-
I just added two terms Pangaea. ^^
How are you?
-
(Thanks. :) I thought the terms were a little strange, but I added them.)
How are you?
When people ask me that question in person, my default response is "I'm okay". However, seeing as we are communicating through a typed medium, I feel obligated to provide a more comprehensive answer.
I'm sorry to say that I could be better. :rolleyes I've been trying to write an essay for one of my classes that's due this week, but working on it is like wading through molasses. As if that's not enough, there's ANOTHER thing I need to write for that class that's due even sooner, that I'm having almost equal trouble with. :bang I'm also a little bored, frankly, with the RP. Two of my characters (including my dinosona) are waiting for morning to come so that they can do something fun with the gang, and my other character (Screech) is waiting for Thud's RPer to post.
-
You occasionally mention that you watch Mythbusters. (I watch that show too)
What were some of your favorite episodes and scenes on that show?
(if you're interested, I found the topic here about that show: http://z7.invisionfree.com/thegangoffive/i...?showtopic=1841 (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=1689) )
-
MythBusters is one of my favorite shows. I find the science fascinating, the hosts hilarious, and their various methods of destroying things both astonishing and entertaining (especially when high-speed cameras are involved). Plus, I love being given the straight facts on all the myths and urban legends out there. It’s hugely difficult to narrow down my favorite myths and episodes, but here’s an attempt at a list:
Cell Phone + Gas Station = Explosion?? (the world's deadliest hair removal techniques :p)
Does A Duck’s Quack Echo? (“Quack, d*** you!” :lol)
You Can’t Beat The Breath Test! (hilarious moments from start to finish :lol)
Ancient Death Ray/Skunk Cleaning/What Is Bulletproof?
Levitation Machine
Plywood Builder
Cement Mix-Up (one of the most awe-inspiring explosions I’ve ever seen :o)
MythBusters Revealed (I ADORE this one for all its hilarious bloopers and behind-the-scenes moments; sadly the tape I have it on doesn’t play anymore :cry)
Border Slingshot (so many :lol moments in this episode)
Escape Slide Parachute/Exploding Hair Cream
The Five Second Rule (one particular line flub by Jamie had me in tears :lol)
Vodka Foot Bath/Vodka Mouth Wash
Bottle Rocket Blast Off!
Toy Car Top Speed (Adam’s mock commercial for a toy car made of lead :lol)
Franklin’s Kite (Tory + The Kite Of Punishment = :lol :lol :lol)
22,000 Foot Fall/Lights On Or Off? (another incredible explosion, plus justification for my lightswitch-flicking habit :smile)
Hindenburg Skin/Croc Zig-Zag
Myths Redux!
Hot Bullets/Red Flag To A Bull/Bull In A China Shop (I credit the first bull myth with inspiring my fascination with the color perception capabilities of different animals)
Great Hollywood Heists (particularly Adam and Jamie’s attempts to climb a duct :lol)
Exploding Trousers!
Exploding Lava Lamp
Mentos + Soda
Water Heater Rocket (“Ooh, that’s pretty!” :lol)
Supersize Special
Lead Balloon
Both Pirate Specials
Both Alaska Specials
Viral Myths Special
Shark Bite Special (I love sharks, and this episode was filled with funny and interesting moments)
Moon Landing Hoax (fascinating all the way through)
Blind Driving/Golf Galore
Stone Cold Sober (Adam on the treadmill and being slapped by Jamie :lol)
The Demolition Derby Special (two hours of pure :wow)
Banana Peel Flip (MythBusters pratfall fest :lol)
YouTube Special
See Saw Saga
Bullet Fired Vs. Bullet Dropped/Knock Your Socks Off
Duct Tape Hour (everything that was done with duct tape in that episode was just :wow)
And finally, last night’s episode. It was hilarious seeing Grant and Tory drunk during the myth of mixing beer and liquor, and incredible to watch Adam and Jamie dimple a car like a golf ball to test its mileage against a smooth car.
Thanks for the link, by the way. :) Maybe I'll post there sometime. (I'm already planning to post some MythBusters lines in the Funniest Quotes You've Heard (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=3506) thread.)
-
Your own opinion on Micheal Jackson and his music?
-
I know nothing about either of them. :p
-
What are you going to do for Halloween? ^^
-
Probably not much, besides giving out candy to trick-or-treaters and eating what's left. :p I stopped trick-or-treating myself a few years ago (can't remember exactly when I stopped), and in any case, I don't have time to come up with a costume. I have, however, had a pretty good run of trick-or-treating in my day, and am quite proud of the unique costume choices I made over the years.
When I was eight, I went as "a well-fed black jaguar" (I was wearing a jacket underneath my costume, and so looked a bit more portly than I intended :lol). Most of the Halloween costumes I have worn were tied to interests of mine: jaguars have always been among my favorite wild cats.
One year, while I was in middle school, I discovered that eating a certain kind of blue-raspberry-flavored lollipop made my tongue turn blue, and so I dressed up as a lizard, purchased a few lollipops to eat as I trick-or-treated, and went as a blue-tongued skink (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Tiliqua_scincoides_scincoides.jpg).
A year or two after that, I became fascinated by the mantis shrimp (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/Odontodactylus_scyllarus3.jpg/800px-Odontodactylus_scyllarus3.jpg), a small crustacean with clublike claws which swing at the same speed as a .22 caliber bullet. Guess what my Halloween costume was that year. :lol (Don't worry; I didn't use my claws for anything besides accepting candy. :p)
Another time I went as a Nothronychus (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/Nothronychus_BW2.jpg), a larger and more formidable relative of LBT's yellow bellies. The costume didn't turn out as well as some of my others, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
My last trick-or-treating outfit was Moe Howard from The Three Stooges. I had the barber give me a bowl cut, spray-dyed my hair black, dressed up in vaguely Moe-ish clothing, and emulated his scowling, insult-spewing, slapstick-happy character to the best of my abilities. :lol My two brothers, accordingly, went as Larry Fine and Curly Howard, and the three of us stayed in a tight group the whole time we were trick-or-treating, doling out Stooge-style verbal and physical abuse to one another (though being careful to never actually hurt each other), and enjoying ourselves immensely. :lol :lol :lol
-
Do you enjoy RP'ing?
-
So far, the only RP I’ve ever participated in is Rat Lady’s “In The Land Before Time”, which I am enjoying immensely. However, I rather doubt that RPing is going to become a regular thing for me. It’s time consuming, something I have to commit myself to pay regular attention to, requires multitasking (playing different characters), and frankly, I'm not very confident in my ability to accurately project the personalities of the characters I play.
-
How is Sasquatch :)?
-
Good. He’s grown considerably since I last shared pictures of him; I’ll have to post some more soon.
The little furball’s getting to be a household menace. :lol He’s become obsessed with climbing on window screens for no apparent reason; a few nights ago he chewed open a bag of cat food; you can’t leave food unattended or he’ll start nibbling on it; :rolleyes and he seems to find a way to climb onto every raised surface in the houseótables, boxes, countertops, and even people’s shoulders. :lol
-
Have you ever seen The Nightmare Before Christmas?
-
Nope. :p
-
Just a weird, random question, but do you think there were any dinosaurs that purred?
-
Knowing exactly what sounds dinosaurs made is a lot like knowing what colors they were: paleontologists can speculate, and infer, and in some cases even come up with a relatively well supported theory for a particular species, but without a time machine, it’s impossible to know the full extent of the dinosaurian vocal repertoire. So it’s not unfathomable to imagine that some of them may have produced purring sounds. I’ve personally never thought of a Pteranodon as a purring creature, but who can say for certain? :p
-
In the case of Far Away Home, did you find that Sky's drawings helped you to visualize the characters better, or would you have liked it just the same without them?
-
I had seen pictures of Sky’s characters on his art thread before you even started “Far Away Home”, so I already knew what they looked like when I began reading the story. However, had it not been for this, I am certain that I would have had immense trouble imagining what the characters look like. Despite my affinity for words, I comprehend objects and concepts best in images, so whenever I read a fanfic, I try to visualize the whole thing as a movie in my head, based on the author’s writing. However, I’m not very good at extrapolating the appearances of characters (especially unique ones like the wingtails) from descriptions, so I find illustrations to be tremendously useful.
-
Eaten any Swedish Fish lately? :lol
-
Hold on...
*grabs bag of Swedish Fish and starts eating*
Now I have! :P: :p :lol
-
Hehe awesome! :lol :lol:
What was your best day ever? :)
-
“Best”...that’s one adjective I have a lot of trouble with. :rolleyes And I've got a bad memory for past emotional states, not to mention my difficulties with temporal disparity (taking time between making comparisons). Yessireebob, this one'll be tricky...
Plus, assuming I've done my math right, I've got 7,787 days to choose from (not counting today)...and I gotta pick my best one...Lemme see...
Nope, sorry; I can't answer this question. :oops Too many choices, not enough memory. :p
-
It's a typically trend that people tend to remember the worst days of their lives rather then the best ones. Human nature I suppose.
-
How are you doing Panagea? :)
-
It's been sort of up and down for me these last couple of days. Thursday was a good day for me: as part of an autumn-time festival at my college, a couple of exotic animal keepers had been hired to visit the campus, bringing with them a number of animals which students were allowed to touch, photograph, and even hold. I spent every moment of my free time between classes with these animals, which included a Burmese python, a California kingsnake, an opossum, a chinchilla, a hedgehog, a Geoffroy’s cat, a capuchin monkey, a leopard tortoise, a young alligator, and a scarlet macaw (I was wary around the last one, since he had bit me the last time these guys had visited :lol).
Things seemed to take a turn for the worse on Friday, however. My sister’s pet hamster died, and I had a test that went poorly (half the stuff that had been on the study guideóand that I had concentrated on memorizingówasn’t even on it, and I pretty much blanked out on significant details for several of the questions :bang). I haven’t been feeling too well lately, either; I’ve had headaches, stomachaches, and a dry throat, and suspect that I may be coming down with something. :rolleyes
Furthermore, I’ve been experiencing a creative drought recently; I’ve had a great deal of trouble setting my mind to getting things done, especially those which involve writing. It’s frustrating, because there are quite a few things I have an obligation to complete, but I keep drawing a blank when I try to tackle them. :wacko
-
What are you working on writing at the moment?
-
I have an essay and a poetry response paper to write for my American Literature class. On the GOF, there are numerous topics which I want to share my thoughts on, and a fanfiction author (not you ;)) who requested feedback for his story. There’s also the “In The Land Before Time” RP (while less vital than some other things, I don’t want to fall behind in it, but I have trouble coming up with things to say if I don’t have another player to interact with who can prompt me), an LBT fanfic I am working on, and a non-LBT-related story I am currently planning, and hoping to publish someday.
-
Have you seen Caustizer's fanfiction of Twilight Valley, Land Before Time: Future Wars?
I mean, some things are completely unexpected, I mean a fanfiction of a fanfiction?
-
Nope, haven't seen it. :p
-
What do you think was your most embarrassing moment in your whole life?
Just say whatever comes to your mind first. ^^
-
Cancerian Tiger previously asked an almost identical question (see my answer here (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=6185&view=findpost&p=9129281)). I'm just about the most easily embarrassed person on the planet, and frankly I'm too embarrassed to talk much about my embarrassing moments. So, sorry, but you'll have to be happy with the example I gave already. :oops
-
Aww okay. I understand. ^^
Then....who's your favorite character in LBT? I think I already know who it is, but I just wanted to ask the source first if you know what I mean. ^^
-
That’s actually a really hard question to answer, as I don’t think I can pick a single favorite character. I’m guessing you’re thinking of Guido, and he’s definitely up there, along with Mr. Thicknose (the reason for both characters being that I identify with them a lot) and the entire gang of seven (though I didn’t like Chomper and Littlefoot so much in the TV series). I love how the gang’s (particularly the gang of five) respective quirks and personalities complement each other so well, making them a very well-rounded group (something I’m struggling to accomplish in my own written work).
However, if I were to choose a “favorite” based on the character I’d most like to see receive more attention in both the LBT canon and fanfiction (probably wishful thinking in the case of the former), I would have to say Ducky. Not only has she, in my opinion, received too few central and/or heroic roles in the series, but I think she’s been overly stereotyped as a helpless, naÔve character who can’t accomplish anything on her own. (This thread (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=1504) describes the issue pretty much as I see it, though I have my own views on the controversial “Search for the Sky Color Stones” TV episode, which can be read here (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=1623&view=findpost&p=9145589).) Ducky seems to me to be the most underused of the gang, and I’d like to see more done with her character.
For the record, if you had asked me this same question fifteen years ago, I would have said that my favorite character was Petrie. That was mainly because I liked Pteranodon the best of all the gang’s species, though. :p Nowadays my interests are much broader, and the characters' personalities are more influential in determining how much I like them.
-
I read your post about your history of bein' an LBT fan, and I see you've read through the "Fanart and Fanfiction" section of the GOF. This leads me to ask:
What were your thoughts on my one-shot fanfic, "A Day of Remembrance"?
I know it was a one-shot, and it was my first published fanfic. I usually write long stories. I hope to write longer fanfics, especially once I'm done with school, but I was just wonderin' what your thoughts are :).
-
Gah...sorry I took so long to respond. :bang I’ve had a lot of work to get done these last few days, and admittedly this thread has fallen low on my list of priorities. :oops
I thought "A Day of Remembrance" was very good, definitely among my favorite one-shot LBT fanfics. :yes I actually read it on FanFiction.net (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4663648/1/A_Day_of_Remembrance) before I saw it on the GOF (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=3261); I have noticed that they are slightly different. I think I like the FF.net version a little better, with the exception of the detail of it being only one year since Littlefoot’s mother’s death (as opposed to three years in the GOF edition); I don’t think it’s possible for all of the first twelve LBT movies to have taken place within that time.
Even though your story is short, there’s a lot of things I liked about it. For starters, your descriptive writing style made it very enjoyable to read. Also, in addition to your impressively accurate character portrayals, your depiction of the relationships between Cera and Tria, and Cera and Littlefoot, felt “just right” to me (I’m not sure how else to put it :confused). With all due respect to the fanfiction writers who use this theme in their stories, I’ve never liked the idea of a romance between Littlefoot and Cera. Not only do I greatly prefer the brother-sister relationship highlighted in your fanfic, but also feel it compatible with the canon series, in which it is established that the gang view themselves as a family.
In conclusion, let me just say that if "A Day Of Remembrance" is any indicator of your fanfiction writing abilities, then I’ll be immensely eager to read whatever LBT stories you have to offer in the future. :yes
-
Thanks :)!
BTW, how's Sasquatch?
-
Same as always: hyperactive, constantly getting underfoot, and incessantly exploring every nook and cranny in the house. He’s gotten pretty big, too, so he’s even more of a handful than before (in every sense of the word :p) and as a result of his increased weight, his attempts at scaling precariously piled miniature mountains of household objects have been resulting in small avalanches with increasing frequency.
The good news is, he hasn’t climbed on window screens for a while. The bad news is, he’s developed an even more worrisome habit of climbing on top of my brother’s pet leopard gecko’s tank and pawing at him (the gecko) through the glass. We’ve tried just about everything to deter him from doing it, from blocking off the most direct path to the tank with a foam board, to clanging a metal dust pan, to spraying him with the water bottle we use for misting the tank. :lol But he still keeps climbing back up there. :rolleyes
-
^Pangaea, can I have your kitty? Pwease?????????? *makes doey, cutesy eyes* :smile
Actually my real question is, as far as your kitty, have you ever tried just distracting him with a toy to get away from the gecko? If you do that consistantly, Sasquatch might stop that behavior. :yes
-
I'll give it a shot. Thanks for the advice. :)
P.S. Technically, he's my sister's cat, since she's the one who takes care of him (and the one who had the idea to adopt a new cat in the first place), and I doubt she'll be willing to give him up. :p
-
How great do you think the upheaval in the paleontology community would be if artifacts and bones from Twilight Valley were found?
Seriously though, have you played History Channel's Turf Wars? It is a "classical" fighting game with dinosaurs.
-
I've watched my younger brother play it, but I've never played it myself.
-
It is actually quite fun.
How great do you think the upheaval in the paleontology community would be if artifacts and bones from Twilight Valley were found?
-
(Oh, sorry; :slap I thought you were asking the question jokingly the last time. :oops)
I imagine it would be hugely controversial, with widespread suspicions that it was a hoax (even after the remains had been checked and re-checked, dated and re-dated, several times over), but that once the scientific community confirmed that the find was genuine, it would be hailed as the most significant paleontological discovery of all time. Humans would no longer be the only or the first technologically advanced species known to have existed, and science would have to completely reconfigure its perceptions of dinosaur intelligence and culture (the latter of which would not even have been a seriously considered concept beforehand).
-
Heh. I figured it would be insanely controversial. Even physicists discovering that superluminal travel was possible would not cause as much of a fuss.
So controversial this find maybe that it may not even be in museums. Speaking of that, I did dream about a TWV exhibit in the Smithsonian. Admittedly that would be a quite a cool exhibit.
-
If you were able to go back in time, what time period would you go to and why?
-
How was your Thanksgiving? :D
-
Ever think about havin' a pet bird someday :)?
-
pokeplayer984:
Just one time period, you mean? Just one trip? Wow, I don’t think I can choose. :confused
If I did go, I would want to have adequate protection against any predators of the time period in question (not to mention parasites and diseases). Assuming I was safe from creating any temporal paradoxes, :p I’d also want to make it a full-fledged scientific expedition, bringing back photographs, specimens, and DNA samples for further research. I would also be inclined to not limit my paleo-safari to a single locality, but to travel all around the world, viewing and cataloguing as much prehistoric wildlife as I could.
The late Cretaceous (~70 million years ago) is definitely a major candidate for a period I’d like to visit. North America, of course, had Triceratops, Ankylosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, and duck-billed, bone-headed, and egg stealer-type dinosaurs at that time. Recent studies have suggested that some of these dinosaurs changed dramatically as they grew (Triceratops’s horns apparently changed shape with age, and boneheads may have grown crowns of spikes on their heads, and then lost them as their skull domes grew in); an opportunity to chart the growth of the living animals would be unmissable.
I’d also want to visit Mongolia, home of Deinocheirus and Therizinosaurus, both huge dinosaurs with giant claws, each known only from a pair of fossilized arms and a few other skeletal fragments. I’d love to see what they looked like in life.
Madagascar also has some critters I’d like to see, including the thick-skulled sharptooth Majungasaurus; the orthodonty-defying theropod Masiakasaurus, the flying raptor Rahonavis, and the burrowing, herbivorous, pug-nosed crocodile :! Simosuchus.
While prehistoric creatures don’t have to be large to hold my interest, there were a quite a few animals scattered around the world in the Late Cretaceous that were among the largest of their respective kinds, all of which I’d want to make a point of seeing. These include Mauisaurus (a more-than-50-foot plesiosaur) in New Zealand, Hatzegopteryx (a pterosaur that could stare down a giraffe at ground level) in Romania, Mosasaurus (a giant marine lizard that would have made a Komodo dragon look like a gecko) in the Netherlands, and, in Argentina, Puertasaurus, a longneck known from only four fossil vertebrae, but estimated to have been one of the most gargantuan land animals that ever lived. It is speculatively reconstructed here (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_QC0xe56GvUo/Sv3AMXwA5LI/AAAAAAAADZ4/fEET3xBPhn8/s1600-h/PUERTASAURUS+Sandow+4BIG.JPG) in comparison with Giganotosaurus (one of the biggest known sharpteeth) and a human. Even as a jaded dinosaur fanatic, this illustrationóspecifically, the obscene humongousness of its principal subjectómade me go :o :blink: :wow.
There are TONS of other times that I’d love to visit, but considering the length of the description I’ve given for just one, I think I’ll stop here. (Unless you WANT me to give more examples. :p)
Rat Lady:
Well...the Thanksgiving celebration (which we held on Friday, so that my brother could join us for it) was pretty good, but the “official” Thanksgiving Day wasn’t so great.
Cancerian Tiger:
I love birds, and have certainly thought that it might be nice to own one, but I can’t see it happening anytime soon. (Sasquatch, of course, is one of the chief reasons why not.)
-
How are you doing Panagea? :)
-
At the moment, I'm in a bit of a daze, due to the events of the last day or so. :wacko
Turns out the reason I was cold last night is because the furnace was off. :blink: (I live in northern Minnesota. It's December. You can see why that would make a difference.)
Despite my 10:58 PM post in the "Good Night GOF" thread, I didn't end up going to bed until after midnight. Then I woke up again just before 3 AM, my teeth chattering like crazy. I took the opportunity to go down to the computer to check my dragons' progress, and posted in the RP before going back to bed at some point after 4 AM. I had a singularly uncomfortable sleep because it was so cold, but when I woke up again, it was 4 in the afternoon. :blink: At that point we got the issue of the furnace sorted out (incredibly, I had not been aware of it before :rolleyes), and now the heat's back on, though I'm still wearing a coat. :p
I have also been procrastinating excessively on the assignments I need to have done next week. :bang
P.S. All times noted are based on what the clocks in my house are set to, which is an hour slower than the time given on the GOF for my area because of Daylight Savings Time.
-
When going over finals and all that, how do you usually study?
-
Well, whenever I’m given a study guide or there is a review day before the test, I make sure to write down everything that’s likely to be on that test. Then, on the day of the test itself, I take out the notes between an hour and a half hour beforehand, and read over them repeatedly until it’s time to take the test. I have a memory like a sieve when it comes to tests, so it's best that I have the needed information as fresh in my mind as possible when I take one. (Unfortunately, I can never memorize everything, and it usually seems that the notes I focus most intently on memorizing turn out to be of lesser importance. :rolleyes: Also, I HATE essay questions. <_<)
-
Also, I HATE essay questions. <_<)
I almost found this to be ironic, given the nature of your posts :p. However, I'm the same way so I understand. I love to write, but I despise essay questions :rolleyes:. Anyhoo, now for a question...
What is your favorite kind of test question :p?
-
I'm a freestyle writer. I don't do so well when I'm told what to write. :p Also, a big reason I dislike essay questions is that I usually have to do them on paper. I don't usually write long pieces linearly, starting at the beginning and proceeding onward, because it's often hard for me to put my thoughts in words. For instance, if I'm preparing to write out an argument, I might not be sure of how exactly to spell out my opening statement, while I have a clear idea of what I want to say for one of my key points. On a computer I can simply write whatever comes to mind first, and then worry about how to word the preceding statements. On paper, I have to write out everything in order, which takes a LONG time. There have been numerous instances in which I have been the last student left in the classroom while taking a test, simply because I have been flummoxed on how to word my response to an essay question.
As for my favorite kind of test question...I'd have to say multiple choice, because they're the easiest. :p The answers are all provided; it's just a matter of picking the correct one. If I'm faced with a blank space to fill in, my mind often similarly draws a blank. :p But if I'm given choices, there's a likelihood that I'll recognize the correct answer as familiar, and mentally link it to the question being asked. Though multiple choice questions can still give me difficulty, because sometimes I see more than one option as being potentially correct.
-
^I'm the same way Pangaea, as far as tests goes.
And I just want to say thanks for the tips on studying, that helped greatly! ^^
Anyhow questions....do you have a favorite mystical creature? If so what is it and why?
-
How is your Fan Fiction story coming along?
-
Rat Lady: I really like dragons, largely because of their great variability of appearance and characteristics (much like dinosaurs). However, another mythological creature I find fascinating is the cockatrice, an amalgamation of rooster and reptile with a singularly bizarre life history (hatched from an egg laid by a rooster :huh: and incubated by a toad or snake) and the ability to kill any living creature it makes eye contact with, including itself (it dislikes reflective surfaces :p). I drew a “realistic” version of one for an art contest/exhibition in my first year of college, and won third prize for it. :wow
Caustizer: Not so well, I’m afraid. I haven’t worked on it in weeks, due to a combination of Writer’s Block and a plentitude of distractions. :rolleyes
-
Could you send me what you have so I can take a look at it? I'm really interested to see how you would write a story.
-
I’m not sure. :unsure: There are a number of reasons for which I am reluctant to share what I have accomplished on it so far. Can we discuss it by PM?
-
If dinosaurs were still alive and you wanted to keep one as a pet, which one would you choose? ^^
-
If they weren’t extinct, you mean? :p (Of course dinosaurs are real! That’s what makes them so awesome! :smile) Well...assuming that it could be guaranteed that whatever dinosaur I chose would take well to captivity, I knew how to take proper care of it, and my lifestyle was otherwise more or less the same (i.e., I lived in the same house, and wasn’t a millionaire or anything), I think I would pick a relatively small one. (I mean, imagine the food bill for a longneck! :lol) Since I live in northern Minnesota, I would want one that could either stay inside the house for at least part of the year, or was adapted to a climate with cold winters. Perhaps a small climbing theropod like Microraptor, Epidendrosaurus, or Anchiornis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchiornis). I could buy them one of those playground thingies they sell for cats, and probably feed them on crickets, mealworms, and other insects sold as reptile food. Alternatively, I could get a small herbivore, like Incisivosaurus, Fruitadens (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruitadens), or Microceratus (the “Great Hideous Beast” from the “Stranger from the Mysterious Above” LBT TV episode :p). Another possibility is Troodon, which is known to have lived as far north as Alaska during the Cretaceous period, and therefore might be able to tolerate spending some time outside during the winter. (Though I’d have to either put a high fence around my yard or keep my pet on a leash when I brought it outside, for its own safety as well as that of the smaller neighborhood pets! :lol)
If pterosaurs are game, too, I might like to have a Sordes, Anurognathus, Nemicolopterus or other species small enough to fly around the house comfortably. Dimorphodon is also a possibility, as it was relatively large for a flying indoor pet, but has been supposed to have been better adapted for climbing in trees than flying long distances, and may in fact have been a reluctant flier.
(As long as I’m on the subject of owning arboreal pterosaursóand in keeping with the spirit of the holiday seasonóI thought I’d share this hilarious art piece (http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2052/2118156131_71185bd0f1_b.jpg) by a pterosaur researcher/paleoartist, depicting the potential hazards of keeping Dimorphodon in the house at Christmastime. :lol)
-
Yeah, that's what I meant. :p
-
Since you're a northern Minnesota resident, have ya ever been to the Boundary Waters wilderness?
-
I’ve been to Ely on two occasions (once in September 2008 and once last August), visiting the Soudan Underground Mine State Park, International Wolf Center, and North American Bear Center, but I didn’t really spend any time in the wilderness. Paradoxically (and perhaps shamefully) for someone who loves nature, I don’t get outdoors much. :oops
-
How are you doing?
-
See my latest post (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=6787.160#entry9160887) in the "How are you Feeling?" thread.
-
Ehhh how's Sasquatch?
-
Pretty much the same as always. Though actually, he seems to have been a bit less mischievous as of late (though it's also possible that I'm being forgetful, or growing overly accustomed to his bad habits :lol). He's never attempted to climb the Christmas Tree, and has treated the hanging decorations as toys a lot less often than I had anticipated. (Of course, having said this, I won't be surprised if sometime soon he makes up for his recent run of relatively good behavior by committing some disastrously naughty act. :rolleyes :p :lol)
-
What are your plans for the near future?
-
Well, I’m graduating from college in May (with an English major and Biology minor), and in the fall I may be starting graduate school. However, due to my having an extremely narrow range of skills (most of them unmarketable), and being ridiculously unsuited for most jobs, I have virtually no idea what career I’m going to pursue. (I used to want to be an author, and had my own series of books planned, but it’s not looking promising. :()
-
Some advice: Land a steady job, and at the same time submit your written work to publishing companies. As my Creative Writing instructor told me, you'll get rejected nine out of ten times, but don't give up. Unfortunately, I have not written any stories I would try to publish. Universal would take me to the cleaners for copyright infringement :bang.
Okay, now for a question: What kind of stories do ya write :)?
-
Thank you for the advice. :) Unfortunately, the main problem isn’t getting the books published, but writing them in the first place. The books have been stuck in a planning stage for years, during which time I’ve barely written anything that would actually be part of the books themselves. By this point I’ve thrown out many of the ideas I previously had, and am basically starting from scratch on the specificities of the plot. :bang I’m also struggling to design realistic, inventive, diverse, three-dimensional characters (and find unique names for them), and make the story dramatic and engaging, but avoid clichÈs as much as possible. It doesn’t help that I’m experiencing a creative drought, and am having difficulty fleshing out the story and establishing the rules of the world.
As for what the books are about, I only feel comfortable with saying so much on the forum, but it is set in a world where species and ecosystems from all stages of Earth’s history (including the present day) exist contemporaneously, but separate from one another. All of the characters are animals, which I am attempting to portray with minimal anthropomorphic traits. The principal cast is a group of present-day animals of various species, who discover a means of traversing the natural barriers that divide the regions, encountering prehistoric creatures in the process. (If you’re interested in hearing more, send me a PM. ;))
-
I'm just curious, as someone that loves to write, do you believe in the whole mary sue thing?
-
I was only recently introduced to the “Mary Sue” concept, and I’m not sure I understand it completely. From what I’ve heard about it, though, it’s definitely something I want to avoid when designing characters: yet another challenge for me, as while I'm about the most copious character creator you can imagine, I have a hard time giving depth and uniqueness to them. (I’m pretty sure a considerable number of characters I’ve invented in the past would qualify as Mary Sues or Gary Stus. <_<)
-
If you could have one wish granted what would it be?
-
Why, I would wish for unlimited wishes, of course! :p
I'm extremely indecisive, so I don't know what I'd do if I was limited to a single wish. I'd really like to be able to think more clearly, and never suffer from Writer's Block or lack of inspiration. There are also tons of extinct animals I'd love to see, and plenty of things about animals, nature, and the world in general I'd like to be more knowledgeable about. It would also be great if I could reconcile humanity's issues with the environment; maybe bring back the species we wiped out, and save the endangered ones. These are just a few of the possibilities...
-
How do you pronounce your forum name?
Is it Pan-gaea or Pan-jea?
-
pan-JEE-uh (emphasis on the middle syllable :p)
I’ve heard different ways of pronouncing it, but as far as I know, that’s the correct way to say it. It’s also spelled with three A’s: P-A-N-G-A-E-A. A lot of times it is misspelled as “Pangea”, with the second A left out.
Pangaea, as you may know, is the name given to the giant landmass (consisting of all of Earth’s continents) that existed at the beginning of the Mesozoic. The name is Ancient Greek for “All Earth”. I chose it as my screen name because I thought it reflected my love and knowledge of dinosaurs and other prehistoric life. Trouble is, I’ve been so familiar with the word for so long that it didn’t occur to me that people would have trouble pronouncing it. :rolleyes
-
What other fandoms (in books, movies, tv shows, etc) do you like besides LBT? :)
-
what is your favourite type of dinosaur in the Land Before Time?
-
What's your preference: Cold climate or warmer climate ;)?
-
Whoa, lots of new questions all of a sudden! :blink: (Don't get me wrong; I'm extremely grateful. :D :DD :smile :lol)
I've already got my response to Rat_lady's question written, so lemme answer that one first, and then I'll get to the others. ;)
What other fandoms (in books, movies, tv shows, etc) do you like besides LBT? :)
I suppose it depends on how you define a fandom. (It’s amazing how many words there are that I’m familiar with, but don’t know the exact meaning of. :wacko) The GOF is the only fanbase community I currently amóor ever have beenóa part of (unless you count the Dragon Cave), but if the term extends to anything one considers oneself a fan of, then I’d have a relatively long list to share.
For the purposes of answering this question, I’m going to assume that the definition of fandom is a book, movie, or TV show (or series thereof) that one avidly and actively follows, in terms of eagerly awaiting and watching/reading new installments, exploring (if not actively participating in) the fanbase, and/or enjoying on a repetitive basis (i.e., watching/reading over and over again).
My TV series fandoms (at least the ones I can name at the moment) include MythBusters, Dirty Jobs, Doctor Who, Primeval, and I suppose the Walking With... series (Dinosaurs, Prehistoric Beasts, Monsters, etc.).
Movies: Ice Age, Pixar films (particularly Toy Story and Wall?E), and the reboot of the Batman series.
Books: Silverwing (and its prequel Darkwing) The Underland Chronicles, Dinosaur Wars, and Guardians of Ga’Hoole.
If non-fiction also qualifies, then I will add any book or documentary by David Attenborough or Temple Grandin.
EDIT: Hmm...1,111 posts...not exactly the sort of big round number one usually cites as a post count landmark, but definitely the most 1s I’ve ever had in a post count. :p
-
Caustizer: Ooh, hard one. I’m terrible at picking favorites. :unsure: I’m assuming you mean, which real-life species depicted in LBT do I like the best? (As opposed to, which LBT-style dinosaur is my favorite? I can answer the question again if my assumption is incorrect. ;)) It’s very difficult to narrow it down. I’ve always had a soft spot for pterosaurs (flyers) and Struthiomimus (egg stealers), but Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops, Stegosaurus, longnecks, oviraptorids (fast runners), dromaeosaurs (fast biters), and Pachyrhinosaurus (Mr. Thicknose) are also all up there. Most of the marine reptiles (Mo’s kind, Elsie’s kind, and the LBT IX swimming sharptooth) qualify as well, though neither they nor flyers are technically dinosaurs. :p Also, while I didn’t particularly like the LBT design of Microraptor (Guido), the real-life counterparts to both it and Beipiaosaurus (yellow bellies) are extremely interesting to me.
Cancerian Tiger: I’m not really very fond of either extreme (I wouldn’t be happy in Antarctica or the Sahara Desert :p), but having grown up in Minnesota (the land where your nose hairs freeze each time you inhale :P:), I’m much more acclimatized to cold weather. Even 0? Fahrenheit doesn’t bother me too much, provided my fingers, feet, and ears are insulated. When I need to take only a brief trip outside (to get the mail, help bring in groceries, etc.) I usually don’t bother taking the time to bundle up; I just slip on my shoes and go out in my indoor clothes, even if it’s only 10? out. :blink:
-
If you could meet anyone, dead or alive, who would it be and what would you ask them?
-
Consecrated coprolites, how did I not notice a new question?! :blink: Sorry about that. :oops
This is a tough one...I'm so shy about meeting people face-to-face that I don't often think about who I would meet (and what I would say to them) if I could meet anyone I wanted. :unsure:
Well, I would sure like to meet the person who last had the deleted footage from The Land Before Time (preferably right at the moment they had it with them), and ask them for it. :p
-
What aspect of the stories I write draws you to continue to review them again and again with enthusiasm compared to other stories on the GOF? If you could make one change to the storyline or a particular character in Far Away Home, who or what would it be?
-
(This time I noticed the question right away; it’s just taken me ages to respond. :slap)
I think what attracted me to Rise of Storm Tide was the fact that it’s set during/after the TV series, with Ruby as a prominent character. (Furthermore you gave an explanation as to how Ruby and Chomper met each other in the first place.) You don’t find a lot of fanfics like that. Also, I liked that it was similar in tone to the original The Land Before Time: darker and more suspenseful than most recent LBT installments, but not packed to the brim with deaths and anachronistic curses (no offense to fanfiction authors who write stories like that, but they just aren’t my cup of tea :p). It honestly felt like it could be made into an LBT movie, perhaps a conclusion to the TV series.
Far Away Home contains several more elements that I appreciate in a story. I really like the convoluted, enigmatic schemes of characters like Eybron (and cruel as they are, I find Tyron’s cunning and inescapable blackmailing methods irresistibly fascinating as well.) And despite your occasional lapses of secrecy, :p you’re very good at surprising me with plot twists, and lots of them. I get a lot of enjoyment out of a story where I can’t see what’s coming, and with Far Away Home, I almost never know what to expect.
Also, In respect to both stories, it’s probably worth noting that you are very proficient at creating interesting, three-dimensional original characters with distinct personalities and (where applicable) realistic goals and motives, however dramatic and ambitious they may be.
As for what I would change about Far Away Home...if you’re asking for a suggestion on how to improve the story in terms of where it is going, I can’t help you. As much as I love it, this is not a story I would, or could, write myself, and if I were to change anything major about the plot or characters, it would probably interfere with what you had planned for the rest of the story. Does that make sense? To use an analogy, if I were given the opportunity to visit the site of an incomplete building, without knowing what the finished product would look like, I would not want to change the placement of a beam to better correspond to my sense of aesthetics, for fear of the entire structure collapsing later on.
If what you mean is, if I had written the story so far, in exactly the same way as you except for one detail, what that detail would be, I can give you an answer for that. I have to say, as a nostalgic (one might even say die-hard) fan of the original “The Land Before Time”, I’m rather enamored with the idea that the Great Valley was the last (or, at least, one of the last), largest, grandest, and lushest green land left in the world at the time of the film, and that when the gang saw it for the first time, it was the most majestic and awe-inspiring sight they had ever experienced. In Far Away Home, however, the valley’s greatness is severely undermined (as early as Act 1, Part I) by the revelation that there are “far greater” ones out there. This comes to a head in Act 3, Part IVb, where the gang (Petrie, Littlefoot, Ducky, and Spike, anyway) sees the Verdant Valley for the first time. Seeing as I prefer the exalted status of the Great Valley from the first movie, I didn’t like it. :p
-
Would you ever like to travel anywhere? And have you traveled anywhere outside the US?
-
The closest I’ve ever come to leaving the U.S. were two occasions when, for summer vacation, my family and I visited Block Island, a tiny little island off the coast of Rhode Island (I don’t think I’ve ever used “island” so many times in one sentence :blink:). However, seeing as it’s technically part of the United States, it doesn’t count. :p
I would really like to visit other parts of the world (especially places with interesting wildlife), but I also have fears about doing so.
If I were to visit a country in which the primary language was something other than English, I’d probably need to have a translator with me all the time, not only because it seems almost impossible for me to learn to speak a second language, but because I have a hard time understanding people who speak foreign languages fluently.
I also have health concerns about visiting foreign countries, as I seem to have a lousy immune system (I can’t even drink the water in Florida without getting sick :rolleyes). Moreover, I am utterly terrified of picking up parasites.
A few locations I might like to visit (both within and outside the U.S.) are:
ï The Gal·pagos Islands.
ï The Amazon Rainforest.
ï Rancho La Brea, Los Angeles. Both the tar pits themselves, and the associated museum.
ï Bracken Cave, Texas. Home to ~20 million free-tailed bats that emerge in one huge swarm every night. :smile (Public access to the cave is limited, to avoid disturbing the bats, but if it’s legal to just wait outside and watch the bats fly past, I’d love to go there.)
ï The San Diego Zoo. (Anywhere I can see animals. :p)
ï New Zealand, especially if there was a place I could go to see its native wildlife.
ï Yellowstone National Park.
-
^
If you visit New Zealand, I recommend that you visit both the North and South island both are beautiful places but South island has more sheep.;)
Not really a question but how's Sasquatch? Is he still loving to play with boxes or has he moved on to paper?
:)
Edit:Sorry, not really a good question. I understand if you don't feel the need to answer.:)
-
Actually, it’s been a while since anyone’s asked me about Sasquatch. I have no problem with this question. :)
I can’t remember specifically the last time I saw him playing with a box, but I’m doubtful he’s given up on this behavior. (I thought he had grown out of climbing window screens, and was I ever wrong! :rolleyes:) He still likes to explore any open bag left within reach, and has developed a habit of walking on the mantle over the upstairs fireplace (often knocking things over in the process :rolleyes). There was one bizarre and rather amusing incident back in January in which Sasquatch, in his typical fashion, galloped down the hallway into the living room at high speed, and jumped up onto the sofa. The thing is, there’s a small space between the back of the sofa and the wall it’s pushed up against, and Sasquatch dropped through it (whether on purpose or as a result of losing his balance, I can’t say). He was unhurt, of course, and quickly found a way out from behind the sofa, but barely a minute or two later he came tearing down the hall again, jumped onto the sofa, and deliberately dove behind it. :wow :confused :lol Evidently he's a thrill seeker. :p So...besides his ever increasing repertoire of mischief, Sasquatch is the same as always. :lol
-
Pardon me for asking the most obvious question of all time but...
To be brutally honest, I don't get a whole lot of enjoyment out of reading Twilight Valley (I actually find it rather depressing at times),
Aside from the fact that it is war story what depresses you about it the most?
Also, did I do a good job with "capturing" the horror of war?
-
Eh, I've heard more obvious questions than that. :p
Aside from the fact that it is war story what depresses you about it the most?
Mostly all the character deaths. (Or does that mean the same thing as “because it's a war story”?)
Also, did I do a good job with "capturing" the horror of war?
Yes, definitely. One example that I considered a particularly good touch was the descriptions of the “war games” played by dinosaur children (“Twilight Hatchlings”) whose impression of war was that it was fun and/or glorious.
-
I actually have a question related to my story, and to actual paleontology. As you know, my big story, "The Tale of Blackclaw" is about Tyrannosauruses. I know it will never be totally accurate (who ever heard of talking dinosaurs?), but there are a few points that might be helpful.
The two issues are how fast do scientists think a fully-grown tyrannosaurus could have run, and how thick/tough their skins might have been, if that last one is even possible to answer. For a fic about dinosaurs, one can see how these will be useful to know. Thanks!
And feel free to ask me something, if you like! I'd hate to be asking without being asked back.
-
There seems to be a LOT of controversy over how fast Tyrannosaurus was capable of running. Some researchers argue that an adult tyrannosaur couldn’t run (that one foot always had to be on the ground), and that it was limited to a top speed of 11 miles per hour. Most estimates of Tyrannosaurus rex’s top speed fall between 11 and 25 miles per hour, depending on the researcher’s views. I have also heard that it has been estimated that it would have taken an adult T. rex one to two seconds to make a 45? turn. (In other words, if you ever find yourself running from a tyrannosaur, zigzag. :p)
The shape and proportions of tyrannosaur leg and foot bones (particularly the shins and metatarsals) suggest that they were actually some of the swiftest runners among dinosaurs their size; better adapted for running than other large theropods. In fact, the limbs and feet of juveniles and small species were very similar to those of similarly sized ornithomimosaurs (“ostrich dinosaurs”; the group that contains “egg stealers”). Seeing as the two groups evolved alongside one another, it has been suggested that they developed their running adaptations in response to one another, the ornithomimosaurs becoming faster in order to better escape tyrannosaurs, and the tyrannosaurs becoming faster to more easily catch ornithomimosaurs. So juvenile T. rex, at least, may have been one of the fastest dinosaurs. I saw a profile for a 21-foot-long juvenile Tyrannosaurus specimen nicknamed “Jane” that gave 20–30 mph as a possible top speed, but I don’t know how scientific this figure is. Still, I think you’d be okay with having your adolescent Blackclaw running at 30 or even 40 mph (though this is in no way a scientific assertion).
The problem is, if a full-sized T. rex tripped and fell while running at high speed, it could severely injure or even kill itself. (The sharpteeth in LBT are unrealistically durable. :p) So even if large tyrannosaurs could run at high speeds, they probably didn’t do it very often. Furthermore, while it is not known exactly how large T. rex’s leg muscles were, it has been argued that they were not sufficient to power high-speed running. One study concluded that for an adult T. rex to run faster than 25 mph, it would need to have an impossible proportion of its muscle massó86%óconcentrated in its legs, and that its top speed could not have been more than 11 or 12 mph (though the study has been accused of overestimating Tyrannosaurus’s weight, and not taking into account how its musculature differed from that of the living animals used to validate the mathematical model on which its conclusions were based). Another study from 2007 came up with a figure of 18 mph as the top speed for T. rex. To tell you the truth, it’s all so confusing to me that even I don’t know what to believe. :wacko
In any case, an adult Tyrannosaurus was probably faster than any of the large herbivores it shared its habitat with (it has been argued that ceratopsians like Triceratops could run at rhino-like speeds, but that’s a discussion for another time), though a recent study suggests that the majority of its diet consisted of young dinosaurs that it could swallow whole. And, if all else failed, a big T. rex could always steal a kill from a smaller one.
As far as your story is concerned, it is about a sharptooth who can scale a cliff or a longneck’s back in a single jump, and survive falling hundreds of feet, so you can probably get away with having him run at unrealistic speeds :p (40 mph or so). However, if you want to be more realistic, 12–20 miles per hour would probably be safer.
As for the skin thickness of Tyrannosaurus, I can’t tell you much, but it certainly was no armor plating, and wouldn’t have stopped the horn of a Triceratops or the teeth of another tyrannosaur. As to exactly how thick it was, though, I have no idea. A few tyrannosaur skin impressions are known, and they show that their scales were small, round, raised, and arranged in “symmetrical rows” (read that in an article; not entirely sure what it means :p). One small tyrannosaur from early Cretaceous China, Dilong, is known to have been covered in filamentous “protofeathers”, which opens the possibility that some or all tyrannosaurs were at least partially feathered at some point in their lives.
Hope this helps, and thank you for the question. :)
-
It does, thanks. Feel free to ask me something back about... pretty much any topic except dinosaurs. :lol
-
What occupation would you like to have, if you don't have one already? :)
-
Probably something involving writing and/or animals. I'm actually taking career counseling right now to find out what occupations would suit me the best.
-
A while ago, you said you were working on a massive post for the Ruby discussion topic. Are you still working on that? If yes, how is your progress on it?
-
Ah... :oops You’ve got a good memory. :p
While my penchant for long and comprehensive posts might suggest that writing comes easily for me, the truth of the matter is that it takes a lot of time and effort for me to write exhaustively. The biggest problem that I have whenever I am trying to communicate an idea (whether I am talking or writing/typing) is putting the concept into words that both describe it understandably andóto put it simplyósound good. Because the Ruby post has so much information to impart, completing it is a particular challenge, especially considering that I started writing it before I even began posting on the GOF, :wow not knowing at the time how deeply engaged I would become with the site. (In other words, I started the post with the assumption that I would have plenty of time to work on it. Now that I’m such an active member, spending nearly ALL of my free time on the GOF, it turns out that that is not the case.)
At the moment, I’ve got at least a page (12-point Cambria font) of text down. I don’t know how long it’s going to eventually be (there are many ideas I want to cover, but it still might end up being “only” two pages or so). but I haven’t made much progress on it in a long time. On most occasions when I would potentially be able to work on the post, I have forgotten about it, or am distracted by something else (e.g., a fanfic or art piece I need to review). And to tell you the truth, there are times when I just don’t feel like working on it. I write best when I feel passionate about my topic; if the topic doesn’t interest me, or I’m simply not in the right mood, it’s like slogging through knee-deep molasses carrying an anvil. Other times, the creative plumbing of my brain just clogs up, and the words just won’t come out. :wacko (It’s a nightmare, especially since writing’s one of the few things I’m good at, and I’ve been hoping to base my career on it. :bang)
Anyway, so that’s another reason I haven’t done much work on the post lately; I’ve been lacking the enthusiasm I need to write effectively. I’m thinking that maybe going back and re-reading some of the threads concerning Ruby (and other subjects to which my post relates) would help jumpstart my writing engine. Unfortunately, it will probably have to wait; I have a test in one of my classes this Wednesday, a project in another class that I need to pick a topic for, and another project for ANOTHER class that I should also start planning. Oy-yoy-yoy... :wacko
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from writing that post, it’s never to tell people about a personal project of mine and say that I’m going to complete it soon. :p (I started the darn thing in JUNE of last year. :blink:) I do have a break this upcoming weekend on which I might have a chance to get some work done on it, but I can’t promise anything.
I should mention that the post isn’t only about Ruby, but covers several other topics relating to the TV series (such as why Ruby’s family didn’t come with her to the Great Valley, and why Ruby and Chomper are there in the first place) as well. Actually, I’m not entirely sure whether I should post it in the character discussion thread for Ruby. It might be more suited for some other thread which more broadly discusses the TV series, and have even considered starting a new thread for it (though this is the most unlikely option).
Thanks for the question, by the way. If anything, you've probably given me a little incentive to finish writing the post. ;)
-
Have you ever talked to LBTlover about removing the whiteness around your forum avatar? I only ask because he's done that for a lot of us (myself included), and he'd probably be able to do it for you very easily.
-
To be honest, the thought of removing the white background of my avatar never crossed my mind. Now that you mention it, I am curious to see what it would look like, but I’m pretty shy about asking favors, and the last time I spoke to landbeforetimelover, he said he was really busy.
-
-Do you collect things?
-
OH, YEAH. :yes I’m a major pack rat. I have several different collections, and my room is packed with things I've stockpiled over the years. Here are a few of my more prominent and/or unusual collections:
ï Hundreds (probably thousands) of toys and figures of dinosaurs, insects, zoo animals, sea creatures, and other critters, ranging from cheap rubber bugs to museum-quality dinosaur models.
ï Videotapes. I have an unfortunate habit of recording TV shows faster than I can watch them, so I have a lot of these lying around. :oops The good news is, I’m much less obsessive about taping TV shows than I used to be.
ï Newspapers. I always used to save the comics section of the newspaper, as well as sections containing articles or photos I found interesting. I’ve gotten better about not stockpiling these anymore too, but the old stacks of newspapers remain. :rolleyes
ï Science and nature magazines, including National Geographic, Audubon, Bat Conservation International, Prehistoric Times, Natural History, and National Wildlife.
ï One of my more bizarre collections: dozens of toothpicks, cocktail swords, twisted paper clips, and other pointy objects impaled on a large, flat piece of green packing foam. “The Toothpick Forest”, I call it. :P:
ï A respectably sized Land Before Time collection including all of the movies and released TV episodes, at least one of each of all of the promotional toys from Pizza Hut, Burger King, and Wendy’s, a few posters, a number of film cels from the original movie, a press kit of the original movie, some books based on the original movie, and a resin statue of Littlefoot and Ducky that supports a picture frame.
ï And the biggie: books on science and nature. I have literally hundreds of them; so many that they don’t all fit in my room. I have no idea how many books I actually own, but would not be surprised in the least if it turned out to be over a thousand. (I’ve got at least twenty-two on bats alone. I’ll count the rest someday when I have time.)
-
Lol,
Your toy and figures collection reminds me of my african animals one. I still have them.:)
Er, is Sasquatch an outdoor or indoor cat?
This isn't really a question but after taking Mozart to the vets, my dad asked the vet whether he needed to be de-wormed and flea but the vet said that he didn't need that because he was an indoor cat. All he needed was his yearly vaccination (which he was so awkward to do, he kept jumping off the vet table and running to the windows....is Sasquatch well behaved when you take him to the vets or is he like my awkward monster?). Anyway, I didn't know that. Did you?
-
Sasquatch is an indoor cat, and we’re hoping he’ll stay that way because we’re terrified of what would happen if he went onto a road. We used to have a similarly hyperactive dog who had no sense around cars, and early last year she was hit by a car and had to be put down. Furthermore, Sasquatch has a habit of charging unexpectedly in front of us at high speed, and has gotten himself stepped on or nearly tripped over multiple times. Unfortunately, he also seems obsessed with windows, clinging to screens and sitting in front of them, looking out. Plus, whenever we open a door that leads outside, Sasquatch is usually there to seize an opportunity to slip through and sit on the porch outside. So far he’s never actually set foot in the yard or beyond, but we’re worried that might change. :unsure:
I’ve never personally been to the vet with Sasquatch, but I hear from my parents and sister that he’s fairly well-behaved, aside from jumping up onto tables and sniffing trash bins. :lol
I didn’t know about the flea and worm thing, but it makes sense if your cat’s not going to be exposed to them.
-
Have you ever considered maybe purchasing a cat lead and gradually (depending on whether he get's used to it) take him for walks outside? We do sometimes with Mozart just on the grass. He likes it but prefers to watch above from the balcony. He's always bee quite anxious with going outside on his own. He prefer it when someone is around. So maybe if Sasquatch is like that, maybe you could go out with him via lead and sit with him.
-
What we're worried about is what Sasquatch might do if he got out of the house and ran off unattended. (That's what happened to our dog when she was hit by the car.) If anything, it's probably a good thing if Sasquatch is indeed not comfortable enough outdoors to stray far from the house.
In addition to staying away from traffic, we'd also prefer to keep Sasquatch an indoor cat to prevent him from wreaking havoc with the local wildlife. He's got a definite predatory instinct, as he's demonstrated on my feet many times. :lol
-
Does it help if you wear socks?
I know from experience with Mozart that it doesn't really as he decides that my legs are much better to attack but Sasquatch might be different.
Do you have a nickname for Sasquatch?
For example Mozart has a variety...Mozzie, Mopey or when I made a mistake I called him Moppy instead....
-
Do you think you would ever write your own books one day? :D
-
Do you have a habit of taking things too literally or are you one of those aspies who are okay with that sort of thing?
-
Does it help if you wear socks?
I know from experience with Mozart that it doesn't really as he decides that my legs are much better to attack but Sasquatch might be different.
Actually, Sasquatch seems to attack people’s feet MORE when they have socks on. So far we haven’t known him to steal any socks, or even just play with them, but if there’s a sock with a living foot inside it, he goes at it like a catnip mouse. I almost always wear socks when I’m walking around the house, and judging by the slightly stinging red scratch I’ve got on the top of my left foot right now, they don’t provide much of a buffer from Sasquatch’s claws and teeth. :lol
Do you have a nickname for Sasquatch?
For example Mozart has a variety...Mozzie, Mopey or when I made a mistake I called him Moppy instead....
I sometimes call Sasquatch “Fluffy” and “Furball”, usually when he’s being naughty. :lol My sister, however, has had more nicknames for Sasquatch than . She’s constantly coming up with new names for him, and dropping older ones, and has probably gone through dozens of them. It drives me crazy, but I do my best not to voice my annoyance, since Sasquatch technically belongs to her, and she should be able to call him what she likes.
EDIT: I decided to remove the list of my sister's nicknames for Sasquatch, because I thought that she might not want to have them shared publicly in such a manner.
Do you think you would ever write your own books one day? :D
I forget whether I’ve told you already, but I’ve been trying to write my own books for years. I’d really like to eventually publish them, but I’m having a really hard time devising names, characters, plots, a believable world, and explanations for various aspects of the story. At the same time, I’m desperately trying to avoid clichÈs, “Mary Sue”-type characters, and accidental replication of other writers’ ideas. Moreover, I face the difficulties of not being able to write emotional scenes very well (without which I fear the story and characters will be bland and unrelatable), or to write believably from perspectives different from my own. In any case, I’m a long way from publishing them. :(
-
Do you have a habit of taking things too literally or are you one of those aspies who are okay with that sort of thing?
I think I do, to some extent. A lot of the time I find myself uncertain of whether someone is making a joke or being serious, and I don't think I always immediately recognize when someone is being sarcastic. Ironically, I love analogies and sarcasm, and use them a lot (though not much on this forum in the case of the latter :p). I do have a definite tendency to look on the literal side of things. For instance, if someone uses the phrase “blind as a bat” in my presence, they will inevitably be met with the protestation that bats are not blind. (Not the best example, but I can’t come up with another at the moment. :bang)
-
Yes I know what you mean. I'm a bit of the opposite that I don't use analogies or sarcasm. Although bizarrley whenever I do say something it can be taken as sarcasm in which I don't mean it to be as...
The raining cats and dogs saying...I thought it was raining cats and dogs...then now though..of course I give the protestation that it's not and can't.
Does Sasquatch sleep in his basket or has he commandered your bed yet?
-
I'll recycle one that I asked CT...
Since being an Aspie you probably know all about obsessions that consume, so I was wondering what was your longest running obsession/passion that you have or had?
Also do you have a good memory or a bad memory?
-
What's the weirdest thing you've ever seen?
-
How do you think I can contribute to the Gang of Five more, so that I can be seen as of more value to the community then a weekly story-teller?
-
Do you believe you are a confident person?
-
*I swear by my sideburns, that joke was TOTALLY unintentional.
Do you wear any sideburns by which you can swear?
-
HO-LY BUCKETS, :blink: I have put off posting here for too long. (Don’t get me wrong; I LOVE the questions. :D) Lemme get to them one by one, in order of post date:
Does Sasquatch sleep in his basket or has he commandered your bed yet?
I try to keep Sasquatch out of my room because of his habit of jumping onto things, climbing stacks of stuff, and knocking knickknacks over. There’s A LOT of stuff in my room (remember my list of collections?), and on the few occasions he’s been in there, he’s generally tended to make a mess. :rolleyes So as of yet he hasn't had a chance to steal my bed. :p
As far as I know, Sasquatch usually sleeps in my sister's room. (We have one of those upholstered tree/tower/jungle gym thingies for cats in there, with a number of little dens and basket-shaped platforms he apparently likes to use as beds.) He does sleep on my parents' and sister's beds every now and then, though from what they tell me he's not particularly intrusive. (Our last cat, by comparison, would nap in just about any spot she found comfortable. My mother tells me that on several mornings she woke up to find the cat asleep on her head. :lol)
What's the weirdest thing you've ever seen?
Wow...I'm completely drawing a blank. :blink: :wacko It's a pretty broad question, and I'm not so good at isolating superlative examples of things. (Also, look two questions down; you’ll see why I’m having trouble coming up with something. :p) Do you mean the weirdest thing I’ve directly experienced, as opposed to, for example, the weirdest thing I’ve seen a picture of in a book? You can certainly post variations on this question if you like in the hopes that I can provide a more specific answer. At the moment, one thing that springs to mind as an example of extreme weirdness are some of the facial contortions my brothers and sister have proven capable of performing. :lol (And me too, for that matter, :oops especially when pressed up against glass. :lol)
Since being an Aspie you probably know all about obsessions that consume, so I was wondering what was your longest running obsession/passion that you have or had?
Ooh, tricky one. My obsessions tend to come and go in a pattern that I cannot predict. Usually when my interests “fade”, they do not vanish altogether, but merely revert to lying beneath my immediate notice. I liken the scenario to bobbing for apples in a bucket whose diameter only permits a few apples to float at the very surface at any one time (though it is deep enough to hold a large number of them). The layer of apples at the top of the bucket corresponds to the subjects I am obsessed with at a given time, while the majority underneath represent my “dormant” interests. However, any one of the apples below the surface can bob into view if one of those previously at the top is pushed down (equating to loss of interest in a subject), or entirely new apples can be thrown in (becoming interested in something I have never been interested in before). Certainly some of my obsessions stay at the top longer than others, but I often don’t even notice when one of them slips out of sight, and I can’t begin to estimate which interests have remained on top for the longest periods. However, the oldest interests I remember having (all of which remain with me at some degree of intensity to this day) involved bats, dinosaurs, crocodiles, sharks, and cats (including wild cats, especially jaguars). Those interests began in preschool or earlier.
Also do you have a good memory or a bad memory?
I have a good memory for some things, a horrendously bad memory for other things. Usually my good memory is tied to something I am passionate about (for instance, prehistoric animals, or LBT).
My memory often seems to run on a “use it or lose it” principle. For example, when I was taking Spanish in grade school, I was relatively good at memorizing words in the language, and even writing simple sentences (though I never figured out how to conjugate verbs :bang). Now that it’s been years since I’ve taken a Spanish class, however, it’s almost impossible for me to spontaneously recall anything I learned from them, apart from a number of vocabulary words. :wacko
I also seem to have a recognitive memory: for example, I couldn’t tell you the family car’s license plate number off the top of my head, but if I were walking through a parking lot looking for the car, I could identify it by its license plate immediately.
How do you think I can contribute to the Gang of Five more, so that I can be seen as of more value to the community then a weekly story-teller?
You seem to be very good at reviewing fanfictions. The thoughts and suggestions I’ve seen you give for Twilight Valley, for instance, are very thorough and well-put. I also know that you are an expert at devising names for characters that are meaningful and/or appropriate for the individual, in addition to sounding good. You’d be a great help to members who are looking for names for their OCs. You seem to be pretty good at starting and participating in discussions involving LBT as well.
Do you believe you are a confident person?
Definitely not. I have SEVERE self-esteem issues. :neutral
*I swear by my sideburns, that joke was TOTALLY unintentional.
Do you wear any sideburns by which you can swear?
Well, yes and no, I guess, depending on whether or not you believe that sideburns, by definition, cease to be sideburns if there is any hair connecting one to the other at the chin. The whiskers on the sides of my face are very bushy, and extend rather far inwards from either side. Personally, I consider them sideburns. :p
I also used to have two patches of hair directly above and in front of my ears that I accidentally allowed to grow out (I always told the barber to stay away from my sideburns because I wanted big, bushy ones :P:). One day my brother and I noticed their prominence and the fact that they were curling upwards, and we dubbed them “bullhorn sideburns”, which I wore proudly from then on as my own unique hairstyle. Trouble was, I had to get them trimmed every now and again, whenever they started to grow so long and curly that people would ask me if I was a Jewish rabbi, :lol One day the dang barber lopped one off completely, and on subsequent occasions when I got my hair cut, the hair in that spot kept on getting cut along with the rest, so it wasn't able to grow back. <_< Eventually the other bullhorn sideburn got cut off as well, and now I'm working on growing both back. So if the presence of a beard automatically renders sideburns nonexistent, you could say that I was swearing on these, saying that I would cut them off again on purpose if I was lying. :p
-
Meet Mr. Burnside after whom (no kidding) the sideburns were named because of the impressive side burns Burnside was wearing:
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/Ambrose_Everett_Burnside.jpg/180px-Ambrose_Everett_Burnside.jpg)
Quite a lot of hair there connecting the two burns on both sides :p though none of it is on the chin.
-
^ I'm already quite familiar with Ambrose Burnside. My dad told me about him in one of my family's more-frequent-than-should-be-considered-normal conversations regarding my facial hair. :lol He's also teased me that my beard looks like Leon Trotsky's (http://www.havelshouseofhistory.com/Trotsky,%20Leon.jpg).
-
Have you ever watched Spongebob? If so, what is your opinion of it?
-
Nope. Never never watched it. It's the sort of thing I'd probably find annoying. I'm not certain I wouldn't like it, but I don't have any interest in finding out at this time.
-
Good. This isn't really a question, but a statement congratulating you on common sense. Spongebob is one of the worst, yet widely popular cartoons ever made, and is single-handedly responsible for lowering the animation quality at Nickelodeon, a channel I used to like when /I was a kid.
-
What is your favorite form of comedy (parody, slapstick, cerebral, obscene, etc.) :)?
-
As usual, I can’t pick a single favorite. I appreciate a mixture of comedy genres: I’m very fond of physical comedy such as slapstick, as well as general visual humor like funny facial expressions, positions, movements, etc. (like many of the pictures in the “Caption This!” section). I also love humor in spoken and written form (picture captions fall into this category as well). And I definitely appreciate intellectual humor (jokes that you need to think about a little to find funny, or are even funnier if you think about them).
I don’t watch a lot of parodies, and my opinion of them seems to depend on what they’re parodying; I tend to prefer “lampshade”-style parodies that poke fun at a common clichÈ (a lot of this was done in Ice Age 3, one of my favorite comedic movies), to ones that spoof a specific movie, for instance. (I’d probably never watch one of those videos that reviews a movie in a satirical way, like the ones that have threads in the General LBT section right now.) As for “dirty” humor, I just don’t find most of it funny. :neutral
-
What do you do when you are depressed?
-
Sleep is my most common response to depression (probably the reason I was sleeping so much earlier this year :rolleyes). Usually I just lie down and daydream until I doze off. Otherwise I often find someone to socialize with (most often my youngest brother), and just talk with them. A little novelty can help sometimes; I may try to watch a movie or read a book I've never seen before (or not seen in a long time). Alternatively, I can find a movie, taped TV show, etc. that I'm already familiar with and know I enjoy (It helps especially if the show is humorous), or engage in some other activity I enjoy. If all else fails, I try to just get out of the house; walking outside or going someplace fun.
-
Do you have any friends in real life? Or are they mostly online?
-
Outside of the GOF, I don’t really have any online friends. As for people I know personally, I suppose some of the professors at my college and former high school might count. There’s also an owner of a rock and fossil shop who I’m on friendly terms with; I once helped him identify and label some fossils he was displaying, and I spend a lot of time chatting with him whenever I visit his store. Overall, though, I’ve never been good at making friends, due to my shyness and the fact that it’s hard to find people who share my interests. (I’m also very bad at keeping in touch with people when I cannot interact with them on a regular basis.) For most of my life, my two brothers have served the role of my best friends. As a result, you could say that they’ve set the standard for my personal definition of “friend”; it’s hard for me to think of other people as friends rather than acquaintances if I don’t know them as well or see them as often as my brothers. :blink:
-
Good. This isn't really a question, but a statement congratulating you on common sense. Spongebob is one of the worst, yet widely popular cartoons ever made, and is single-handedly responsible for lowering the animation quality at Nickelodeon, a channel I used to like when /I was a kid.
I disagree. I happen to love Spongebob and I don't believe it "lowered" the quality of anything.
Anyway, not sure if this question was asked already, but what comedy shows/movies/comics do you like the most, Pangaea?
-
If you could have any of the villains in past Land Before Time movies return for another one, who would it be?
Remember that as of yet no LBT villian (apart from Chompers parents, but thats subjective to opinion) has ever appeared in another installment.
-
This might be an odd question, but do you believe in the term "guilty pleasure" as in having "LBT as a guilty pleasure" due to certain circumstances of what seems to be socially acceptable in society, or do you kick out the labels and just like what you like even if other people would call them guilty pleasures?
-
In Far Away Home, do you view Glide as a villian hooked by chance, or as a misguided hero?
Also, when are you going to start reviewing again? The next chapter is nearly ready to go up :lol
Gratz on finishing school too.
Caustizer.
-
Anyway, not sure if this question was asked already, but what comedy shows/movies/comics do you like the most, Pangaea?
Someone did ask about what movies I liked, but the list I gave is in need of updating by now (though I'm not sure whether I should bother editing it), and anyway, it's not the same as your question.
There are plenty of movies and shows with comedy in them that I like, but the ones I go for when I specifically want a laugh (not all would necessarily be considered comedies) include the following:
Movies
The Ice Age series
Pixar films
Kung Fu Panda
The Princess and the Frog
The Marx Brothers movies
Shows
The Three Stooges
Classic Disney cartoons (mostly ones with Donald Duck and Goofy)
MythBusters
Dirty Jobs
America's Funniest Home Videos (haven't watched it in ages, though)
Whose Line Is It Anyway?
Comics
Garfield
The Far Side
If you could have any of the villains in past Land Before Time movies return for another one, who would it be?
Definitely between Ozzy and Strut, Sierra and Rinkus, and Ichy and Dil. All three of those duos made me laugh. Ozzy and Strut might be my first choice, seeing as Ichy and Dil split up (and having them get back together and return to their previous routine of simply hunting the gang might be a bit awkward), and a lot of the humor from Sierra and Rinkus came from their conflicts with Pterano, who I doubt would be willing to associate with them again.
This might be an odd question, but do you believe in the term "guilty pleasure" as in having "LBT as a guilty pleasure" due to certain circumstances of what seems to be socially acceptable in society, or do you kick out the labels and just like what you like even if other people would call them guilty pleasures?
I used to think the term “guilty pleasure” simply referred to a fandom (or just a subject of interest) you were shy and/or embarrassed about sharing, but for a while now I've been confused about what it actually means, so I don't really use it. If the definition I gave is basically what you're talking about, then, unfortunately to say, yes, I do have many interests that I am reluctant to express openly. It depends on the subject, of course; I'll be quite open about the fact that I love science and nature, and enjoy writing, but I don't think I'd ever spontaneously state “I like The Land Before Time”, because I figure most people probably think of it as a musical children's cartoon with too many sequels, :rolleyes and fear that some might judge me as weird, immature, creepy, or whatever for liking it. (Yeah, I know; I'm a wimp.) On the other hand, if someone else were to bring up the subject first, and ask me if I liked LBT, I wouldn't lie. I'm much more comfortable with sharing my interests with someone if I feel reasonably certain that that person will share them (or, at least, not denigrate them).
In Far Away Home, do you view Glide as a villian hooked by chance, or as a misguided hero?
He sure felt a lot like a villain early on, but since then he's become more of an antihero (not sure if that's quite the right term; “grudging hero”, perhaps?). I think the second option would probably be closer.
Also, when are you going to start reviewing again? The next chapter is nearly ready to go up :lol
I don't feel like I can apologize enough for the delay. :oops Finishing all of my schoolwork, preparing for my graduation, attending the graduation itself, having my uncle over, helping clean the house in preparation for his arrival, and still finding time to sleep has left me with a lot less time and energy for extensive GOF activity than I would like. Tomorrow's shaping up to be another busy day for me, so I'll do my best to read and review Act III, Part II tonight. (Of course, if I'm successful, you'll probably know before you see the answer to this question. :p)
Gratz on finishing school too.
Thanks. :D
-
I figured I would ask you this, since you love science and whatnot.
I believe you know about the relationships species have with each other. Commensalism, mutualism, parasitism etc.
There is also a predator and prey relationship. Of course, this does not benefit the prey in anyway, but I was wondering two things, (first one I'll admit is pretty silly and morbid, the second one is a bit gross too):
1. If the prey was weak, old, or even depressed to the point of wanting to kill themselves, and wanted to be eaten, wouldn't it be mutualism then? Since the prey does not want to live anymore, and will give permission for the predator to eat them?
2. Wouldn't it be mutualism between the producers, (the plants) and the predator when the predator eats the prey, digests, excretes waste so the plants can grow?
I'm sorry if this confuses you or baffles you at all, I just was thinking this as I was reading about the relationships of species. :p
-
You have mentioned not seeing the Brave Little Toaster, however, you left some captions on my BLT caption this"es" that were surprisingly in-character. Did you see it/them from the links I put up?
-
I figured I would ask you this, since you love science and whatnot.
I believe you know about the relationships species have with each other. Commensalism, mutualism, parasitism etc.
There is also a predator and prey relationship. Of course, this does not benefit the prey in anyway, but I was wondering two things, (first one I'll admit is pretty silly and morbid, the second one is a bit gross too):
1. If the prey was weak, old, or even depressed to the point of wanting to kill themselves, and wanted to be eaten, wouldn't it be mutualism then? Since the prey does not want to live anymore, and will give permission for the predator to eat them?
2. Wouldn't it be mutualism between the producers, (the plants) and the predator when the predator eats the prey, digests, excretes waste so the plants can grow?
I'm sorry if this confuses you or baffles you at all, I just was thinking this as I was reading about the relationships of species. :p
Not at all. I was studying symbiotic relationships myself in my Animal Behavior class this past semester. We didn’t cover anything that related to what you’re talking about, and I didn’t learn much that I hadn’t known already, :p but I think I can still offer an answer to these.
1. Seeing as we do not know exactly what goes on inside the minds of non-humans, I am hesitant to say this, but as far as I’ve learned, it is very rare for animals to actually want to die, if this even occurs. (I remember reading that only humans are believed to be capable of deliberately committing suicide, though I’m a bit skeptical of this.) In any case, I think the different symbiotic relationships are defined by how they impact the participant organisms’ reproductive fitness (their ability to survive and produce descendants). For instance, predation provides food for the predator, improving its odds of surviving to produce another generation, while the prey’s reproductive fitness is not just reduced, but altogether obliterated. Even an animal that is past its reproductive prime can further its genes by helping relatives. If you had an animal that was suffering and was “put out of its misery” by a predator, I suppose it might be considered mutualism from a moral standpoint, but from a scientific perspective, that animal has had its reproductive fitness cut short (by its condition as well as the predator), so it would still be considered a one-sided relationship.
2. I think this would be considered commensalism. The plant benefits from the nutrients from the predator’s waste (as well as the possible fact that there’s one less herbivore around to eat it :p), but the predator does not directly benefit. In the long run, the plant could end up feeding more herbivores for the predator to eat (either by growing bigger or by successfully reproducing), but it could be similarly argued that predation is mutualistic because every prey animal killed by the predator leaves more plants for the others to eat.
I have to say, I really liked that question. (Not that I like the others less, but this one was particularly interesting.) Thank you, Amy! :)
You have mentioned not seeing the Brave Little Toaster, however, you left some captions on my BLT caption this"es" that were surprisingly in-character. Did you see it/them from the links I put up?
Incredibly, no (though I have seen the links and am planning to watch it; I just haven't had time what with my graduation, my uncle visiting . . . oh, and my Internet not working :mad). I just came up with those captions based on what I saw in the images. For this one (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=7668&view=findpost&p=9187698), I saw Lampy poking Radio in the clock with the two prongs of his plug, and immediately thought of Moe Howard’s two-finger eye-poke. :lol As for the other ones (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=7696&view=findpost&p=9187699), it started with just an irrestistible opportunity for a joke involving the literalization of light and light bulbs being used as metaphors for intellect, which I then lampshaded (yeah, that was intentional :p) in the second caption by having Lampy state that having a dim bulb and being a dim bulb mean the same thing for him. As for the third, I think I kind of had the impression that there would be a lot of comic exchange between Lampy and Radio, and the idea of the kind of threat Lampy would make to Radio just popped into my head. (Come to think of it, Radio’s the only one of the main appliances who doesn’t have a face, isn’t he?)
I have to say, I'm rather pleased to hear that my captions suited the characters so well. Thanks, Ptyra! :DD
-
What is your favorite subject in school?
-
Biology. More specifically, biology relating to nature and living organisms. Some of my favorite biology classes I took during my time at college were Life's History, Microbiology, Plant Systematics, Ecology, Conversations with Naturalists, and Animal Behavior. (I think I enjoyed Plant Biology, too, but my memory of it is very dim.)
-
Biology. More specifically, biology relating to nature and living organisms. Some of my favorite biology classes I took during my time at college were Life's History, Microbiology, Plant Systematics, Ecology, Conversations with Naturalists, and Animal Behavior. (I think I enjoyed Plant Biology, too, but my memory of it is very dim.)
Hey, wait, that is my favorite subject too! Though I am more of a molecular biology person. Ecology is interesting too.
Do you like seafood?
-
Oh, yeah. :yes Went to Red Lobster just this Sunday to celebrate my graduation. Crab legs, crab cakes, tilapia, Maine lobster tails, scallops, salmon, and shrimp are probably my favorites. (I am, however, worried about the environmental impacts of large-scale fishing and fish farming, so I'm rather hesitant about ordering some kinds of seafood, particularly the last two. :unsure:)
That reminds me, I have some additions to make to my list in the "Favorite Foods" thread.
-
Hmm...now that school is mentioned...
In your entire school career, which subject was the biggest pain in the neck for you?
-
Ohhh, that’s hard. :unsure: I despised Music class in middle school. Not only was it inanely boring (we didn’t even learn to play instruments; the most interesting thing I remember doing is copying musical notes :rolleyes), but an event that is surely one of my my worst school memories occurred in that class. (It started with a few people throwing spitballs at me and making taunts from afar; before I knew it, half the class had surrounded me and was picking on me for no apparent reason, while the substitute teacher just stood by and did nothing. :mad Perhaps fortunately, I don’t remember much of what the other students said to me, but I do know that they upset me to the point that I broke down crying at my table :( . . . and received taunts for that as well. :anger)
I suppose that doesn’t quite fit the criteria of which subject was the most frustrating for me to complete. I never liked gym class in middle school (I’m not even sure that counts), I had A TON of trouble with Algebra in high school, and in my first year of high school I had an exasperating Spanish teacher who assigned word finds as assignments every day. (As I recall, we had to find the Spanish words, while their English meanings were listed, so we had to know the meaning of every word in order to find it. That wouldn’t be so bad, except that the teacher didn’t give us all the words in the daily vocabulary list, and on the next day’s quiz there would be words that weren’t on the list OR the puzzle. :bang)
In college, there was a mandatory course called Dignatas (a dignity-themed class). The instructor was wonderful, but the assignments and readings were very challenging. Furthermore, it was a year-long course, and the next year I had a full load of four additional courses, which proved to be very taxing on me. One of those courses was Fantasy Literature, which had some interesting reading, but A LOT of it, and the instructor (who was virtually unpleasable when it came to evaluating work) gave us ridiculously little time to read each of the books. Then there was Public Relations. The instructor was a nice guy, but the class was unbearably dull, and many of the assignments were challenging (the sort of work that seems to take forever to complete). And last fall I took Introduction to Hebrew Scriptures, which had many assignments (often large ones) that were far outside my usual realm of interests, and were a pain to complete. (Against all odds, I got out of that class with an A. :blink:)
So . . . yeah, probably one of those.
-
I like biology a lot, too :yes. I struggled a bit with algebra in high school as well, but excelled in phys ed and the performing arts.
I can't help but say that I really admire the restraint you'd practiced on that day in music class. I'm really saddened by stories like that. Thank goodness (probably 'cuz I'm female) I was never in a situation that severe. There probably would've been several peers in the nurse's office, and I probably would've been in really deep s*** :blink:. I can take a LOT more crap than the average person, but there's only so much I can take. This leads me to ask:
Do ya consider yourself short-tempered or high-tempered?
-
Which RP's have you read/followed on this forum?
-
I can't help but say that I really admire the restraint you'd practiced on that day in music class. I'm really saddened by stories like that.
Thank you. Although it might not have been so much a matter of restraint as the fact that one of my personal rules was to never hitóor even insultóanyone in school, for fear of getting in trouble for it (Or would that still count as restraint? :confused). Fortunately for me there were very few occasions when someone else hit me, so I never really had to physically defend myself.
Do ya consider yourself short-tempered or high-tempered?
I’m not entirely sure what kind of temper I have. :unsure: In general I think I’m pretty tolerant, but there are some things that get on my nerves very quickly. Often, I’m more likely to become irate at a repeated source of irritation, such as if someone is singing an annoying song and continues to do so even after I have asked them several times to stop. I also tend to be crankier if I’ve had a bad or stressful day, and I’m quicker to snap if I’m being bothered by a loud or irritating noise if I have a headache. On the other hand, there are probably things that I have above-average tolerance for (though I can’t think of any examples at the moment :oops).
Which RP's have you read/followed on this forum?
Let's see . . . there was “Sleep and Remember”, the first and part of the second “Insane CafÈ”, the first 20 pages or so of “New Surroundings” (a Jurassic Park/LBT crossover), the first three pages of “The Wish”, and “In The Land Before Time” (which I joined ;)). I might have glanced at a couple of others, but I think that's about it.
-
Okay, here's a question...
I know you do like dinosaurs, but is there any particular one you hate for any reason at all?
-
Not really. Even if you extend the definition of “dinosaur” to include modern-day birds, there really aren't any I particularly dislike. There are some birds in some places that I wish weren't there (such as starlings in North America), because they are invasive species that cause problems for native wildlife, but I don't hate them for it.
EDIT: Well, unless you count Barney. :p
-
EDIT: Well, unless you count Barney. :p
I think we can all agree with that one. :P:
If your favorite Dinosaur was put into The Land Before Time, what kind of personality do you think it would have? And would you have it be male or female?
-
Surprisingly enough, no one has yet asked me about my favorite dinosaur in this thread. My response, of course, would be that I can’t really choose a favorite. :p However, for the purposes of this question, I’ll go with Therizinosaurus (http://www.luisrey.ndtilda.co.uk/html/adino256.htm), since it’s a dinosaur I’m very fond of that I’d really love to see in LBT.
I’ve always imagined a LBT Therizinosaurus character (or any fictional Therizinosaurus character) as being misunderstood; popularly assumed to be more dangerous than he or she really is. (The paradox that Therizinosaurus was a theropod, related to T. rex and nearly as big, with the largest known claws in natural history, but was most likely a herbivore, has always fascinated me.) The two personality types I envision the character having are as follows:
ï Openly friendly and sociable, but feared by most creatures he/she meets due to his/her imposing physical appearance. May be aware that he/she is frightening to others, and is therefore cautious when it comes to seeking friends, or oblivious to it, in which case his/her attempts to be outgoing would often get him/her into trouble.
ï Outwardly gruff and reclusive by nature (probably in response to being shunned and/or feared by everyone he/she meets), possibly even making empty threats when annoyed, but kind and harmless underneath it all. (I have a certain fondness for characters like that, examples including Manny the mammoth from the Ice Age movies, and Kirby the vacuum cleaner from The Brave Little Toaster.)
I suppose the character would more likely be male, but I can’t really explain why :confused (I’ve always had trouble with the dichotomy of gender in characters I design, and how it influences the way I portray them).
By the way, I know of at least two artists who have already come up with LBT Therizinosaurus characters (IsisMasshiro (http://isismasshiro.deviantart.com/art/LBT-Therizinosaurus-20428343) and theblazinggecko (http://theblazinggecko.deviantart.com/art/TTOC-Zino-Bio-129781510)), the latter of which has a character profile which is coincidentally very similar to the first of the two I came up with. :blink:
-
In another topic, you mentioned that your family is crazier than The Mythbusters. Seriously, how crazy can they be?
(Note: I will fell no ill will of you if you decide to not answer this for any reason whatsoever.)
-
Well, it was mainly a joke, :lol and to my knowledge none of us are clinically insane (though note the words “to my knowledge” :p), but we all have our quirky characteristics that add up to make us a pretty nutty bunch, especially my siblings and I when
all two or more at least one of us is in a playful mood (it often becomes contagious). The fact that my two brothers and I regularly practice Three Stooges routines (gently) on one another should be evidence enough. :lol There's also been times when we've applied whipped cream to each other's faces in various manners (from pie tins, to spraying from the bottle, to simply throwing handfulsófor a long time there was a patch of white on a sheltered area of brick wall outside our local food court where such an incident occurred), physically dragged one another down the hallway, dumped enormous piles of blankets on one another from the top of the stairs, and so on. Then there's the fact that my sister has basically invented her own language (well, pidgin language, anyway)ówhich can be extremely difficult to understand as the only noun it apparently contains is “gerbil”, and has a seemingly endless supply of improvised nicknames for our cat; my youngest brother can hardly look at a pile of fried chicken without pointing out one that he thinks looks like the Loch Ness Monster (he has an incredible artistic talent for imagining and designing bizarre and outlandish creaturesóboth on paper and in computer programs such as Sporeósome of which he originally encounters in dreams); my other younger brother is difficult to describe, but he has long had a reputation as the nut of the household (and that’s saying something), whose antics in the past have ranged from deliberately running into walls, to dancing around inanely, to producing some of the goofiest sounds and facial expressions imaginable (and yet he is also a brilliant and talented individual whom I greatly admire); our parents are slightly more normal, but they both have their oddball characteristics, and are habitual wisecrackers tendency (and my dad has been known to make some pretty bizarre shopping investments . . . such as a banana holder); and I . . . well, you already know me :p (sometimes I question my OWN sanity).
Heck, even our cat is nuts; his strange habits include galloping down the hall at lightning speeds, rushing in front of or into your feet when you least expect it, attacking people's feet (but only when they have socks on, it seems), and staring at you, arching his back, and then bolting like this (without the telling precursory action of taking a long, slow step in the direction he's going to go) :bolt for no apparent reason.
Okay, maybe we’re more weird than crazy, but you see my point. :P:
-
Hey Pangaea what is your opinion about these creatures?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axolotl (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axolotl)
-
Are there any Black bears in your area :)?
-
Hey Pangaea what is your opinion about these creatures?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axolotl (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axolotl)
I love axolotls! :DD (Actually, I’m fond of salamanders and other amphibians in general.) I think they’re cute, and fascinating as well, particularly in that they can regenerate limbs and are neotenic, retaining their juvenile form even when they reach sexual maturity, but able to change to a more conventional adult salamander form if their pool dries up. It’s sad that they’re so rare in the wild. :(
I can't recall having ever had a dream (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=6166&view=findpost&p=9194246) with axolotls in it, but last April I got to see some live ones at the Palm Beach Zoo in Florida, which I immediately became attached to. Here are some photos:
(http://i556.photobucket.com/albums/ss2/Pangaean/SDC11279.jpg)
(http://i556.photobucket.com/albums/ss2/Pangaean/SDC11292.jpg)
(http://i556.photobucket.com/albums/ss2/Pangaean/SDC11298.jpg)
(http://i556.photobucket.com/albums/ss2/Pangaean/SDC11311.jpg)
The tank was somewhat dim, and the non-albino axolotls were harder to get good pictures of. This is the best I could come up with.
Are there any Black bears in your area :)?
Oh yeah. :yes We don’t see them very often, but we’ve found our garbage can overturned a number of times, :lol and have had a few glimpses of them over the years. Two years ago we were outside the house with our (since deceased) dog, who started barking at something. It turned out to be a black bear that had apparently been raiding our trash in broad daylight. We saw it fleeing (well, moving away; as I recall it wasn’t going very fast) along the side of the road, and ran into the woods when we got closer (I think our dog had gotten off her leash and was trying to chase it). We could still see it walking through the woods (which were fairly open) from the road for a while, but it was gone by the time one of us was able to retrieve a camera from the house.
A few years previously, we saw a younger black bear (judging by its disproportionately large ears :lol) in the woods behind our garage (very close to the location of the sighting I mentioned before). We might have seen it on the ground originally, but it quickly climbed up a tree. In both of these cases, of course, we were cautious about not getting too close to the bear.
-
Don't think this has been asked but do you have a specific favourite dinosaur?
What countries have you been to? Or if not, what countries would you like to visit?
-
Don't think this has been asked but do you have a specific favourite dinosaur?
As a matter of fact, I was just marveling that no one had asked this question a few posts ago (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=6185&view=findpost&p=9192360)! :lol
I honestly can't choose a specific favorite dinosaur. There are so many that I find interesting, and I can't compare how much I like one versus another. One potential contender, however, is Therizinosaurus (the long-clawed herbivorous theropod I discussed in that earlier post). I've been a fan of this dinosaur since the fifth grade (though my level of interest in dinosaursóand in specific speciesóhas fluctuated considerably since then). I definitely tend to gravitate to the “weirder” dinosaurs, like the buck-toothed Incisivosaurus (http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/files/imagecache/news/files/news/20081216_incisivosaurus.jpg), long-fingered Epidendrosaurus and four-winged Microraptor “Guido” gui (left and right in this image (http://www.luisrey.ndtilda.co.uk/jpegs/256col/chin.jpg), respectively), and bristly Tianyulong (http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/03/tianyulong_-_a_fuzzy_dinosaur_that_makes_the_origin_of_feath.php), but I also have a nostalgic fondness for the “classics”: T. rex, Stegosaurus, Triceratops, and so on (some of which were actually quite weird themselves). Lately I've also been very interested in the horned dinosaurs (ceratopsians), which have recently been discovered to have undergone bizarre developmental changes over the course of their lives, the horns and skull bones actually changing shape as the dinosaur grew. Sauropods (“longnecks”), dromaeosaurs (“raptors”), oviraptorosaurs (the group Ruby belongs to), Dilophosaurus (the crested theropod inaccurately portrayed as a small, frilled venom-spitter in Jurassic Park), Ankylosaurus and its relatives, certain hadrosaurs like Parasaurolophus, and good ol’ egg-stealing Struthiomimus are also up there. And that’s not even going into pterosaurs and other prehistoric creatures that were not dinosaurs themselves.
What countries have you been to? Or if not, what countries would you like to visit?
Rat_lady7 asked me a very similar question some time back. My answer (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=6185&view=findpost&p=9173055) pretty much covers what you're asking. ;) As I've never left the U.S., I'd probably be interested in visiting almost any other country (especially one where I could see wildlife), so long as there wasn't a high risk of me being killed, injured, kidnapped, imprisoned, etc. (For instance, I wouldn't want to visit a country where there was a war going on, even if it offered fantastic wildlife viewing opportunities; apparently this is a genuine concern for many nature documentary crews and international field biologists).
-
Ever had an alcoholic drink before?
-
Yep, I’ve had a few. I’ve stopped bothering keeping track of how many alcoholic beverages I’ve tried, and which kinds, but overall I’m not too fond of them. Too bitter for me (most of them taste like mouthwash, in my opinion :p), and I don’t like the way some of them burn my tongue. :x I didn’t even have my first taste of an alcoholic drink until weeks after my 21st birthday. It was a tiny sip of a glass of red wine at a restaurant, which had me immediately searching for something to overpower the taste. :lol So far, the only alcoholic drink I’ve found agreeable is champagne. I had a couple of glasses of it at my graduation commencement dinner; I liked the fizziness and the fact that it wasn’t too bitter. It’s just as well that I don’t like most kinds of alcohol, though; if I really enjoyed the stuff, I might be liable to drink too much of it. And I would definitely not enjoy being drunk.
-
Hey Pangaea, do you think you could look and review a bit of "The Last Untime"? Do take your time with it, I just wanted to know your input about it.
-
Which states have you been to? Which ones would you like to visit?
-
Hey Pangaea, do you think you could look and review a bit of "The Last Untime"? Do take your time with it, I just wanted to know your input about it.
I suppose so. I'm a little concerned, however, that I won't like the story due to its dark tone and the direction it appears to be headed (as evidenced by the introduction). :unsure:
Which states have you been to?
Let me see . . . not counting states in which I’ve only been to airports, or flown over on my way to other states, I think the following list covers most of them:
ï New Hampshire: My grandma used to live there.
ï Florida: That’s where my grandma lives now.
ï Connecticut: My mother used to have family there; since then they’ve all either died or moved out of state.
ï New Jersey: My uncle and his wife live there.
ï Wisconsin: My family’s taken vacations to Milwaukee and Wisconsin Dells.
ï Illinois: A few years ago, my mother went on a business trip to Chicago, and the whole family went with her.
ï New York: I’ve been to NYC a few times to visit the American Museum of Natural History.
ï Rhode Island: Went there on two separate occasions to visit Block Island, an island off its coast. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to leaving the country.
ï Maryland: Remember my trip to Washington, D.C. (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=6034) last summer? ;)
ï Minnesota: My home state. :p
Which ones would you like to visit?
Here's a few I can think of just off the top of my head:
ï Wyoming/Montana/Idaho: Yellowstone National Park! :DD
ï California: Lots of sites I’d like to see there: the tar pits at Rancho La Brea, Sequoia National Park, the San Diego Zoo, etc.
ï Alaska: I want to see glaciers and Arctic wildlife before it’s all gone. :cry
ï Texas: Bat headquarters (Seriously! Bat Conservation International is based there :p). I’d love to see one of their free-tailed bat roosts. If visitors aren’t allowed at Bracken Cave, then I’d settle for the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin.
Oh, and, of course, it’d be nice to have a chance to meet some other GOF members in person (in those states and others). :yes
-
Do you live in the country, or in a city?
-
Hey Pangaea, how are you doing?
-
And another thing, do you know anything about prehistoric plants? I want to write a scene where one of the characters is using medicine from the plants. I know it's LBT, but I want to be as accurate as I possibly can when it comes to the plants of that day.
-
Do you live in the country, or in a city?
I live pretty close to an urban area (there's a small shopping center within a half mile of my house, and it's probably only a ten-or-fifteen-minute drive to the middle of town), but I can't say I live IN a city, or even a suburb. My house is surrounded by woods on three sides (though you a couple of neighboring houses are visible through them), and a row of trees blocks the side facing the road. We also have a very large yard. So I guess I would say neither. :p
Hey Pangaea, how are you doing?
I'm a little frantic right now. The remainder of this week and the one following it are going to be crazy. I have a dental checkup tomorrow (and I’m anxious about the condition of my teeth). On Saturday my parents are leaving town, so my siblings and I will be in charge of taking care of everything around the house for a few days. My birthday is next Wednesday (the same day my parents get back), so I’ll have to decide what we’re going to do to celebrate. And at the end of next week my older younger brother is leaving to study abroad in Fiji for his fall college semester, so we’ll want to make the most of the remaining time we’ll have with him. And there are still a lot of threads on the GOF I want to post in, not to mention the reviewing I need to do in the Fanart and Fanfiction section (Earlier tonight I applied a heavy dose of hand to my forehead when I noticed that you had answered my question about how to review your fanfic over three days ago. :slap). So yeah, I’ve got a lot on my mind (which seems to have very little space these days :unsure:).
Your other question will require me to do a bit of memory-refreshing research in order to provide you with a satisfactory answer, and seeing as it’s both late and there are things I need to get done before I go to sleep, I hope you don’t mind if I answer it tomorrow (well, technically today, July 8th, but my definition of “tomorrow” is “when I wake up from sleep” :p).
-
How old were you when you became interested in dinosaurs? Is there anything that triggered your interest in them?
How is the Sasquatch?
-
Sorry this took longer than expected. :oops My Internet connection decided to stop working last night (while I was in the middle typing GOF posts, no less :bang).
And another thing, do you know anything about prehistoric plants? I want to write a scene where one of the characters is using medicine from the plants. I know it's LBT, but I want to be as accurate as I possibly can when it comes to the plants of that day.
Just earlier on the day you asked that question, my younger brother and I were looking at a book on trees, and I had told him that I wished I knew more about Mesozoic plants. :rolleyes Granted, I probably know more than the layperson, but that’s not enough for me. :p From what I know, The Land Before Tme isn’t that scientifically accurate in its portrayal of Mesozoic flora, and considering that it depicts dinosaurs from all stages of the Mesozoic living side-by-side, you probably don’t need to worry too much about the plants being from a particular period. That said, from what I researched, it seems that the dominant plants during the Triassic and Jurassic periods were ferns, tree ferns, cycads, cycadeoids, ginkgoes, and conifers. Flowering plants became common in the Cretaceous period.
ï Cycads and cycadeoids (Cycadophyta): Primitive, woody-stemmed plants with tough, palm-like leaves. Some have spherical stems (almost like giant, unopened pinecones), others treelike. Cycadeoids (order Bennettitales) are extinct today.
ï Ferns and tree ferns (Pteridophyta): Tree ferns (order Cyatheales) have their fronds on the top of tree trunk-like stalks, as much as 50 feet (15 meters) tall in some species.
ï Horsetails (Equisetaceae): Ancient relatives of ferns, which may consist of a thin stem with whorls of hairlike branches (hence the common name) or a thicker, unbranched, segmented stalk. More information (and perhaps the world’s first poem about them) here (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=7730). ;)
ï Ginkgoes (Ginkgoaceae): The only ginkgo species alive today, Ginkgo biloba, is very similar to its ancestors in the Mesozoic. It is a large tree that is dioecious (having either male or female reproductive structures, as opposed to both, like most plants), with fan-shaped leaves that turn yellow in the fall, and fleshy, light yellow-brown, fruit-like seeds that, when ripe, supposedly smell like butter that has long passed its expiration date.
ï Conifers: Cone-bearing trees such as redwoods, cypresses, and Araucariaceae. The latter is represented today by three genera: Wollemia (the so-called Wollemi pine), Agathis (New Zealand’s kauri or dammar tree) and Araucaria (the fantastically named monkey-puzzle tree :lol), all of which had extremely similar ancestors during the Mesozoic.
ï Angiosperms (Magnoliophyta): The flowering plants. These have been around since at least the early Cretaceous (~140 million years ago), and comprise most of the familiar plants alive today. Mesozoic examples included the ancestors of modern magnolias, palms, oaks, maples, sycamores, figs, roses, buttercups, and water lilies.
Until recently, it was thought that grasses (Poaceae) did not evolve until long after the Mesozoic. However, sauropod coprolites (fossilized droppings) from India have been found to contain fragments of silica resembling those found in grass stems. This suggests that the ancestors of modern rice and bamboo existed in the late Cretaceous (65 million years ago). From what I have gathered, though, there is no evidence that there were fields of grass like those we are so familiar with today during the time of the dinosaurs, though there was probably some other plant that filled the niche.
As far as I know, however, there is as yet no fossil evidence of a tree species with palmately lobed peltate leaves resembling five-pointed stars. :p
Here are some links that might help as well: ;)
http://fossilnews.com/2000/mezplants/mezplants.html (http://fossilnews.com/2000/mezplants/mezplants.html)
http://www.projectexploration.org/garden/index.htm (http://www.projectexploration.org/garden/index.htm)
http://www3.hi.is/~oi/Nemendaritgerdir/Aud...Paleobotany.pdf (http://www3.hi.is/~oi/Nemendaritgerdir/Audur%20-%20An%20introduction%20to%20the%20Mezozoic%20Paleobotany.pdf) (This one’s a PDF file, and rather scientific, so you might have trouble with it.)
How old were you when you became interested in dinosaurs? Is there anything that triggered your interest in them?
Rat_lady7 asked that question way back when; here (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=6185&view=findpost&p=9134661) is my answer. I don't remember how my interest in dinosaurs got started, and as I discuss in that post, LBT may or may not have been a part of it.
How is the Sasquatch?
Sasquatch is doing well. Unfortunately, he's become very bold in his outdoor excursions, and has begun bringing home voles and shrews he has caught. Usually they are already dead; on at least one occasion a vole was alive but crippled, and we had to put it out of its misery, the poor thing :cry; and sometimes the animals are uninjured enough to run away once we get Sasquatch to let them go (This has happened a few times with voles, and once with a chipmunk). We've tried to limit the amount of time Sasquatch spends outside, and the distance he travels from the house, but he's become a master of slipping out the door as soon as we open it. Today I tried putting a collar with a bell on him so that his ability to approach prey unheard is reduced, but he clearly hated it and struggled to get it off. Apparently he succeeded, because when someone let him back into the house, the collar was gone (It was designed to break away if it got hooked on a branch or other object; Sasquatch must have managed to unsnap it somehow). I'm just glad we don't live in New Zealand or any other place with rare, vulnerable wildlife.
-
^
Sorry about Sasquatch's attempts to destroy the wildlife population. However it is what cats do but as owners, from what you describe, you seem to be trying your best to stoop it. naturally though, he's a step ahead of you. Good luck with it.
Does he still love boxes and other snug places?
-
^ Thanks, Saft. Like you said, we're not being too successful at preventing Sasquatch from hunting. We know it's just his nature, but I wish we could have kept him an indoor cat. :neutral
Sasquatch has most definitely retained his love of boxes and bags. :yes Just today he was sitting in a cardboard box, which was just the right height for his head to be visible from the outside. I tried to snap a few pictures, but he jumped out before I could get many good ones.
Also, I can't remember if I've mentioned this before, but several weeks ago Sasquatch caused an avalanche in a precarious pile of clutter in the downstairs living room. There was a bag of recyclables on top of the pile containing an empty soda box, and apparently he tried to jump into the soda box, which caused the bag to slide down, in turn dislodging other objects. The result was a huge (albeit shallow) flood of spilled stuff blocking the entrance of the living room, in the center of which was Sasquatch, stuck face-down in the soda box. :lol It was probably the biggest mess he's yet created. :lol:
Sasquatch is at least a year old at this point, and the most recent pictures I've posted of them are from six months ago. :blink: I'd really better get around to posting more. :unsure:
-
Not sure if you've mentioned this before but where did you get Sasquatch from?
Is he microchipped? Do you enjoy de-fleaing and worming him or does the vet do that? I didn't know that Mozart, being a house cat is not required to be de-flea or de-wormed unless he of course starts to go out or has to go the cattery.
-
Thank you for the question. :) My sister adopted Sasquatch from Animal Allies.
Yes, he is microchipped. If he is getting any de-worming and/or de-fleaing treatments, then the vet must provide them. I actually have very little involvement in the care of Sasquatch; I have not yet attended any of his veterinary trips.
-
Have you gotten to reading my fanfiction thread, yet?
-
Are there any particular things that you enjoy doing?
Do you tell people that you have ASD or only a select people when it's necessary?
-
How's your birthday going Pangaea? :)
-
:nod:
I second what Ratlady asked.
Also, if you were able to go to the zoo, would you perhaps have been able to take photographs? No worries, if you haven't. If you did, it would be great to see them.:)
-
So, how's the book on ceratopsians :D?
-
Whoa! I got a lot of questions in one day! :wow Thank you, all of you! :D
Have you gotten to reading my fanfiction thread, yet?
Not yet, but I definitely plan on reading (and probably reviewing) it. :yes The trouble is, there's at least five or six other fanart and fanfiction threads that I'm due to leave feedback on (all of which I either promised to review earlier or have already been a commited reviewer of for some time), and I think that maybe I should get some of them out of the way first, especially those who have already been waiting a while. :unsure: Plus, it takes me a lot of time to write feedback posts, and I've had more limited time on the GOF lately due to having only one computer in the house with Internet (which moreover must be shared among a large family of frequent computer users), and the fact that I am attempting to spend as much quality time with my brother as I can before he leaves for the next four months on Saturday. If it's urgent that I review your story, I can try to do it sooner, but at this point I'm estimating that I probably won't get to it until early next week.
Are there any particular things that you enjoy doing?
Hmm…that's kind of vague, but I like answering questions, :p talking to people about interesting subjects (not limited to nature and prehistoric life; I have had enjoyable conversations involving linguistics, etymology, anthropology, physics, history, chemistry, urban legends, and humorous anecdotes), watching films about nature, science, science fiction, fantasy, comedy, animation, and combinations thereof, reading (in which my tastes are generally the same as my preferred film genres), looking at lolcats and other amusing pictures online, observing animals (whether they're wild, in zoos, or pets), looking at rocks and plants, and, of course, hanging out on this forum. :p
How's your birthday going Pangaea? :)
Well, at this point it's already over, and it was great! :smile I basically described the whole thing here (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=5975&view=findpost&p=9196714), so you can go there to read about it. ;)
Okay…At this point I’ve stayed up so late that the dawn chorus of the songbirds has come and gone (Even the crows have finished with their morning territorial cawing). That’s a sign I need to get to bed. I’ll answer Cancerian Tiger’s question and Saft’s other two questions later (either this afternoon, tonight, or sometime tomorrow, depending on how late I sleep and how busy my day is).
-
As promised, I'm back with answers to the rest of the questions. ;)
Do you tell people that you have ASD or only a select people when it's necessary?
Generally I don't bother to tell anyone that I have Asperger’s unless I feel that it is relevant (For instance, if I were at an interview for a job in which my ASD might give me difficulty, I would let them know about it so that they would be aware that I might take more time to adjust to the job, etc., than some people). I don't try to hide the fact that I have Asperger's, but most of the time I just don’t see much point in mentioning it. I’m not especially good at explaining what exactly Asperger Syndrome is, and how it is significant. More importantly, I don’t like the idea of using my condition as an excuse, or a cushion to fall back on when I’m faced with something challenging (For instance, I would never want to imply something like “I’m having trouble doing this; I need more help because I have Asperger’s”). I also don’t want to come off as begging for sympathy (“Be extra nice to me, because I have an ASD”), though I do like others to be aware that I am more sensitive and socially awkward than the average person. For instance, almost four years ago, in an English class during my first year of college, I was being (playfully) teased while standing up in front of the class. I was feeling embarrassed, so I announced then and there that I had Asperger Syndrome and was more sensitive to teasing than most people. In retrospect, I suppose you could argue that to have been a sympathy plea, :rolleyes but I felt that it was a better, more substantial reason for others to not tease me than just saying “I hate being teased” or “I’m very easily embarrassed”. After class the instructor told me that it had been very brave of me to share that I had Asperger’s. It didn’t seem like that big of a deal to me at the time, as this was not all that long after I had first learned about Asperger’s and that I had it, and I was not yet aware that there are (unfortunately) some people out there who don’t believe Asperger’s is a real condition, or worse, consider people who have ASDs to be mentally handicapped or inferior; this is another reason I am hesitant to tell people up front that I’m an Aspie. And, of course, the fact that I have trouble opening up to people and engaging in spontaneous conversation is a factor as well.
Also, if you were able to go to the zoo, would you perhaps have been able to take photographs? No worries, if you haven't. If you did, it would be great to see them.:)
Oh yeah. :yes I take photographs almost every time I go to the zoo. I've got so many that if you want to see them, I might start a thread in the “Show us…” section to post them in. (It might be a little while, though, seeing as I've got so much else going on at this time. :unsure:)
So, how's the book on ceratopsians :D?
Thank you for asking. :smile So far, it’s fantastic. The book, New Perspectives on Horned Dinosaurs, is essentially a collection of scientific literature on ceratopsians, with chapters (each a separate research article) divided into four parts: Systematics and New Ceratopsians (articles on ceratopsian classification and descriptions of new species); Anatomy, Functional Biology, and Behavior (basically, what the horned dinosaurs were like in lifeóit’s the section I’m most interested in ;)); Horned Dinosaurs in Time and Space (the times and places in which ceratopsians lived, and their roles in those ecosystems); and History of Horned Dinosaur Collection (the shortest sectionóonly two chaptersówith the most self-explanatory title :p). Overall there are over 550 pages, with 35 or 36 articles (the number depending on whether or not you count the Overview :P:), all on threehorns and their relatives. :DD
Just by skimming through it and reading a few pages, I’ve learned some very interesting things. For instance, I just read some parts of a fascinating chapter on Protoceratops, which suggested that it may have been nocturnal, having adaptations for good night vision and binocular vision, and possibly used its hind legs to dig hollows or burrows in the ground to shelter in during the day. Following it was a study of Psittacosaurus that suggested that it might have been semi-aquatic :blink: (I’m a little iffier on that one). Another chapter described a theory regarding Triceratops that I don’t think I’d ever heard before: that its horns were used to help cool and stabilize the temperature of its brain (Apparently goat horns have the same function, though they obviously have other purposes as well, which was probably also true of Triceratops). There’s also a chapter I haven’t read much of yet, which describes the shape and positioning of the horns and frills of chasmosaurines like Triceratops. It seemed to conclude that many ceratopsians engaged in head-pushing contests like some lizards (It included simple pictures showing how the horns of different species would lock together to ensure a steady push while causing minimal damage to the frill). It looked extremely interesting, and I’ll be sure to read it in depth later. :yes
Threehorn fans such as yourself should know, it's an extremely scientific book, and challenging to read even for me. You might have an easier time understanding some of the technical jargon than most people due to your knowledge of anatomy, but there are plenty of terms that you’d probably only recognize if you had studied dinosaur skeletons (which I have not :oops). It's very expensive as well; the list price is $110, though on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/New-Perspectives-Horned-Dinosaurs-Ceratopsian/dp/0253353580/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279226895&sr=8-1), where we got my copy, you can get it for considerably less. Still, at roughly $75, it’s a bundle.
If you’re interested I hearing more about this book, I’d be more than happy to discuss it further with you by PM, or in further questions on this thread. ;)
-
I'm just curious, when people critique your work, how do you usually react?
-
At this point, do you think it's somewhat difficult to create an "orginal" story about dinosaurs, especially one about a mixed-species group trying to find a new home?
(I ask because I'm considering creating a dinosaur story)
-
I'm just curious, when people critique your work, how do you usually react?
I’m always anxious about receiving feedback, because I worry about what people will say. Receiving positive feedback definitely boosts my self-esteem. When people point out something in my work that needs improvement, I can’t help but feel a little disappointed, but generally I accept that the detail or object of critique could use work, and try my best to do a better job next time. If I had not been happy with the criticized detail myself, I often openly agree with the person who made the comment (People tell me I’m too hard on myself, and they may be right).
That said, I crave and greatly appreciate thorough and honest feedback on my work (preferably from multiple reviewers). If people do not tell me what they like, what they don’t like, etc.óor worse, give me no feedback at all (*clears throat, tilts head indicatively –> (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=7730)*)óI have no reference for how well I am doing. In these cases, I often become my own critic, generally focusing on the negative; sometimes becoming paranoid that my work is full of errors that I can’t see, and try my best to find them, magnifying any that are being present (or that I perceive to be).
So far, to my knowledge, I have never had any of my work flamed, but I imagine that if it were to happen, I would feel very upset, angry, and humiliated, though I would try my best to keep cool in my response.
At this point, do you think it's somewhat difficult to create an "orginal" story about dinosaurs, especially one about a mixed-species group trying to find a new home?
(I ask because I'm considering creating a dinosaur story)
I suppose it is. Unfortunately to say, when it comes to creating a story with “natural” (not excessively anthropomorphized) dinosaurs as characters, there's not a whole lot you can do. The Land Before Time found a very good formula, which appears to have proven difficult to deviate from (Remember Dinosaur?). I’ve seen stories in which an author created “intelligent” dinosaurs with tribal societies or their own civilization (though humans are usually pulled into this as well), and then there’s the Walking With Dinosaurs route, in which the life of a particular dinosaur or community of dinosaurs is followed.
Still, there are dozens of dinosaur species that have never been prominently featured in fiction (if at all), and I think paleocritter-centered stories are a dreadfully underexplored genre.
I’m facing similar problems with my own stories. I want my characters to be as naturalistic as is reasonably possible, but it’s very difficult to come up with a compelling plot that doesn’t fall into a preexisting mold. :bang
-
I'm going to repeat the same question I asked CT,
When it comes to money are you usually a spender, a saver, or somewhere in between?
-
What's the best prank you've ever pulled :angel?
-
In the same dinosaur story I am writing, I have one of the characters, a baby Pteranodon, get swept away from the sea from the sea around the Kansas-Tennessee area, into Montana. The problem is, I don't know how she gets there. What would you suggest for her predicament?
-
When it comes to money are you usually a spender, a saver, or somewhere in between?
A spender, unfortunately. :rolleyes
What's the best prank you've ever pulled :angel?
Hmm…Hard to say. I’m not that much of a prankster, though I do enjoy surprising people. Since I don’t like being pranked myself, I typically don’t pull any humiliating or unpleasant ones on other people.
One of the more memorable examples of prank-like behavior I’ve pulled was in my first year of college. I brought a gorilla costume to my English Composition class, put it on before class started, hid in an alcove in the corner of the room, and stepped into view while the instructor was taking attendance and had just noticed that I was apparently absent. It didn’t particularly freak out anyone, but it definitely surprised a few people, and was a good laugh for the whole class. (This is not the kind of thing I would normally doo, but this class had an exceptionally friendly atmosphere, the instructor had a good sense of humor, and it was Halloween.)
Other xamples of pranks I’ve pulled in the past (all on my family) have included suddenly popping out from behind corners or doorways and shouting something loud such as “BOOGA!”; :lol building a huge pile of blankets, sleeping bags, and pillows on the railing at the top of the stairs, calling a sibling who was downstairs to come up, and then pushing the pile on top of them; hiding in a pile of clothes, blankets, or (in autumn) leaves, and bursting out when someone comes near (one time I was hiding in a leaf pile, and my intended victim jumped in and landed on me! :lol); and bending the articulated faucet on the upstairs sink to point forward, so that the next person who turns it on gets sprayed by it (I tried to play this trick on one of my brothers once when the two of us were fooling around, but unfortunately I forgot about it and the next person to turn on the sink was my mother! :lol).
In the same dinosaur story I am writing, I have one of the characters, a baby Pteranodon, get swept away from the sea from the sea around the Kansas-Tennessee area, into Montana. The problem is, I don't know how she gets there. What would you suggest for her predicament?
Before I even saw that question, I came up with a suggestion for that issue that I posted in your art thread. :! You've probably seen it already, but here it is again anyway:
There is evidence that, like modern reptiles, hatchling pterosaurs were very precocious, possibly capable of flight immediately after hatching (This at least seems to be the case for smaller pterosaurs like Rhamphorhynchus and Pterodactylus). On the other hand, the discovery of a colonial nest site (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/1202_041202_pterosaurs_egg_2.html) of Pterodaustro, containing fossilized eggs, hatchlings, and adults suggests that at least some pterosaurs cared for their young to some extent. If you don’t already have an idea, perhaps the Pteranodon was trying to fly, but got caught in a wind that blew her far inland.
-
:lol
I can relate to the "hiding under leaves" story. When I was in high school, our Kiwanis Key Club members (myself included) would host an annual three-day haunted cornmaze in a cornfield to raise funds for the needy throughout the community. Well, I was lying on my back under a pile of leaves across a path with the intent of scaring somebody by jumping up while they would step over me. Instead, the person tripped, fell right on top of me, and still got pretty freaked out nonetheless :lol.
Okay, time for a question. What is Ely, MN like in the summertime? I've only been there in the wintertime :p.
-
Hmm…as I recall, it was very sunny while we were there this year. Temperature-wise, the weather was perfect for me, though I don’t know exactly what it was (I’m assuming somewhere within the 70–85? Fahrenheit range), and I’m accustomed to pretty cold temperatures (I seem to recall you saying that you liked it warmer). Last year it did rain a bit while we were there; I can’t remember about the year before that. Of course, we’ve never been to Ely for more than a day or two at a time, so we probably didn’t get a very comprehensive assessment of the weather.
-
Does Sasquatch get anxious during thunderstorms?
-
Hmm…I don’t know, since I haven’t observed his behavior during thunderstorms. Lately we haven’t had a lot of particularly dramatic thunderstorms where I live, either.
-
Do you watch or have you heard of Avatar: The Last Airbender?
-
I've heard it mentioned a few times on this forum (usually by you ;)), but otherwise I am not familiar with it.
-
Heh, don't mind me, I'm just a huge fan of it. ^^
Have you ever been to any Autism conventions before? Or groups? Like PHP and the like?
-
Afraid not. Though if I ever had the opportunity, I would be interested to attend that sort of thing. :yes
-
You probably would like being there, understanding yourself and all. :yes
How would you describe your humor?
-
Are you going to try solving the troubles with MSN? What exactly is the problem that is so far making a chat impossible? It would sure be awesome to have a chat :yes
-
I previously answered a question about my favorite forms of comedy here (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=6185&view=findpost&p=9186256), but I suppose this is a different question.
I come from a family of wiseguys, :p so unsurprisingly a lot of the humorous things I say are witty, teasing, and/or sarcastic wisecracks (You might notice that I make a lot of remarks like this in my posts, usually punctuated by this emoticon: :p). I’m often unable to come up with improvised witticisms on the spot, however, because it takes time for me to formulate in my head what I’m going to say.
I’m also something of an insult comic, though I only do so in jest, and ONLY to people whom I know will not take offense at them, with whom there is a mutual understanding that the insults are jocular. Again, though, it’s often hard for me to reach into my cerebral insult bank and pull out something original on short notice, and sometimes I jarble my insults. One time I called my older younger brother “nimwit”, because I was trying to decide whether to say “nimrod” or “dimwit”. :lol
Also, as I mentioned to Cancerian Tiger a few questions back, I like to surprise people, usually by popping out at them suddenly or sneaking up on them.
And, of course, my fondness for physical comedy and visual gags means that I enjoy pulling bizarre facial expressions and strange movements (such as my “stiff zombie” and “lopsided hunchback” walks, or my Bigfoot impression :lol), as well as carefully executed Stooge-style slapstick. Here’s an example of one of my routines:
#1: While facing another person (usually a brother), I point to a nonexistant object on the floor and ask “What’s that?” or “Hey, is that a penny?”.
#2: Person leans forward to look more closely at what I am pointing at.
#3: Balling my pointing hand into a fist, I swing it up and (gently) bop the other person on the forehead.
Pretty much my whole family is into these sorts of things. I have a list (spanning over 25 pages) of script-style records of amusing things my family members and I have said, and humorous situations we have been in. Examples:
Me: “I would appreciate it if you would let me get a word in edgewise.”
My older younger brother: “But we ain’t in edgewise. We’re in Minnesota!”
My sister: “Hey, guys. Guess what? Today I saw a real dead human brain.”
Me: “Great. I’m glad you two were finally reunited.”
My older younger brother: “There are monkeys in this world!”
Me: “Of course. There’s one in the living room talking right now.”
*My brothers and I are watching a Three Stooges short, and our mom walks in.*
My mom: “What’s this show called?”
My youngest brother: “ëI’m A Monkey’s Uncle’ (*the title of the short*).”
My older younger brother: “You are?”
*My mom and older younger brother are sitting on the couch in the living room. I’m looking for my two youngest siblings.*
Me: “Where are those other two chumps?”
My mom: “I don’t know. (*pause*) Hey! What do you mean by ëother chumps’?”
Me: (*carrying a roast turkey from the oven*) “Turkey coming through!”
My mom: “You talking about yourself?”
Me: “You can pick your friends, but not your family.”
My mom: “You can pick your friends, you can pick your petsó”
My dad: “You can pick your nose…”
My mom: “That’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Me: “Ah, I’ve seen weirder things.”
My sister: “Yeah, the mirror.”
-
Those lines are hilarious :spit :spit! I think a thread should be started where members post the wittiest lines they've ever said or have been told :idea.
Out of all our favorite prehistoric pals, which character would ya spend a day with if given the chance :)?
-
Your family is a bit like mine Pangaea, we like to joke around and poke fun at each other. :lol
Have you ever had any pets in your life? Like fish, hamsters, etc?
-
^/^^ Yeah. One of us (either my mom or my older younger brother) joked once that our lives could be a sitcom. :lol Personally I don’t think we’re quite dramatic enough for that, but we ARE a pretty comedic bunch. :p
And that’s not a bad idea about the witty lines thread, CT. Maybe I’ll even start it myself. :idea
Glad you liked the quotes. :smile
Out of all our favorite prehistoric pals, which character would ya spend a day with if given the chance :)?
AAAAAHHHHH!!!!! Don't make me choose! D:
Honestly, I don't think I could pick just one of them. I suppose I could narrow it down a bit based on how comfortable I think I'd feel meeting them one-on-one.
ï I can't really explain why, but I probably wouldn't pick Chomper. :unsure: It's not his habit of eating bugs; just somehow his personality (as portrayed in the TV series) didn't seem as “interesting” as those of the rest of the gang.
ï Spike is adorable and sweet, but you can't really have a conversation with him. :p However, it would be interesting to see if he could communicate with other non-speaking creatures, because since he would be able to communicate with me to some extent, he could potentially tell me what animals like my cat are thinking, or even relay messages from me onto them. :idea
ï I love Cera, but I think I'd be too afraid of making her upset or angry with me to feel completely at ease while talking to her. :oops
ï Littlefoot is very nice, and I'd probably enjoy talking to him, though for some reason I imagine that I'd feel shy around him. :unsure:
ï Petrie's way of speaking really doesn't bother me much, and I'd probably feel pretty calm around him (like me, he's a bit of a nervous wreck, and I find that I see eye-to-eye more with individuals who have things like that in common with me, because I feel like I can empathize with them more), so he's a possibility. The problem is, I'm not sure what the two of us would do together. :confused When it comes to socializing, I'm predominantly a talker; I seldom engage in physical activities such as games. When I say this, I mean absolutely no offense to the little guy, but it might be hard to have an intellectual conversation with him.
ï I would love to meet Ducky, who is so friendly and polite that I think I'd feel comfortable around her. (We also share a fondness for interesting rocks. :lol) One potential problem is that we're almost polar opposites in some respects: she's outgoing, I'm an introvert; she loves singing, I don't; she's full of energy, I have virtually no stamina, etc.
ï I think I'd enjoy hanging out with Ruby. She's nice, and a good conversationalist, and could probably tell a lot of interesting stories. Plus, I'd really like to know more about her history with Chomper and the Gang of Five (the other valleyers and Red Claw, too, for that matter). :p
ï If Guido's an option, then I'd definitely consider him. :yes I expect that I'd feel very relaxed around him, given how much we have in common (We're both shy, stammery, and generally nervous).
Have you ever had any pets in your life? Like fish, hamsters, etc?
Yes, several. :yes
ï A number of goldfish, on at least two or three separate occasions throughout the 90s. We never kept track of how many we owned total.
ï Two dogs, the first a shaggy black retriever mix who came to our house (apparently as a stray) in the early 90s. As I remember him, he was a very nice dog, though he had a habit of chasing cars that got him killed in 1994/95. :cry The second dog was a terrier mix we adopted from an animal shelter on June 12, 2008. Frankly, I didn't like her much, because she was extremely noisy and disobedient, constantly escaping from the house or her leash. She didn't chase cars, but had no sense around them, and was hit by one on February 17, 2009, and had to be euthanized.
ï A tabby, our longest-lived pet so far. She showed up in our backyard in summer 1995, and like the aforementioned dog, we kept her. She was a very mellow cat, a little overweight, generally well-behaved, and seemed to be always purring. She died of old age on November 19, 2008 (the day after LBT's 20th anniversary :blink:).
ï An African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) tadpole. Unfortunately it died before it could mature.
ï Two ant farms, the first of which (owned by me in the early 90s) I barely remember, the second of which was kept by my older younger brother a few years ago, and contained harvester ants.
ï Two Triops longicaudatus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triops_longicaudatus), or tadpole shrimp, fascinating little critters of a lineage older than the dinosaurs. The first one, imaginatively named Shrimpy, :rolleyes came from a package of eggs I received as a Christmas gift sometime in the late 90s. The second, called Al, was a class pet of sorts I took care of in high school, and brought home when the school year ended. As Triops only live for a few months, both are long gone, but I was very attached to them, and even wept when each of them died.
ï Tory, a leopard gecko. We got him three years ago yesterday as a birthday gift for my youngest brother, and both of us took care of him. He was a wonderful and beautiful pet, and tragically died on December 11, 2009 of an intestinal blockage. I have pictures of him here (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=644&view=findpost&p=9156862), and he's presently featured on the wallpaper for my computer desktop.
ï A Roborovski hamster, owned by my sister. I can't remember exactly when she got him, but I believe it was sometime in the fall of 2007. She kept him in her room, so I didn't see him much. He died of illness not long after Tory (either December 2009 or early 2010 :unsure:).
ï And, of course, our polydactyl cat, Sasquatch, presently our only pet, whom we adopted on August 27, 2009. We were told that he was around eight weeks old at the time, which means that he passed his first birthday around late June or early July. (We belatedly commemorated the event a few days ago by giving him some new toys and cat treats. :DD)
-
^That's awesome that Sasquatch has more then five toes on each foot. :D For some reason I never knew that.
Anyhow, I remember you saying you had allergies to cats, then how do you live with a cat constantly in the house?
-
^That's awesome that Sasquatch has more then five toes on each foot. :D For some reason I never knew that.
Yeah, seven on each front foot and six on each hind foot. Twenty-six toes total. :wow They give him the impression of having enormous feet, hence his name. His extra left hind toe is really just a clawless nub, and you have to feel through the fur on his foot to find it. But his other twenty-five toes have fully functioning claws (Trust me; I’ve probably been punctured by all of them! :lol). A few minutes ago I was holding him on my lap, and he reached up and started using his fourteen front claws to “comb” my beard and sideburns. :lol
Anyhow, I remember you saying you had allergies to cats, then how do you live with a cat constantly in the house?
Um…I think you’re either confusing me with someone else or “misremembering”; I’m not allergic to cats. Dust, possibly, but not cats. :p And I’m glad about it. :^.^:
-
As you questioned me a lot of artwork related questions, I got curious if you ever visited my deviantart page (here (http://hakunaro.deviantart.com/))?
Have you also seen my other works there, other than my LBT fanart or are these kind of art not your taste? :)
-
Yes, I have. :yes Though it's exactly as you said; your LBT artwork is basically the only material in your gallery that really interests me. Sorry.
-
Oh... I see. That's too bad. :unsure: But I understand. :)
That brings me to a similar question: What are your thoughts about Sky, Star and Glide having a different (anthropomorphic) appearance?
Also, how's the graphics tablet hunt go? :) Anything you could find that suits you?
-
To be honest, I just don't care for anthros. I prefer my fictional non-human characters to not look like humans, whether they be dinosaurs, modern animals, aliens, or mythological creatures. For example, I like the creature designs of The Spiderwick Chronicles because their goblins, trolls, fairies, mermaids, manticores, etc. don't just look like humans with animal parts stuck on (or vice versa).
As for the graphics tablet, I haven't really done any searching yet. :oops It seems I don't have the time for anything these days… :rolleyes
-
Is there anything you are allergic to?
-
I think I may be allergic to dust, as whenever I'm cleaning my room (something I REALLY need to do right now :rolleyes) or otherwise spending prolonged periods engaged in an activity in which a lot of dust is kicked up, I start sneezing, my eyes water, my nose runs, and I get itchy and shaky. While I have much less evidence for this, I also may be allergic to certain kinds of pollen. Some other members of my family are allergic to stinging insects, so it's possible that I may be as well, but the only time I can remember being stung was by a single large wasp, and I'm too afraid of finding out that I'm dangerously allergic to one or more species of stinging insect to experimentally submit myself to the full gamut of venomous Hymenoptera inhabiting my region.
-
Alright, im sure you've seen the movie judging from the Captions i've seen.. What did you think of the Black Cauldron? Did you know that they are releasing a DVD of it September 14th this year?(Hopefully they wont push it back or cancel it all together.. :p)
And yes, it was out of the clear blue.. :lol
-
Ah, a question! Thank you! :smile
Oh wow, it’s been quite a while since I saw it…I’ll have to watch it again sometime.
I only saw the movie once, on a videotape I rented from my town’s public library at some point dring my high school years. (I watched a lot of movies back then; these days it seems I barely ever have time for them. :rolleyes) I recall not being particularly fond of any of the characters: I found the main two humans annoying; didn’t find Gurgi or Creeper very funny, and thought they were a little annoying too; and at the time I felt that the Horned King was one of the creepiest and most threatening animated villains I’d ever seen (Thanks to you and your captions, though, I’ve become quite fond of him; :smile he’d be the main reason I’d watch the movie a second time). I did think the Gwythaints (that’s the name for the dragon creatures, right?) were cool, and liked Hen Wen (she was cute, I liked that she didn’t speak, and I thought the idea of an oracular pig was interesting).
-
Yup, Gwythaints are the Dragon Critters.. ^_^
Another question that is kinda out of the blue.. How did you stumble on Dragon Cave? :D
-
I believe you can thank Rat_lady7 for that. :smile Last year she was raising a lot of dragons and displaying them in her signature. I thought the dragons were cute, and I became curious about how many the different kinds there were and what they all looked like. Eventually I began looking at other people’s scrolls on the site, and after much deliberation, I decided to join myself, officially becoming a member on October 19, 2009, 4:23 PM Central U.S. time. :p My early attempts to raise dragons were disastrous: my first four eggs died; my next four hatched, but later died (I didn’t think to freeze them :bang), and for the first three months, less than half of the dragons I raised received enough views to mature. Things improved immensely after mid–late January, when I discovered the Dragon Cave fansites that provide views for eggs and hatchlings. However, I’ve been frustrated lately by the limited variety of eggs that have been dropping in the cave, the spriters’ apathy for the suggestions and feedback I’ve attempted to give them on their dragon concepts (it made me all the more appreciative of all the courteous and responsive people on the GOF), and DC’s decision to retire the Frilled Dragons. <_<
-
Have you ever had a desire to change your avatar? If so, what were you considering changing it to?
-
Getting sick of looking at my avatar, eh? :p
Yeah, I have thought about changing my avatar before, and I may very well do it eventually. There are a few reasons for which I have felt disinclined to do so, though. One is that I think of an avatar as being like an ID photo: it’s the first thing you see when you look at the card, even before you read the name attached to it, so it’s a good means of visual identification, especially when you’re scrolling through threads too quickly to read names. In my mind, changing an avatar frequently kind of defeats that purpose, and since I don’t any problem with the one I have now, I don’t really have any motivation to change it.
I’m also, admittedly, rather attached to it, as I made the drawing specificially for an avatar, and I feel like it’s a very appropriate one (as it features the most ubiquitous denizen of the supercontinent from which I take my screen name).
Still, I've had my avatar for over a year now; I can't think of any other consistently active member (apart from a few admins) who hasn't changed their avatar at least once in that time. Maybe I am due for a new one.
I have thought of a few ideas of a replacement picture for my avatar, if I ever were to change it. It would definitely be a piece of artwork I created, probably featuring a prehistoric animal drawn LBT-style like my current avatar.
One idea that I thought would look interesting would be a picture of my dinosona in flight (well, gliding flight :p). My two concerns are that it would be very difficult to draw, and the drawing would end up so large that not much detail would be visible once it was scaled down to avatar size.
Another option I’ve had in mind (almost as long as I’ve had my avatar, actually) is that I would draw a full-body picture of the Lystrosaurus in my current avatar. Or I could draw a different LBT-style creature that lived around the time Pangaea existed; perhaps an Estemmenosuchus, a gorgonopsid, even an early dinosaur like a Coelophysis or Herrerasaurus. For some reason, though, I’ve felt extremely reluctant to draw anything lately; I didn’t even start work on my submission to pokeplayer’s art contest until a couple of days before the deadline. :rolleyes
-
Of got a question..
What is your avatar of?? :neutral It kinda looks like Spike(Except looking a little different) with vampire teeth :p :DD
-
^
Don't change your avatar, unless you want to.
-If you go away, what do you do with Sasquatch? (also how is he?)
-Do you like owls?:p
-Have you ever done anything spontaneous and out of character? (Sorry if that one has been asked).
Thank you.:)
-
Of course, results may vary, depending on how much you like cats and whether or not you are allergic to them (though neither of those should be an issue to you, Rat_lady. ).
I remember you saying this back in the depression thread and I thought you were implying that you were allergic to cats, so I guess that's why I thought you were allergic.
Anyhow...on with a question, and you don't have to answer this if you don't want to, have you ever had a crush on anyone before?
-
Just another question, are you a fan of Pokemon or any other animes?
-
Sorry to heap questions on you Pangaea.
What sort of books do you read? Do you have a favourite author?
How is the Sasquatch?
-
I'm watching Osmosis Jones right now. It's an animated feature about the human body and how it can be infected. It's not a documentary or anything, but it IS about the human body. Have you seen this before?
And have you ever thought of being a pathologist?
-
I love questions, and I’m thankful and glad for all of the ones that are posted in this thread and for the people who ask them. However, if you wouldn’t mind waiting to ask a new question until I had answered one you had posted earlier, so that I don’t get such a huge backlog of questions, that would be appreciated :) (That goes for everyone).
Right now I'm in the middle of writing answers for my last eleven or twelve questions (from three different people, one of whom has posted twice and the other three times! :P:) They will be posted shortly, provided I don't get any more questions before I am finished.
-
What is your avatar of?? :neutral It kinda looks like Spike(Except looking a little different) with vampire teeth :p :DD
:spit
It's actually a Lystrosaurus, a dicynodont from the late Permian and early Triassic. In English, :p it's a distant relative of mammals that lived before the dinosaurs, at the time the supercontinent Pangaea existed. It was by far the most common backboned land animal of its time (especially after roughly 70% of its fellow land-dwellers became extinct at the end of the Permian :blink:), with fossils known from every continent. Four to six species are currently recognized (my avatar is based on Lystrosaurus georgi). Its group name, dicynodont, translates as “two dog teeth”, and refers to the fact that all members of the infraorder were toothless except for a pair of tusks (which may have been possessed by only males or females in some species, and were absent altogether in others). Lystrosaurus's own name means “shovel reptile”, because it has long been suspected of being a digging animal.
Like all known dicynodonts, Lystrosaurus was a plant eater. Among its kind, it was medium-sized, being about as large as a pig, and probably resembling one too. Here's (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Lystr_georg1DB.jpg) what the entire animal looked like (in fact, I used this same image as a reference while drawing my avatar).
As I'm sure you recognized, the Lystrosaurus is drawn in the style of a LBT dinosaur. The features of the head are based on those of the frogs and turtles in LBT IX, and I looked at Cera's horn to get an idea of how to draw the tusks. Light green and yellow just felt “right” for colors (even though real Lystrosaurus probably had more mammal-like hides, and possibly even hair), and I made the eyes brown because that's the color mine are. ;) I only drew the head because (1) I would have had to shrink down a full-body image to a point where details might not have been recognizable, and (2) I was too lazy to bother. :p As I said in my response to my last question, I thought that it was an appropriate creature to use as an avatar, given my screen name. (As I state in my signature, I'm represented by a Lystrosaurus; I hoped it would help people know what my avatar was. :p)
Did I answer this question before? It just occurred to me that I most likely did. :blink: Ah, no matter; I love answering this particular question. :p
If you go away, what do you do with Sasquatch? (also how is he?)
So far we’ve never left the house for more than a couple of days at a time since we got Sasquatch, so I’m not entirely sure what we’d do if we had to leave for a week or something. Hoever, if we’re ever gone for more than a night, we usually have a friend of my sister’s come to the house to check on Sasquatch, refill his food and water, clean his litterbox, etc.
Do you like owls?:p
Oh, yeah. :yes I love owls. You can blame the Guardians of Ga’Hoole books for that. :p I’ve bought quite a few books on owls recently (nonfiction, not just novels), and incidentally we’ve also been hearing a lot of barred owls outside our house at night.
Have you ever done anything spontaneous and out of character? (Sorry if that one has been asked).
Hmm…meaning have I ever done something out of the blue that was totally atypical for me? I almost certainly have, but I can’t think of any examples right now. :wacko
Anyhow...on with a question, and you don't have to answer this if you don't want to, have you ever had a crush on anyone before?
No. In fact, I don't think I've ever experienced romantic feelings for anyone in my life. :blink:
-
Just another question, are you a fan of Pokemon or any other animes?
Nope. I don't care much for anime. There was a time several years ago when I watched some of the older PokÈmon episodes, and I saw the first three movies, but my only real interest in them was seeing the creatures (A lot of the human characters annoyed me).
What sort of books do you read? Do you have a favourite author?
I read a lot of nonfiction books, most of them science-and-nature-oriented. These include books on dinosaurs and other prehistoric life (surprise! :p), and any animal that I happen to be interested in at any given time. A few authors whose work I enjoy are Temple Grandin, Richard Conniff (a natural history writer for magazines like National Geographic), and Aldo Leopold (author of A Sand County Almanac).
Many of the novels I read are xenofiction: stories about non-human characters, like the Silverwing and Guardians of Ga’Hoole series, Tailchaser’s Song, and Raptor Red. Almost all of the fiction I read falls into the fantasy and science fiction genres. I like the Dinotopia books; both the illustrated one by James Gurney and the spin-off novels and novellas. A couple of other series I like are The Underland Chronicles by Suzanne Collins, and the “Ratha” series by Clare Bell (about a clan of sentient prehistoric cats) and Dinosaur Wars by Thomas P. Hopp. That’s all I can think of right now. :unsure:
If you go away, what do you do with Sasquatch? (also how is he?)
How is the Sasquatch?
Yo asked me the same question twice! :lol Those would also be the eighth and ninth times I've been asked that question. :wow Don't worry, I don't mind. :p
Sasquatch is okay right now (I’ve STILL got to post more pictures of him! :bang), though he can’t seem to stand being inside for long periods, and on a few occasions has spent all or most of the night outside. We worry about him when he does this (last night we think he had an encounter with a raccoon; he wasn’t injured in any way, but we heard a lot of noise). We also fear for the safety of our neighborhood wildlife. He’s caught a few more voles (one of which was lucky enough to be brought back to the house alive; I subsequently released it), and a few days ago my brother found him with half of a dead bird (We’re hoping that the bird was already dead or dying when Sasquatch got to it, having flown into a window or something. If Sasquatch has learned to stalk and catch birds, then we’ve got a problem). He’s also made a few attempts to climb trees. So we’re concerned about the potential trouble he could get himself into outside.
I'm watching Osmosis Jones right now. It's an animated feature about the human body and how it can be infected. It's not a documentary or anything, but it IS about the human body. Have you seen this before?
I've heard about it, but nope, haven't seen it. :p
And have you ever thought of being a pathologist?
Microorganisms interest me, but I wouldn't want to work with the pathogenic ones. I'd be afraid of getting sick. Plus, I'm terribly clumsy in the lab. :P:
Whew!
-
Wow, that's amazing Pangaea! :D All of those questions.
But I'll try to keep my questions to a minimum....sorry about that. :P: :oops
-
^ No, no! Don't ask any fewer questions; just space them out a bit more. Wait for me to answer one before asking another. ;)
And it's all right; your questions in that big block I responded to just now were easy to answer. :p
-
Okay, the picture of the Lystrosaurus looks familier. I think i might have seen it in 'Walking with Dinosaurs'. :p Unfortunately, being in a Black Cauldron mood, i miss-read the one part as Lystrosaurus Gurgi (Lystrosaurus georgi)
Um, i've got a question.. Who or what is Sasquatch? :blink: I mean, i know what Sasquatch is, im just curious.. :blink:
And speaking of 'Walking With Dinosaurs' have you seen that on the Discovery Channel? or watched it? :DD
-
^
Yeah, I know that I asked you twice about Sasquatch but I asked on different days.:p
Are you good at organisation?
-
Okay, the picture of the Lystrosaurus looks familier. I think i might have seen it in 'Walking with Dinosaurs'. :p Unfortunately, being in a Black Cauldron mood, i miss-read the one part as Lystrosaurus Gurgi (Lystrosaurus georgi)
:spit
Okay, admittedly it didn't get me as much as the “looks like Spike with vampire teeth” comment on my avatar, but it was still amusing. :lol
The creature you’re thinking of from Walking With Dinosaurs is probably Placerias from the first episode. It was a dicynodont like Lystrosaurus, and looked a quite a bit like it, but was much larger (around 10 feet long and 1 ton), and lived later, coexisting with early dinosaurs.
Um, i've got a question.. Who or what is Sasquatch? :blink: I mean, i know what Sasquatch is, im just curious.. :blink:
Sasquatch is my cat. Well, technically, he belongs to my sister, but he’s a part of the family, really. He’s called Sasquatch (which as you know, is another name for Bigfoot) because he’s polydactyl; he has multiple toes: seven on each of his front paws, and six on each of the back (though one is so tiny that it’s concealed in his foot fur). As a result, he has very large feet. We adopted him from an animal shelter on August 27, 2009, so the Friday after next will be our one-year anniversary of owning him. (At the shelter, he had two brothers named Yeti and Wookiee who were also polydactyl, and a sister, Nessie, who wasn’t.) I’ve posted several pictures of him in the “Show Us Your Critters” thread (1 (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=644&view=findpost&p=9132995), 2 (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=644&view=findpost&p=9134101) 3 (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=644&view=findpost&p=9158749), 4 (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=644&view=findpost&p=9161490), 5 (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=644&view=findpost&p=9177341)), though I haven’t updated in months, and really need to get around to posting more pictures. :bang
And speaking of 'Walking With Dinosaurs' have you seen that on the Discovery Channel? or watched it? :DD
Yeah, I’ve seen the whole “Walking With” series, and own videos or DVDs of almost all of them: Walking With Dinosaurs, Walking With Prehistoric Beasts, Walking With Cavemen (I only saw this one on TV, and didn’t care for it much), Walking With Dinosaurs: Allosaurus, Chased By Sea Monsters, Land Of Giants, The Giant Claw, and Before The Dinosaurs: Walking With Monsters, which actually features Lystrosaurus in its last episode.
Last Sunday, I also got to see “Walking With Dinosaurs: The Arena Spectacular (http://www.dinosaurlive.com/)”, a live show with animatronic dinosaurs that move around an arena and effectively act out a stage version of Walking With Dinosaurs, assisted by a (rather melodramatic) narrator/host/actor and special effects that that areóto make an understatementónot on par with the series’. :p Still, it’s an impressive show. :wow
Are you good at organisation?
Well, yes and no. I like to keep things organized if I can, so I try to put my files and belongings into safe places where they can be easy to find and access. To my knowledge I've never been diagnosed with OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder), but I wouldn't be a bit surprised to find out that I had it, from the way I sort and organize certain things. However, a lot of the time I get lazy and just put things wherever I can fit them. This is the reason my room is such a mess right now. :bang
-
Hey Pangaea, I just want to thank you again for the gift, it was awesome! ^^ And while some parts may not have been what I pictured her to look like, it was pretty accurate. :)
Anyhow, for the picture, did you use Petrie's mom as a reference?
-
Have you ever seen or heard of the Discovery Channel series Dinosaur Planet?
-
Hey Pangaea, I just want to thank you again for the gift, it was awesome! ^^ And while some parts may not have been what I pictured her to look like, it was pretty accurate. :)
Anyhow, for the picture, did you use Petrie's mom as a reference?
You're very welcome. :^.^: I'm pleased to hear that you liked it.
Yes, Mama Flyer was my main reference for the character (mainly scenes from LBT XII, as well as some screenshots from the end of the first movie). I based her claws off of Pterano's, though (from memory :!), because I imagined such claws to be more suited for a flyer that blinded a sharptooth with them. :blink: You stated in your dinosona profile that your character had almond-shaped eyes and an hourglass-shaped body, so I tried my best to tweak the eyes and torso to fit that description. You also said that her crest was longer than a typical female Pteranodon's, so I attempted a design that was somewhere between a female's and a male's.
Have you ever seen or heard of the Discovery Channel series Dinosaur Planet?
Yeah, I've seen it. I liked that many of the dinosaurs were designed more accurately than those in Walking With Dinosaurs, mainly in the raptors and other theropods having feathers. I wasn't too fond of some of the storylines, though, and I really didn't like the narrator. <_<
-
How is Sasquatch :smile?
-
Tenth time that question's been asked! :smile
He's doing okay. It's only been a few days since I last answered this question, so there's not a whole lot of news. Yesterday while my siblings and I were toasting s'mores over the grill after a cookout, I spotted him pouncing at something at the base of a nearby spruce tree. I rushed over and saw that he was trying to catch a vole. I probably saved that vole's life by pinning Sasquatch down with one hand (I was holding a chocolate bar in the other :p) long enough for it to escape into the tall grass a few feet away. After that I brought Sasquatch inside.
Today he apparently had a run-in with another neighborhood cat. We saw him outside at the door, and when we opened it, he dashed inside like he was scared of something. A moment later my sister saw a white and brown cat streak across the yard (I didn't see it myself). Sasquatch didn't have any injuries, but we think he might have been spooked by the other cat, which was probably older and larger. Fifteen minutes later, he wanted to go outside again. :rolleyes
EDIT: Hmm…2,222 posts. A schnappszahl post count! :smile
-
How are you doing Pangaea? And I see you have an Alt black dragon! Congrats! ^^
-
"Walking with Dinosaurs"? I remember watching that! :smile It was actually one of the first things I ever watched in the Discovery Channel, back in the year 2000. (but not THE first show/program I saw on that channel, if I remember correctly)
What other shows/programs have you watched on that channel? What was the first one you saw? (if you can remember)
-
How are you doing Pangaea?
I'm doing okay. :) My sleep schedule is still messed up (I slept from around 6 AM to 5 PM today :wacko), and I'm feeling a little tired right now Nothing much exciting happened today, but my brother and I enjoyed watching the monitor lizard show I mentioned on Cyberlizard's star day thread, while having a rather tasty dinner of crab cakes. :smile Nothing to report on Sasquatch as far as I know. Tonight I'm hoping to get around to posting in some threads I've kept forgetting about, and maybe do some artwork.
And I see you have an Alt black dragon! Congrats! ^^
Thank you. :DD Yeah, it was a big surprise for me when that egg of mine hatched into an Alt. Black. :wow It also makes me happy because I now have a mate for the male Alt. Black that I already own :^.^: (He was an extremely lucky Abandoned Page hatchling grab).
Good luck on your own dragons maturing. Remember, if they look like they aren't going to make it, post them in those links I gave you. ;) "Eggs Around the World", "Silvi's Lair" and "Dragonnery" all have "emergency" sections that can give eggs and hatchlings an extra boost when their time is running low (Most of your dragons are already eligible).
What other shows/programs have you watched on that channel? What was the first one you saw? (if you can remember)
The first time I ever remember watching the Discovery Channel was years ago (I think during Shark Week) while I was visiting relatives in New Hampshire. We didn't have cable at our own house back then, so we barely ever had a chance to watch that channel. I remember staying up until 1 AM (a big achievement for me at the time; that just shows how long ago it was :lol) to watch a rerun of a program about the Loch Ness Monster (which I was fascinated by at the time), and then being really upset when I found out that it had actually aired at midnight. I also recall watching a show on giant squid (another interest of mine) and another on megalodon (a giant prehistoric shark), along with some other Shark Week programs. I might have seen one or more of the above on different years than the Loch Ness Monster one.
Other notable shows I've watched on Discovery (those that I can think of at the moment :P:) have included MythBusters (of course :p), Dirty Jobs, Planet Earth, Dinosaur Planet, I think Chased by Sea Monsters (one of the "Walking With" series I mentioned before), Alien Planet, and Wild Discovery, a great series of unrelated programs focusing on wildlife, which sadly they never seem to show anymore. :cry
-
What are your career plans :)?
-
I've been trying to decide that lately. :confused It would be nice if I could do something that benefits animals, their habitats, and/or the environment in general; I've been thinking about a job involving working with animals and educating people about them. Another possibility is that I could become an editor or proofreader. Something involving writing would probably make sense, though I don't feel like a sufficiently versatile or dependable (as far as coming up with ideas for what to write and getting writing projects done on time) writer to make a living off my own work. :unsure:
Gaaaaahhh…I think there was something else, but I can't remember what it is right now! :bang
-
Would you call yourself a night owl or an early bird? Or somewhere in between?
-
Night owl, without question. :p I habitually stay up until stupid o'clock in the morning (heard Littlefoot1616 use that phrase somewhere, and thought it was hilarious :lol), sometimes going to bed after the sun has risen. :blink: Of course, when I have classes or other priorities that force me to get up early, I have to adjust my schedule to go to bed sooner. I guess I like staying up late because everyone else in the house is usually asleep by around midnight or 1 AM, so it's quiet and I can more easily concentrate on what I'm doing, without needing to worry about being interrupted. Still, I would like it if I could start going to sleep earlier so that I don't keep waking up in the middle of the afternoon. :rolleyes
-
^I'm more of a night owl myself. :yes
Are you interested in politics? And if not or if you are why?
-
No, not really. I suppose I should be, but I just don't like politics. I vote, and try to find out about the candidates (what they stand for, what they support, etc.) beforehand, and sometimes a political news article (usually one concerning the environment) catches my eye, but that's about the extent of my involvement. It's hard for me to explain exactly why I don't try to follow politics, but I guess you could say that one reason is that it is confusing for me. Another thing is that I'm often not sure who to side with in most political debates; I'm not even entirely sure whether I would be considered liberal or conservative. The slander and scandal that seems to be rampant in the political world also puts me off.
EDIT: By the way, I completely forgot: You're old enough to vote now! Congratulations! :smile
-
What's your opinion on religion as a whole? Or I guess to explain it a bit more, do you think religion is essential to human beings? Or is it something that you think doesn't necessarily needs to be around in life? It's just a security thing for human beings?
-
Holy buckets, I just discovered this question from nearly a month back that I had somehow overlooked: :blink:
Are you going to try solving the troubles with MSN? What exactly is the problem that is so far making a chat impossible? It would sure be awesome to have a chat :yes
I'm so sorry for not noticing your question, Malte. :oops :bang Apparently you posted it while I was typing a response to the previous question, and after I posted that response, I didn't look above it. :slap
I have managed to install Microsoft Messenger on my computer and set up a working account, so theoretically I'm capable of chatting now. The trouble is, I don't know if the people I chat with need to have Microsoft Messenger themselves in order to chat with me. It's so confusing that there are several different chat programs out there, and different GOF members use different ones. :wacko
Admittedly, there are a couple of reasons I have been reluctant to put a lot of effort into setting up a chat program. One is that I have had a lot of things to worry about lately: building my independent living skills by taking a larger part in household tasks such as making dinner; looking at potential jobs and trying them out; keeping active on the GOF, and not falling behind in all the reviewing of members' work that I do; planning and working on the books that I've been thinking about writing for years but have still made barely any headway on; and still having quality time to spend with my family. I guess I'm afraid that if I start using chat programs a lot, I'll have even more difficulty finding time for all these other things.
The second reason is probably a more selfish one: I'm very shy about sharing my real name. A few GOF members already know it, but I'm not entirely comfortable with allowing it to be visible for anyone who visits the GOF to see. :unsure: I need to share my e-mail address in order for people to chat with me, right?
Additionally, I'm rather doubtful that I'm even well suited for chatting, mainly in that I take much longer than most people to respond to any conversational sentence, because I tend to write lengthy responses and mull over my choice of words. I would expect that a person chatting with me would experience long moments of boredom waiting for me to respond. I don't want this to prevent me from trying out chatting, but the combination of it and the other issues I mentioned, combined with my unfortunate penchant for procrastination, means that taking that first step into the chatroom is something that I'm not strongly inclined to do.
What's your opinion on religion as a whole? Or I guess to explain it a bit more, do you think religion is essential to human beings? Or is it something that you think doesn't necessarily needs to be around in life? It's just a security thing for human beings?
I'm a little shy about sharing my views on religion (though I can talk with you about it by PM, if you like), but I will say that I don't believe it's a necessity for human life. I don't really have any problem with it, as long as the practitioners of any one religion don't impose it on everyone else, spread propaganda to promote it, start wars over it, etc.
-
Wha! Questions out of clear blue skies..
Other then Estemmenosuchus, what other Dinosaur would the Horned King be? Same goes for Davy Jones..
Why am i asking that question? It will hopefully be for a future chapter of my Disney Villains Fanfic where the Disney Villains go to the world of Dinosaur(The Disney Movie) and in turn, they turn into Dinosaurs themselves.. Kinda leaning towards (Probably Horned)Suchomimus for the Horned King and Dilophosaurus for Davy Jones but there are still things that im a little iffy on.. Tips? (Carnivores if possible!) :p
-
Do you mean true dinosaurs? Because Estemmenosuchus wasn't actually a dinosaur, but a therapsid, a relative of mammals, which lived before the dinosaurs, over 250 million years ago. If you aren’t concerned about scientific accuracy, you could still use it (after all, the even older, sail-backed synapsid Dimetrodon appeared in the first LBT), since it may have been at least partially carnivorous. By the way, here’s a restoration of the head (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_u6CUqDWU5nw/Sge3fwG8f8I/AAAAAAAAAIY/mhW0_-EK8B8/s400/Estemmenosuchus+sketch.jpg) of Estemmenosuchus mirabilis, and a full-body restoration (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/Estemmenosuchus_uralensis.jpg) of its smaller-horned relative, E. uralensis.)
As far as actual dinosaurs go, the Horned King reminds me the most of either Carnotaurus (which, to my knowledge, had the most prominent, most hornlike headgear of any carnivorous dinosaur) or some kind of ceratopsian (horned dinosaur). Ceratopsians may have eaten some meat as well as plants, and there were a lot of pretty frightful-looking ones. There’s the well-known Styracosaurus and its close relative Rubeosaurus (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_A3NVGDDDHJs/TFHY-2gCR8I/AAAAAAAAFu4/PSp68_Yw2g8/s1600/Rubeosaurus.jpg), the splayed-horned Medusaceratops (http://www.cmnh.org/site/Img/AboutUs/Pressroom/Medusa/Medusacolor.jpg), the four-foot-long-horned Coahuilaceratops (http://i.livescience.com/images/horned-dinosaur-100528-02.jpg), Diabloceratops (http://www.contentparadise.com/productdetails.aspx?id=11095) (whose name literally means “Devil Horned Face”), and the colossal-headed Pentaceratops (http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/OMNH%20Pentaceratops%20resize%2027-9-2007.jpg), whose skull measured nearly ten feet from the tip of its beak to the top of its frill. If you had your heart set on a theropod, though, I’d go with Carnotaurus (or possibly Allosaurus, which had fairly large, hornlike crests over its eyes, and much more powerful and well-developed forelimbs than Carnotaurus).
I can’t say there are a lot of dinosaurs that remind me of Davy Jones. :blink: Looking at prehistoric animals in general, he’s a LITTLE bit like an ammonite (http://www.marshalls-art.com/images/ipaleo/paleopg21/Ammonites.jpg), a swimming, spiral-shelled mollusk related to the modern squid, octopus, and nautilus. Some species had shells measuring over six feet in diameter, but seeing as all ammonites were confined to water, and most probably weren’t very fast swimmers, they probably wouldn’t be ideal for your story (unless Davy Jones can still only touch land once every ten years :p).
If you did choose an actual dinosaur for Davy Jones’s dinosona, you might actually want to make HIM a Suchomimus or Spinosaurus. Both were carnivores (and very large ones; roughly the same length as Tyrannosaurus, or even longer), but probably ate mainly fish and other aquatic animals, possibly spending much of their time literally up to their noses in water (Their nostrils were located higher on their snouts than most dinosaurs, allowing them to breathe while holding their jaws underwater, poised to snap at prey like monster-sized herons). Another interesting fact about them: the tips of their snouts were dotted with tiny pits or pores, which probably detected vibrations in the water, allowing them to sense approaching prey. Among carnivorous dinosaurs, they were the kings of the water, their only enemies being giant crocodiles. Neither dinosaur really had horns anyway; just a single small, pointed crest along the midline of the skull. But tie an octopus around one’s neck and it wouldn’t make a bad Davy Jones. :p
-
I'm so sorry for not noticing your question, Malte. dino_oops.gif in-frustrated.gif Apparently you posted it while I was typing a response to the previous question, and after I posted that response, I didn't look above it. doh1.gif
I did much worse I'm afraid as it took me until now to respond to your feedback on my last LBT picture in spite of the fact that I really appreciate your feedback a lot and dam very grateful for it. Not responding until now was a very bad way for me to show that :oops
Sorry for that one.
I have managed to install Microsoft Messenger on my computer and set up a working account, so theoretically I'm capable of chatting now. The trouble is, I don't know if the people I chat with need to have Microsoft Messenger themselves in order to chat with me. It's so confusing that there are several different chat programs out there, and different GOF members use different ones.
That's right. There are several programs which can make contact with the MSN messenger. In fact I might want to consider getting another program as of lately my MSN messenger has been kind of faulty (sometimes logging me out in the middle of a chat). But no matter which programs others are using, it doesn't have any influence on the working of the chat as such (none that I'm aware of).
Of course I won't keep pestering you about it if you don't want to use a chat program. But rest assured that chat program or no chat program I wouldn't want to know your name if you don't want me to know it (nor would I pass it on to anyone if you told it to me). There is nothing selfish about trying to keep ones name secret in the internet. While I don't make my first name a secret I do try to keep my last name out of public messages as it is the combination of first and last name that allows for others to identify you or find more information etc. I would be happy to chat with you and think that it would be really interesting, but having now pestered you after telling that I wouldn't pester you about it I will do my best at least not to continue this pestering :lol
-
I'm so sorry for not noticing your question, Malte. :oops :bang Apparently you posted it while I was typing a response to the previous question, and after I posted that response, I didn't look above it. :slap
I did much worse I'm afraid as it took me until now to respond to your feedback on my last LBT picture in spite of the fact that I really appreciate your feedback a lot and dam very grateful for it. Not responding until now was a very bad way for me to show that :oops
Sorry for that one.
That's different. As the host of an "ask me" thread, I'm obligated to answer (or at least address) any question that's posted in it, while no one's expected to leave feedback on other people's feedback. :p I certainly appreciate getting responses from the members whose work I review, but I don't hold them to it. :)
Of course I won't keep pestering you about it if you don't want to use a chat program. But rest assured that chat program or no chat program I wouldn't want to know your name if you don't want me to know it (nor would I pass it on to anyone if you told it to me). There is nothing selfish about trying to keep ones name secret in the internet. While I don't make my first name a secret I do try to keep my last name out of public messages as it is the combination of first and last name that allows for others to identify you or find more information etc. I would be happy to chat with you and think that it would be really interesting, but having now pestered you after telling that I wouldn't pester you about it I will do my best at least not to continue this pestering :lol
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to chat with you. Seeing as you don't like PMs, and our e-mail discussions have generally been very slow, a chat program sounds like the best way to have a conversation with you. I'm just stuck on how to set up a chat program account that will allow me to communicate with you. :confused
-
Journey Into Blacksun will feature the kids of the gang, instead of the gang of seven themselves.
What is your opinion of this? Do you think that the new characters give oppertunity for more development, or that it is too much of a deviation from the spirit of the Land Before Time?
-
How was your trip? :)
-
Journey Into Blacksun will feature the kids of the gang, instead of the gang of seven themselves.
What is your opinion of this? Do you think that the new characters give oppertunity for more development, or that it is too much of a deviation from the spirit of the Land Before Time?
On one hand, I am sad that the story won't be from the point of view of the LBT characters I know and love, and I do have some fear that it almost won't feel like a LBT story with its cast of characters that are in many ways similar to the original gang, but not the same. On the other hand, you have already pulled off stories and characters that I never expected to be as good as they turned out, and I have read at least one other LBT fanfic (an unfinished story by Almaron) that centered entirely around OCs, with no canon LBT character playing more than a marginal role, and yet still managed to be very good (at least in my opinion). I trust your writing ability to create another great LBT story from this premise. :yes
How was your trip? :)
It was fantastic. :smile We didn’t have time for nearly all of the things I had hoped to do, but we had a lot of fun. :yes As I know you’ve seen, I gave a brief overview of my trip here (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=8269&view=findpost&p=9204824); if you want to know anything more specific about my vacation, just ask. :D
The museum visit was especially enjoyable because my brother and I met a guy in the Dinosaurs & Fossils exhibit who saw that we were interested in prehistoric creatures, and spent quite some time conversing with us, showing us several fossil replicas that weren’t displayed in the exhibit, and telling us about the fossils. One of the things we learned from him was that you can tell whether or not a dinosaur had cheeks covering the sides of its jaws, and how far they would have extended, by looking at the neurovascular foramina; small holes around the edges of the mouth that supported blood and nerve passages. He pointed out that an Allosaurus skull had several prominent neurovascular foramina along most of the length of the jaws, so the only fleshy tissue between its jaws would have been at the very back; in short, it had no cheeks. A “Camptosaurus” skull, however (Camptosaurus has recently been found to be the victim of a Brontosaurus-esque mix-up in which the skull of a related dinosaur, Theiophytalia, was mistakenly attributed to it, so most museums and artistic representations of Camptosaurus show it with the wrong head) had very few, if any, foramina along its entire mouth, so it probably had cheeks that began just behind the beak at the front of its jaws. He also gave us a little test to see if we could identify a cast of a certain fossil. It was about a foot and a half long, gently curved, and pointed at one end. He told us that he frequently showed to kids who visited the museum, and that they had variously identified as a claw, a tooth, a rib, a beak, a horn, a spike, and even a tail. My brother and I both recognized it immediately: the claw of a Therizinosaurus cheloniformis. :lol
Our first visit to the Mall of America was just my brother and me (I think our dad came in, too, but he never crossed paths with us). We mostly just wandered around, checking out stores we’d never seen before and eating dinner. The store we spent the longest at was an old favorite of ours, the Rainforest CafÈ, a restaurant decorated to look like a rainforest, with fake vines and plants covering the ceiling, walls, and fake trees and rocks that were everywhere; cylindrical tanks of tropical fish; recordings of rainforest sounds and thunder; lights that would periodically go dark and flash to simulate a storm with lightning; a system of “troughs” (made to look like rock) with water sprinkling into them from above, to create the sound and appearance of rain; and animatronic creatures such as giant butterflies and a crocodile lying in a pool that would growl, lurch forward, and open its jaws (The pool was filled with coins that people had thrown in, and my brother and I performed our tradition of attempting to “feed” donations to the crocodile, :p trying to toss pennies into its mouth. We both succeeded at least once).
On our second MOA trip the next morning, our main stop was Underwater Adventures, an aquarium in the east wing of the Mall, built entirely underground, and FILLED with tanks of aquatic animals, both freshwater and marine. We’ve been to it several times before, and never get tired of it. The highlight of the aquarium is the giant glass tunnel through a series of tanks, one filled with Minnesotan fish (e.g., sturgeon, bass, paddlefish, and the odd duck, the alligator gar, normally found much farther south), another featuring fish of the Amazon River (arapaima, arowana, pacu, various catfish), another coral reef creatures (tang, angelfish, butterflyfish, triggerfish), and an enormous one containing seven different species of sharks, two species of sea turtles, stingrays, sawfish, guitarfish, a shark ray, groupers, and various other kinds of fish (I’m guessing Alex would love this place :smile). Sadly the bamboo sharks and cownose rays that had formerly inhabited the aquarium’s touch tanks (basically an aquatic petting zoo) had “retired”.
The greatest mishap that occurred on the trip was that I forgot to recharge the battery of my digital camera after visiting the museum, so it was almost out of juice even before we were done with Underwater Adventures. Fortunately, I was able to buy another battery at the mall that was about three-quarters charged, which was enough to last me through most of the trip to the Minnesota Zoo.
We reached the Minnesota Zoo sometime after 1:00 (1:15?) in the afternoon, and stayed almost until closing time at 6:00, mainly because of me :p (I spend a long time at zoos, partly because I like to take so many pictures :P:). They had a temporary exhibit featuring animals of the African rainforest, including colobus monkeys, dwarf crocodiles, and red river hogs. I was a little disappointed, though, that the exhibit’s bat caveówhich I had previously read about in a brochureócontained only one species of bat (Eidolon helvum, the straw-colored fruit bat). Not only did I know the species well from the zoo back home, but there were supposed to be at least two others in the exhibit, according to the signs outside the enclosure. Moreover, both of the zoo’s nocturnal exhibits were undergoing (or had already gone) renovation, and the bats that used to be there were gone (It was the same case at the National Zoo when I went there last year <_<). I seem to have abysmal luck when it comes to seeing bats. :rolleyes
Still, the Minnesota Zoo was great. At 3:00 we watched the KAYTEE World of Birds Show, a presentation featuring trained birds that would fly or run out to a handler who would share facts about them. The first bird to be introduced was described as being found around the world, sacred and symbolic in many cultures, and probably the single most important bird in human history………the chicken :p (specifically a red junglefowl). Other avian stars were a sulphur-crested cockatoo, a crowned crane, a red-tailed hawk, a peregrine falcon, a hyacinth macaw, a galah (rose-breasted cockatoo), a bald eagle, a spectacled owl, and a Eurasian eagle owl, plus some random birds that appeared briefly onstage early on in the show, such as a crowd of ducks. :lol After the show was finished, my brother and I walked most of the length of the zoo’s enormous outdoor trail. Towards the end of it we discovered another new exhibit (this one permanent) called “Russia’s Grizzly Coast”, which featured brown bears, Amur leopards, wild boars, sea otters, and other animals of northeastern Asia.
When I get the chance, I'll post some photos. ;)
-
The Far Away Home marathon is getting pretty close, with only two chapters left to go until the reckoning! With the ending so near, what are you expecting to occur?
I'm interested to hear your predictions or thoughts.
-
Awww…the end’s that near?! :cry :p
Well, here are the predictions I can think of at the moment:
ï The jungle runners ally themselves with the wingtails, though only with great reluctance and after tremendous adversity.
ï All of the central charactersóSky, Glide, Star, Eybron, and both sides of the gangówill converge at the Eye of the World or on the path to it.
ï We will learn the identity of Eybron’s informant.
ï There will be a large-scale battle between the wingtails and jungle runners and Tyron’s sharpteeth. (I’m not fond of the concept of wars in LBT, but that’s what I’m guessing will happen.)
ï We will at last meet Tyron in the flesh, and in some way or other, there will be a huge surprise or twist involved.
ï The Eye of the World (which we know is a weapon) will have its power demonstrated in a monumental and horrific way.
ï While I’m hoping that Siak will survive the story, I have a sad feeling that she will be killed in the final conflict. :neutral (If that happens, I hope she at least goes down fighting.)
ï At least one individual on one side of the conflict will turn on his or her own side.
ï At least one of the villains will meet his end at the Eye of the World.
ï Chomper will leave the gang after the battle, with Ruby being the last member of the gang to see him, and the only one who knows his true reason for doing so.
ï Thylo befriends Spike and returns to the valley with the gang, becoming Spike’s eventual mate (They say opposites attract, you know :p).
ï Sky and Glide form an uneasy truce, probably with Star’s encouragement.
-
We will learn the identity of Eybron’s informant
I was hoping it wasn't too confusing, but at the end of the third Act Eybron's informant was revealed to be Tyrus himself.
Prince Tyrus traded the locations of Sky (which he knew because he had a grudge against him, and held Redgar to follow him) and the Eye of the World (one of his father's secrets) in return for Eybron's assurance that he would kill both Sky and Tyron, allowing Tyrus to become king.
As for all the other predictions... no comment.
-
^ Oh. :oops Sorry, I guess I either forgot, or somehow that little detail went over my head.
-
What is/are your least favorite food(s)?
-
Wow, this is a surprisingly hard one. :blink: I’ve never been very fond of soup, probably because there’s something about the texture of most cooked vegetables that I really dislike. Ironically, while I love tomato sauce, I don’t care for whole tomatoes, either raw or cooked. I also don’t like meatloaf, mayonnaise, or oatmeal.
-
What is your favorite Dinosaur? ^_^
-
To answer that question, allow me to quote an earlier post (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=6185&view=findpost&p=9194827) in which I discussed the subject: :smile
I honestly can't choose a specific favorite dinosaur. There are so many that I find interesting, and I can't compare how much I like one versus another. One potential contender, however, is Therizinosaurus (the long-clawed herbivorous theropod I discussed in that earlier post). I've been a fan of this dinosaur since the fifth grade (though my level of interest in dinosaursóand in specific speciesóhas fluctuated considerably since then). I definitely tend to gravitate to the “weirder” dinosaurs, like the buck-toothed Incisivosaurus (http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/files/imagecache/news/files/news/20081216_incisivosaurus.jpg), long-fingered Epidendrosaurus and four-winged Microraptor “Guido” gui (left and right in this image (http://www.luisrey.ndtilda.co.uk/jpegs/256col/chin.jpg), respectively), and bristly Tianyulong (http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/03/tianyulong_-_a_fuzzy_dinosaur_that_makes_the_origin_of_feath.php), but I also have a nostalgic fondness for the “classics”: T. rex, Stegosaurus, Triceratops, and so on (some of which were actually quite weird themselves). Lately I've also been very interested in the horned dinosaurs (ceratopsians), which have recently been discovered to have undergone bizarre developmental changes over the course of their lives, the horns and skull bones actually changing shape as the dinosaur grew. Sauropods (“longnecks”), dromaeosaurs (“raptors”), oviraptorosaurs (the group Ruby belongs to), Dilophosaurus (the crested theropod inaccurately portrayed as a small, frilled venom-spitter in Jurassic Park), Ankylosaurus and its relatives, certain hadrosaurs like Parasaurolophus, and good ol’ egg-stealing Struthiomimus are also up there. And that’s not even going into pterosaurs and other prehistoric creatures that were not dinosaurs themselves.
I might add that if you include birds in your definition of "dinosaur", there are a great many varieties of themóboth living and extinctóthat I like as well. Among prehistoric birds, some of my faves are:
ï Phorusrhacids or terror birds: flightless predatory birds of the Americas.
ï Teratorns: ENORMOUS condor-like birds of prey (The largest, Argentavis, had a 25-foot wingspan :wow).
ï Gastornithiformes: giant flightless birds that were the dominant predators on Earth for a time shortly after the dinosaurs went extinct.
ï Dromornithids or mihirungs: another group of huge flightless birds, including possibly the largest birds to ever live. Surprisingly enough, their closest modern relatives are geese and ducks, which has led to one species, Dromornis stirtoni, being given perhaps the most awesome name ever: the Giant Demon Duck of Doom. :lol
ï The pelagornithids, pseudodontorns, or bony-toothed birds: albatross-like seabirds with bony outgrowths on the insides of their beaks that functioned as teeth. The largest of these birds were about the same size as Pteranodon (~20-foot wingspan), and probably filled a similar niche.
ï Plotopterids: North Pacific swimming seabirds resembling long-necked penguins or flightless cormorants, some of which were as tall as an adult human.
ï Confuciusornithids: ancient birds from the early Cretaceous, with toothless beaks and reduced tails like modern birds, but clawed wings like Archaeopteryx. Males had long, paired, streamer-like tail feathers.
ï Ichthyornithids: toothed gull-like seabirds of the late Cretaceous. I’m sure you’re familiar with one particular individual from a certain LBT movie. ;)
ï Hesperornithids: another group of toothed Cretaceous waterbirds. These, however, were flightless, and were so adapted for swimming that they could not even stand up on land, but had to slide on their bellies like seals.
ï Patagopteryx: a smallish flightless bird from the late Cretaceous of South America, one of the oldest known examples of a secondarily flightless bird (i.e., its ancestors once flew, but later lost that ability).
Among my favorite modern and recent birds are the crows and ravens, the kiwi (and pretty much any other endemic New Zealand bird, living or extinct), owls, woodpeckers, parrots, pigeons, hummingbirds, bowerbirds, lyrebirds, and birds of paradise. I may as well refer you to my list of favorite animals (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=4167&view=findpost&p=9206375) that I recently posted, since there are really too many birds I like to name here. (I hope you’re prepared for some heavy reading. :p)
Thank you for the question. :DD Even though I already answered that one, I enjoyed responding to it. Answering questions makes me happy. :^.^:
-
What is the dinosaur in your avatar
-
First off, thanks. I really needed a question, even if it was one that had been asked before. :p
My avatar is a Lystrosaurus; not a dinosaur, actually, but a dicynodont, a relative of mammals from before the time of dinosaurs. The first line in my signature mentions what it is. You can also read a more in-depth explanation of my avatar here (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=6185&view=findpost&p=9202440), and an even more thorough one here (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=8178&view=findpost&p=9202510) in my art thread (which I REALLY need to update :rolleyes).
-
Does Sasquatch continue to steal/attack socks :lol?
-
Thank you so much for the question! :DD
Sasquatch has actually never stolen socks, just attacked them while people's feet are in them. :lol He hasn't been doing it so much lately, except to my mom (We've hypothesized that it's because she has a habit of feeding him scraps of turkey, so he thinks he can get treats out of her if he pesters her enough :rolleyes). It's probably because he's been spending more time outdoors, which has provided him with an outlet for his wildness.
He's developed a couple of other bad habits to make up for it, though. On several occasions, he's caught (and usually killed) voles, shrews, and occasionally small birds (though I suppose it’s technically not a “bad” habit; it's just his nature as a cat). A while ago he also started chasing deer. :wow Two particular deer, at least: a doe and her fawn who periodically visit our yard. I've never witnessed it myself, but on two occasions (August 29th and September 1st), my youngest brother and a think a few of my other family members saw Sasquatch charging across the lawn towards the deer, who retreated. A few days later, while the deer were in the yard, I stepped out on the back porch to watch them, followed by Sasquatch. The deer didn't pay me much heed, but when they saw Sasquatch, they started backing away into the woods. :lol He's becoming a real terror of the outdoors, it seems. We just hope that the deer won't ever retaliate if he continues to try to chase them, and that he won't bother any bucks.
Also, when we leave the butter dish on the table, Sasquatch often jumps up and starts licking the residue that's not covered by the lid. And I just discovered less than an hour ago that he's figured out how to nudge open a cupboard door, so that he can squeeze into the space underneath the sink.
Finally, while it's no fault of Sasquatch's, a couple of weeks ago, my sister found two insects that had fallen off of him that she said were impossible to crush. I recognized them as cat fleas (Ctenocephalides felis). This worried us because we treat Sasquatch with flea and tick medication every month. We were concerned that we either weren't correctly applying the medicine (it goes on the back of his neck and shoulders), he was managing to lick most of it off or otherwise remove it, or it wasn't working, and decided to take him to the vet (He was due for a checkup, anyway). Unfortunately, he got out of the house on the day of the appointment, and we had to reschedule it because we couldn't find him in time. :rolleyes When we did make it to the vet's and discuss the issue, we decided that it was likely that Sasquatch had picked up the fleas outside, and that his fur was just so long and thick that the fleas hadn't had time to make it to his skin (where, presumably, they would have been killed by the medicine) before he brushed them off. So, fortunately, it probably wasn't much to worry about.
Whoa, looks like I overfilled the Answer Cup on that one. :p Guess that's what happens when I go too long without a question. :P:
-
What is your most memorable/favourite moment in Far Away Home so far?
-
Probably the eruption of the Black Mountain at the end of Act III.
-
Have you ever considered changing your name to "Gondwanaland" or "Gondwana"?
-
At what age did a first get interested in "The Three Stooges" :lol?
-
Have you ever considered changing your name to "Gondwanaland" or "Gondwana"?
I have thought of "Gondwana" (I greatly prefer it over "Gondwanaland") as being a good alternative or "spin-off" screen name for me (like for an e-mail account), as it sounds cool, is easier to spell and pronounce than "Pangaea", and relates to Pangaea. When I joined the GOF, I originally thought of calling myself "Panzoa" (the name of the world in which my planned book series is set), but because I was so shy I decided on a similar but more anonymous name. Afterwards I thought about changing it, but I didn't know how, and figured that it wasn't possible (This was all before I made my first post, three months after I actually joined). At this point, my name is so entrenched in the GOF and in the minds of most everyone here that I don't really want to change it; I'd feel strange having a different screen name and all the older posts calling me by a different name.
At what age did a first get interested in "The Three Stooges" :lol?
I know I saw my first Stooge episodes (“False Alarms”, “Three Pests In A Mess”, and “Flat Foot Stooges”) in early December during my high school years, and I'm pretty sure it was 2004, when I was sixteen. I'd heard references to them before, and my mother had told me about them, but I had never given them much thought until then. Of course, upon seeing them, I became an instant fan (as did my two brothers), and wanted more. :lol
-
Are your siblings fans of LBT?
-
As far as I know, they’re not. We all used to be, back in our younger days, but I don’t believe any of my siblings has watched a LBT move since at least 2002 (the most recent installment they’ve seen being The Stone of Cold Fire). I haven’t actually told anyone else in my family about my rediscovered LBT fandom, or about the GOF. The subject of LBT has briefly cropped up in conversation a handful of times, but I’ve always been too shy to mention that I’m into it again now. (It isn't impossible, though, that any of my siblings have watched LBT in private, like I do.)
-
Pangy, do you hate Gothmog? :(
(Kinda snickering in real because the question is really out of the clear blue :lol)
Also, were you familier with the Dark Crystal? :p
-
Hmm…It’s been a while since I’ve watched The Return of the King (and AGES since I saw it for the first time and got my first impressions), but I don’t recall ever especially disliking him. If anything, I thought his unique, tumorous-looking appearance was interesting, and liked how he was so easy to distinguish from the other Orcs (Uruk-hai? I can never tell which is which :wacko). And although I may be forgetting something, I don’t recall him as doing anything in particular to warrant him as an especially evil, vicious, sadistic, or otherwise despicable villain. By far the villains/antagonists that I loved to hate the most in LotR were Grima Wormtongue, Denethor, and the Mouth of Sauron, all of whom either creeped me out, sickened me with their behavior, or both. :p
As for The Dark Crystal, I do remember seeing part of the movie way back in middle school (I was in a room reserved for “special needs” students, and another student was watching it). I was pretty squeamish back then, so some parts of the movie creeped me out quite a bit and put me off from watching (namely a scene with the Skeksis at a banquet; I had a hard time eating dinner that night :lol), but the creatures did intrigue me. I’ve been meaning to watch it for a while now, but these days I somehow can barely find the time to watch anything. :blink: :rolleyes
I appreciate the questions. :^.^:
-
Has Sasquatch become a regular escape artist, or was this his first disappearing act?
-
Ever since he first decided that he likes being outside, he's made a habit of slipping out the door at any opportunity. Many times we'd walk up to the front door and see him waiting inside and think, “Uh-oh, someone get ready to catch the cat!” We've tried to limit his outdoor excursions to the daytime, but sometimes he gets out in the evening; on a few of these occasions he's stayed out all night (worrying us considerably), but he's never been gone for this long. :( I wish we'd kept him an indoor cat. :bang
-
Is he neutered by any chance? I understand that helps reduce problems with running away.
-
Yes, he is neutered. He's also microchipped, so if someone were to find him and bring him to a vet or animal shelter, they would know who he belongs to. Our concern is that he's been hurt or worse by another animal or a car, or stuck up a tree, or something. :unsure: We've already checked the city animal shelter, and distributed flyers around the neighborhood in case anyone's seen or found him.
-
Wait, what happened with Sasquatch? :o
-
On Sunday evening he got out of the house (usually we try to keep him indoors at night) and didn’t come back the next morning. My whole family was worried because he’d never been gone for so long. We searched for him all over our property, the woods around our house, and along the nearby roads, with no luck. I put his food dish outside in the hopes of attracting him. My dad and I checked the animal shelter to see if anyone had found him and brought him there, but he wasn’t there either. We even made flyers with his picture and description and distributed them around the neighborhood. Then, on Wednesday, I was at the dining room table, working on a project, and heard some slightly distressed-sounding meowing. I looked up and saw him on the back porch, looking slightly damp and scruffy, but otherwise okay (It turned out that he had been accidentally trapped in the garage three nights earlier). I of course immediately dropped what I was doing and let him in. He was very hungry and rather thirsty, but still full of energy; minutes later he was pouncing after a catnip toy tied to a string and gnawing my feet. :lol The whole family was ecstatic to have him back, and it was a big load off everyone’s shoulders because we weren’t all worrying about him anymore. So, in short, he’s okay now. :)
-
I'm sorry I'm late to congratulate you about Sasquatch's return :)
I'm sure it must be an awesome relief.
-
You've shown us some of your pets in the "Show Me" section but (if there were no limitations i.e. conversation laws, you could keep them happily) what other animals would you have a pet?
-
I'm sorry I'm late to congratulate you about Sasquatch's return :)
I'm sure it must be an awesome relief.
Thanks, Malte. :)
Yes, it is. :yes I felt SO much more relaxed for the rest of the day.
You've shown us some of your pets in the "Show Me" section but (if there were no limitations i.e. conversation laws, you could keep them happily) what other animals would you have a pet?
Conservation laws, you mean? I've never heard any laws concerning having conversations with wild animals. :p
Sorry, I couldn't help myself. :P:
Assuming the animals had not been illegally taken from the wild, were comfortable in captivity, didn't mind people, weren't aggressive, and I had the means to take proper care of them, my choices would probably come down to how much attention I would need to give them (I like keeping animals like cats and leopard geckos because you need to devote relatively little time to caring for them, and it’s easy for a friend to look after them if you leave on a vacation or other trip).
Owning bats would be nice; if they were insect eaters, they would be very useful to have around (the problem would be housetraining them). I might be afraid of letting them outside, for fear of owls and hawks getting them. It would be neat to have a monitor lizard, whether a small species like a spiny-tailed goanna or a big one like a Komodo dragon (though some monitors have venomous bites, so I’d have to be careful about that).
I’ll just list some other ideas:
Terrarium
Bearded dragons
Blue-tongued skinks
Prehensile-tailed skinks
Ball pythons
Corn snakes
Hognose snakes
Horned frogs
African bullfrogs
Caecilians
Tortoises
Land hermit crabs
Tarantulas
Whip spiders
Millipedes
Weta
Aquarium
Small sharks (e.g., horns, leopards, bamboos, swells)
Skates
Rays (they’d either have to be stingless species, or I’d have to be able to safely remove the stings)
Elephantnose fish
Cuttlefish
Octopuses
Olms
Axolotls
Birds
Ravens
Magpies
Crows
Chickens
Owls
Ducks
Parrots
Budgerigars
Kakapo
Emus
Kiwi (provided I could get one that didn’t have a terrible temper)
Mammals
Pot-bellied pigs
Binturongs
Skunks (scent glands removed, preferably)
Armadillos
Porcupines
Alpacas
Degus
Guinea pigs
Capybaras
Fennec foxes
Hedgehogs
Pygmy marmosets
Any kind of small cat
Granted, for most of the animals named here, I don’t know too much about the amount of attention they would need, but if it was practical for me, I’d love to keep them.
-
Conservation laws, you mean? I've never heard any laws concerning having conversations with wild animals. :p
Sorry, I couldn't help myself. :P:
D'oh! Stupid fingers were typing faster than I was reading! :lol Don't worry, I had that one coming. That was too wonderfully set up not to act upon! :DD :smile Good one! Nice selection of animals too ;)
-
That is a neat list of animals indeed :yes.
What is the scariest movie you've ever seen :)?
-
It would appear that no thread on the GOF is exempt from my procrastinatory tendencies. :slap
Anyway, sorry for the wait.
Scariest movie…That’s a hard one, especially since my level of scaredy-catness in regards to movies has changed immensely over my lifetime; the first time I watched LBT II (I was probably eight or nine years old), I turned off the TV at the point when Littlefoot was asleep and the grass behind him started rustling, because I was afraid that it would be Ozzy and Strut jumping out to attack him (A few minutes later my siblings called me back into the room, telling me that it was just Cera). Needless to say, scary movies were never my thing, and I only started watching them once I became interested in the creatures, monsters, and aliens that were often featured in such movies.
As for which movie I found the scariest, it’s hard to say. When I was in high school, I rented a library copy of Alien and watched it alone, and I couldn’t help but fast-forward at several points when I expected that something was going to suddenly jump out (I knew all about the creatures already; they were nowhere near as scary as the atmosphere of the film). I also recall seeing a werewolf movie called Dog Soldiers on the Sci-Fi channel that freaked me out quite a bit when I first saw it. (I’m pretty sure I watched both of these movies within about the same two-or-three-year time frame.)
-
^
If you didn't like Alien and if you ever get the chance to go to Switzerland, I recommend that you do NOT go to the HR Giger Alien Museum near the castle in GruyerÈ. Sure the bar is cool but not the actual museum itself...*shudders*, do not ever want to visit there again...a truly disturbing mind...
Have you ever seen Simon's Cat?
As a fellow slave to a cat, I thought it might be nice to link you up with this. Perhaps you can recognise some of Sasquatch's traits in the animated shorts? I know that I can with Mozart!
http://www.simonscat.com/films.html (http://www.simonscat.com/films.html)
-
Heh, it's been awhile since I posted a question here. :)
I've asked this on my facebook, but I want to hear what your answer would be:
When you have friends, what are your conditions for them if you have any? Such as should they have your same interests, beliefs, etc?
-
^
If you didn't like Alien and if you ever get the chance to go to Switzerland, I recommend that you do NOT go to the HR Giger Alien Museum near the castle in GruyerÈ. Sure the bar is cool but not the actual museum itself...*shudders*, do not ever want to visit there again...a truly disturbing mind...
Have you ever seen Simon's Cat?
As a fellow slave to a cat, I thought it might be nice to link you up with this. Perhaps you can recognise some of Sasquatch's traits in the animated shorts? I know that I can with Mozart!
http://www.simonscat.com/films.html (http://www.simonscat.com/films.html)
Oh, no, it wasn’t that I disliked the film (on the contrary, I’m rather fond of the Alien films, mainly because I think the creatures are cool :p); it’s just that, for a high-strung person like me watching it for the first time, the tense atmosphere was really nerve-racking. D8
Yes, I have seen “Simon’s Cat! :D Only two episodes so far: “Cat Man Do” and “The Box”. I didn’t know there were others; thanks for the link! :DD And yes, even in those (mainly the latter), I can find a number of behaviors that I've seen Sasquatch exhibit:
ï Sleeping on the same bed as me.
ï Climbing into boxes (I’ve shown you the photographic evidence :p).
ï Knocking boxes and bags on their sides as he exits them.
ï Jumping on top of precarious objects and balancing there.
ï Batting around loose pieces of paper and cardboard.
ï Reaching his paws out through a small opening in a box.
ï Pushing around an upside-down box from inside like a turtle (I think I’ve seen him do this).
ï Somersaulting while playing (In many cases the plaything is a tasty sock-covered foot :p).
Heh, it's been awhile since I posted a question here. :)
I've asked this on my facebook, but I want to hear what your answer would be:
When you have friends, what are your conditions for them if you have any? Such as should they have your same interests, beliefs, etc?
I do tend to feel more comfortable with someone if they have a lot in common with me, largely because I'm otherwise constantly worried about accidentally offending them, or getting into an argument with them (I hate arguments). They don't have to share all of the same interests as me; just a few major ones that we can talk about. It also helps if I can have long, engaging conversations with the person; that they don't get bored while talking to me and vice versa. I almost never discuss topics like politics, religion, or sexuality, so it doesn't matter that much if the person has different backgrounds or opinions in those areasóthough it has its limits: I seriously doubt I could get along with a Christian fundamentalist, or a political extremist. And, of course, I don't care to be friends with people who are racist or disregard the environment.
-
What is your favorite part about your volunteering at the aquarium :)?
-
One thing I always enjoy is when I invite people to pet the lake sturgeon in the touch tank, and at first they're reluctant or nervous about it, but after they touch them they're surprised at how interesting they feel (sturgeon have leathery, sandpapery skin and ridges of smooth bony plates), and find that they actually enjoy the experience so much that they often end up stroking the fish again, and inviting friends and family members to do the same. (When I was at the aquarium on Halloween, one girl showed up who said she was scared to touch fish, but at the same time really wanted to try it; she pet the sturgeon, and for the rest of the afternoon she kept coming back to do it again.) I also really like to see people's reactions when I tell them facts about the animals (such as that the largest lake sturgeon ever caught was 9 feet long and 310 pounds), not to mention answering questions for them. ;) So I guess I could say that my favorite part of the job is inspiring and encouraging visitors to be interested in wildlife. (Besides conserving the animals themselves, I believe that's the most important reason to have zoos and aquariums; allowing people to see animals close upóand even interact with some of themómotivates people to appreciate and care about wildlife in a way that nature shows on TV just can't do.)
-
I have a question.:D
Well I have two if you don't mind?
-Do you have shortened variants of your username? Like nicknames?
I have two...''Safty'' and ''Saftykins''..that I got on TLKFAA....how I managed that I have no idea.
-How is the Sasquatch?
Does he ever puff himself up when he sees the vaccum cleaner?
Mozard does that...it's highly amusing...then he struts around it...poor guy.
(I have asked you three questions, but think of the third as a bonus.) :)
-
I'm very glad to receive more questions, Saft. Thank you! :smile
Do you have shortened variants of your username? Like nicknames?
I used to think that it wasn't possible to come up with a decent “nicknamey” abbreviation of “Pangaea”…until babidikrakenguard started calling me “Pangy” :lol (She tells me it's pronounced “Pan-jee”).
How is the Sasquatch?
He's doing okay at the moment. (Did you hear about the recent incident (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=6185&view=findpost&p=9211944) when he went missing for a few days?) He got out of the house earlier this evening; I dropped what I was doing and went outside with a bag of kitty treats to bring him back in. It was dark out, and when Sasquatch ran onto a section of the road that was in the shadow of some trees and not illuminated by any streetlights, all I could see of him was an occasional dim glimpse of the light brownish patch of fur under his chin and throat; I practically had to find him by touch. It didn't help that he kept alternately approaching me to get the treats and darting farther away (I think he may have been following another animal like a deer or rabbit, because I heard something else moving around on the side of the road). Eventually, I dropped some treats on the ground for him, he stood still long enough for me to discern where he was, and I made a successful lunge for him, just barely grabbing ahold of his belly with one hand. He didn't have time to eat any of the kitty treats, and I couldn't find them on the ground in the dark (especially while holding Sasquatch), so after I brought him in I gave him three replacement treats, which he eagerly devoured.
Starting next Friday, my family and I are going to be leaving town for a week; we'll be leaving Sasquatch in a kennel where we're promised he'll be given plenty of attention and playtime (we got a tour of it last night); he'll have a lot less freedom, though. We'll be leaving his Grinch and maybe a couple of his other toys with him, in the hopes of making him more comfortable. This is the first time we've left Sasquatch alone for this long, and we're hoping that he'll be okay. :unsure:
Does he ever puff himself up when he sees the vaccum cleaner?
I don't know…the only time I remember seeing Sasquatch react to a vacuum cleaner was this summer, when my dad turned it on in front of him. His reaction was to scramble, leap, and run into the next room as fast as possible. Unfortunately, I was holding him at the time, and was left with a number of scratches on my chest, collar, and shoulder :lol (Evidently a turtleneck shirt doesn't make for adequate kitty-proof armor :p). He may have arched his back a little, but I can't remember if he puffed up. He's such a fluffy cat already that it might be hard to tell.
-
Do you ever get sick of being asked so many questions?
-
No, nah, uh-uh, negative, nope nope nope, and soitenly not! :smile :p
I love questions. I don't know why. I guess I just enjoy telling people stuff. I seriously doubt I'll ever get tired of answering them.
-
Which of the three to you like best?
1. Tyrannosaurus Rex
2. Giganotosaurus
3. Spinosaurus Eqgypticus
Forgive any spelling mistakes.
-
It's really hard to say. I like all three of them, in different ways. I suppose I have a sort of emotional attachment to Tyrannosaurus rex; when I first became interested in dinosaurs, it was definitely my favorite (in no small part due to Sharptooth).
When I first heard about Giganotosaurus carolinii, I was enthralled by the idea of a predatory dinosaur bigger than T. rex, and for a long time I liked it much better. (For some reason I always found Giganotosaurus more interesting than Carcharodontosaurus saharicus. :confused)
I don't exactly remember when or why I became crazy about Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, but it might have been when I bought a bookóA Field Guide to Dinosaurs: The Essential Handbook for Travelers in the Mesozoicóillustrated by one of my favorite paleo-artists, Luis V. Rey, who depicted it as looking something like a brightly colored cross between a sail-backed dragon and a giant pelican. It just looked so cool to me that it outstripped both Giganotosaurus and T. rex in personal favoritism.
I suppose I would say that I like Spinosaurus the most by a tiny margin, only because it’s more unusual than the other two. And I have a nostalgic fondness for T. rex that places it slightly above Giganotosaurus (helped by the fact that the latter is no longer so special, due to several related dinosaurs of similar size and appearance being discovered). But it’s extremely close. All three are rather fascinating dinosaurs: Tyrannosaurus’s bite force and sense of smell were among the highest of any dinosaur; there is evidence that Giganotosaurus hunted in packs to take down sauropods; Spinosaurus had sensory pits in its snout that it could have used to detect movement of prey while submerged up to its nostrils (which were located almost midway between the tip of its nose and its eyes) in water.
-
Ah yes someone else who likes Spinosaurus :DD
It's my favorite of the 3 for just about the same reasons. I like all it's traits, the long snout, the sail on its back and the idea of a therapod that hunted on land like any other and in water maybe like a crocodilian.
Just for the sake of saying my 2nd and 3rd favorite dinosaurs or Carcharodontosaurus and Baryonyx respectively.
-
-Are you planning on getting Sasquatch a Christmas present?
-If so, then what are you planning on getting him?
(Oh, by the way, don't worry too much about leaving or having left Sasquatch at the Kennel. They are always generally looked after and whilst it may be very strange for them (and you of course :) ), they do generally adapt and begin to enjoy it, then they don't want to go home afterwards.)
-
Sorry for the delayed response.
Sasquatch will definitely be getting something for Christmas, but I'm not sure what it'll be. Being a cat, he's paradoxcially easy to please and hard to buy for; :p chances are we'll buy him a special toy, and he'll be more interested in playing with the crumpled wrapping paper. :lol Last year his favorite present was the stuffed toy Grinch (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=644&view=findpost&p=9203849), which wasn't even meant for him (Fortunately the gift's intended recipient was more than happy to let Sasquatch have it :wub). It's hard to go wrong with catnip; maybe a flexible stick with a big feather on the end (Our old cat, Softkitty, had one of those, and loved it). Or perhaps we should just buy him a bag of kitty treats, give him a few, and let him play with the wrapping.
Thanks, Saft, not just for the question but for trying to allay my concerns about leaving Sasquatch in the kennel. :) Here's hoping you're right about him enjoying it.
-
Well, I really hope that Sasquatch is okay in the kennel. It's always hard to leave them when you have to go away.
You know, I didn't realise that you drew until I read that you had made your own avatar and the birthday gifts that you've made people. So my question is, and I apologise if it's been mentioned before, you've got too many pages on your thread now :p , but what age did you learn to draw? Did it come naturally to you or did you learn through art classes at school? Do you have a favourite media that you like to use? (1)
(1) Just in case, I mean media as art tools like Traditional pencil art and Digital art like a pen thing..which I can't remember the name for it....
-
Where can those colored pencils mentioned in your post in my fanart thread be found? I use Crayola brand colored pencils, and as much as I try to avoid the lines colored pencils leave, they still manage to do that :rolleyes.
-
Gack! :slap I'm so sorry for not responding! Somehow I didn't notice that I had new questions! :bang
Well, I really hope that Sasquatch is okay in the kennel. It's always hard to leave them when you have to go away.
You know, I didn't realise that you drew until I read that you had made your own avatar and the birthday gifts that you've made people. So my question is, and I apologise if it's been mentioned before, you've got too many pages on your thread now :p , but what age did you learn to draw? Did it come naturally to you or did you learn through art classes at school? Do you have a favourite media that you like to use? (1)
(1) Just in case, I mean media as art tools like Traditional pencil art and Digital art like a pen thing..which I can't remember the name for it....
First, in case you didn't see me mention it elsewhere, Sasquatch apparently did quite well in the kennel while we were gone, and didn't seem any worse for wear when we brought him home. With the exception of not being able to go outside due to it being winter, he has returned to his familiar lifestyle at the house without a hitch, and is apparently the same as ever. :smile
I don't know the exact age I was, but I know I was drawing when I was in preschool, and possibly even before then. We still have a picture of an an alligator and a crocodile that I drew back then (I saw it several months to a few years ago, but don't know where it is now). Even at that age, I was keen on scientific accuracy; I drew the crocodile with the distinctive lower tooth that remains visible when it shuts its mouth (in alligators, only the upper teeth protrude when the jaws are closed). :lol
My first medium, as I recall, was crayons; I later moved on to markers, and then pencils (I like them because, if you make a mistake while drawing or coloring, it can be erased :p). For several years I also made pictures on the computer on a program called ClarisWorks, which has been discontinued now (hence I no longer use it). Today I do almost all of my drawing with pencil and colored pencil, and recently I've started scanning my pictures to the computer and cleaning them up using Photoshop. I'd also like to learn to use a drawing tablet, though I don't see the chances of that happening anytime soon to be very good. :(
Where can those colored pencils mentioned in your post in my fanart thread be found? I use Crayola brand colored pencils, and as much as I try to avoid the lines colored pencils leave, they still manage to do that :rolleyes.
I bought all of the Prismacolor Premier colored pencils I currently own at Michael's (an arts and crafts store, in case you're not familiar with it). I have a set of 36 pencils, and about 30 additional ones that I purchased individually. However, the set cost something like $45, and the other pencils were about $2 apiece (though I did make use of coupons). I'm still interested in getting more colors (though I've been procrastinating in doing so), and the next time I buy them, it will probably be from one of the two Websites below, both of which sell them for much less:
http://www.dickblick.com/products/prismaco...olored-pencils/ (http://www.dickblick.com/products/prismacolor-colored-pencils/)
http://www.jerrysartarama.com/discount-art...red-Pencils.htm (http://www.jerrysartarama.com/discount-art-supplies/Colored-Pencils/Prismacolor-Colored-Pencils-and-Sets/Prismacolor-Colored-Pencils.htm)
I've also seen the sets (containing 12, 24, 36, 48, 72, 120, and 132 different pencils, respectively) for sale on Amazon.com.
P.S. I use Crayola pencils to some extent, too (mainly to provide additional colors to my palette); before I discovered Prismacolor, they were the kind I most often used. I also have some RoseArt pencils, but personally I find them to be poorer for coloring than either of the other two brands. I'd definitely say that Prismacolor Premier is superior to both.
-
are you planning to see any movies this holiday season?
-
I'll probably go to see Tangled a second time (saw it on Friday), and maybe The Chronicles of Narnia.
-
Do you think Star survives until the end of Far Away Home?
-
Well, if Cloud is Sky and Star's son, I'd think that she'd have to (unless she lays the egg before the end of the story, which I'm doubtful she has had or will have time for). However, the fact that you are asking this is making me suspicious… :p
(For the record, I hope she does survive.)
-
Remember that Star forgets to tell Sky about 'the egg', implying that it may have already been laid.
-
^ My suspicions that she will die have sadly increased. :(
-
I'm not sure if I've asked this before. How does Sasquatch react to snow :lol?
-
First off, thank you, thank you, thank you for the question! :DD I could really use some questions right now; they both make me feel cheerier and oil the gears of my brain by forcing me to think.
I haven't spent a lot of time watching Sasquatch when he's outside in the snow (we try to keep him inside usually), but he doesn't seem to take much interest in it. I do know that he walks through it sometimes, because there have been occasions when we let him out the front door and he shows up at the back door, not to mention the footprints he leaves. Despite his insulating fluffiness, he rarely spends more than a few minutes outside at a time; I think he doesn't like the cold.
There was one occasion earlier this winter when I saw Sasquatch in the middle of the front yard, standing in deep snow that probably reached at least up to his belly. It was hard for him to walk normally in it, so he made these hilarious-looking leaps through the snow up to the front porch, :lol leaving a series of bizarre asymmetrical imprints in the snow where all of his legs (and probably his body as well) impacted it at once. I think I may have seen him make one or two of these; then I looked away for a moment, and when I turned back, he was already on the porch, having left a perfectly straight trail of those funny-looking imprints over a distance of several feet. Even in the snow he's pretty fast. :!
-
(http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~rcb7/Cret.jpg)
In the globe on the upper-left, what is the name of the modern-day North American continent. The globe is from the early Cretaceous period. Thanks.
-
I believe it's referred to as Laurentia, or the North American craton (a craton is basically the core of a tectonic plate; the part that remains geologically stable throughout the plate's history). However, it's not a term specific to the Early Cretaceous. As far as I know, continents don't usually get different names at specific time periods because they are geographically and/or geologically different at that time. Each tectonic plate has an established name that never changes, regardless of the time period. In cases when two or more plates are positioned such that the continental landmasses on top of them merge together to form a supercontinent, a name is often given to it; for example Laurasia (the North American and Eurasian plates), Gondwana (South America, Africa, India, Antarctica, and Australia), and of course Pangaea (all of the continental plates).
Mind you, there's enough I don't know about geology that I could be wrong about the “continents in prehistoric times not being given special names” thing. But it seems to me that geologists studying how plates and landmasses move and change over time probably wouldn't want lots of different names for every one just to identify them at various stages of Earth's history.
I hope some of that is helpful, and thank you for the question! :)
-
Thus far, who is your favourite character in Far Away Home and why?
Also... do you like any types of alcoholic drinks? If so, which ones and when?
-
Thus far, who is your favourite character in Far Away Home and why?
Hoo boy…I have such a hard time choosing favorite characters… :rolleyes I admire your ability to write stories with complex, realistic, three-dimensional characters; even the ones in Far Away Home whom I do not find entirely likable (e.g., Glide, Eybron, even Sky to some extent) are interesting to me. Doesn't help that since I've been reading Far Away Home over the course of more than a year, there's a lot of details I can't remember that could potentially affect my answer. :unsure: Oh well; I'll just base my answer on what recollection I have.
Gentry is a character who has interested me from the start, partly because I like Struthiomimus, :p but also because, as you mentioned once, egg stealers have the distinction of effectively being able to choose the lifestyle of either a sharptooth or a leafeater (more precisely, they can either stick to plants and coexist with leafeaters, or live as nest-raiders and be seen as enemies). Gentry, having a taste for eggs but being a sympathetic character who is more amiable than the egg stealers we have seen in the LBT series, is sort of inbetween; he'd have a hard time living peaceably in a place like the Great Valley, but he's clearly a nice guy. Misfit characters like that just appeal to me, I guess.
I've also grown rather fond of Aizon. Just the fact that he wears glasses that he made himself endears him to me. :lol He's a somewhat mysterious character with a lot of untold backstory (such as his history with Siak and the jungle runners, and the other wingtails, for that matter). There's also his unique political standing; he's the only wingtail character who has been seen to be actively and devotedly engaged in ending the conflict between the wingtails and the jungle runners. Then there's the fact that he's friendly to dinosaurs outside his species, which is just a likable trait.
I'd also be lying if I didn't say Siak, not so much because she's my OC, but because, similarly to Gentry, she's in the interesting position of being amiable towards leafeaters while having a carnivorous diet. While I've been shy to say so, I'd really like to see you do a chapter on her for Ruby in the Jungle, just because I'm interested to see what you'll do with her. :yes
If non-OCs count, then I really like your portrayal of Ruby. She's a character I was fond of in the first place, and I think it's great that she has such a key role in this story. (It's something I haven't seen in a lot of other LBT fanfics.) I'm finding it a little hard to elaborate, but suffice to say that I admire her sense of duty and leadership in this story.
Also... do you like any types of alcoholic drinks? If so, which ones and when?
I very rarely drink any alcohol. While I like to occasionally taste new alcoholic drinks, almost every kind I have tried so far has been far too bitter for my tastes. An exception is champagne, which I first tried at a pre-graduation dinner ceremony this May, and again last month after my grandmother's funeral. It tastes okay to me; maybe the fizziness of it covers the bitterness somewhat. However, the last time I drank it, I felt a little woozy and unfocused afterwards (well, more than usual :p), even though I'd only had one glass. Evidently my body doesn't metabolize alcohol very well, probably partly because I drink it so sparingly. Because my inclination to avoid the negative side affects of imbibing alcohol is stronger than whatever liking I may have for the flavor (I much prefer soda like Sprite and root beer anyway), even champagne isn't something I would typically drink outside of special occasions when it is readily available (i.e., I wouldn't bother to go out and buy a bottle for myself).
I also remember having one or two frozen margaritas (or a similar kind of drink) at a restaurant shortly after my graduation. I thought it was good, since the fruit flavor covered up the taste of the alcohol. Since I liked the flavor (and don't recall feeling any ill effects afterwards), there's a fairly good chance that I would order a beverage like that the next time I visit such a restaurant, though again it's not something I would drink on a regular basis.
-
Regarding one of our fav dinosaurs, Therizinosaurus. I'm confused on one aspect. Many stuff I read on it says the claws are three feet long; is that the measurement of the claw bone itself or is it with the added length of the sheath that would naturally cover it in life? I'm editing my Therizino story and want it to be as accurate on the physical description as possible.
Also concerning Therizino, what's your theory on its intelligence level? Do you think it would have the 'average' theropod intelligence due to it being in the theropod family; or the generally lower intelligence scale of the herbivores since it's said to eat plant matter?
Lastly..... do you like chocolate too? :smile
I'm not sure if these questions were asked to you already, as 20 pages is a lot to look through in a short time. If these were asked already, I give you my apologies for wasting your time. I also apologize for the questions not being very good ones too...
-
Not a question but...
MERRYCHRISTMAS!
-
Regarding one of our fav dinosaurs, Therizinosaurus. I'm confused on one aspect. Many stuff I read on it says the claws are three feet long; is that the measurement of the claw bone itself or is it with the added length of the sheath that would naturally cover it in life? I'm editing my Therizino story and want it to be as accurate on the physical description as possible.
Three feet is the estimated length of the living Therizinosaurus's longest claw, including the keratin sheath. The bony core of the clawóthe part that is preserved as a fossilóis 28 inches long.
Also concerning Therizino, what's your theory on its intelligence level? Do you think it would have the 'average' theropod intelligence due to it being in the theropod family; or the generally lower intelligence scale of the herbivores since it's said to eat plant matter?
You got me on this one. I actually don’t know. :wow It’s a really good question, though. I’m going to look into this subject. Actually, I have a relatively vague understanding of dinosaur intelligence (which is a difficult thing to determine, or even define, in itself). I know that the dromaeosaurs and troodontids have the largest brains in proportion to body size of any dinosaur, and coelurosaurs (the group of theropods that includes those families as well tyrannosaurs, ornithomimosaurs, therizinosaurs, oviraptorsaurs, alvarezsaurs, and birds), have proportionally larger brains than other theropods. Sauropods I know have the proportionally smallest brains among dinosaurs (though that’s not to say theyónor any other dinosaursówere stupid); thyreophorans’ (armored dinosaurs like stegosaurs and ankylosaurs) were slightly larger; and ornithopods such as hadrosaurs had relatively large brains, so that when they called to one another, they could process the information conveyed by different vocalizations. I’m not entirely sure where ceratopsians and pachycephalosaurs stand, though I know that the latter had quite small brains.
As for therizinosaurs, I’m guessing that the earlier species, which may have been more omnivorous, were closer to other theropods in terms of brain capacity, while it’s possible that later, more herbivorous species had proportionally smaller brains. However, as I said, I don’t know whether this is the case. To my knowledge, not much cranial material from “advanced” therizinosaurs has been discovered so far (Therizinosaurus itself is known from barely more than the arms), and there’s still so much that’s not yet clear about these dinosaurs that I’d think that my assumptionsóif not anyone’sócould easily be wrong. I’ll see if I can find out for you, though. When I do, I’ll post that information here, and let you know about it. ;)
Lastly..... do you like chocolate too? :smile
I most certainly do. :smile I like milk chocolate and white chocolate a lot, as well as dark chocolate, provided the cocoa content in it isn’t so high that it tastes really bitter. (I hate bitter foods! :x) I can get tired of the taste, however, if I eat a lot of the same kind of chocolate in a short amount of time. Also, for some reason, I don’t like chocolate ice cream as much as vanilla; I can eat vanilla ice cream for a lot longer before getting tired of it than I can chocolate.
I'm not sure if these questions were asked to you already, as 20 pages is a lot to look through in a short time. If these were asked already, I give you my apologies for wasting your time. I also apologize for the questions not being very good ones too...
First, no, I have not been asked these questions before. (I might have discussed my chocolate preferences once in the “Tell us something about yourself” thread, but that post would be very hard to find.) Second, I love answering questions; even if these had already been asked, I wouldn’t consider it a waste of my time to answer them. (All I would have to do is link you to the response I posted the first time I was asked the question.) Third, they were great questionsóin fact, they were exactly the types of questions I enjoy answeringóand I thank you for asking them. :)
MERRYCHRISTMAS!
Thank you! :smile I had a very good Christmas.
-
I trust that you had a good Christmas but my question is, how is Sasquatch? I seem to recall in a previous post that you mentioned that you were going to get the Sasquatch something for Christmas, so what did you get him? Was he more interested in the wrapping paper?
-
Sasquatch is doing well, speeding down hallways and attacking people's feet as usual. :lol (He's had his share of cuddly moments also, though.) I think I might have mentioned what he got for Christmas in the “What did you give for Christmas thread”, but I feel more like just telling you here than going back to check. :p
I personally didn't give Sasquatch anything; he basically got one gift from the entire family. It contained two bags of kitty treats, and a fluffy pink, legless, wingless, catnip-filled bird with an extremely long, pom-pom-tipped tail. He enjoyed both of these gifts immensely: as I recall, when my sister opened one of the bags of treats, he came right up and started sniffing the opening of the bag. And he was going at that catnip bird more furiously than he usually does at my feet! :lol I know that we got him a new bag of cat food recently as well, but I can't remember whether or not it was a Christmas gift. :unsure:
Thanks for the question. (First one of the new year! :DD)
-
While on the subject of Sasquatch, did he react to the catnip the way a cat typically does :lol?
-
Yes. Yes, he did. :lol I was afraid he was going to rip the toy apart two minutes after it had been given to him. The last cats I saw attacking something the way he did were a pride of lions on the documentary series Planet Earth bringing down an elephant. And even they weren't using all four sets of claws AND their teeth at the same time.
-
What is your favourite type of music and/or favourite band?
-
Can switching to Geico really safe you 15% or more on car insurance?
.........
.............
.....................
.......................
.........................
...............................
.................
Did the little piggy cry "weeweewee" all the way home?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F_G2zp-opg (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F_G2zp-opg)
-
Caustizer:
This is actually the fourth question ever asked of me in this thread. This was my original answer, from almost seventeen months ago:
I don’t really have a favorite genre of music. I usually don’t bother to differentiate between the different genres, and as such my musical preferences are virtually impossible to describe. In fact, I rarely listen to music on its own at all. (I’ve never used a portable audio deviceóeven an iPodófor anything except recording school lectures, etc.) The soundtracks of audio-visual media such as movies, TV, and computer games represent most of the music I enjoy (the original The Land Before Time being an excellent example :DD).
I'm still at a loss to define my musical preferences, but I do have a few revisions and additional comments for my previous answer. There's a rather broad range of music I enjoy, though there are some styles, such as rap and heavy metal, that I generally don’t care for. I find that I enjoy songs that have clever or humorous lyrics. I also prefer singing to be backed by instrumental music, which may be part of the reason I tend to be driven crazy when people sing around me in real life.
One major update I have is that in the past year, I *have* started listening to music (usually in the form of recordings and videos downloaded from YouTube). I always listen to it through headphones on my computer, often while working on something that doesn’t require a lot of hard thinking. (For example, it’s difficult for me to concentrate on typing with music in the background.) Most of what I listen to is soundtrack music, although I do fairly frequently listen to a selection of songs by a band called The Irish Rovers, that I discovered on YouTube. (My rule of thumb when it comes to music is still “listen to what I like the sound of”. :p)
Rat_lady7:
1. I dunno. I don't drive, and know nothing about car insurance. :P:
2. I'm going to take that as a rhetorical question. :p
-
What is your opinion about Canadian culture? Do you find that living in a northern state makes it more meaningful to you or are you primarily into American media only?
I remember the Irish Rovers, because they used to play us their songs in music class.
-
Has the spell check ever tried to correct your username with "Pongee"? :p
-
What is your opinion about Canadian culture? Do you find that living in a northern state makes it more meaningful to you or are you primarily into American media only?
Truthfully, I don't think I know enough about Canadian culture, or what distinguishes it from American culture, to answer that question. :oops I suppose I feel a closer affinity of sorts to Canada than I imagine I would have if I lived in a more southerly state, but I can’t say more than that. I feel like something of a cultural hermit; I’m pretty isolated from other cultures in general. (I don’t even feel like I know my own country’s culture very well.) It makes me feel ignorant, which I hate. I definitely respect other cultures, and have an interest in learning more about them, but my shyness and social awkwardness hold me back from really immersing myself in them or otherwise exploring them firsthand.
Media-wise, I don’t discriminate much between cultural sources. As long as the quality is right, I go for whatever books, movies, TV, news sources, etc. I can get my hands on. Some of my favorite TV shows, nature documentaries, and online sources for scientific news are British (and one of my all-time heroes is broadcaster/naturalist David Attenborough). One of may favorite paleo artists (Luis V. Rey) is Spanish-Mexican, and at least one of my favorite authors (Kenneth Oppel) is Canadian. (Whoops! I forgot; make that at least two authors. ;))
Has the spell check ever tried to correct your username with "Pongee"? :p
Surprisingly enough, Microsoft Word apparently recognizes “Pangaea” as a real word. When I type it, it doesn’t even highlight it as misspelled, or bring it up when I do a spell check.
-
Has Sasquatch ever destroyed anything that was worth something to you?
Aside from dinosaurs and anthing else prehistoric, do you like any other aspect of history?
-
Has Sasquatch ever destroyed anything that was worth something to you?
I can't think of any personal belongings of my own that he's done severe damage to (although he was accidentally locked in my extremely cluttered room one night; maybe he did break something and I just haven't found it yet), but he did knock over and break a ceramic bowl belonging to one of my brothers (as well as some other items, I think).
Aside from dinosaurs and anthing else prehistoric, do you like any other aspect of history?
Well, I am fairly interested in the mythology, architecture, traditions, and artwork of ancient and indigenous cultures. In my second-to-last semester of college, I took a course on American Indian (Native American) history, and enjoyed it so much that I signed up for the follow-up course the semester after.
-
Interesting. I have no knowledge of Native american history, you'll have to talk to me about it sometime. :)
Do you collect anything?
-
I think you asked me that same question before. :p No matter; I'll just quote my previous answer:
OH, YEAH. :yes I’m a major pack rat. I have several different collections, and my room is packed with things I've stockpiled over the years. Here are a few of my more prominent and/or unusual collections:
ï Hundreds (probably thousands) of toys and figures of dinosaurs, insects, zoo animals, sea creatures, and other critters, ranging from cheap rubber bugs to museum-quality dinosaur models.
ï Videotapes. I have an unfortunate habit of recording TV shows faster than I can watch them, so I have a lot of these lying around. :oops The good news is, I’m much less obsessive about taping TV shows than I used to be.
ï Newspapers. I always used to save the comics section of the newspaper, as well as sections containing articles or photos I found interesting. I’ve gotten better about not stockpiling these anymore too, but the old stacks of newspapers remain. :rolleyes
ï Science and nature magazines, including National Geographic, Audubon, Bat Conservation International, Prehistoric Times, Natural History, and National Wildlife.
ï One of my more bizarre collections: dozens of toothpicks, cocktail swords, twisted paper clips, and other pointy objects impaled on a large, flat piece of green packing foam. “The Toothpick Forest”, I call it. :P:
ï A respectably sized Land Before Time collection including all of the movies and released TV episodes, at least one of each of all of the promotional toys from Pizza Hut, Burger King, and Wendy’s, a few posters, a number of film cels from the original movie, a press kit of the original movie, some books based on the original movie, and a resin statue of Littlefoot and Ducky that supports a picture frame.
ï And the biggie: books on science and nature. I have literally hundreds of them; so many that they don’t all fit in my room. I have no idea how many books I actually own, but would not be surprised in the least if it turned out to be over a thousand. (I’ve got at least twenty-two on bats alone. I’ll count the rest someday when I have time.)
-
pfft...I must be getting old then...alas.;)
Well I doubt you have been asked this quesiton before...and if you have, I'd be highly suprised. Anyway if you had to choose one as a pet what would you go for:
A Gremlin
A fairy
A Pixie
A leprachaun
A goblin
or A brownie.
-
Now there's a random one. :lol
Probably a brownie. We could use someone to help clean the house. :p
-
^
Poor Brownie...imagine Sasquatch's reaction to having one of those in the house.:p
Does Sasquatch bring friends into the house? And by friends I refer to other cats? Have you seen him interact with other cats?
-
^
Poor Brownie...imagine Sasquatch's reaction to having one of those in the house.:p
That's one reason I don't think any of those pets would really be a good idea, unless they had a background as the fae world equivalent of a lion tamer. :p
Does Sasquatch bring friends into the house? And by friends I refer to other cats? Have you seen him interact with other cats?
To date, no to both of those questions. :o
-
Just so you know, you're not the only one who has been rather bust lately. I've been bogged down by college work so much last week that I've decided to wait another week to post the next chapter of my fanfic. (I usually planned to post them once every two weeks, in case if you haven't noticed.) Also, I don't care if I have to wait until my next birthday until you're finished with that card for me. As much as I would like to see it, I would prefer that you continue to comment on my fanfic, if I had to choose between the two.
This brings my to this question: How busy are you, really? How many and what things are you trying to get done, both here on GoF and at home?
-
Something I should clarify is that the main reason for my recent struggles with reviewing isn’t as much that I'm so constantly busy that I don't have time for it, but that the pressure from all the tasks and issues I've had to worry about have left me feeling spread thin, too stressed out for extensive posting (sometimes even forgetting entirely). Just typing posts has become an effort for me; it can take me an hour or more to write a single large paragraph or a review for a story such as yours. Much of that time is spent simply trying to figure out the right words to express my thoughts. Composing a short post from whatever thoughts are present in my head at the time doesn’t take too much out of me, but writing a review is, by comparison, a long, meticulous, and arduous undertaking that requires me to analyze the events of the chapter (often looking back to previous ones to get a sense of continuity), scrutinize the text to scope out errors, mine my vocabulary for the right words, and organize those words such that my thoughts are properly conveyed. (Your story presents a particular challenge, as, to be honest, it's not the kind of LBT fanfiction I would typically review on my own, having very little familiarity with Bionicle; it's harder for me to comprehend the world of the story and recognize its “rules”.) I might seem sharp from the posts I write, but in reality my mind works very slowly. While I’m ashamed to admit it, a lot of the time I have so much on my mind, and feeling so frazzled and unfocused because of it, that I just don’t feel up to the task at that time, telling myself I’ll work on it later. Pathetic, I know. :oops This isn’t anything personal; I’m like this with almost everything I do (one reason I honestly don’t think I have much hope of making something of myself in the world :().
As for the things that have been keeping me occupied, one particularly significant real-life distraction is my first real job: proofreading recipes for a cookbook that my college is preparing for its centennial. Originally, it was just my job to read over the several hundred recipes (all submissions from students and staff of the college) for errors, consistency, and comprehensibility, but then I accepted an offer to input recipes into the database (many of them are originally submitted in paper form, and must be typed in to the computer) for additional pay. That, however, takes considerably greater time and effort. In addition, I quickly discovered that since I usually look at my keyboard while typing instead of my computer screen, I may accidentally create my own errors while typing and not notice them. I couldn't have that, so I've been trying to train myself to look at the screen as I type. It's not as easy for me as it is for some people, since my hand-to-eye coordination isn't great, and my fingers regularly “forget” where the right keys are, so I end up making a lot of typos. While at least I am able to see them and correct them immediately, it takes me longer to type as a result. The good news is that just a couple of days ago, I finally finished inputting all of the recipes I currently had, so at least some of the burden is off my back for the time being. (I’ll be getting more recipes soon, though… :unsure:)
Another real-life matter that has occupied much of my time in the past month is my brother (the older of my two younger brothers, specifically), who, in mid-December, returned home for the first time in nearly five months, having been studying abroad for his fall college semester. He had a lot of catching up to do with the rest of the family, and vice versa. He came back with over 20,000 photos (yes, that’s the correct number of zeros) of his time overseas that he was eager to share, and we eager to see. On evenings when the whole family had a simultaneous hour or so of free time, he would show us these photos on a projector. There were also several films he wanted to see, from Tangled at the movie theater to Life (a nature documentary consisting of eleven one-hour episodes) on our Blu-ray player. Not to mention all the talking and socializing with his siblings that he hadn’t been able to do since July. He had less than a month to do all the things he wanted to do with us before he had to go back to college, andóhaving always been closer to him (and my other family members) than to any other person in the worldóI was obliged to spend a considerable amount of my time with him. You could probably say that it was my first priority. (To say that family is very important to me is a monumental understatement; I probably don’t devote enough time to it as it is.) My brother has been gone for several days now, so I can’t use the excuse that I couldn’t review your chapter sooner because I was spending time with him. However, while he was with us, I didn’t find a whole lot of time to devote to other tasks, namely my cookbook job. Since focusing on several things at a time makes it harder for me to get any of them done, so I decided that I wanted to get that job over with as quickly as possible. (It seems that it really has made a difference; I’ve noticed that I’m managing to get a lot more posting done at a faster rate since I finished with the cookbook.)
There have been some other, minor family issues that have caused me stress and/or distraction, but I have a great deal of respect for the privacy of my other family members, and so one of my personal rules is to not post anything that I imagine they would rather not have shared on a public forum. Just to avoid causing undue concern, however, I want to emphatically assure everyone that I have a very loving, stable, and supportive family to whom I am very close, and that whatever unwanted drama and grief they bring to my life is insignificant to my long-term self-esteem and well-being. That said, being as sensitive as I am, when there is drama in my family, it generally doesn't put me in a great mood for writing reviews.
Other items on my agenda:
ï Continuing to volunteer at the local aquarium.
ï Household chores. (Lately I’ve been worrying that I’m not pulling my weight around the house, so I’ve been trying to help out more.)
ï Reviewing fanart and fanfiction, such as yours, Caustizer’s, Sky’s, and FlipperBoidSkua’s.
ï Keeping up with the “In The Land Before Time” RP. (These posts require a particularly extensive amount of time, thought, and effort for me to write.) Again, thankfully I don’t have to worry about it for the time being.
ï Posting photos in my “Twin Cities” vacation thread, after which I’m going to start another thread for my vacation to Florida in November.
ï The three (ridiculously belated) star day cards I'm making, which are by far the things I've been devoting the least time to. :oops
Believe me when I tell you that I really have been feeling overwhelmed lately (probably due to trying to do too many things at once). I've even given thought to taking a break from the GOF, but I imagine that that would only make things worse, as I would be letting down the people for whom I have obligations to post, and that when I returned I would only find an immense backlog of fanart and fanfiction to review. I really don’t know what to do at this point. :unsure:
I have to say, Chronicler, that your post reminds me a lot of an exchange we had almost a year ago when I was late in sending you reviews for your first fanfic. (You told me that I wasn't the only one with problems then, too.) I am more than aware from reading other people's posts on this forum (especially the “How Are You Feeling” thread) that I am not the only person on this forum who is feeling stressed or having difficulty in their life. Forgive me if I'm wrongóthis could just be my paranoiaóbut I'm getting the impression that you're irritated by my lateness to review, andójust maybeóby the explanations I give as well, like I’m just complaining or trying to make excuses.
Let me just say this: I think that, by most people’s standards, I’m lazy, or at least a wimp when it comes to stress. I have dismal willpower and am pathetic at handling pressure. I’m a severe procrastinator and a supreme failure at delivering promises on time. And I hate myself for all of this. :bang I really am sorry for being so late with reviewing your chapteróand I know there are several members out there to whom I owe the same apology, for various things. :neutral When I posted my review, I thought it would be better if I at least offered some explanation for why I was late, rather than just casually posting it without any indication that I cared that I had taken so long.
Pangaea
-
I greatly apologize for giving you the impression that I'm irritated and impatient with your lateness. I certainly never intended to give you such an impression. :( I kind of figured it would be okay to mention it when I'm also falling behind schedule, so to speak. :oops I feel that I should also confess that whenever I see something I didn't expect numerous times (like long delays), I get curious about why it happens and start to demand answers. At least I'm trying to learn from my mistakes. Believe me, my impatience used to be even worse when I first joined a forum (bzpower, the Bionicle fan forum) back in 2004. :oops
-
^ That's okay. I know can be pretty over-sensitive at times, not to mention my notorious habit of misinterpreting people's words and intentions. Sorry for any misunderstanding.
By the way, while individual time-consuming matters like the cookbook project will come and go, I sadly don't expect that my life will be anything less of a mess anytime soon, so if I'm late in the future (I'll try to be less so, but I've seen how my promises turn out), you can safely assume that it's for similar reasons as I described above.
-
:bang By the way, how did the Sasquatch get on at the kennel?
Oh, yes..found something that might interest you (being the dinosaur avid that you are). If you haven't already read it already.:p
For Pangy (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12262349)
I came across it just before, when I was looking at the news...I'd be honest when I say I'm not :anger at a new study find when I've written one of my exam eessays on the subject (first humans out of africa). Obviously poor timing. :bang
-
Are their any other reptiles you are interested in other than Dinosaurs?
-
:bang By the way, how did the Sasquatch get on at the kennel?[/URL]
I came across it just before, when I was looking at the news...I'd be honest when I say I'm not :anger at a new study find when I've written one of my exam eessays on the subject (first humans out of africa). Obviously poor timing. :bang
Wow, I could have sworn I was asked that question (and answered it) before, but having checked the last few pages of this thread, it would seem not. :blink:
We didn't press for details when we picked him up from the kennel (on the same night we returned home; we couldn't stand to wait until the next day, even though it was dark out and our driveway was snowed in :p), but apparently he got along fine and was well-behaved. The bad news is that he didn't get to interact with any of the other cats in the kennel because none of them were friendly. :p) He didn't seem any worse for wear when we brought him home; still the same unpredictable combination of affection and spazziness as ever. :lol
And thanks for the link to that article; :) I hadn't heard about this dinosaur! :! So it actually had just a single claw on its hand? :wow I know that other members of its family, like Mononykus (literally “one claw”) and Shuvuuia, also had extremely reduced digits, but apparently they had vestigial second and third fingers in addition to the large thumb claw.
Are their any other reptiles you are interested in other than Dinosaurs?
Oh, definitely. I never professed myself to be solely a dinosaur nut. :p
Let's see…for modern reptiles, I'll just quote the relevant section of my list (http://gangoffive.net/index.php?showtopic=4372&view=findpost&p=9206375) (which I'm sure is missing some entries :p) from the “What animals does everyone like? (http://gangoffive.net/index.php?showtopic=4372)” thread:
Tuatara
Amphisbaenians
Lizards
ï Monitor lizards
ï Tegus
ï Basilisks
ï Iguanas
ï Anoles
ï Flat lizards
ï Collared lizards
ï Horned lizards
ï Helmeted iguanas
ï Chameleons
ï Agamas
ï Thorny devils
ï Bearded dragons
ï Water dragons
ï Forest dragons
ï Flying dragons
ï Dragon lizards
ï Frilled lizards
ï Sailfin lizards
ï Forest lizards
ï Garden lizards
ï Dab lizards
ï Butterfly lizards
ï Eyelid geckos
ï Leaf-tailed geckos
ï Tokay geckos
ï Day geckos
ï House geckos
ï New Caledonian geckos
ï Flying geckos
ï Web-footed geckos
ï Frog-eyed geckos
ï Knob-tailed geckos
ï Sand geckos
ï Marbled geckos
ï Green geckos
ï Forest geckos
ï Alpine geckos
ï Harlequin geckos
ï Gold-striped geckos
ï ÜKawekaweau
ï Girdled lizards
ï Shovel-snouted lizards
ï Fringe-toed lizards
ï Wall lizards
ï Green lizards
ï Lava lizards
ï Alligator lizards
ï Caiman lizards
ï Crocodile skinks
ï Five-lined skinks
ï Blue-tongued skinks
ï Shingleback skinks
ï Shinning-skinks
ï Prehensile-tailed skinks
ï Berber skinks
ï Eyed skinks
ï Tree skinks
ï Fire skinks
ï Mabuyas
ï Sandfish
ï Slow-worms
ï Glass lizards
ï Grass lizards
ï Wood lizards
ï Spinytail lizards
ï Whiptail lizards
ï Swift lizards
ï Beaded lizards
ï Gila monsters
Snakes
ï Pythons
ï Boas
ï Burrowing asps
ï Corn snakes
ï Cobras
ï King cobras
ï Rattlesnakes
ï Giant vipers
ï Bush vipers
ï Pit vipers
ï Adders
ï Puff adders
ï Death adders
ï Horned adders
ï Cottonmouths
ï Sea snakes
ï Kraits
ï Mambas
ï Tentacled snakes
ï Vine snakes
ï Garter snakes
ï Cat-eyed snakes
ï Hog-nosed snakes
ï Central American tree snakes
ï Gopher snakes
ï Pine snakes
ï Bullsnakes
ï Kingsnakes
ï Coral snakes
ï Pipe snakes
ï Mangrove snakes
ï Egg-eating snakes
ï Leaf-nosed snakes
ï Grass snakes
ï Tiger snakes
ï Liana snakes
ï Bushmasters
ï Blind snakes
Turtles
ï Matamatas
ï Softshell turtles
ï Pig-nosed turtles
ï Spotted turtles
ï Chicken turtles
ï Painted turtles
ï Pond turtles
ï Map turtles
ï Sliders
ï Cooters
ï Terrapins
ï Giant tortoises
ï Gopher tortoises
ï Pancake tortoises
ï Radiated tortoises
ï Red-footed tortoises
ï Geometric tortoises
ï Angulated tortoises
ï Leopard tortoises
ï Spurred tortoises
ï Star tortoises
ï Tent tortoises
ï Russian tortoises
ï Hermann’s tortoises
ï Cape totoises
ï Box turtles
ï Snapping turtles
ï Big-headed turtles
ï Side-necked turtles
ï Snake-necked turtles
ï Musk turtles
ï Mud turtles
ï Spiny turtles
ï Sea turtles
Crocodilians
ï Gharials
ï Crocodiles
ï Alligators
ï Caimans
As for prehistoric varieties, I'll provide a less specific list of the general kinds that interest me the most:
Pterosaurs
Plesiosaurs
Placodonts
Nothosaurs
Mosasaurs
Aigialosaurs
Ichthyosaurs
Hupehsuchians
Thalattosaurs
Sphenodontians (includes modern tuatara)
Rhynchosaurs
Kuehneosaurids
Squamatans (includes modern lizards, snakes, and amphisbaenians)
Prolacertiformes
Choristoderes
Proterochampsids
Ornithosuchids
Phytosaurs
Rauisuchians
Aetosaurs
Crocodylomorphs (includes modern crocodiles)
Doswellia
Younginiformes
Chelonians (includes modern turtles)
Procolophonians
Pareiasaurs
Captorhinids
Mesosaurs
Coelurosauravids
Simiosaurs
Longisquama
basal archosauromorphs
non-dinosaurian ornithodirans
EDIT: Messed up a little; ctenosauriscids and prestosuchids are both subclades of rauisuchians.
-
(oogaboo @ Jan 28 2011, 09:21 AM)
Are their any other reptiles you are interested in other than Dinosaurs?
Oh, definitely. I never professed myself to be solely a dinosaur nut. dino_tongue.gif
Let's see…for modern reptiles, I'll just quote the relevant section of my list (which I'm sure is missing some entries dino_tongue.gif) from the “What animals does everyone like?” thread:
QUOTE (Pangaea @ Sep 7 2010, 11:33 PM)
Tuatara
Amphisbaenians
Lizards
ï Monitor lizards
ï Tegus
ï Basilisks
ï Iguanas
ï Anoles
ï Flat lizards
ï Collared lizards
ï Horned lizards
ï Helmeted iguanas
ï Chameleons
ï Agamas
ï Thorny devils
ï Bearded dragons
ï Water dragons
ï Forest dragons
ï Flying dragons
ï Dragon lizards
ï Frilled lizards
ï Sailfin lizards
ï Forest lizards
ï Garden lizards
ï Dab lizards
ï Butterfly lizards
ï Eyelid geckos
ï Leaf-tailed geckos
ï Tokay geckos
ï Day geckos
ï House geckos
ï New Caledonian geckos
ï Flying geckos
ï Web-footed geckos
ï Frog-eyed geckos
ï Knob-tailed geckos
ï Sand geckos
ï Marbled geckos
ï Green geckos
ï Forest geckos
ï Alpine geckos
ï Harlequin geckos
ï Gold-striped geckos
ï ÜKawekaweau
ï Girdled lizards
ï Shovel-snouted lizards
ï Fringe-toed lizards
ï Wall lizards
ï Green lizards
ï Lava lizards
ï Alligator lizards
ï Caiman lizards
ï Crocodile skinks
ï Five-lined skinks
ï Blue-tongued skinks
ï Shingleback skinks
ï Shinning-skinks
ï Prehensile-tailed skinks
ï Berber skinks
ï Eyed skinks
ï Tree skinks
ï Fire skinks
ï Mabuyas
ï Sandfish
ï Slow-worms
ï Glass lizards
ï Grass lizards
ï Wood lizards
ï Spinytail lizards
ï Whiptail lizards
ï Swift lizards
ï Beaded lizards
ï Gila monsters
Snakes
ï Pythons
ï Boas
ï Burrowing asps
ï Corn snakes
ï Cobras
ï King cobras
ï Rattlesnakes
ï Giant vipers
ï Bush vipers
ï Pit vipers
ï Adders
ï Puff adders
ï Death adders
ï Horned adders
ï Cottonmouths
ï Sea snakes
ï Kraits
ï Mambas
ï Tentacled snakes
ï Vine snakes
ï Garter snakes
ï Cat-eyed snakes
ï Hog-nosed snakes
ï Central American tree snakes
ï Gopher snakes
ï Pine snakes
ï Bullsnakes
ï Kingsnakes
ï Coral snakes
ï Pipe snakes
ï Mangrove snakes
ï Egg-eating snakes
ï Leaf-nosed snakes
ï Grass snakes
ï Tiger snakes
ï Liana snakes
ï Bushmasters
ï Blind snakes
Turtles
ï Matamatas
ï Softshell turtles
ï Pig-nosed turtles
ï Spotted turtles
ï Chicken turtles
ï Painted turtles
ï Pond turtles
ï Map turtles
ï Sliders
ï Cooters
ï Terrapins
ï Giant tortoises
ï Gopher tortoises
ï Pancake tortoises
ï Radiated tortoises
ï Red-footed tortoises
ï Geometric tortoises
ï Angulated tortoises
ï Leopard tortoises
ï Spurred tortoises
ï Star tortoises
ï Tent tortoises
ï Russian tortoises
ï Hermann’s tortoises
ï Cape totoises
ï Box turtles
ï Snapping turtles
ï Big-headed turtles
ï Side-necked turtles
ï Snake-necked turtles
ï Musk turtles
ï Mud turtles
ï Spiny turtles
ï Sea turtles
Crocodilians
ï Gharials
ï Crocodiles
ï Alligators
ï Caimans
As for prehistoric varieties, I'll provide a less specific list of the general kinds that interest me the most:
Pterosaurs
Plesiosaurs
Placodonts
Nothosaurs
Mosasaurs
Aigialosaurs
Ichthyosaurs
Hupehsuchians
Thalattosaurs
Sphenodontians (includes modern tuatara)
Rhynchosaurs
Kuehneosaurids
Squamatans (includes modern lizards, snakes, and amphisbaenians)
Prolacertiformes
Choristoderes
Proterochampsids
Ornithosuchids
Phytosaurs
Prestosuchids
Rauisuchians
Aetosaurs
Ctenosauriscids
Crocodylomorphs (includes modern crocodiles)
Doswellia
Younginiformes
Chelonians (includes modern turtles)
Procolophonians
Pareiasaurs
Captorhinids
Mesosaurs
Coelurosauravids
Simiosaurs
Longisquama
basal archosauromorphs
non-dinosaurian ornithodirans
:blink: I see...
What is your favorite film staring one of these reptiles?
Jurassic Park? :lol:
-
Well, except for pterosaurs, none of those reptiles I mentioned really have a starring role in Jurassic Park. Picking favorites is rarely easy for me, and I'm actually having a hard time coming up with examples of movies I really like that have reptiles (let alone prehistoric, non-dinosaurian ones) in a prominent role…which says to me that reptiles really need more attention and respect in film. -_-
As far as prehistoric reptiles go, the second and third Ice Age movies both had themómarine reptiles (ichthyosaurs/mosasaurs/short-necked plesiosaurs) and pterosaurs respectively. And there's LBT, of course: you've got pterosaurs (namely Petrie), plesiosaurs, Archelon (Archie), two species of giant crocodilians (Deinosuchus and Sarcosuchus, and ichthyosaurs (Mo). And while it's technically a TV series, Primeval has had more non-dinosaurs than dinosaurs, including Coelurosauravus, Scutosaurus, mosasaurs, pterosaurs, and Pristichampsus. (That reminds me; I have to check out the new season of the show! :blink:)
-
You know anything about prehistoric cockroaches? I read they've been around forever and can endure practically anything.
-
I don't know nearly as much about them as I do some prehistoric creatures, but I can tell you that their ancestors are first known to have evolved in the Carboniferous period (~359 to 299 million years ago). These weren't technically the same as modern cockroaches (order Blattaria); they were the common ancestors of cockroaches, termites, and mantises. The oldest known true cockroaches date from the early Cretaceous (though they may well have evolved before then). The early cockroach-like insects are distinct from modern roaches in having long ovipositors, or egg-laying tubes; true cockroaches have short ovipositors, and lay their eggs inside leathery cases called oothecae.
The Carboniferous is famous for its giant arthropods, a result of oxygen levels being much higher than today. However, its cockroach-like insects aren’t known to have been any larger than the biggest modern cockroach species. One of the largest proto-cockroaches, Archimylacris eggintoni (one specimen of which was recently modeled in 3D* (http://www.sciencecodex.com/creepy_crawly_cockroach_ancestor_revealed_in_new_3d_model) :smile) measured 3 1/2" in length; about the same as large specimens of Australia's rhinoceros cockroach (http://www.dannesdjur.com/bilder/macropanesthia_rhinoceros_2.jpg) or giant burrowing cockroach (Macropanesthia rhinoceros) and Latin America's giant cave cockroach (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v162/nonamethefish/giganteus2.jpg) (Blaberus giganteus).
Most known fossil cockroaches (and cockroach-like insects), like the majority of modern species, were detritivores, feeding on decomposing organic matter, one family, the Raphidiomimidae, adopted a predatory lifestyle, evolving spiny front legs similar to the raptorial forelegs of their relatives, the mantids. Another interesting family, the Umenocoleidae, developed their forewings into hard covers (elytra), like those of beetles. (Ponopterix axelrodi from the early Cretaceous of Brazil shown here (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_VA6LePZ6KNY/SvJauoOkRhI/AAAAAAAAB8w/l6XeSIGybq8/s1600-h/Name+that+Bug+4.JPG).) Some extinct cockroaches are known from specimens preserved in amber (this (http://www.mnhn.fr/museum/front/medias/publication/18153_g09n1a07.pdf) PDF article has some excellent photographic examples), while others are known from fossils so well preserved that their original color patterns are still visible.
While cockroaches are definitely tough, their reputation of being able to survive anything is slightly exaggerated; namely, the belief that they will inherit the Earth in the event of nuclear warfare. While cockroaches can certainly survive far higher doses of radiation than humans, their resistance is not nearly as high as that of some other insects, such as flour beetles and fruit flies. (This was demonstrated on an episode of MythBusters.)
-
Hey Pangaea, what do you think of this article (http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/39/2/159.abstract)?
Using a new dating technique, these people have dated a dinosaur bone to 64.8+-0.9 Mya. The K-T event took place 65.5 Mya ago. Now, I have only basic education in statistics, but assuming that the scientists took multiple measurements, and that these measurements follow the normal distribution (or bell curve), and knowing that the 1st standard deviation is 0.9, this should give a probability of cca 78% that the fossil is younger than 65.5 Mya. This is exciting!
-
This definitely is interesting, though it's not the first time I've heard of dinosaur fossils being dated to the Paleocene. If the fossils are indeed post-Cretaceous, my personal hypothesis is that they represent a small population of dinosaurs that survived the K-T extinction event, only to succumb later to another natural disaster, disease, too few healthy individuals to sustain their numbers, or some other cause.
Thanks for sharing this, jansenov. :)
-
What did you think of that tribute video I made about Sky?
-
I've only been able to see the soundless version (my computer won't play the downloaded version; what program do you need for the format?), but I'm impressed. :wow I like how you organized the pictures; it must have taken you a lot of time to put the whole thing together. It was all a very kind gesture of you, too. :yes
I hate to say it, though, but at the beginning of the video, you left out the “t” in “Artworks”. Also, just wondering: why did you put the “Dawn of a Wingtail” pictures after the “Artwork By/Video Produced By” screen? (I would have put that after all of the pictures, right before the “Special Thanks To” credits.)
Personally, I think you should have made a separate category for “Fly With Me”, “One Longneck Family”, “Majestic Flyers”, and the picture of Star “kissing” Sky (why wasn't the animation shown, by the way?), along with the picture of Mo Sky drew for July 2010's LBT fanart contest, which I noticed was missing.
I must say I was quite surprised to see the picture of my signature with the dinosaur pen come up at the end. :! I feel almost too complimented. :oops
-
Who are your greatest inspirational idols?
-
Do you have a specific Paleotologist that you like?
-
Hi, how are things Pangaea? :)
-
Who are your greatest inspirational idols?
Wow, where to start? There are a lot of people who inspire me.
Sir David Attenborough: Naturalist and broadcaster, who has presented and narrated several of the best nature documentaries ever made. Without a doubt one of my all-time heroes.
Temple Grandin: Animal scientist and autism advocate who is autistic herself. Has written several excellent books on autism and animal behavior and is someone I really look up to.
Aldo Leopold: Ecologist and nature writer (author of A Sand County Almanac) who contributed enormously to wilderness conservation and environmental ethics. Both his writing style and his invaluable contribution to ecology and conservation are hugely inspirational to me.
Merlin Tuttle: Bat researcher and photographer, and founder of Bat Conservation International. Has been described as having done more for the welfare of bats than any single person on the planet.
Robert Bakker: Paleontologist largely responsible for revolutionizing scientific views of dinosaurs. Author of Raptor Red, a xenofiction novel about a Utahraptor (written with the most minimal of anthropomorphism, which you don’t often see), and The Dinosaur Heresies, which helped popularize his theories about dinosaurs, such as that they were “warm-blooded”.
Darren Naish: Paleontologist and science writer who runs one of my favorite science blogs, “Tetrapod Zoology (http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/)”.
Mark Witton: Artist and palaeobiologist who specializes in pterosaurs; his artwork can be seen here (http://www.flickr.com/photos/markwitton).
Matt Martyniuk: Paleo-artist and self-described “armchair paleontologist”; like me, he’s not a certified paleontologist, but he’s taught himself as much about the subject as he can (keeping up-to-date on new discoveries) and endeavors to deliver that information to other non-paleontologist paleontology fanatics on his blog (http://dinogoss.blogspot.com/).
Ed Yong: Science writer who runs the outstanding science blog “Not Exactly Rocket Science (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/)”.
Luis V. Rey: Paleo-artist who creates some of the most colorful and dynamic dinosaur illustrations you’ll ever see. (Website here (http://www.luisrey.ndtilda.co.uk/).)
Ray Troll: Often humorous artist who specializes in fish and prehistoric life. (Website here (http://www.trollart.com/home.html).)
Richard Conniff: Science writer whose style is both informative and fun to read (often downright hilarious); exactly what I aspire to.
Gregory S. Paul: Paleontological author and illustrator.
Paul Sereno: Paleontologist who has made a huge number of significant fossil discoveries all over the world.
Wayne Barlowe: Science fiction and fantasy artist. Wrote and illustrated Expedition, almost surely my favorite book on hypothetical alien life.
The MythBusters (Adam Savage, Jamie Hyneman, Kari Byron, Tory Belleci, and Grant Imahara): I just admire their skill at building things and solving problems, and their commitment to scientifically debunking myths despite not being scientists themselves.
The Three Stooges (Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Curly Howard, Shemp Howard, and “Curly” Joe DeRita): My favorite comic team ever. My brothers and I wanted to be them at one time, and it brought us closer together as a result.
Groucho Marx: Another of my favorite comedians; his wit is what inspires me.
Gary Larson: The Far Side cartoonist.
Jim Davis: Garfield cartoonist.
Certain GOF members: Malte279, Cancerian Tiger, Rat_lady7, Caustizer, and FlipperBoidSkua, just to name a few. ;)
P.S. I'm sure there are people I'm forgetting…
Do you have a specific Paleotologist that you like?
Basically the ones I mentioned in my response to the last question. :p
Hi, how are things Pangaea? :)
Pretty good, I guess. I still haven't posted in the RP, because I promised myself that I would get all my major reviewing work out of the way first. (I figure I’ll have a clearer head for writing once I’m done, anyway.) Tomorrow I'll be getting a new batch of recipes to proofread for my cookbook job. Speaking of which, did I ever tell you about the recipe debacle I encountered a while back? I decided to try one of the recipes (Hershey pie; basically a s’more in pie form: :p a mix of chocolate, marshmallow, and whipped cream in a graham cracker crust), which called for 3 cups of melted butter mixed with 12 crushed graham crackers. However, when I followed those instructions, I ended up with a greasy soup of crumbs in semisolidifying butter; even when I strained out the crumbs and squeezed out the excess butter, it was completely unfit for a pie crust and I had to throw it out. Clearly there was a huge mistake in the amount of butter given in the instructions, so I tried the recipe a few more times, experimenting with the amount of butter, starting with 1/3 cup and adding more until I had a moldable crust. (For the record, these pies turned out delicious). Eventually I concluded that 3/4 cup was a bit too much, but 2/3 cup (especially with unsalted butter) was perfect, and changed the recipe accordingly. I must say I’m glad that I’m the one who discovered the mistake; I don’t know how many people who bought the cookbook would have had the same thng happen to them otherwise.
-
If you were magically conjured up planet like earth for example. Would you panic, look for food, build a shelter, relax and do nothing or look for help first? Why would you pick that first intstead of something else? And why?
Sorry if this question was already asked. I just don't have the time and patience to read all 22 pages.
-
Nope, this question hasn't been asked.
Assuming I'm understanding the question correctly, I think the first thing I would do is explore a bit, looking for other people, sources of food and shelter, potential threats, etc., and work on my emergency survival skills if it looked like I would need them.
-
Nope, this question hasn't been asked.
Assuming I'm understanding the question correctly, I think the first thing I would do is explore a bit, looking for other people, sources of food and shelter, potential threats, etc., and work on my emergency survival skills if it looked like I would need them.
Yes but what would you do first, and why?
-
:neutral ....I see...
Anyway a question is partly based on how Sasquatch probably felt from knocking over those videos and by what happened to me last week....anyway Have you ever had anything embarrassing happen to you?
-
Nope, this question hasn't been asked.
Assuming I'm understanding the question correctly, I think the first thing I would do is explore a bit, looking for other people, sources of food and shelter, potential threats, etc., and work on my emergency survival skills if it looked like I would need them.
Yes but what would you do first, and why?
Like I said, the first thing I'd do would be to look around, the reason being that I would want to assess my situation; see if there were any people around to help me out, and watching things that could help me survive in case there weren't.
Anyway a question is partly based on how Sasquatch probably felt from knocking over those videos and by what happened to me last week....anyway Have you ever had anything embarrassing happen to you?
Oh, yes, TONS of times. I'm just about the most easily embarrassed person in the world. :oops A lot of the embarrassment I experience comes from conversations with people that turn awkward. I also get embarrassed when I do things that unintentionally annoy other people, such as watching certain movies (the main reason I keep LBT and many of my other fandoms a secret). I prefer not to bring back the embarrassment by talking about such incidents. :unsure: Two other questions in this thread have asked me about my embarrassing moments; this (http://gangoffive.net/index.php?showtopic=6430&view=findpost&p=9129281) is the answer I gave.
-
I don't think I've asked this before, but when is it Sasquatch's birthday? And how old will he be this year?
Another cat related question (obviously), has Sasquatch taken to hiding in peculiar places and then ambushes?
00000000000000000000
What do you think about people who use their ASD's as an excuse? Does it make you angry? Or do you understand them?
You also work in an Aquarium right? Unless I'm confusing you with someone else.:p What's it like there? What do you do there? It's futile to ask whether you enjoy it or not, obviously...since it'll be 'yes'...but do you have a favourite animal at the aquarium that you frequently visit?
(I think I have bombarded you with too many questions, sorry. :oops but when one has an :idea, one has an :idea. :p :smile :p
I have another question.:D
Do squirrels eat bats? :angel
-
I don't think I've asked this before, but when is it Sasquatch's birthday? And how old will he be this year?
I think Sasquatch was about eight weeks old when we got him in August 2009, so his birthday would probably be in mid-to-late June, and he'll be two years old. :)
Another cat related question (obviously), has Sasquatch taken to hiding in peculiar places and then ambushes?
Oh, yes. :lol We got him a special hideout box (a wire frame covered by purple fabric with holes in three of the walls), and lately he's developed a habit of lying in wait inside the box, and as people walk by, he lunges out and attacks their feet. (Mine have the scabs to prove it. :p) Also, it wasn't an intentional ambush, but one time Sasquatch was hiding in a bag of recyclable paper and cardboard, and my dad picked up the bag not knowing he was in there, and got a big surprise. :lol Sadly I didn't actually witness the event, but to my knowledge Sasquatch didn't attack my dad or anything; he just jumped out of the bag and gave him a fright. It was pretty amusing for everybody, though. :lol
What do you think about people who use their ASD's as an excuse? Does it make you angry? Or do you understand them?
Depends on how exactly they're using them as an excuse. I can imagine there are some people who don't know any better; who are under the impression that they can't do something because of their ASDs. While these kinds of people should learn that this isn't true, I can't really be angry at them for it. On the other hand, people who deliberately use their ASDs to “take the easy way out” of things, get away with crimes, or whatnot, are abusing their “disability privileges” (for want of a better term), and give the rest of us a bad name. -_-
You also work in an Aquarium right? Unless I'm confusing you with someone else.:p What's it like there? What do you do there? It's futile to ask whether you enjoy it or not, obviously...since it'll be 'yes'...but do you have a favourite animal at the aquarium that you frequently visit?
Nope, you've got the right person. ;) My station is at a section of the aquarium called “Critter Corner”, where there are two touch tanks (exhibits where you can pet the animals inside) containing Amazon freshwater stingrays (Potamotrygon motoro) and lake sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens), respectively; a magpie (Pica hudsonia) named Pica; a ball python (Python regius) named Bob; an anerythristic motley corn snake (Elaphe guttata) named Cornelius; a fox snake (Elaphe vulpina) named Foxy; a tank full of mudpuppies (Necturus maculosus); and a walk-in aviary (with a wetland/lakeshore theme) containing an assortment of ducks, herons, shorebirds, and turtles. My job chiefly involves instructing visitors on how to properly pet the rays and sturgeon, and answering any questions they might have. (You know I enjoy that! :smile) It's also my responsibility to call the front desk and inform the staff if a bird gets out of its enclosure in the aviary, and keep it from escaping the aviary itself.
It's kind of hard to describe what my shifts are like; if there aren't a lot of visitors around, it can get a little boring, but at least then I can always walk around and see what all the animals are up to. Often I bring my camera along in case they're doing something interesting or are being particularly photogenic. (One of these days I'm going to start a thread for zoo and aquarium photos, and I'll post some of these.) I definitely enjoy the job, though. I spend most of my time looking at the rays (though currently there's only one, named Lilypad) and magpie (who occasionally talks to me; he can say “hello”, “ëmorning”, and “quack!” :lol), followed by the sturgeon and the aviary animals.
Do squirrels eat bats? :angel
I don't know for certain, but I'm pretty sure they typically don't. I did find this article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8261000/8261364.stm) about a Svynnerton's bush squirrel attacking and fatally wounding a Wahlberg's epauletted fruit bat, though apparently not to eat it. However, North American red (http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Tamiasciurus_hudsonicus.html) and gray (http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Sciurus_carolinensis.html) squirrels are known to eat small animals such as bird nestlings, so I wouldn't put it past them to eat a bat if they had the chance and were quick enough to catch one.
(I think I have bombarded you with too many questions, sorry. :oops but when one has an :idea, one has an :idea. :p :smile :p
That's okay, but as a very emphatically friendly request, do you think you could please possibly spread out your questions a little more (as in asking just one or two at a time; more is okay if they're all closely related)? If you come up with several questions at once, you could try writing them down or putting them on a word document. (It works for me. :yes) Not only is it easier on me to answer fewer questions in any one post, but I'm less likely to procrastinate on responding if I don't have to answer a bunch of different ones at once, and I often spend more time answering single questions, so the quality of the answers you get may be better. ;)
-
What did you do today? :)
-
Nothing particularly exciting, I'm afraid. Let's see…I got up at about 4-or-5-something AM and visited the GOF. At around 7:40, right after I posted in the RP, I joined my dad when he drove my sister to school, so that we could run some errands. We visited the grocery store, the department store where I get my meds, the at&t store (where I bought a memory card and adapter so that I could transfer photos from my cell phone to the computer), and finally a bakery. After we got home, I put away the groceries, went back on the GOF for a while, then took a nap (because I'd only had about four hours of sleep that morning). I woke up around dinnertime; my brother and I made macaroni and cheese with some Cheddar cheese sauce mix I had picked up at the bakery. (It was too sharp for me, though, so I added some different cheeses to make it less Cheddary.) After that I went back on the GOF, visited Dragon Cave, and eventually started feeling tired again and took another nap.
-
Oh, right...sorry...I won't anymore. :unsure:
-
^ No, no, please don't stop asking questions! :o In fact, disregard what I said before; if asking several questions at once is what works best for you, then by all means do that. :yes
-
This question is related to my fanfic. You said in a review for an earlier chapter that you liked the way Velika spoke, so I was wondering: What did you think of that story he told in chapter 7 and of the gang's reaction to it?
-
Looking back at the review (http://gangoffive.net/index.php?showtopic=8547&view=findpost&p=9217358) I believe you are talking about, what I actually said was that I specifically liked his line “Of what use is the roof against the rains if there are no walls to stem the floods?” because I thought it was a good analogy. Most of his lines confuse me as much as they do the other characters. :p
As for Velika's story, I, like the characters, was stumped on where he was going with it for the most part, and the ending (though amusing in a dark sort of wayómostly because of the way he delivered it) threw me for a loop. After Garan explained it, it made sense to me, though. I thought the gang's reactions (mild horror and disgust for most of them; irritation and indifference for Cera) seemed appropriate. Although, considering what it almost cost them when they followed Velika's advice (albeit misinterpreting it a bit), perhaps it would have been better for them if he hadn't shared it at all.
-
If you were to be completely honest, were you (or are you) ever sensitive towards critique?
-
I'll admit it: I am just a little bit sensitive when it comes to my work being critiqued. It's because I'm absolutely obsessed with being as close to perfect as I can possibly be (though most of the time I am to some extent dissatisfied with the end product anyway), so I can't help but feel a twinge of disappointment when I am told that I need improvement in a particular area. At the same time, however, I really do want feedback on my work, and I want it to be honest and not sugarcoated; I'd rather someone tell me that I'm doing something wrong so that I can work on improving it than not mention it and allow me to continue making that mistake. My reviewing style reflects the kind of feedback I'd like to receive on my own work: honest and supportive with comments on what is good and what can be improved.
-
if you could meet anyoner famous living or dead, who would you like to meet?
-
Oh gosh, I don't know. :blink: I'm so shy and awkward when it comes to meeting people for the first time (especially reputable individuals for whom I have a lot of respect), that more likely than not I'd make a fool of myself in front of them, and in many cases I just wouldn't know what to say to them. :unsure:
It would probably be someone contemporary; I can imagine running into all kinds of linguistic, cultural, and philosophical barriers talking to someone who lived a hundred years ago; my inherent social discomfiture would be the source of enough awkwardness in such a meeting.
There's also the issue of the definition of “famous”. I'd really like to meet certain people with high levels of expertise in certain fields (paleontology, for instance), so I could ask them questions and learn more about those subjects, but I don't know whether they would be considered “famous”.
Some of the people I listed in my response (http://gangoffive.net/index.php?showtopic=6430&view=findpost&p=9224475) to the question on inspirational idols might be likely picks, but I honestly can't imagine myself meeting any one specific person I can think of right now. :oops
For some reason I'm getting dÈj‡ vu here. Have I been asked this question before? :confused
-
Do you find you connect at all with Swiftwalker's character in Far Away Home, or do you find him to be a last minute addition you are unconcerned about overall?
-
Have you ever made like a short story or something like that for that character in your avatar? And what is he/she?
-
Do you find you connect at all with Swiftwalker's character in Far Away Home, or do you find him to be a last minute addition you are unconcerned about overall?
Sorry for making you wait. I figured I should read the latest Far Away Home chapter before I responded, and then…I procrastinated. :oops
Given that adult Ruby was implied to have never found a mate in an early “present-day” scene in the story, I suppose that I might have guessed that Swiftwalker was introduced as a love interest for Ruby who would meet an untimely death in the climax of the story, and as a result subconsciously kept myself from getting too attached to him. :oops (I hadn't considered the possibility that he would become her mate between the end of Far Away Home and the prologue of Ruby in the Jungle. :slap) Lately, however, I think I've been starting to feel for his character more, especially in the last chapter, with his and Ruby's endeavors to save one another during the battle with the sharpteeth. (I find that I'm connecting with him better than I did with Bron in LBT X, if that's any yardstick.)
Have you ever made like a short story or something like that for that character in your avatar? And what is he/she?
He's a Lystrosaurus, the most common and ubiquitous large backboned inhabitant of the supercontinent Pangaea between around 250 and 245 million years ago. Further explanation here (http://gangoffive.net/index.php?showtopic=6430&view=findpost&p=9135118), here (http://gangoffive.net/index.php?showtopic=6430&st=280&#entry9202440), and here (http://gangoffive.net/index.php?showtopic=8450&st=0&#entry9202510) in my art thread.
My track record of storywriting has been rather pitiful for the last several years, so no, I have not written a story about him. He could barely be considered an OC, really; he has no name, no traits or personality that have yet been defined in words, and even I don't know what he looks like below the neck. :P: Basically, that picture is everything I have so far devised for that character. I have thought of a couple of potential stories in which he could appear, however. One idea is a LBT fanfiction in which the gang discovers a “lost world” of creatures that should have died out over 150 million years ago (which, for them, would have been the Triassic/Permian/Carboniferous :p). The other is an affectionate parody of the original LBT set in the Permian, with species from that period substituting the familiar dinosaur characters. :lol
-
Since MSN didn't work out, is there any chance we could try to have a chat via Skype? I think we both might enjoy a chat some day :)
-
I have to apologize to you, Malte. I feel very bad about this, as the issue isn’t that MSN and other chat programs haven’t been “working out”, but my own failure to even pursue the task of learning about these programs and how to use them in the first place. :oops I have Microsoft Messenger (8.0) for Mac installed on my computer, but I am flummoxed as to how to use it, and unsure of whether it is even compatible with the program you use. Prompted by your question, I just checked out Skype as well, but from what I can make of it, I have my doubts that it would be practical for me to use. (Basically there are a number of factors that deter me from using it.) On top of this, these days I have been having a real problem balancing my life and getting work done; the rate at which I’ve been accomplishing things has slowed to a pathetic crawl. :bang I don’t know how much time I would be able to devote to chats even if I were able to have them. That said, I hate to disappoint you, and I would like to converse with you more often, but I don’t know when or if doing so through chat programs will be possible. At the moment, I think e-mail is still the most feasible means for us to communicate. Again, I am sorry for letting you down. :(
-
How is Sasquatch these days :smile?
-
Still as wild and fluffy as ever. :lol Lately he seems to have been obsessed with being let out of the house. He'll beg for someone to open the door for him, standing up on his hind legs and pawing at the door knob/handle; if and when someone lets him out, he runs outside for a few minutes; then sometimes he'll reappear outside the door, apparently wanting to be let in, but when someone opens the door, he'll either continue to just stand there, or actually dart away. :confused When he really does want to come in, he tends to crouch just outside the open door for a few seconds, then spring through the doorway and dash across the room. :blink: As he did last year, he often grabs the opportunity to slip out of the house when someone opens the door for whatever reason, but now he's also taken to trying to get people to let him out whenever he sees or hears them come near a door. Earlier this evening, almost every time I passed the front door on my way up or down the stairs, Sasquach would race over to the door and gesture that he wanted to let out. (We prefer to keep him inside at night, so I kept telling him, “Sorry, Sasquatch. Not gonna happen.” :p)
-
That's a good idea, considering there are Black bears in your neck of the woods. Have any more bears come near your property, or has it so far been just the one time they raided the trash cans :lol?
-
Actually, black bears have raided our trash several times over the years. There were also a few occasions on which we saw a bear at the edge of the yard, and a number of years back we saw a juvenile bear behind our garage, which climbed up a tree, allowing us to get a pretty good look at it (though we kept our distance, of course). Truthfully, though, I'm not too worried about the black bears; from what I've heard, they tend to be afraid of cats. :lol
-
Did you have any April Fools pranks played on you this year?
-
No, surprisingly enough. Go figure it was the one April Fool's Day when I was alert and prepared for any pranks that might come my way. :rolleyes Although a lot of snow did fall in our area that morning, leading me to joke, “Mother Nature decided to cancel spring!” :p
I did, however, pull my traditional (for three years running now) prank of baking a cake and using food coloring to disguise it as chocolate. My family, of course, has wised up to the ruse; the point now is to make them guess what kind of cake they are really eating. I managed to fool all of them this year: it was a carrot cake with buttercream frosting, :smile and to my pleasant surprise they all enjoyed it.
Other than sneaking up on someone and surprising them, brain teasers like that are about the only pranks I ever play on people. I'm not really the pranking type, largely because I don't like being pranked myself.
P.S. I have seen that you have a new Far Away Home chapter posted and plan to review it soon. ;) Please accept my advance apology for the delay.
And thank you for the question; it's been a while since I've been asked one, and I've missed them. :)
-
I heard that you do not enjoy visiting the GOF anymore. D:
What is the reason? Will you leave the GOF eventually? :o
-
I don't want to sound greedy, but would you review a fan fiction if someone asked you to?
-
I heard that you do not enjoy visiting the GOF anymore. D:
What is the reason? Will you leave the GOF eventually? :o
Well, there are a number of factors, the main one being that the forum is so much less active these days, and fewer members are posting. There haven't been many new, engaging, thought-provoking discussion threads, and even the Party Room and “Caption This!” section haven't been receiving much new material lately. I'm not a very spontaneous poster; I practically rely on other members to prompt or otherwise motivate me (either directly, as in this thread, or indirectly, such as by posting something that inspires me to comment or add to a conversation).
Another part of the reason is that I myself am in a rut. As I'm sure I've already stated countless times in the “How are you feeling?” thread, lately I have been feeling gloomy, uninspired, foggy-headed, lacking in energy, and generally apathetic towards everything. It's almost gotten to the point that my obligations on the GOF are the only things that keep me coming back. And even with those I've been having problems. I no longer find enjoyment in reviewing; it just feels like a chore now; so much so that I'm reluctant to even look at new fanart and fanfiction, and feel disinclined to start post feedback on new threads, for fear of ending up being overwhelmed with reviewing work.
You can at least rest assured that I am unlikely to leave the GOF altogether anytime soon. Part of it is because there are still a few fanfictions I'm reviewing, plus a RP that I'm now in charge of, that I don't want to let down. But I'm also very attached to this forum; I've been visiting it regularly for over two years now, and even if I no longer feel as motivated to come here anymore, I clingóperhaps futilelyóto the hope that things will improve.
I don't want to sound greedy, but would you review a fan fiction if someone asked you to?
Lemme guess: you want me to review your LBT story? :p PM me and we can discuss it. :) What kind of feedback are you looking for? Do you want the kind of review where I point out spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors in the text, or just my opinion, suggestions, etc. on the story?
Truthfully, I tend to have a hard time saying no to requests, because I hate to disappoint people. This can cause problems for me, though, because if I’m reviewing a lot of fanfictions at once, I can end up with a huge backlog of work to do, which can make for a lot of stress. As a result, these days I’m rather hesitant to start reviewing new stories. :unsure:
-
I have a question for my fanfiction about a certain species of dinosaur I don't know what to call. They are in this image from the tv episode the lonely journey
(http://i1110.photobucket.com/albums/h442/vonboysp/unknowndino.png)
Sorry for the awful image quality :unsure:.
I'm asking about the dinosaurs on the right side of the image. the adult one and the two little ones. The scientific name for them would be good, but what I'd really like to know is what they'd be called in the LBT universe. I don't know if they were ever referred to at all, so I guess a name has to be made up for them. Do you have a suggestion?
Thanks :DD
-
I think those are supposed to be Iguanodons. In the past I have referred to them as "Thornthumbs" in LBT stories.
EDIT: Sorry, I hadn't been paying attention at all to what thread it was I was posting in. Sorry for speaking up in a thread in which clealy I was not asked :oops
-
Sorry, I hadn't been paying attention at all to what thread it was I was posting in. Sorry for speaking up in a thread in which clealy I was not asked :oops
No problem. :) Honest mistake.
Malte is correct; those dinosaurs are based on Iguanodon. Most LBT fans refer to them as “spikethumbs”, though peculiarly, their design in the show appears to be lacking their most famous feature, the large, conical modified thumb claws. You can also see that one of the babies in the picture is standing flat on its front feet; although Iguanodon was primarily quadrupedal (though juveniles were better adapted for walking on their hind legs), in reality, it walked on the tips of its three central fingers, which were bound together by skin to form a mittenlike hoof. Its pinky finger was prehensile, and could have been used as a thumb (since the dinosaur’s real thumb was a rigid, fused spike, possibly a weapon against predators and/or other Iguanodon).
It used to be that there were several species of Iguanodon, but recently the genus has been split shattered into so many new genera that Scientific American needed three articles to cover them all. (Here are the articles, in case you wanted to know more: Part I (http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=the-explosion-of-iguanodon-part-i-2010-11-15), Part II (http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=the-explosion-of-iguanodon-part-ii-2010-11-16), Part III (http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=the-explosion-of-iguanodon-part-iii-2010-11-17)). Iguanodon bernissartensis is now the only species of Iguanodon still considered valid. The newly renamed genera include the following:
Dollodon bampingi
Mantellisaurus atherfieldensis
Dakotadon lakotaensis
Owenodon hoggii
Barilium dawsoni
Kukufeldia tilgatensis
Hypselospinus fittoni
Sellacoxa pauli
Proplanicoxa galtoni
I’ve wondered if the LBT Iguanodon were based off of one of these former Iguanodon species, since they seem to be rather small compared to the other leafeaters they commonly appear alongside. In real life, Iguanodon bernissartensis was a rather large dinosaur, with an average length of 26–33 feet (at least the size of an adult threehorn), and even as much as 42 feet (around sharptooth length :blink:). The 20–23-foot Mantellisaurus would be a better size match for the LBT spikethumbs, but I think of them as Iguanodon anyway since the filmmakers probably didn’t know about all the different species of Iguanodon (let alone that they would eventually be considered to not be Iguanodon) when they made the choice to include them in the show.
By the way, have you seen the LBT Glossary in the General LBT section? (There’s a link to it in my signature.) It’s a very useful resource if you’re looking for LBT-accurate terms to use in a fanfiction.
-
I've been using that LBT glossary for my fanfiction, but in this case it didn't really help when I didn't even know the scientific name to begin with.
Thanks Pangaea....and Malte :lol
-
This isn't really a question, but I figured this would be the best place to post this. Knowing how interested you are in paleontology (is that the right word?), I figured you might be interested in reading these articles I came across a few days ago.
The largest fossil spider ever found:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/larges...ndinvolcanicash (http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/largestfossilspiderfoundinvolcanicash)
How dinosaurs got so huge:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/201104...osaursgotsohuge (http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20110417/sc_livescience/howdinosaursgotsohuge)
Dinosaurs may have hunted at night:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/201104...vehuntedatnight (http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20110414/sc_livescience/scarythoughtdinosaursmayhavehuntedatnight)
What do you think of these articles I found?
-
Yep, paleontology is the right word. :yes
I had seen another version (http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/04/14/dinosaurs-around-the-clock-or-how-we-know-velociraptor-hunted-by-night/) of the nocturnal dinosaurs article before on Not Exactly Rocket Science (one of the best science blogs on the Net, in my opinion), and I recall seeing articles with the theme of explaining how sauropods reached such huge sizes, but the spider one is brand new to me. I was very interested to learn about this discovery; I had been wondering what the largest fossil spider was, now that Megarachne has been reclassified as a eurypterid.
The subject matter of all three of the articles is fascinating to me. Thought-provoking, too, especially the latter two. The explanation that sauropods could exist at a lower population density than large mammals because they produced more offspring got me wondering whether perhaps some sauropods were more solitary as adults than they have often been portrayed, their size affording them protection from predators and the absence of other individuals nearby enabling them to feed with less competition. I know there is evidence from fossil trackways, nest sites, etc. that at least some sauropods lived in groups for at least some of the time, but it's food for thought nonetheless. And the study on dinosaur eyes determining which species were nocturnal/diurnal/crepuscular really surprised me, especially its conclusion that some pterosaurs such as Rhamphorhynchus were nocturnal. It also makes me wonder about the color vision of these creatures; would some of them have had monochromatic vision, like many nocturnal animals today? And would their other senses, such as smell and hearing, have been stronger, to compensate for reduced visibility?
Thanks for sharing these, Chronicler! :)
-
You recently mentioned that among your interests was Alternate History. Even though I don't have much time to read fictional books these days, I know that when I do eventually get the chance, it'll be of the Alternate History genre.
My questions are which Alternate History stories have you read? Which ones are your favorite? Would you like me to tell you about a series of Alternate History books that I would recommend? (even though my only knowledge of them is from their Wikipedia pages, since I can't find the time to read them, as I've already stated)
-
What have you been up to lately?
-
You recently mentioned that among your interests was Alternate History. Even though I don't have much time to read fictional books these days, I know that when I do eventually get the chance, it'll be of the Alternate History genre.
My questions are which Alternate History stories have you read? Which ones are your favorite? Would you like me to tell you about a series of Alternate History books that I would recommend? (even though my only knowledge of them is from their Wikipedia pages, since I can't find the time to read them, as I've already stated)
As far as alternate history goes, I'm mainly interested in speculative evolution, like what life forms might have evolved if [X mass extinction] had not occurred. So far the only alternate history books I can say I've read are Dougal Dixon's The New Dinosaurs (which gives a now rather outdated and corny look at how the dinosaurs might have evolved had they not gone extinct) and the first two or three books in the Destroyermen series by Taylor Anderson (about the crew of a WWII “destroyer” ship who become marooned on a parallel world where the K-T extinction evidently never occurred).
You can share that list of books if you like, but I'm fine either way. :)
What have you been up to lately?
Not very much. Truthfully, I've been a mess lately (well, a worse mess than usual). Not eating very healthily, sleeping at bizarre hours for erratic periods, losing track of the days and time in general, not getting out enough, forgetting everything, and feeling physically ill when confronted with any task requiring high cognitive effort. :bang
As far as more interesting things I've done recently, I visited the zoo about four weeks ago, volunteered at the aquarium three times since then, made bananas flambÈ, done a very small bit of proofreading, had a couple of minor kitchen catastrophes, been lightly whacked in the head by a three-week-old ham swinging by a rope from a tree…that's about all I can think of.
-
planning on seeing any movies this summer?
-
How is Sasquatch doing?
Right now, I'm cat-sitting my aunt and uncle's cat; Dave who is eleven. He's so sweet. I'll have to post a picture up of him on here. He has fangs!
-
Sorry about the delay; familial obligations have kept me off the GOF for the last few days.
planning on seeing any movies this summer?
Let's see…definitely Kung Fu Panda 2, Cars 2, and POTC 4; maybe also Cowboys & Aliens and Super 8.
How is Sasquatch doing?
Right now, I'm cat-sitting my aunt and uncle's cat; Dave who is eleven. He's so sweet. I'll have to post a picture up of him on here. He has fangs!
Sasquatch is doing well. :) He's been spending more time outside now that the snow has melted, and though I didn't see it, he's already caught his first critter of the year: a shrew (according to my brother, who told me about it, the shrew was alive, and uninjured enough that it could be released). I can't tell if he's grown at all recently, but as you pointed out in the “Show us your CRITTERS!” thread, he's huge now compared to when he was a kitten (He'll have passed his second birthday in less than two months). He can easily reach any doorknob in the house when he stands on his hind legs with his paws outstretched (luckily he hasn't learned how to use them…yet :lol). Actually, right now the most recent pictures of him I have posted are nearly a year old. :blink: I really ought to update sometime soon.
Can't wait to see those pictures of yours! :D
-
Are you as interested in the GoF awards as you were last year?
-
Sorry for the delay; :oops I really do appreciate getting a new question. Thank you. :)
Interested…I'm not sure I understand what you mean. :confused It took me a while to cast all of my votes, mainly because I'm so indecisive, and have been unusually stressed out recently (probably due to a combination of a severely screwed-up sleep schedule and too many things on my “to do” list, both of which, fortunately, I am making progress on fixing).
On an emotional level, I suppose I don't feel as much excitement about the awards as I did last year, but all of my emotions seem to have been “dimmer” lately (I have no idea why :wacko), so really, I haven't been as excitable as I used to about anything. :neutral
-
How was your hike on the Bright Angel trail? Was it easier, harder, or exactly as you expected it to be :)?
-
Was it blazing hot when you went hiking?>
-
What debt do you think Siak owes Aizon, so much as to make her feel obligated to take care of a bunch of total strangers for him?
-
Are you ever going to answer this question? :lol
-
Gahhh! I'm so sorry, everyone! Shame on me for making you wait so long! :bang I really do appreciate your questions, and I hope you continue to ask them. It's just hard to answer them (and remember that they're even there) when I have a jillion things to worry about and my mind is everywhere but here. :wacko Sorry again for my forgetfulness.
How was your hike on the Bright Angel trail? Was it easier, harder, or exactly as you expected it to be :)?
I guess it wasn't nearly as tough as I'd expected it would be, but I actually think that all three of those options could apply to some extent. Before we actually visited the Grand Canyon, I had imagined that hiking there would involve much steeper and rockier trails than the Bright Angel Trail turned out to be. Shortly before our actual hike, however, I read in a pamphlet that the Bright Angel Trail was the easiest trail for hiking, so as a result I wasn't too surprised that it turned out to be so smooth (both the hike and the trail itself :p). What did come as a surprise to me was how much time it took us to hike a measly one mile down the trail (though my constant stopping to take pictures was probably a big reason for that :oops). We knew that we weren't going to make it all the way down to the canyon floor in one day (that's not recommended for visitors anyway), but we had originally hoped to hike three miles; when it became evident that we weren't going to make it that far before sundown, we cut back our goal to two miles, then one-and-a-half miles, and in the end, we didn't even make that. Returning to "easier than expected" territory, my siblings and I were all surprised that we took the same amount of time (if not less) to hike back up to the rim as we took going down (Again, this was probably because I was taking fewer pictures on the way back). We enjoyed the trip in any event, and maybe another time we'll get to hike further.
Was it blazing hot when you went hiking?>
Well, we made a point of starting our hike a little later in the dayóaround 2 or 3 PMóso that the sun wouldn't be at full strength for most of the trip, and conditions would only become cooler as we progressed. Still, it was pretty warm out (though not the kind of sweltering heat that would allow you to make omelets outside without the aid of a fire), and we had used up just about all our water in the numerous bottles we were carrying with us by the time we got back.
What debt do you think Siak owes Aizon, so much as to make her feel obligated to take care of a bunch of total strangers for him?
Hmm…One possibility that came to mind is that Aizon was the one who "introduced" Siak to the Jungle Runners (more likely, he recommended that she seek them out and advised her on how to befriend them, considering the runners' attitude toward wingtails) after her mate was killed; I'm guessing she was probably seeking out a new home at that point. Maybe Aizon himself gave Siak sanctuary for a short amount of time before directing her to the Abyssal Jungle.
-
Hey, how's Sasquatch? :D
-
Gack…sorry for forgetting to respond. :slap
Sasquatch has been doing well, although recently he's been having territorial issues with a neighbor's cat who sometimes visits our yard. Last week the cat appeared at the edge of our lawn; Sasquatch was on the deck and positively raced across the yard to confront it. He stopped just short of the other cat, and the two of them just stood there, backs arched and fur puffed out, for several minutes, gradually crouching down and eventually lying on the ground staring at each other. (This happened at dinnertime, so my family and I were all there to watch, and speculate on what they were doing.) After a while, the neighbor's cat stood up and slowly retreated into the underbrush. Sasquatch continued staring after it for a good few minutes, well after the other cat was out of sight.
A couple of days ago, Sasquatch had another run-in with the neighbor's cat. This time the cat came right up beside our front step. I heard the sounds of an angry cat from inside the house, and came out to find Sasquatch staring down the other cat from atop the step. I didn't want there to be a fight, so I went to pick Sasquatch up, but at that moment, he charged the other cat and chased it around the corner of the house. When I caught up, Sasquatch was standing a few feet away from the other cat in a clearly agitated posture, growling aggressively. I picked him up, and could feel that his ribcage was expanded with air, Sasquatch having literally puffed himself up in order to look bigger (I could feel him deflate as I carried him back into the house). Fortunately for me he didn't struggle or protest much as I interrupted his standoff with the other cat.
Although the neighbor's cat was the intruder on both occasions, so far I haven't seen it display any aggression towards Sasquatch. I'm hoping that it stays that way, and that their future encounters grow to be more amiable. (Cats aren't completely antisocial with their own kind, and I couldn't help but interpret the first meeting as the feline equivalent of two people who don't really like each other having a cautious conversation to get to know one another better.)
-
Have you heard about "Dinosaur Revolution" on the Discovery Channel? If not, here's the discussion topic I started: Dinosaur Revolution (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=9860)
-
What is your favorite comfort food?
-
Have you heard about "Dinosaur Revolution" on the Discovery Channel? If not, here's the discussion topic I started: Dinosaur Revolution (http://www.gangoffive.net/index.php?topic=9860)
Yep, I've heard about it. I think I've taped four episodes of it, but I've only watched the first part of the first one (the Eoraptor segment, to be precise). One of these days I may watch the whole thing, but so far I haven't found the time or interest to do so. (Is that a bad sign, that one of the GOF's biggest dinosaur fanatics is ignoring a dinosaur show? :unsure:) I have been following your thread, however.
What is your favorite comfort food?
Uh…root beer, I guess. When I'm stressed or upset, in a situation where other people would say "I need a (alcoholic) drink", it's what I have instead. :p Does that count as comfort food?
-
Have you given up on Twilight Valley?
I will tell you that it is on hiatus until I can get things straightened out with my writing abilities.
-
A while ago, you said you were working on a massive post about Ruby. Have you made any progress on it yet? How much longer do you think it will take for you to finish it?
Since I'm here, I'd also like to ask if you've read the latest chapter of my fanfic, which I consider to be even better than the previous one.
-
Helllllooooo good sir,
How are you these days?
-
I’m so sorry to all of you for taking so long to answer your questions. :( :slap :bang :oops What in the world has happened to me, huh? I used to love answering questions… :neutral
Have you given up on Twilight Valley?
"Given up" as in stopped reading it? Well…I think it’s time I confessed something (please don’t be offended!): as LBT fanfictions go, Twilight Valley isn’t one I like that much. That’s certainly not to say that it’s a bad fanficóon the contrary, I’m very impressed by the amount of work and detail you’ve put into it, and I love how you’ve used your knowledge of medicine, weaponry, and military organization in the story to make it realistic and believableóbut LBT war fics just aren’t my thing, I’m afraid. To tell you the truth, I am only reading and reviewing the story because you asked me to (I’m sorry, I hate how that sounds :bang). I know it was one of the stories I cited when you asked me which LBT fanfictions I had read (http://gangoffive.net/index.php?showtopic=6430&view=findpost&p=9140439) way back when on this very thread (though it’s worth noting that those were fanfics I had seen, not necessarily ones I liked). Back when I first read it, you see, I was at the height of my LBT obsession, in a veritable feeding frenzy for fresh LBT material. I had already seen all of the movies and available TV episodes, and so fanfics were all I had left to satisfy my obsession. I read a wide range of LBT stories in that time (most of which I listed in the afore-linked post), and yours happened to be one of them. And although it wasn’t my favorite fanfiction, you seemed to want feedback on it so badly that I didn’t want to say no when you requested me to review it. :oops
I can still continue to review Twilight Valley once you get it going again, if you still want me too. I did make a start on writing a review for the last chapter you posted, but like so many other projects of mine it sort of fell by the wayside as I slipped into my current rut. It’s one of the things I hope to complete soon now that I’m back on the GOF.
A while ago, you said you were working on a massive post about Ruby. Have you made any progress on it yet? How much longer do you think it will take for you to finish it?
Since I'm here, I'd also like to ask if you've read the latest chapter of my fanfic, which I consider to be even better than the previous one.
To answer your first question, no, I'm sorry, I have not. :( I'm pretty sure it's been well over a year since I last even opened the document in which I was writing that post. Sadly, I cannot guarantee that I will ever finish it. :cry If I do, it probably won't be until after I've caught up on all of the things I still have to do for other members on the GOF. At the very least, I should be clearer of mind and more capable of writing it once I've gotten everything else out of the way.
As for your second question, I think by now you know that I've read the chapter you were referring to. :p I have not, however, gotten around to reading the new chapter you've posted since then. :oops So much to do…
Helllllooooo good sir,
How are you these days?
Not so good, I'm afraid. :( Life-wise, I haven't really been doing anything lately; no work, no volunteering, no accomplishments to speak of. I've pretty much been feeling like a worthless, futureless waste of resources with insufficient talent and willpower to do anything progressive or meaningful. I've written more on the subject here (http://gangoffive.net/index.php?showtopic=10347&view=findpost&p=22000772).
-
How was your Easter?
I know I had to cut mine short because of an exam I was studying for today, damn shame too. Turned out I should have studied more for that exam but hindsight is always 20/20.
:angel
-
I'm wondering if you can get together your Paleontological knowledge to answer this little question that's been bugging me. What did dinosaurs taste like?
First I's say like any other reptile, like alligator or something, but there's that little thing about them being closely related to birds. So would they actually taste like chicken then? :p
Just been woderin'.
-
Since you're posting more often now (As in more than once a month) You wanna try to answer my question? :DD
-
Great greasy gravy, I can't believe I've neglected my own "Ask Me" thread so badly! :bang I'm so sorry! :oops
How was your Easter?
Fairly uneventful. Apologies to anyone reading this who values the religious aspects of Easter, but for me and my family, Easter is little more than an excuse to hunt down hand-decorated hard-boiled hen fruit and eat lots of chocolate and ham. :p
Since you're posting more often now (As in more than once a month) You wanna try to answer my question? :DD
Yes, I'm sorry. :oops I've actually been working on a (very long) response to your question for months, but like my activity on the GOF until recently, my progress on it has been sporadic. Completing it, however, was in fact on my immediate "to do" list even before you reminded me.
I'm wondering if you can get together your Paleontological knowledge to answer this little question that's been bugging me. What did dinosaurs taste like?
First I's say like any other reptile, like alligator or something, but there's that little thing about them being closely related to birds. So would they actually taste like chicken then? :p
Now that's a really tricky question, but also a really good one. I can say you're probably on the right track in assuming that alligator and chicken are good starting points for speculating on what dinosaurs tasted like. Pretty much any time someone poses a question about dinosaurs that could only be solidly answered by studying a flesh-and-blood dinosaur, paleontologists turn to birds and crocodilians to make inferences. This makes sense, considering birds are descended from a group of dinosaurs, and crocodilians had a close common ancestor with dinosaurs. The problem is that dinosaurs were extremely diverse, and inhabited a wide variety of niches, so there's only so much one can infer from animals that are mostly wither semiaquatic ambush predators or small-bodied, high-energy fliers. It would be like trying to figure out everything about the behavior and physiology of mammals by studying only bats and platypuses. But I digress.
According to one source I found, alligator and crocodile meat does taste something like chicken, due to the fact that they have large amounts of anaerobic, or fast-twitch, muscle fibers. Fast-twitch muscle is extremely powerful and requires little or no oxygen to function, but it tires much more quickly than aerobic, or slow-twitch, muscle. It allows for the short, sharp bursts of speed which crocodilians use to catch prey, and birds like chickens to rapidly propel themselves into the air to escape from predators. Slow-twitch muscle, by comparison, has less power output, but is good for sustained activity like endurance running or flapping flight, as well as structural support for the body. Slow-twitch muscle fibers are packed with blood vessels, myoglobin, and mitochondria, and as a result are dark in color and, when eaten, have a richer, “meatier” flavor (think beef and pork). Fast-twitch muscle fibers, on the other hand, contain mostly glycogen, and are paler. Apparently, animals with a lot of fast-twitch muscle tend to taste like chicken.
Tha ratio of fast-twitch to slow-twitch muscle in an animal often correlates with the animal’s lifestyle, and what it needs those muscles for. Size is also a factor, because muscle supports and holds the body together as well as providing movement, and the larger the animal, the more muscle it needs for both of these purposes. Endurant slow-twitch muscle is best for the job of holding up a lot of weight, so larger land animals will have more slow-twitch muscle than smaller ones. It is also possible for the muscle composition of an animal to change as it grows up, so a sharptooth might describe the taste of a young dinosaur as different from an adult of the same species.
It is fairly safe to assume that since non-avian dinosaurs were generally terrestrial animals that spent most of their time walking, their legs would have contained a fairly high proportion of slow-twitch muscle. Their tails, however, may well have contained large amounts of fast-twitch muscle. Until recently, a much-overlooked feature of dinosaur anatomy was the caudofemoralis, a large slab of muscle that ran much of the length of the lower half of the tail, connecting to the thighbone via a tendon. When a dinosaur needed to get somewhere in a hurry, much of the power behind its sprint would have come not from the leg muscles, but from the caudofemoralis. It would seem likely that the highest concentration of “light meat” in a dinosaur would be in the tail.
The meat of large flightless birds like ostriches and emus tastes much like lean beef. It is plausible that the leg meat of similar-sized (50–300 lb) fast-running dinosaurs had a similar flavor. However, the tail meat of these dinosaurs may have tasted more like chicken or alligator. On a related noteóand this is pure speculation on my partóit may be that the tail meat of dinosaurs specialized for endurance running may have tasted slightly richer and beefier than that of dinosaurs adapted for high-speed sprinting.
It’s worth noting that muscle composition is just one of the variables behind the taste of a meat. The diet of the animal, the amount of fat and gristle in the meat, and even the hormones in the body can all have an influence on flavor and texture. Fat, for instance, though it doesn’t fossilize, was certainly stored by dinosaurs to sustain them over extended periods without. Some dinosaurs, such as those that lived in hot climates (which was the case for much of the world during the Mesozoic), may have concentrated their fat storage in certain areas of the body, as emus, camels, and lizards do, so as to reduce the risk of overheating. Those that lived closer to the poles, such as Pachyrhinosaurus from Alaska and Leaellynosaura from southern Australia, were perhaps fatty all over, to help with insulation. As a result, their meat may have tasted rather greasy and oily.
Meat from the smallest dinosaurs may have tasted like the “dark” meat of a chicken or turkey, due to the tendency of smaller, more active animals to have more fast-twitch muscle than larger, slower ones.
Dromaeosaurs (“raptors”) were sprinters and ambush predators that probably had a lot of fast-twitch muscle. They too might have tasted like poultry, but their carnivorous diet would have made their meat a lot more pungent.
Sauropods (“longnecks”) were enormous animals that were almost certainly very slow-moving as adults. It would be logical to assume that they would have tasted very beefy. There is evidence, however, that baby sauropods could sprint (on their hind legs, no less!) to escape predators, and they might have tasted slightly more chickeny than their elders.
Big hadrosaurs (“duckbills”), ceratopsians (horned dinosaurs), and thyreophorans (armored dinosaurs) probably all tasted beefy. None of them were especially fast runners (the armored ankylosaurs and stegosaurs, in particular, were among the slowest of dinosaurs), and they were all predominantly herbivorous, though some, like the ceratopsians, could have been omnivores. Recent discoveries of petrified hadrosaur “mummies” show that these dinosaurs were particularly meaty around the rump and tail, which likely contained muscle for both long-distance migrations and sprints of as much as 28 miles per hour (possibly enough to outrun a large tyrannosaur!), as well as perhaps fat stores to see them through lean times.
Large pterosaurs (flyers) are believed to have had mostly fast-twitch muscle tissue, to give them enough power to launch their large bodies into the air. So if Chomper ever tried chicken, there's a good chance that he would say it tastes like flyer. :p On the other hand, smaller pterosaurs that did more flapping would have had more slow-twitch muscle, and thus might have tasted more like birds that do a lot of endurance flying, like ducks. It's worth keeping in mind, however, that most known pterosaurs had diets consisting of fish, shellfish, small animals, and insects, so perhaps gull, hawk, stork, or even bat meat might be more accurate flavor analogues for certain species.
Big theropods like Tyrannosaurus and Allosaurus were probably very beefy-tasting (though the theoretical rule of thumb that the tail meat probably tasted “lighter” than the meat elsewhere would presumably still apply). However, because they were meat-eaters themselves, their flesh probably would have been overpoweringly like the smaller carnivores, their diet probably would have had an overpoweringly pungent, metallic taste, and some parts of the body, such as the liver, may have been so rich in vitamins that they would have been toxic to consume.
I think that’s about all I can come up with right now. I repeat, please keep in mind that a lot of this is just informed speculation. At any rate, I hope you find it interesting and/or helpful :) (and my apologies again for the delay in answering your question).
Sources:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_pol...taste_like.html (http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2010/10/what_did_dinosaur_meat_taste_like.html)
http://decapoda.nhm.org/pdfs/2331/2331.pdf (http://decapoda.nhm.org/pdfs/2331/2331.pdf)
http://www.pterosaur.net/anatomy.php (http://www.pterosaur.net/anatomy.php)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/muscle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/muscle)
http://www.dynamicchiropractic.com/mpacms/...le.php?id=31599 (http://www.dynamicchiropractic.com/mpacms/dc/article.php?id=31599)
http://www.protein.bio.msu.ru/biokhimiya/c...l/65070891.html (http://www.protein.bio.msu.ru/biokhimiya/contents/v65/full/65070891.html)
-
Do you think you'd have time to critique my Doctor Who fan fiction?
-
You mean this one (http://gangoffive.net/index.php?showtopic=11440)? Well, I suppose I could, though I'm not sure I'm what you would call "qualified" for it, since I haven't read the novel it is based on. :unsure:
What kind of critique are you looking for? Do you want me to point out typos, grammar errors, and the like, or are you more concerned about the overall quality of the story? (We can continue this discussion by PM if you wish.)
-
Well, I guess I can fill you in on the basics of it. And Pming that would be a great thing to do. But yeah, typos, grammar, and overall quality...since that's the bit I feel most concerned with.
-
You mentioned in a recent PM to me that you like LEGOs. Is there any set or theme in particular that you like the most?
-
I think I have a definite slant towards sciencey, science-fictiony, and fantasy-y themed LEGO series. :p I am especially fond of sets that have interesting figures (dinosaurs, monsters, animals, aliens, and the like) and complex vehicles and architecture with many moving parts. I most enjoy building large, complicated sets with hundreds of pieces; unfortunately, due to the cost of many of them and the fact that we have limited space in our household, I haven't been able to collect any new ones for a while. :(
Here are several of the most memorable LEGO sets I have collected over the years:- Two 1997 Divers-themed sets: Shark Cage Cove (http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=6558-1) and Deep Sea Refuge (http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=6441-1) (Sadly both of these are mostly in scattered pieces right now, though I still have the sea creature minifigs all in one place).
- The 2000 Dino Island sets All Terrain Trapper (http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=5955-1) and Dino Research Compound (http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=5987-1) (one of my all-time most beloved LEGO sets).
- The entire 2001 Dinosaurs (http://www.brickset.com/browse/themes/?theme=Dinosaurs) series (though some of the bricks and other small pieces from the baby dinosaur sets are missing).
- One small Dino Attack set (http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=7473-1). (That series' dinosaur figures, despite their cheesy, monstery inaccurateness, were pretty much the only parts of those sets that appealed to me, but I didn't consider them to be worth paying for the entire sets, so I never collected any but the smallest and cheapest one.)
- Aqua Raiders (http://www.brickset.com/browse/themes/?theme=Aqua%20Raiders) Crab Crusher and Aquabase Invasion sets.
- The Mars Mission Crystal Reaper (http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=7645-1) and Eagle Command Base (http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=7690-1) sets.
- The Exo-Force Sentry (http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=7711-1) and Sonic Phantom (http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=7704-1) sets. (The human minifigures in that series creeped me out, but I liked the robot designs. :p)
- A small one, the Pharaoh's Quest Scarab Attack (http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=7305-1) set.
- A number of Star Wars sets, namely the Millennium Falcon (http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=4504-1), Cloud City (http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=10123-1), Sandcrawler (http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=10144-1), Jabba's Sail Barge (http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=6210-1), and a motorized AT-AT Walker (http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=10178-1).
- The Harry Potter sets containing Buckbeak the hippogriff (http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=4750-1), the Hungarian Horntail dragon (http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=4767-1), and Fluffy the three-headed dog (http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=4706-1).
- Several Bionicle sets, including Lehvak (http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=8564-1) (my first one), three of the Visorak (http://www.brickset.com/browse/themes/?theme=Bionicle&subtheme=Visorak) (Boggarak, Roporak, and Keelerak), four of the Barraki (http://www.brickset.com/browse/themes/?theme=Bionicle&subtheme=Barraki) (Takadox, Kalmah, Ehlek, and Pridak), Toa Kopaka (http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=8685-1), Vamprah (http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=8692-1), Nocturn (http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=8935-1), and Makuta Icarax (http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=8953-1).
-
Do you like power metal?
-
That's hard to say, as I don’t know enough about the style to even tell you for certain whether or not I’ve heard it. As I've stated before in response to questions about my musical preferences, I am very bad at recognizing certain musical genres, and pretty much completely hopeless when it comes to distinguishing between subsets of those categories (e.g., power metal versus other types of metal). So there could have been times when I listened toóand enjoyedóa power metal tune, but was unaware that that was what it was.
I imagine that if I were to listen to a variety of power metal songs, I would find that there were some that I liked and some that I disliked, as is the case with just about every other style of music out there. While I suspect that my like-to-dislike ratio differs between genres, genre in and of itself is not a make-or-break factor in determining whether or not I enjoy a tune.
So…short answer: I don’t know. :unsure:
-
What do you think about the theory that ceratopsians were not only herbivores but omnivores?I know you can't give a 100% sure answer,I just want to hear your opinion about it.
-
Personally I am fascinated by the idea of dinosaurs traditionally believed to be strictly herbivorous (or carnivorous, for that matter) being in fact omnivorous. And the theory of part-time carnivory in ceratopsians sounds very plausible to me. Whereas other plant-eaters such such as hadrosaurs, ankylosaurs, and sauropods had broad muzzles adapted for cropping as much vegetation as possible per bite, ceratopsians had narrow jaws built for shearing, which suggests that they were more selective about what they ate. While they were certainly adapted for a primarily herbivorous lifestyle, they were much better suited for facultative carnivory than most of their fellow plant-eaters, or the numerous herbivores alive today that have been documented to eat meat on occasion (hippos scavenging carrion, deer decapitating seabird chicks, cows eating chicks and ducklings, etc.).
Omnivory seems especially likely for the smaller and more basal ceratopsians like Psittacosaurus and Leptoceratops; the larger species such as Triceratops and Centrosaurus were often the most abundant dinosaurs in their respective habitats, and there probably wouldn’t have been enough meat to go around. That’s not to say some of them wouldn’t have grabbed it when they had the chance, though. I don’t find it unlikely or difficult to imagine ceratopsians picking at the remains of a dinosaur carcass, (perhaps even bullying a theropod away from its kill in order to do so), pinning some poor small animal to the ground and tearing it apart with their beaks, or snapping at some tasty-looking insect (only to get hit in the face with a defensive squirt of noxious chemicals :p).
Thank you very much for the question. :)
Sources:
http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/20...-of-the-day-11/ (http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2007/06/05/tet-zoo-picture-of-the-day-11/)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/markwitton/522293984/ (http://www.flickr.com/photos/markwitton/522293984/)
http://www.thescelosaurus.com/ceratopsia.htm (http://www.thescelosaurus.com/ceratopsia.htm)
-
Thanks for the answer.I think it's realy helpfull that you mention the sources,becose one can read more about the topic if they want to with them.I have another qouestion to you.We always hear that dinos went extinct becose of a big meteor.I heard that maybe they were alredy a dying species,and the meteor was only the end of a longer suffering.They say that what realy killed dinosaurs were the bloodsucker insects,and other parasites.They spread various infections among the dinos,and the meteor just finished the alredy weakened species.What do you think about this theorys?
-
Did you ever get my PM about my plot problems for my Doctor Who story...I'm only asking because it doesn't seem to be in my "sent" inbox, and I wrote a loooooot of stuff that I'm a little scared to re-write if I have to :oops
-
Thanks for the answer.I think it's realy helpfull that you mention the sources,becose one can read more about the topic if they want to with them.I have another qouestion to you.We always hear that dinos went extinct becose of a big meteor.I heard that maybe they were alredy a dying species,and the meteor was only the end of a longer suffering.They say that what realy killed dinosaurs were the bloodsucker insects,and other parasites.They spread various infections among the dinos,and the meteor just finished the alredy weakened species.What do you think about this theorys?
Sorry for the delay, Blais. I had a hard time figuring out how to word my response, and finding the time, energy, and concentration to write it. :oops
Truth be told, I’m not particularly attentive to new theories and articles about how the dinosaurs went extinct, partly because it’s such a ubiquitous subject: it seems like there’s hardly a single dinosaur book, documentary, or article out there that doesn’t devote a segment to talking about their extinction, and I’m much more interested in the diversity of dinosaur species and their behavior and biology than how they died. That won’t keep me from answering this question, though.
A small disclaimer: I guess I was a little absentminded writing this post, because I worded most of my argument as if I were refuting the idea of disease being the sole cause of the dinosaurs’ extinction, not as a theory that it merely “tenderized” the dinosaurs before the meteorite impact finished them off. :oops I think many of my points probably still apply, and I’ve tried editing them a little to be more relevant, but writing this entire post took so much time and work that I don’t want to reword the entire thing. (I’d like to share my thoughts on the “disease only” hypothesis anyway.) But if it wasn’t the answer to your question that you were looking for, just let me know and I’ll take another shot at it.
Personally I don’t buy the “wiped out by diseases” theory at all (at least, not as a singular reason for large numbers of dinosaur species around the world going extinct at the same time). The thing is that there’s almost no such thing as a contagion with a 100% mortality rate. And most pathogens are specialized for only a relatively small range of host species. It’s unlikely that there were ever very many diseases that could have affected all contemporary dinosaur species. To use a modern-day example, rabies is a contagious and extremely deadly disease (once symptoms appear, death is almost inevitable) that can infect virtually all mammal species, and have weóor any other mammals that we know ofóbeen wiped out by it? Obviously no; in fact, it is possible for some animals to be infected with the rabies virus but not develop rabies, because their immune systems are resistant to the disease and fight it off before symptoms develop. This is how all diseases work; whenever a disease infects a population, there will generally be a few individuals that just happen to have the right immune response to avoid getting sick. If all other members of the population die, then as long as there are enough survivors to breed, the population will rebound, but this time most or all of its members will be resistant or immune to the disease that ravaged the population before. And usually when a new disease crops up in a population, its impact will be far less severe, because the organisms and their immune systems will have been evolving alongside the precursors of the disease, and thus will be better “prepared” for resisting an outbreak. The worst epidemics occur when a population is introduced to a pathogen that they have never encountered before, and so the vast majority will have no immunity whatsoever. It is also much more likely for a population to be completely wiped out if it is hit by multiple outbreaks of different diseases over a short period of time, so that the population is unable to recover between epidemics.
As far as I know, proponents of the extinction by disease hypothesis usually also suggest that new land bridges forming at the end of the Cretaceous allowed dinosaurs from different continents to encounter one another and expose each other to new diseases. While it’s true that sea levels did drop at the end of the Cretaceous, and thus these interchanges may very well have happened in some parts of the world, I personally have a hard time believing that there were enough dinosaur species moving between landmasses in enough parts of the world, spreading enough diseases with broad enough host ranges and/or high enough mortality rates to other dinosaur species, and those diseases spreading far enough to affect the entirety of the dinosaur populations on those landmasses, and caused enough damage to those populations that dozens of dinosaur species across the globe simultaneously became extinct, or were crippled population-wise to the point that the meteorite easily finished them off. There are other holes in this theory as well. Some landmasses at the time of the late Cretaceous, such as India, were completely isolated from the rest of the continents, but as far as I know the dinosaurs living there died out at the same time as those in other parts of the world. The disease theory also does not account for the other organisms that died out at the same time as the dinosaurs (I’ll get to them soon).
What a lot of people probably don’t realize is that all of the major geologic periods of the past half billion years contained extinction events, many of them at or near the end of the period. The best known, of course, are the five great mass extinctions, of which the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event that killed the dinosaurs was one. The dinosaurs had already lived through several extinction events by the time of their “final” extinction. Each of those events probably claimed a portion of the dinosaur species alive at the time, but the survivors simply rediversified and came back as strong as before. It was only the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous that hit hard enough to completely wipe out most of the dinosaurs (and if you consider the roughly 10,000 bird species alive today, then arguably the dinosaurs bounced back from that one, too). And throughout their history, interchanges of dinosaur species between different continents took place many times before the end of the Cretaceous. I am unaware of any existing studies on how those prior interchanges affected the species involved, but I can’t help but question (if uninformedly) why the end-Cretaceous interchanges would have been so much more catastrophic than those that occurred in the millions of years beforehand.
Another fact many people aren’t aware of is that the end-Cretaceous extinction affected more than just the dinosaurs, or even the pterosaurs, and marine reptiles. It also severely impacted shallow-water marine life: the spiral-shelled ammonites, straight-shelled belemnites, reef-building rudist clams, and giant inoceramid clams all disappeared entirely from the fossil record. Many other reef-dwelling species, such as corals, suffered heavily, and the foraminiferans, microscopic algae found both on the seabed and in the plankton that form a key component of the oceanic food web, declined by as much as ninety percent. Plankton in general were apparently very hard hit by the extinction, so that would explain why so many marine species became extinct.
On land, plants also suffered severely (which is pretty much a no-brainer, considering the stated effects of the meteorite impact theory include global forest fires and the blotting out of the sun), and in turn, many herbivorous insects died out. Even mammals, birds, and crocodilians, despite being trumpeted as extinction Houdinis in almost every source that mentions the aftermath of this event, suffered losses. Marsupials and multituberculates lost several species, and the latter never returned to being as successful as they were in the Mesozoic. The toothed hesperornithean and enantiornithine birds all disappeared, leaving only the toothless neornithes to repopulate the planet (it’s still a mystery why they didn’t go extinct, too). The crocodiles and their relatives lost about half of their numbers, and none of the large species survived.
Basically, any theory that only explains how the dinosaurs died out, and fails to account for the extinction of all these other organisms, is only plausible as a supporting cause of the dinosaurs’ extinction, not as the cause of the entire Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event. And let’s face it: any ecological catastrophe that causes so much damage to the most fundamental organisms in the food web like plants and plankton is definitely going to have severe consequences for the large heterotrophs such as dinosaurs.
In addition to the meteorite impact, the end of the Cretaceous was marked by massive and almost continuous volcanic eruptions taking place in what is now west-central India, a site known as the Deccan Traps. These eruptions may have ejected enough ash and gases into the atmosphere, with effects that may have been similar to what the meteorite impact caused. Earth’s climate was already in flux at the time, if the falling sea levels I mentioned before are any indication, so it seems reasonable to me that it was those changes that were already giving the dinosaurs and other large animals difficulty (in extinction events, it is invariably the big animals, or megafauna, that are most affected), then came the double whammy of intense volcanic activity and a meteorite impact that devastated the global environment. In fact, according to one of the sources I found (the first one listed), all mass extinction events may be linked to either volcanic events or meteorite impacts (or both).
In summary, I think that it’s possible that disease might have affected some dinosaurs towards the end of the Cretaceous if there was indeed widespread interchange of species over newly formed land bridges, but I feel doubtful that it would have contributed significantly to their final demise. Perhaps at some point I will find a source that convincingly argues thatófor the dinosaurs at leastódisease could have been widespread and destructive enough to make a difference, but at this point in time, the climate change + Deccan eruptions + meteorite hypothesis is the most convincing explanation for me.
Thanks for asking me another question! :DD
Sources:
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/education/events/cowen1b.html (http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/education/events/cowen1b.html) (3 pages)
http://paleobiology.si.edu/geotime/main/ht...retaceous4.html (http://paleobiology.si.edu/geotime/main/htmlversion/cretaceous4.html)
http://paleobiology.si.edu/blastpast/paleoBlast3.html (http://paleobiology.si.edu/blastpast/paleoBlast3.html)
Did you ever get my PM about my plot problems for my Doctor Who story...I'm only asking because it doesn't seem to be in my "sent" inbox, and I wrote a loooooot of stuff that I'm a little scared to re-write if I have to :oops
Yes, I did receive your PM, Ptyra. I'm sorry; I haven't responded yet because, to tell you the truth, the amount of message content I have to respond to was a little overwhelming when I first saw it. You have so many points to address, many of which I think you probably understand better than I can comprehend, let alone offer suggestions for. (I'm honestly concerned that you're going to be disappointed by just how useless I'll be at helping you.) Also, the night I first got your PM, I already had a lot of things on my mind. There were e-mails I needed to write, threads on the GOF that needed my input, and family-related matters that I knew I would have to attend to. When I opened your message and started, I think my brain overloaded. :oops I really needed a rest after I skimmed through it. There was no way I could tackle it without a clear head. I haven't had the chance to get back to it since then because things haveóif anythingóonly been busier for me since then. We had a guest in our household through all of last week, and my youngest brother came to visit from college for the weekend; I tried to spend as much quality time with them as possible (in fact I wasn't able to visit the GOF at all for a couple of days). They’re both gone now, so things will be less busy around the house, and I hope to be able to respond to your PM soon, though it may still take a while unless I respond to it in segments. Sorry again for worrying you. :oops
-
Ah, okay :) . Thanks for letting me know. I'm just glad that it didn't run off to LaLa Land where the buffalo roam and there was no chance of finding it.
You can take your time
-
Wow,thanks for the lot of information,thats definetly satisfied my thirst for knowledge about this topic.To be honest,I was sceptical with it too.
I am unaware of any existing studies on how those prior interchanges affected the species involved, but I can’t help but question (if uninformedly) why the end-Cretaceous interchanges would have been so much more catastrophic than those that occurred in the millions of years beforehand.
I guess the reason why the late Cretaceous interchanges were more fatal is the other cathastrophes that happened that time.Those diseases alone were not able to take the dinosaurs down,however they lowered their diversity.The real question for me with this theory is that without this interchanges smaller dinosaurs could have survived the other catastrophes?I don't think that we can estimate this,but I think that we should look on other species.Mammals for example could traveled across those land bridges too,and spread diseases with each other,but they still lost only 20%-40% (I don't remember the punctual number).And,as you said there were isolated places.For me this suggest that dinosaurs would died out with or without this interchanges aniway.
I can't help but ask another question :smile .While I was visitig a zoo,I noticed how the male tiger was nearly twice as big as the female.But watching the owls,the female was bigger than the male.I wondered about this,and the t-rex came into my mind.Female t-rexes were bigger than males,and I guess this is true for all Theropods.But what about other species,such as ceratopsians,sauropods,stegosaurids,ankylosaurids?Were the female bigger than the male was a thing all dinosaur species shared,or only a few?
-
I need the guidance of one college-Aspie to another.
I haven't been doing this well with keeping up with my work this semester and it has been hurting my grades...or so I think, I'm still confused as to how they work. And it's been hurting my tests too.
So, do you have any advice you could offer for next semester that could be of value to me as a college student with Aspberger's?
(Or places to go for visual study aids like documentaries?)
-
I realised I never repliedto his, so I'll do it now.
Thanks for all that info on what dinosaurs might have tasted like. It was a really interesting read, and those links were a good read too. I'm soory it took so long to say thanks for it, Pangaea.
I have a couple new questions for you now, but I'd have to PM to you I think. They're things having to do with my fanfiction, and I wouldn't want to spoil that here. :)
-
Rrrrgh…I’m so sorry, everyone. :bang I really wish I could have responded to these questions sooner. :oops
I can't help but ask another question :smile .While I was visitig a zoo,I noticed how the male tiger was nearly twice as big as the female.But watching the owls,the female was bigger than the male.I wondered about this,and the t-rex came into my mind.Female t-rexes were bigger than males,and I guess this is true for all Theropods.But what about other species,such as ceratopsians,sauropods,stegosaurids,ankylosaurids?Were the female bigger than the male was a thing all dinosaur species shared,or only a few?
Now there’s a great question, and a subject I’d very much like to know more about. Unfortunately, at this point in time there really is no answer to that question, because it’s such a problematic task to identify a dinosaur’s gender (let alone gender-specific characteristics of an entire species) from fossils alone. In most cases it’s almost impossible to tell for certain whether disparities between two specimens ostensibly of the same species are attributable to sexual dimorphism, differences in age, simple variation between individuals of the same sex and age group, or even if they are two very closely related species or subspecies.
Apparently even the supposed size dimorphism in T. rex is not certain. It seems that the theory came about when someone interpreted T. rex specimens as coming in two morphs or body types: one larger and sturdier, the other smaller and more slender. It was postulated that the robust specimens represented females, on the basis of certain features of the tail vertebrae that could have permitted easier egg-laying, namely a reduced chevron bone on the underside of the first tail vertebra (a feature supposedly also found in crocodiles). Later, however, two problems with this theory turned up: the robust Tyrannosaurus “Sue” turned out to have a complete first chevron, and the article that had originally claimed that female crocodiles had a smaller first chevron than the males turned out to be mistaken (Whoops). Furthermore, there was not a large enough sample size of Tyrannosaurus specimens to prove that the species definitively came in two separate adult morphs; it’s equally possible that they represented different age groups.
More recently, however, a specimen of T. rex was discovered that had a much more telling gender-specific feature: medullary bone, a specialized tissue that develops within the bones of female birds when they are ready to lay eggs, to provide the calcium needed to form eggshells. Since this discovery, specimens of Tenontosaurus and Allosaurus have also yielded medullary bone. So it appears that we finally have a method for identifying female dinosaurs. The catch is that medullary bone is only present when the animal is reproductively active: if a female dinosaur died outside the breeding season, she would have no medullary bone to be fossilized. So we still don’t have a positive method of telling dinosaur genders apart.
Besides the T. rex example you mentioned, I cannot think of any other dinosaur species for which one gender has been postulated to be bigger than the other, though I have heard plenty of theories regarding dinosaur sexual dimorphism. For instance, two species of Parasaurolophus (the long-crested P. tubicen and the short, curved-crested P. cyrtocristatus) have been suggested to represent male and female (or alternatively adult and juvenile) of the same species. In the case of Protoceratops andrewsi, a species known from dozens of specimens across a wide range of ages, it has been proposed that individuals with larger neck frills and highly arched snouts were male, while those with flatter snouts and less prominent frills are female, though apparently there are still experts who are unconvinced. Other speculated examples of dinosaur sexual dimorphism are much more outlandish. I’ve even heard one bizarre hypothesis that Apatosaurus and Diplodocus were male and female of the same species. :huh:
One thing I’d like to point out is that even if paleontologists were to confirm a case of sexual dimorphism within a dinosaur species that involved the female being bigger than the male or vice versa, it would be highly presumptuous to conclude that all related dinosaurs probably exhibited the same pattern. In other words, if female Tyrannosaurus did turn out to be bigger than the males, that wouldn’t necessarily mean the same was true of all theropods.
Though not exactly sexual-dimorphism-related, one intriguing study I have heard concluded that, in at least some kinds of theropods (Troodon, Oviraptor, and the latter’s close relative Citipati were the genera studied), the male would breed with several females and incubate all of their eggs in one big nest, in the same manner as modern ratites (ostriches, emus, rheas, and cassowaries*). If this was indeed the case, then sexual dimorphism in these dinosaurs could go either way: male ostriches (and to a lesser extent rheas) are larger and more boldly patterned than females, but in emus and cassowaries, it is the female who is larger and showier (as well as more assertive in courtship).
While not strictly dinosaurs, there are a couple of pterosaur species for which there is good evidence for sexual dimorphism. As it turns out, all known adult fossils of the (arguably) most popular pterosaur of all, Pteranodon, come in two distinct types: roughly two thirds of them exhibit short crests, wide pelvic canals, and wingspans of around 13 feet (4 meters), while the last third have the long crests and 20-to-23-foot (6-to-7-meter) wingspans that most people associate with Pteranodon, along with proportionally narrower pelvic canals and blunter-tipped bills with prominent “overbites”. From this evidence, it seems likely that Pteranodon sexual dimorphism and breeding habits were much like those of lions and elephant seals: the females outnumbered the males, and were more modest in size and ornamentation; males probably had multiple mates, and sparred with one another for breeding rights (perhaps using those specialized bill tips?**), hence their larger size and flashier adornments.
Another pterosaur, Darwinopterus (a long-tailed variety from the mid-to-late Jurassic of China), is known from fewer specimens than Pteranodon, but presents a rather convincing argument for sexual dimorphism. Like Pteranodon, this species appears to come in two morphs: one with a crest and one without. I haven’t found any sources saying that the forms are any different in size, but the crestless versions do have proportionately larger pelvic girdles, and, most telltale of all, one remarkable crestless specimen was found preserved with an egg partially inside the pelvic canal (the egg was probably still inside the body when the pterosaur died, and was pushed out during decomposition). So this particular specimen was inarguably female, though it could still be the case that she is a different species from the crested Darwinopterus specimens, or that she was not yet at the age where she would have developed a crest. The most likely explanation, however, is that the crested Darwinopterus are male and the crestless ones are female. (Again, though, we shouldn’t assume that this pattern of sexual dimorphism was the case for all pterosaurs.)
Thanks for the question, and sorry for taking so long to answer it.
*Kiwis are also ratites (and the male does take care of the eggs), but they tend to be monogamous, and only brood one or two eggs at a time, probably because their eggs are so big in proportion to their body size that it would be difficult for the male (who is even smaller than the female) to incubate more than that.
**Now I can’t help but mentally compare male Pteranodon bills to jousting lances. Jousting Pteranodons…now there’s a cool image for you (As if pterosaurs weren’t awesome enough already :lol).
Sources:
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/dinosaur/2...dinosaur-lives/ (http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/dinosaur/2012/02/intimate-secrets-of-dinosaur-lives/)
http://www.ncsu.edu/news/press_releases/05_06/133.htm/ (http://www.ncsu.edu/news/press_releases/05_06/133.htm/)
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrap...and-pterosaurs/ (http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/2012/01/05/mutual-sexual-selection-dinosaurs-and-pterosaurs/)
http://www.thescelosaurus.com/ceratopsia.htm (http://www.thescelosaurus.com/ceratopsia.htm)
http://www.thescelosaurus.com/lambeosaurinae.htm (http://www.thescelosaurus.com/lambeosaurinae.htm)
http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2008...h-of-mister-mo/ (http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2008/12/19/dinosaurs-a-bunch-of-mister-mo/)
http://dinogoss.blogspot.com/2010/10/brontodiplodocus.html (http://dinogoss.blogspot.com/2010/10/brontodiplodocus.html)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/markwitton/22.../in/photostream (http://www.flickr.com/photos/markwitton/2217903694/in/photostream)
http://pterosaur.net/ecology.php (http://pterosaur.net/ecology.php)
http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/20...osaur-with-egg/ (http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2011/02/10/darwinopterus-pterosaur-with-egg/)
http://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2011...us-egg-awesome/ (http://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2011/01/22/darwinopterus-egg-awesome/)
I need the guidance of one college-Aspie to another.
I haven't been doing this well with keeping up with my work this semester and it has been hurting my grades...or so I think, I'm still confused as to how they work. And it's been hurting my tests too.
So, do you have any advice you could offer for next semester that could be of value to me as a college student with Aspberger's?
(Or places to go for visual study aids like documentaries?)
I'm sorry, Ptyra, I'm practically drawing a blank here. :( :bang
Looking back, I honestly can't comprehend how I made it through college as well as I did. I procrastinated on assignments, did a terrible job at keeping up with the assigned reading, and was severely stressed during the toughest times of the semester (especially when I had multiple projects to complete in a short period of time). I also discovered the GOF in my last year-and-a-half of college, so that was a considerable distraction as well. :oops
I did find that, when writing papers, at least, I was most productive when I had long, uninterrupted stretches of time to concentrate on finishing them. If I alternated between assignments, hopping from one to another and getting a little work done on each in turn, I tended to lose focus, and progress would be much slower than if I worked on completing one assignment at a time. (I think I sometimes did switch from one project to another if I hit Writer's Block on the one I was working on.) Also my highest priorities in any given workload were the assignments with the closest due dates, but that's just logic.
As for tests, I would usually just try to repeatedly review the relevant material as many times as I could (Sometimes I would ask one of my family members to quiz me). When I had to give presentations, I would practice them beforehand in front of family members, to time myself, memorize what I would say, and get feedback on my performance. (I did live at home while I was going to college, though, and if you're not doing the same, you might need to find other people to help you in these respects.)
I'm sorry. That's about all I can come up with. :oops Good luck with college!
I realised I never repliedto his, so I'll do it now.
Thanks for all that info on what dinosaurs might have tasted like. It was a really interesting read, and those links were a good read too. I'm soory it took so long to say thanks for it, Pangaea.
I have a couple new questions for you now, but I'd have to PM to you I think. They're things having to do with my fanfiction, and I wouldn't want to spoil that here. :)
You're welcome, Vonboy. I'm glad I could help. :)
No worries about the wait, either. As I’ve said multiple times, it would be incredibly unfair of me to complain to people for taking a long time to get back to me, considering how slow I am at responding to people. :oops
By the way, in the months since I answered that question, a new episode of MythBusters came out in which the hosts taste-tested a variety of meatsóincluding rattlesnake, peacock, goat, squab (pigeon), turtle, frog, alligator, and ostrichóthat have apparently been described as “tasting like chicken” at one time or another, to determine just how easily they could be mistaken for chicken. (One of the tests can be viewed here (http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/videos/tastes-like-chicken.htm).) Even after grinding the meats up and cooking them as patties to remove the variable of texture, they concluded that virtually none of the meats could be easily confused with chicken. When I watched it, one of my first thoughts was “Oh darn, I wish this episode had aired sooner so that I could have told Vonboy about their results”. So I thought I’d let you know now.
And sure, you can PM me about those other questions. Be warned that it might take me a while to gt back to you if my answers end up being very detailed. If it’s urgent, though, I’ll do my best to be prompt.
-
Another music question.
Favorite genre of music?
-
Okay, my first question: can you forgive me for being so unresponsive lately? I'm sooooo very sorry about that. Between being obsessed with Super Mario Bros. and writing all sorts of fanfics, trying to keep my current job, trying to find an affordable apartment that allows pets (that one's been practically fruitless...looks like I might have to give up my ratties :( But at least my antlions can be passed as decorative bowls of sand...), and all sorts of other things, I have not been feeling very social at all, especially for the internet peoples... I hope you haven't been put off by my absence...
Second question: I'm working on making another 'realistic' drawing, this one with Red Claw, Screech, Thud, and the two super-preds intended in the RP (Gigano and Stromer, I believe was the name for the Spinosaurus). Do you have any sources that can help me on scaling these characters accurately and/or have any pointers you might be willing to give me? :)
And the main question in relation to that: Were Utahraptors feathered (I'm still convinced Screech and Thud are Utahraptors :p ) ? I know their smaller relatives were almost certainly feathered primarily for regulating body temperature, but larger animals tend to be better at maintaining body heat without an insulating coat. So were Utahraptors big enough to forsake feathers or did they stay true to their family's feathery heritage :D ?
-
Another music question.
Favorite genre of music?
There's not much I can say that I haven't already said in previous (http://gangoffive.net/index.php?showtopic=6430&view=findpost&p=9220287) responses (http://gangoffive.net/index.php?showtopic=6430&view=findpost&p=22008612) to music-related questions. I like music that sounds good to me, and that's about it (There's really no way I can think of putting it that doesn't sound stupid. :p). I just don't know enough about all the different music genres and what defines each one to be able to pigeonhole my musical preferences. :wacko I suppose I could say that there are three basic kinds of songs or tunes that I enjoy: lively, bouncy music; slower, "soothing" music; and exciting, "epic" music.
Okay, my first question: can you forgive me for being so unresponsive lately? I'm sooooo very sorry about that. Between being obsessed with Super Mario Bros. and writing all sorts of fanfics, trying to keep my current job, trying to find an affordable apartment that allows pets (that one's been practically fruitless...looks like I might have to give up my ratties (http://i5.ifrm.com/html/emoticons/sad.gif) But at least my antlions can be passed as decorative bowls of sand...), and all sorts of other things, I have not been feeling very social at all, especially for the internet peoples... I hope you haven't been put off by my absence...
Of course I forgive you, Sparky. :yes I'll admit, it's been pretty lonely without you around, but I understand completely (I’ve had plenty of times where I just didn’t feel like socializing or was engrossed in an obsession too), and I can honestly say I hold you no ill will for it.
Sorry to hear about your problems in real life, and especially about your rats. :( I wish you the best in finding an apartment that will accept them. (As for the antlions, won't you still have to smuggle ants into your apartment to feed them? :unsure:)
I do hope that, if you have the time and inclination, we’ll be able to pick up our abandoned conversations (Let me know if you need me to re-send you any e-mails or PMs, or remind you of threads in which I’m awaiting a response from you ;)). Put your real-life issues first, though. I don’t mind waiting longer.
Second question: I'm working on making another 'realistic' drawing, this one with Red Claw, Screech, Thud, and the two super-preds intended in the RP (Gigano and Stromer, I believe was the name for the Spinosaurus). Do you have any sources that can help me on scaling these characters accurately and/or have any pointers you might be willing to give me? (http://i5.ifrm.com/html/emoticons/smile.gif)
Ooh, that picture sounds epic! :! Well, scaling isn’t one of my strong suits, but there’s plenty of scenes in the TV series showing the sharptooth trio together, so that shouldn’t be a problem, right? As for Gigano, we know he’s about the same size as Chomper’s parents, and Chomper claims that Red Claw is “the biggest sharptooth of all”, so that could mean that Gigano is actually slightly smaller than Red Claw. However, one possibility I just thought of is that Gigano is actually not a fully grown sharptooth (or at least he wasn’t at the time of LBT V): it could be that he was the sharptooth equivalent of an impulsive adolescent (more like a young adult). This could explain some of his behavior in LBT V (eating a bush because it smelled like the gang, managing to chomp down on his own tail, and taking on two angry parent sharpteeth: honestly, I’ve always thought that the guy seemed a few eggs short of a clutch), as well as why he was apparently smaller than Red Claw. Theoretically, Gigano could have experienced a late growth spurt since the events of LBT V (there’s good eatin’ to be had along the seaside :P:), so that he has attained his adult size by the time in which the RP takes place, which would conceivably allow him to be as big asóor even slightly bigger thanóRed Claw. So I guess you’re free to make Gigano whatever size in relation to Red Claw that you want. (If you’re going for realism, though, keep in mind that Giganotosaurus was only a few feet longer than Tyrannosaurus: perhaps 40–43 feet compared to T. rex’s 39–40 feet.)
Stromer the Spinosaurus’s size is a little harder to ascertain. I guess you could look at screenshots from LBT XII showing him next to the gang, compare them to shots from the TV series showing the gang next to Red Claw, and estimate the two sharpteeth’s relative sizes, though there’s no guarantee that it would be accurate, considering that the character scaling in LBT is often inconsistent. Somehow I envision Stromer as being the biggest of the super-pred trio. It’s possible that Chomper only assumes that Red Claw is the largest sharptooth around because he has never seen Stromer’s kind, or even that Chomper’s use of the word “sharptooth” only refers to his own species (or just does not include Spinosaurus because they look so different from other sharpteeth; even the gang asked “What is that thing?” when they saw Stromer for the first time). Even the real-life Spinosaurus’s size is not known for certain, since only fragments of its skeleton are known. We don’t know how long its tail was, for instance: this article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/lost-worlds/2012/aug/29/dinosaurs-fossils) provides a great visual representation of how this could affect Spinosaurus’s total length. The respective lengths of the Spinosaurus lengths in the drawing are stated to be 12, 14, and 16 meters (or 40, 46, and 53 feet). There’s also this scale chart (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Largesttheropods.png) from Wikipedia showing the comparative sizes of Tyrannosaurus, Giganotosaurus, Carcharodontosaurus, and Spinosaurus (which is assumed here to be around 46 feet long). It should be taken with a grain of salt, though; it’s impossible to know whether Spinosaurus had shorter legs or a shorter tail than are represented in the silhouette (More on the subject of Spino’s proportions later). And the author of this article (http://scienceblogs.com/laelaps/2008/04/27/was-spinosaurus-really-the-big/) suggests that Spinosaurus’s size has generally been overestimated, and that all of these mega-theropods were in about the same size range: about 42 feet long (give or take two to three feet). I should think that you would be safe with a conservative length of 45–46 feet for Stromer, 42–43 feet for Gigano, and 40–42 feet for Red Claw (remember that he is supposedly a rather large T. rex). But, like any animal, dinosaurs surely varied in size even as adults, so you can feel free to tweak those dimensions if you want.
This brings me to my next challenge: pointers on how to draw your dinosaurs realistically. Hoo-wee…three different species this time; four if you wanted tips on Utahraptor as well. :blink:
Let me get Utahraptor over with first, since I presume you’re more interested in info on the three mega-theropods. (Let me know if I am incorrect in this assumption.) Unfortunately, Utahraptor ostrommaysorum is one of those dinosaurs that is only known from a few intriguing fragments, so there’s not much I can tell you about what it looked like. I can tell you that it is believed to have belonged to the group of dromaeosaurids known as dromaeosaurines, which were more heavily built than their relatives the velociraptorines (e.g., Velociraptor and Deinonychus). To my knowledge, the most complete known dromaeosaurine is its eponymous member, Dromaeosaurus, but it lived roughly 50 million years later than Utahraptor and probably wouldn’t make for a very accurate comparison. This guy (http://shartman.deviantart.com/art/Plunderer-from-Utah-179491659) made a skeletal restoration of Utahraptor a while back, but according to him it is inaccurate and should not be used as a reference for drawing this dinosaur. (I imagine there are worse places to start, but I still don’t feel quite right recommending it to you as a source. :unsure:)
This blog article (http://dinogoss.blogspot.com/2011/02/heat-feathers-and-half-arsed.html) (which I’m pretty sure I linked you to previously when I was telling you about Archaeopteryx) contains an image that demonstrates the “do”s and “don’t”s of illustrating Velociraptor, some of which you might be able to apply to Utahraptor (see also my response to your third question, at least as far as feathers are concerned). The same blog author (who is also an artist) also wrote this post (http://dinogoss.blogspot.com/2011/12/waddle-achillobator-waddle.html) regarding fact about dromaeosaurs that is rather ironic, given Screech and Thud’s LBT species name: raptors (Utahraptor especially, in all likelihood) were not particularly well adapted for fast running. But then, it is currently thought that raptors in general were probably more like cats: adapted for short bursts of extreme power rather than prolonged chases. I would think that, like any big cat (and plenty of other animals that aren’t built for fast running but can still readily outpace your average human, such as rhinos, hippos, and grizzly bears), a dromaeosaur could move extremely fast when it wanted to; it just couldn’t keep going for very long. Anyway, the same page has an illustration of Achillobator, a dromaeosaurine from Mongolia that approached Utahraptor in size. I don’t know how much of the illustration is speculative, but it might be an okay reference for your realistic drawing of Screech and Thud.
Well…that was a little more info about Utahraptor than I thought I would be able to provide. Anyway, on to the megatheropods: Tyrannosaurus, Giganotosaurus, and Spinosaurus.
For a good overall guide to these three dinosaurs’ respective anatomies, here are three skeletal restorations, all done by the same person (who I understand to be a rather renowned and extremely knowledgeable paleoartist, so I consider him a trustworthy source):
Tyrannosaurus: skeletals based on both the specimen known as “Sue (http://shartman.deviantart.com/art/A-T-rex-named-Sue-124138016)” and the unusually big-headed individual called “Stan (http://shartman.deviantart.com/art/A-T-rex-named-Stan-125137798)” (Keep in mind that we do not know the actual genders of these specimens, or whether their physical differences are even related to gender.)
Giganotosaurus (http://shartman.deviantart.com/art/Big-honkin-theropod-of-the-southern-hemisphere-302541476): The artist notes that one of the most commonly seen skull reconstructions of Giganotosaurus is in fact inaccurate, so be sure to pay close attention to the skull in this image when drawing Gigano’s head.
Spinosaurus (http://shartman.deviantart.com/art/Fisher-King-revisited-278622408): The restoration on top shows the amount of skeletal material actually known from this dinosaur; as you can see, it’s not much.
A lot of my suggestions for accurately drawing Tyrannosaurus, Giganotosaurus, and Spinosaurus applies equally to all three, so rather than describing each dinosaur separately, I’m going to alternate between them as I focus on different general aspects of their anatomy:
Body: From what I’ve heard, Giganotosaurus was slightly bulkier than T. rex (and probably wasn’t as fast or agile), whereas Spinosaurus is apparently believed to have been more lightly built than either. This means that, in a head-to-head Jurassic Park-style brawl, Spinosaurus would be at a disadvantage due to its more delicate build (and specialized jaws that may not have been well suited for attacking large animals). In a more realistic hypothetical confrontation scenario, however, I strongly imagine that T. rex or Giganotosaurus would probably refuse to engage Spinosaurus in a fight in the first place, because Spinosaurus was simply so damn big and intimidating looking that no theropod in its right mind would consider it a remotely good idea to test whether this sail-backed behemoth’s combat prowess was in fact inferior to its own. (See my dissertation (http://gangoffive.net/index.php?showtopic=11426&view=findpost&p=22007631) on the absurd [IMHO] “T. rex vs. Spinosaurus” debate). This brings me to Spinosaurus’s most distinctive characteristic: its sail. Many pictures you see of Spinosaurus depict the sail as a simple half-disk affixed to the dinosaur’s back, supported by thin vertical rods, much like the sail of Dimetrodon or the dorsal fin of some colossal fish. In fact, Spinosaurus’s sail probably looked rather different. This article (http://laelaps.wordpress.com/2007/08/02/what-big-neural-spines-you-have/) contains a photo of the original Spinosaurus sail material (which was later lost in a WWII bombing raid that destroyed the museum where the fossils were kept…yet another reason to hate Zotz-damn war <_<); as you can se, the spines were actually fairly broad, and most scientific restorations show them as being rather close together, which would suggest that the sail was more like a tall, narrow hump than a fin. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the sail appeared as just a smooth, solid surface in the living animal, with the bony spines buried beneath the skin, as in this illustration (http://hyrotrioskjan.deviantart.com/art/Spinosaurus-320498261). Though much less extensive, the shoulder humps of bison (http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/learning/webcasts/palo_duro/bison_history.phtml) have similar-looking internal skeletal support. Granted, as this article (http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/dinosaur/2011/06/was-spinosaurus-a-bison-backed-dinosaur/) points out, bison shoulder humps are attachment points for muscles that support the head, which was almost certainly not the purpose of Spino’s sail. Spinosaurus. Still, I would recommend drawing Stromer with a smooth humplike sail (See the “Soft tissue” section for an exemplary 3-D restoration and a few more relevant tips). As for the shape of the sail, Spinosaurus’s relatives, such as Suchomimus, had sails that extended all the way from their shoulders to partway down their tails; although these sails were lower than Spinosaurus’s, evidently paleontologists believe that Spino’s sail would have been similarly extensive, and not just a simple semicircle affixed to the back of the torso as in some illustrations. There are already at least three image links in this post showing what the sail is apparently believed to have looked like, so I don’t think I need to elaborate any further.
Teeth: One aspect of accurate theropod illustration that I am perpetually unsure about is how to depict their teeth: exposed, like a crocodilian’s, or concealed by “lips”, like a lizard’s? On one hand, dinosaurs are more closely related to crocodilians, but unlike most dinosaurs, crocodilians live in aquatic habitats where don’t need to worry about their teeth drying out (that’s one argument I’ve heard, at least).
The author of this article (http://qilong.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/making-lip-of-it/) examines the various possible configurations of dinosaur “lips” and how they might have covered the teeth: like me, he’s apparently not an academically educated paleontology expert, but his knowledge of the field is well beyond mine, and even I have a hard time comprehending everything in his post. Personally, until more information on the subject becomes available to me, I’ll probably be drawing my theropods with moderate “lips”, with only the tips of the longer teeth protruding. (It might be safe to give Stromer more exposed teeth, considering the possibility that Spinosaurus spent a good amount of its time up to its nostrils in water.) Mind you, reptile “lips” are not like mammalian lips: reptiles (including dinosaurs) have almost no facial musculature whatsoever, so they would not have been able to curl their lips back in a snarl. The equivalent threat display would probably consist of the dinosaur simply opening its mouth, as if to say ”I’mma bite you if you don’t back down!” This is pure speculation, but I imagine that the more threatening the display, the wider the gape; for example: closed mouth = “I’m submissive/I’m calm/You’re not bothering me”, slightly open mouth = “I’m a little worried you’re gonna hurt me/Careful, you’re cheesing me off”, and mouth wide open = “If you’re not running for the other side of Gondwana in three seconds you are DEAD MEAT!” However, I don’t know exactly how far any of these theropods could open their mouths (though if its relative Allosaurus was anything to go by, Giganotosaurus’s gape may have been pretty wide), so be careful not to dislocate your characters’ jaws. Also, don’t forget that theropod teeth were not uniform in size and shape: look closely at the teeth in the illustrations I’ve linked you to to get an idea of how to draw them accurately. Mind you, if you draw Red Claw and/or Gigano with their mouths closed, all of their upper teeth should be overlapping their lower teeth, so none of their lower teeth would be visible. Spinosaurus, on the other hand, had a rosette of teeth in the bulbous section at the end of its lower jaw that, from the looks of things, would have overlapped the corresponding section of its upper jaw when its mouth was closed. (It’s worth remembering that spinosaur teeth were straighter and more conical than those of other theropods, much like the teeth of crocodiles.) This illustration (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Spinosaurus_skull_steveoc.jpg), based on a 2005 reappraisal of Spinosaurus’s skull anatomy, should be a pretty good reference for the teeth, and the head in general.
Heads: Judging from what I consider to be the most accurate Tyrannosaurus illustrations I have seen, T. rex had two bony knobs directly above (and extending slightly behind) its eyes, with two relatively smooth, bar-like ridges extending about a third of the way down the snout in front of them. These bars seem to meet in the middle of the snout, and give way to a knobbly ridge that runs along the midline of the snout, ending slightly behind the nostrils. Giganotosaurus seems to have had more of a short, blunt horn above and in front of the eye. Directly in front of each “horn” was a long, low ridge of very small, close-together bumps that extended about the same length along the snout as T. rex’s ridge and “bar” ornaments combined (possibly even further). The ridges would never join, but they would run very close together, but much closer. Carnosaurs such as Giganotosaurus are well known for having extremely narrow skulls, like giant axes, and are believed to have attacked large prey by opening their jaws wide and rapidly snapping them shut on the fleshy parts of their target’s bodies (such as the thighs and flanks), slicing off gigantic slabs of skin and flesh while avoiding breaking their teeth on the bones. Because their skulls were so narrow, I’m guessing their usual technique was to angle their jaws parallel with the sides of the prey’s body. Following that, I imagine the hunting carnosaur would wait for the prey to weaken a bit, then go in for another bite, repeating the process until the prey was dead and the hunter could dine leisurely. Spinosaurus had a single small crest on the midline of its skull, just in front of its eyes. From the restorations I’ve seen, it was shaped like a slightly peaked semicircle, and seems to have had slight vertical ridges on its surface (almost like a mini version of its sail). It was probably slightly larger in life due to being covered with keratin, and some illustrations I’ve seen depict it as being softly serrated on top. Its nostrils were about midway between its eyes and the tip of its snout. An important thing to remember about dinosaur nostrils (which I remember telling you about before in your art thread): in life, the fleshy nostril openings of dinosaurs were small, and situated at the very front of the bony nostril openings, or nares. Don’t give your dinosaurs huge gaping nostrils. One fascinating theory about Spino’s facial anatomyóthough I am not entirely clear on how widely accepted it isóis that the end of its snout was pockmarked with tiny pits, similar to those found along the jaws of crocodilians, which are sensitive to changes in water pressure and allow them to detect prey swimming nearby (The proposed placement of the pits can be seen in this drawing (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_OVH5UC-R50w/R5Ac1fUuuxI/AAAAAAAAATI/H5Jx03OJ7zo/s320/Spinosaurus+Color.JPG) of Spino’s skull). Maybe one of Spinosaurus’s hunting strategies was to stand in the water with its snout dipped beneath the surface (the high placement of its nostrils allowing it to breathe), patiently waiting for a fish to swim near. When that happened, it could rapidly twist its head and neck or dart its jaws forward to seize the fish. It’s also possible that it could have swum or waded deeper into the water, its head held at an angle so that its eyes and nostrils were exposed, but much of its mouth was underwater. In general, Spinosaurus is believed to have been good at making swift, sharp, precision strikes at smaller prey. There’s even been one discovery of a spinosaur tooth embedded in the backbone of a pterosaur: the owner of the tooth could have been scavenging a dead pterosaur, but the more exciting possibility is is that it snatched the still-living pterosaur right out of the air (or ambushed it on the ground). The proportions of spinosaur jaws are apparently similar to those of gharials (though I can’t help thinking that they look a little more robust), which suggests that they wouldn’t have been very good for attacking large prey. However, it’s possible that Spinosaurus was a canny scavenger, perhaps scaring other predators away from their kills, ripping open the bodies with its powerful arms and giant claws, and sticking its muzzle right into the body cavity, nosing around for the most nutritious innards without needing to pull out for air, thanks to its high-placed nostrils. It’s also been suggested that spinosaurs used their large hand claws to snatch or impale prey, though if you look at restorations, the arms don’t seem quite long enough to do that as effectively or as accurately as the jaws (I’m not even sure if Spinosaurus would have been able to see its own hands that easily). It may have been able to use them to pick up and carry larger prey; some of the fish it probably hunted measured over six feet long.
Hands: When drawing theropod forelimbs, be sure to avoid the all-too-common mistake of “bunny hands syndrome”: drawing the hands pronated, with the arms folded up against the chest and the palms facing backward. No known theropod could hold its hands this way without dislocating its wrists: in general, they held their hands with the palms facing one another, as if poised to clap or holding an invisible basketball. This (http://whenpigsfly-returns.blogspot.com/2009/03/theropod-handprints-their-implications.html) is the best source I know for understanding the range of movement theropod arms had (I may have told you about all of this before, so forgive me if I am repeating myself). T. rex, as we all know, had only two functional fingers, the second of which (the one on the bottom, if you’re looking at the hand from the side in the afore-described “clapping” pose) was slightly longer than the first. (It did have a vestigial third finger, but that was just a splint of bone that probably wasn’t even visible in life). Relative to its own body, Giganotosaurus’s arms seem to have been about the same size as T. rex’s, though the forearm appears to have been slightly stouter, with three fingers of relatively equal length whose claws were considerably longer than those T. rex. Spinosaurus (if related spinosaurs from which arm material is known are anything to go by) had much burlier arms. Its first finger was shorter than the other two, but bore an extremely long, curved claw that made its overall length (base to claw tip) about the same, if not slightly more. For all three of these dinosaurs, the first finger (the thumb) was angled forward slightly, while the other finger/s pointed more or less straight forward (at least, that’s how they appear when the hand is in profile; I’m guessing that the fingers curled inward somehat and the claws were more curved than you can see in the skeletals).
Soft tissue: Like any modern reptile, bird or mammal, dinosaurs weren’t just skin and a little muscle stretched over a skeleton: they had fat, and loose skin, and muscle tissue that would not be immediately evident from looking at attachment sites on bones, and just places with soft-tissue padding filling in spaces between bones. “Say no to shrink-wrapped dinosaurs!” as I saw one source put it. :lol (Though focusing mainly on sauropods, these (http://svpow.com/2010/12/13/pimp-my-pod-2-haids/) articles (http://svpow.com/2011/11/18/sideshow-collectibles-apatosaurus-maquette-part-3-the-neck/) have some great images and pointers that relate to reconstructing appropriately fleshy dinosaurs.) So don’t draw dinosaurs with visible “windows” (fenestrae, if you want to be technical) in the skull: layer skin over them so that the dinosaur’s face is more or less a smooth surface. Ribs and vertebrae should not be easily distinguishable beneath the skin, and the base of Stromer’s sail should probably be merged with the sides of his body (sort of like if you pushed a CD up through a layer of stretchy fabric, as opposed to jamming the CD down into the back of a clay dinosaur). After all, animals’ vertebrae are generally not covered in form-fitting skin; they have flesh between the neural spines (the vertical bony projections on the midline of the vertebrae, which are extremely elongated in Spinosaurus to form the sail) and the transverse processes (the paired bony projections that stick out from the sides of the vertebrae). Here’s (http://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/tbone.jpg?w=480) an image of two T-bone steaks (each of which is actually half of a cow’s lumbar vertebra and the meat around it) put back together. Outlined at the bottom is the actual shape of the complete vertebra: the “wings” are the transverse processes and the projection on top is the neural spine; as you can see, there’s plenty of back muscle bridging the gaps between them. And here’s (http://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/cross-section-of-cow-through-rumen-trace.jpg?w=480&h=363) a cross section of a cow’s entire torso, again with the vertebra outlined (though the transverse processes are not as long here), and another image (http://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/human-abdomen-xs.jpg) showing a cross-section of a human abdomen. The article (http://svpow.com/2009/06/22/sauropods-were-tacos-not-corn-dogs/) containing the latter two images points out that dinosaur (or at least sauropod) vertebrae were were not as deeply buried in the animals body as the vertebrae of mammals like cows or humans, and Spinosaurus probably didn’t have a massive wall of meat between the top of its sail and its ribcage, but nonetheless, there probably wasn’t a sharp right angle between the base of the sail and the back. And be sure to give your dinosaurs broad, fleshy tails, like a crocodilian’s. If you look at the base of a croc’s tail, it’s actually wider than the hips. This is due to the caudofemoralis, a large slablike muscle that runs along the sides of the tail and connects to the thighbone via a tendon: the legs of reptilesóincluding dinosaursóare in fact largely powered by the tail muscles. T. rex in particular is believed to have had an extremely muscular tail; it is believed to have been the fastest-running dinosaur of its size thanks to this. This article (http://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2010/12/06/guest-post-bulking-up-the-back-end-why-tyrannosaurus-tail-mass-matters/) is the best source I know regarding the caudofemoralis and why paleo-artists should take it into account when drawing dinosaur tails (At the bottom of the page is a good illustration of an accurately fleshy T. rex. Here’s (http://shartman.deviantart.com/art/T-rex-reigns-again-189796623) an alternatively colored version on the artist’s DA account, and here’s (http://shartman.deviantart.com/art/Because-you-can-never-have-too-many-T-rexes-341210751) another illustration by the same artist of a T. rex in profile). Here (http://karkajou1993.deviantart.com/art/Spinosaurus-Model-323943373) is one 3-D model of a Spinosaurus done by an artist who, as far as I can tell, is trying to make it as accurate as possible (Both the artist and some of the commenters think that the base of the tail should be thicker than it already is). Now that’s one meaty-looking spinosaur! :lol (Honestly, though, I imagine that its bulk would make it look even more imposing and add to the sense of massiveness.) The same artist also has a 3-D model of Tyrannosaurus (http://karkajou1993.deviantart.com/art/Tyrannosaurus-Model-324002478). (No Giganotosaurus, but it’s worth looking through this guy’s gallery just the same: he does some of the most awesome realistic paleo-art I’ve ever seen.)
Skin: Spinosaurus lived in a warm, humid climate (and may have been semi-aquatic as well), so I would make Stromer scaly. According to one scientific paper (http://palaeo-electronica.org/1999_2/gigan/text.pdf) I found, Giganotosaurus’s habitat was more temperate, but there’s not much evidence as to what kind of skin it had, so you’d probably be safe drawing Gigano without feathers as well. From what I’ve been able to gather, the climate of Late Cretaceous Montana was subtropical, so adult T. rex may not have needed a feathery coat either. I guess I would leave Red Claw scaly, too (See my response to your next question for more info on fuzzy tyrannosaurs. ;))
And the main question in relation to that: Were Utahraptors feathered (I'm still convinced Screech and Thud are Utahraptors (http://i5.ifrm.com/1676/156/emo/dino_tongue.gif) ) ? I know their smaller relatives were almost certainly feathered primarily for regulating body temperature, but larger animals tend to be better at maintaining body heat without an insulating coat. So were Utahraptors big enough to forsake feathers or did they stay true to their family's feathery heritage (http://i5.ifrm.com/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif) ?
Personally, I’d be inclined to put feathers on Utahraptor, for a number of reasons. First, as you said, phylogenetic bracketing: Utahraptor’s smaller, more basal relatives (e.g., Microraptor and Sinornithosaurus) are definitively known to have been feathered (not just feathered, but fluffy all over, down to the tips of the toes and fingers and almost to the end of the snout) and there is evidence that its more derived relative Velociraptor had feathers, too, so it’s almost certain that Utahraptor had feathers at some point in its evolution, and it seems unlikely to me that it would lose them entirely.
Secondly, although it was indeed larger than any other dromaeosaur currently known, I don’t think Utahraptor was so big as to not need an insulating coat. Its estimated weight is apparently around half a ton (1,000–1,100 pounds). That’s about the same weight as a grizzly bear, and yet grizzly bears get along just fine with a full coat of fur (and historically have lived in some rather hot climates, such as Mexico). And I should think that a Utahraptor, with its long, slender limbs and tail, would have a lot more surface area than a grizzly, all the better to disperse excess body heat.
Thirdly, we have an extremely exciting fossil discovery (so exciting that I made a post for it (http://gangoffive.net/index.php?showtopic=11134) when I heard about it) that presents an argument in favor of big fluffy theropods: Yutyrannus huali, a medium-sized (~30’ long) tyrannosaur that was covered in filamentous feathers up to 6 inches long, the largest confirmed feathered dinosaur known to date. Granted, Yutyrannuss native climate is believed to have been fairly cool by Mesozoic standards, and I don’t know how Utahraptor’s habitat compared. Still, it proves that “big theropod” does not necessarily equal “bald theropod”.
Now, this next line of reasoning isn’t really backed by any scientific sources or research; it’s largely speculation based on various things I know about feathers and thermoregulation: I can’t help but think that a large feathery animal would have an easier time keeping itself cool than a large furry animal, because of the structural differences between feathers and fur. The respective body coverings of both mammals and birds tend to come in two basic types that serve the same purposes: a short, soft, dense underlayer that provides insulation (underfur in mammals, down feathers in birds) and a long, coarse, waterproof layer that protects against the elements (guard hair in mammals, vaned feathers in birds). And for both kinds of animals, excess heat can be dissipated by fluffing out their coats, lifting their hairs or feathers to expose the skin and allow heat to escape. However, it would seem to me that feathers have an advantage over hairs insulation-wise because of their branching structure: not only does the vaned surface of a feather allow it to cover much more surface area than a hair, but a single feather can (to some extent, at least) serve both the insulatory and element-proofing roles by having fluffy branches at the base and vane-forming ones higher up.
Basically, my hypothesis is that a feathery animal (such as a dinosaur) could grow beyond the size where most mammals in the same climate would lose most of their hair, and still retain an insulating layer of feathers, because feathers, unlike hair, can continue to serve an insulating function even if they become sparser in order to keep an animal cool.
It’s rather confusing (even for me :wacko) to explain where I’m coming from, so allow me to attempt to replicate my train of thought and how I came to this conclusion: A single feather covers much more skin than a single hair. > Feathers can be spaced farther apart than hairs (and fewer are needed overall) in order to adequately insulate a given area of skin. > Wider spaces between individual feathers means more bare skin is exposed when the animal fluffs out its coat, allowing the animal to dissipate more heat and cool itself more easily.
Here’s a photo I thought I’d share to help illustrate my point. This summer, when my family and I toured an emu ranch in Nevis, Minnesota, we had the opportunity to see a selection of feathers, skins, eggshells, and other artifacts from a variety of ratites (ostrich, rhea, and of course emu). Among these were a piece of an ostrich skin (the yellow object in these (http://i556.photobucket.com/albums/ss2/Pangaean/Minnesota%20Emu/DSC03890.jpg) photos (http://i556.photobucket.com/albums/ss2/Pangaean/Minnesota%20Emu/DSC03888.jpg)*) and an emu skin (the large red-dyed object in both the above photos and these (http://i556.photobucket.com/albums/ss2/Pangaean/Minnesota%20Emu/DSC03885.jpg) ones (http://i556.photobucket.com/albums/ss2/Pangaean/Minnesota%20Emu/DSC03881.jpg)). One thing I found striking was just how sparse the feathers on these birds (particularly the ostrich) really are. The little bumps on the skins where the feathers attach are farther apart than the hairs on your arm. Ostriches do in fact have large patches of bare skin underneath their wings and on their sides (as visible in this picture (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YJHdQPXuOgY/TVnUTl9shnI/AAAAAAAAAxk/kXtGi1qZwOQ/s1600/46371158.RL06.jpg), not taken by me), which are generally covered up when their wings are folded, but can be exposed when the ostrich needs to radiate excess heat. (That ostrich in the photo actually looks like it’s missing some feathers, judging from the goosebumpy patch on its leg; perhaps it’s been molting?) Emus also apparently have sparse or featherless patches on their underbellies, and they can thermoregulate by simply standing up when it’s hot, and sitting down when it’s cold.
It’s possible that some of the larger feathered dinosaurs had similarly placed bald spots that could be covered or exposed at will depending on the circumstances, so you could draw your Utahraptors that way if you wanted. (Alternatively, you could just say that they have featherless patches but keep them hidden. :p) I think it’s also safe to leave the legs unfeathered to at least some extent. As I recall, the ankle joint was the cutoff point for Archaeopteryx’s leg feathers, while ratite feathers stop about halfway between the knee and ankle joint. You can decide for yourself whether you want to go with one of those configurations, or draw your Utahraptors with completely featherless legs. You should probably not omit feathers from the tail, head, or neck, and definitely not from the arms or back.
*Also visible in these photos:
(1 (http://i556.photobucket.com/albums/ss2/Pangaean/Minnesota%20Emu/DSC03890.jpg), 2 (http://i556.photobucket.com/albums/ss2/Pangaean/Minnesota%20Emu/DSC03888.jpg)) The huge white feather on the left of the first two photos is from an ostrich, the one in the middle is from a rhea, and the small beige-ish bifurcated feather on the right is from an emu.
(3 (http://i556.photobucket.com/albums/ss2/Pangaean/Minnesota%20Emu/DSC03885.jpg)) An emu eggshell, sitting on top of two dyed skins from emu feet. Above is a stack of hides (with the feathers still attached) from emus of varying ages.
(4 (http://i556.photobucket.com/albums/ss2/Pangaean/Minnesota%20Emu/DSC03881.jpg)) A whole dried emu foot (the “emu foot scepter” :p).
Holy roly-poly star-nosed moley, THAT was one humongous post. :wow
(http://adsoftheworld.com/files/star-nosed-mole_0.jpg)
(
[size0]Imagine this guy with really huge, surprised looking eyes, like this: :blink:.)
-
Dunno if this has been asked, but with all your knowledge of dinosaurs, have you considered writing a book about dinosaurs?
Have you tried LBT fanfiction, or dinosaur fanfics of any kind?
-
Dunno if this has been asked, but with all your knowledge of dinosaurs, have you considered writing a book about dinosaurs?
The thought has probably crossed my mind a few times, though, like most large goals that people have asked me about, I doubt that I could do it very well. I'm not sure what sort of qualifications one needs to have in order to write a dinosaur book (I have an English major and a Biology minor, but no paleontology degree), but even if I do have them, I'm such a dismally slow and inconsistent writer (in that I often procrastinate and often can't muster the willpower, concentration, or passion to write) that it would probably take me ages to do. I also imagine that I would have to contact some real paleontology experts, to learn what it entails to write a proper educational book on dinosaurs. (No, I don't consider myself an expert; personally, I think I'm kind of like a sentient Wikipedia, with banks of data that I'm constantly updating from various external sources, attempting to weed out the info that is outdated or inaccurate. The trouble is that the floors of my memory banks are comprised of sieves, and so I have to constantly brush up on my knowledge to compensate for the fact that I'm constantly forgetting things…) I guess it's something I could feasibly do, but it would take me ages and would be very difficult, and I don't think the final product would stand up to a lot of the books written by real experts. (Obviously my self-esteem wouldn't help push me toward completing such a goal…)
Have you tried LBT fanfiction, or dinosaur fanfics of any kind?
Well, I've sort of dabbled in writing fragments of a few LBT fanfic ideas I've come up with. I've certainly thought of plenty of concepts for LBT stories, but as with all my ideas, fleshing them out and getting them down on paper (or a computer screen) is much more challenging.
Over the years, I've also come up with several ideas for original stories involving dinosaurs and other animals. Back in the late 90s I had a story set in the late Cretaceous involving a baby Pteranodon that fell from his cliff nest (Pteranodon almost certainly did not nest on cliffs, but that's what I had seen in the books and movies back then) and, after being spooked by a Stygimoloch popping its head out of the bushed, ran into and befriended a Struthiomimus, who helped him find his way back to his home, and afterwards proceeded to have regular adventures with him.
For well over a decade, however, the stories I have focused on the most have been set in a world inhabited by prehistoric and modern animals from throughout Earth’s history. The setting and characters have gone through so many revamps and reimaginings that the current version only faintly resembles the original, and none of the literally dozens of stories I previously completed could be considered canon anymore. Originally the stories took place on an undiscovered island with a vast, Great Valley-esque ring of mountains encircling its interior; modern-day animals lived outside it; prehistoric species inside. The stories were extremely random and cartoonish, with uncountable numbers of extremely simple characters, most of them sharing only a tiny range of personality types. They traveled around in vehicles called “cat-cars” (modeled directly on Sylvester the cat slippers, like these (http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2010/075/3/0/Slip_Me_My_Slippers__by_captainveronica.jpg)), lived in a giant white building built by a sea lion as a hotel/apartment complex for prehistoric and modern creatures alike, and all of their resources from food to electricity could be spontaneously generated by magician’s hats.
The current incarnation of these stories is (thankfully) much more thought-out and far less ridiculous. The setting is an entire planet rather than an island, I am attempting to limit the number of characters as much as I can, and the animals have no outlandish technology (though one extremely technologically advanced species does feature prominently). The frustrating thing is that I want the world to seem as real as possible, but there are still some fantastical elements that I can’t figure out how to get around. I’m also concerned that there are too many different themes in the stories that readers will have difficulty accepting as compatible. And I’m struggling to figure out how to make the stories relatable to readers, since the world has no humans in it, but I don’t want the significance of encountering living dinosaurs to be lost on the characters. On top of that I want the stories to be as original, interesting, and clichÈ-free as possible. As a result of all these challenges (plus many others), I haven’t been making much progress on these stories, either.
-
The thought has probably crossed my mind a few times, though I doubt that I could do it very well. I'm not sure what sort of qualifications one needs to have in order to write a dinosaur book.
I'm such a dismally slow and inconsistent writer that it would probably take me ages to do.
I also imagine that I would have to contact some real paleontology experts, to learn what it entails to write a proper educational book on dinosaurs.
Well, as a fellow procrastinator, I know what you mean by being a slow writer. I have so many stories that I have yet to even type up! :rolleyes:
I didn't mean an actual educational dinosaur book though, so you're safe there, lol
Over the years, I've also come up with several ideas for original stories involving dinosaurs and other animals. Back in the late 90s I had a story set in the late Cretaceous involving a baby Pteranodon that fell from his cliff nest (Pteranodon almost certainly did not nest on cliffs, but that's what I had seen in the books and movies back then) and, after being spooked by a Stygimoloch popping its head out of the bushed, ran into and befriended a Struthiomimus, who helped him find his way back to his home, and afterwards proceeded to have regular adventures with him.
Now that sounds like something I'd want to read! You got me hooked after Struthiomimus :lol I like the elements, and hope you get around to finishing it!
I tried a sort of Dinotopia approach in one of my stories - humans and dinosaurs living together not-so-peacefully. My main charry was a Dilopho and a cop. One of his friends was a Troodon photographer/geek/blogger, and his love interest was a female Dryosaurus lieutenant. I recently scrapped the idea of dinosaurs and humans and just made it humans, so I definitely see where you're coming from :DD
:goodluck!!
-
Now that sounds like something I'd want to read! You got me hooked after Struthiomimus :lol I like the elements, and hope you get around to finishing it!
Er…well…sorry to disappoint you, but there's basically no chance of me "finishing" that story. :oops Like I said, it's at least 13 years old, horribly outdated and inaccurate, and far below my current standards of quality.
Incidentally, a few weeks ago, while cleaning the basement, I found two of the original books (read: small stacks of paper stapled together) I had made depicting the story. The story was called "Tear and Struth" (the former pronounced like "pterosaur", not like the water that comes from your eyes :p; the latter pronounced with a long "oo" sound, like "Ruth" ;)), which should give you an idea of my level of creativity for naming my characters. :rolleyes Each page consisted of a pencil drawing with accompanying text (though I had never gotten around to writing the narrative for the later pages), all rather crappy (Granted, I was a preteen when I made it). The storyline consisted of what I previously described, which followed up with the titular duo meeting a friendly Triceratops (with perfectly straight horns, including a nose horn the same length as the other two :huh:) who carried them on its head to the edge of the sea and tossed them into a hollow log, presumably so that they could ride back to the Pteranodon colony. Along the way they were threatened by an Elasmosaurus, which was scared off by a giant pliosaur, which apparently proceeded to capsize their log as it dove underwater, forcing the pair to hitch a whale shark-style ride on a large ichthyosaur (which technically shouldn't have existed in their time period), culminating in them being unceremoniously flung onto the beach much like the gang in LBT V at the end of the shark chase (I can't remember whether I had seen that movie by the time I wrote the story). That's where it cut off; like most of the projects I have ever embarked on, I never finished the story.
Admittedly, I do still like the concept of "Tear and Struth", and it's something I could potentially revisit someday. Finishing the original story is out of the question, but I suppose I could remake it, changing the characters' names and thoroughly reworking the whole thing to make it up to date with what I (and the current paleontological community) now know about dinosaurs. …Actually, the more I think about it, the more the idea of returning to this concept appeals to me. Maybe I could even get it published as some kind of book series (probably for children or young adults), perhaps even with an appendix to each book containing educational content about the prehistoric animals featured in the story. :idea
You know, it amazes me how sometimes I can start out writing a post thinking one thing, and by the time I get to the end I've come up with an entirely new idea or completely changed my opinion. It's one of my favorite things about talking to people on this forum. Thanks so much for the inspiration, StrutEggStealer. :D (If I do write these stories, I'll be sure to name you under "Acknowledgements", maybe even give you a little shout-out of some kind in the story itself. ;))
I tried a sort of Dinotopia approach in one of my stories - humans and dinosaurs living together not-so-peacefully. My main charry was a Dilopho and a cop. One of his friends was a Troodon photographer/geek/blogger, and his love interest was a female Dryosaurus lieutenant. I recently scrapped the idea of dinosaurs and humans and just made it humans, so I definitely see where you're coming from :DD
:goodluck!!
WHAAAT?! You got rid of the dinosaurs in favor of a human-only story? That's madness! :wow
Just kidding; I'm sure you had your reasons, even if I can't comprehend them. :p Personally, I just can't write humans. Every human I think I've ever depicted in anything I've written was either an insert of myself or my siblings, or more two-dimensional and characterization-free than the paper they were on. I still have trouble grasping how normal people think and function in real life; creating original human characters that aren't just splinters of my own personality is all but impossible for me. :oops
-
The story was called "Tear and Struth" (the former pronounced like "pterosaur", not like the water that comes from your eyes :p; the latter pronounced with a long "oo" sound, like "Ruth" ;))
Lol, Ruth is my name, another reason I have an affinity for the Struthios :DD
The storyline consisted of what I previously described, which followed up with the titular duo meeting a friendly Triceratops (with perfectly straight horns, including a nose horn the same length as the other two :huh:) who carried them on its head to the edge of the sea and tossed them into a hollow log, presumably so that they could ride back to the Pteranodon colony. Along the way they were threatened by an Elasmosaurus, which was scared off by a giant pliosaur, which apparently proceeded to capsize their log as it dove underwater, forcing the pair to hitch a whale shark-style ride on a large ichthyosaur (which technically shouldn't have existed in their time period), culminating in them being unceremoniously flung onto the beach.
Sounds like fun, though. Active, flowing storyline, sure to keep the readers interest.
OMG, I'm sorry! Whenever I hear the phrase "I write" immediately, my brain clicks on, and I prepare PHeedback, and I fire off a barrage of questions trying to convince the other to either publish and/or illustrate this story to add more creative awesomeness to the world :DD
Personally, I just can't write humans. Every human I think I've ever depicted in anything I've written was either an insert of myself or my siblings, or more two-dimensional and characterization-free than the paper they were on. I still have trouble grasping how normal people think and function in real life; creating original human characters that aren't just splinters of my own personality is all but impossible for me. :oops
Lol like I said, it was coming off too much like Dinotopia ;) but I wonder how it would have turned out using dinosaurs... I still use anthros and saurians in my stories, though. I have one story about a GE-Troodon-Deinonychus hybrid raised in a lab who eventually escapes and is taken in by a human couple - basically about his journey to have a normal life since he has almost genius IQ, can speak - stutter XP - and is able to reason. I like stuff like that :3
Thanks so much for the inspiration, StrutEggStealer. :D (If I do write these stories, I'll be sure to name you under "Acknowledgements", maybe even give you a little shout-out of some kind in the story itself. ;))
Aw, thanks. I'm glad I could be of help. As mentioned above, I go all out on the story process. I really, really want to see stuff like that work out, and I try try try to see it fulfilled. I'm glad I didn't come off as overbearing, too XDD
... unless I did... O_o
-
Aw, thanks. I'm glad I could be of help. As mentioned above, I go all out on the story process. I really, really want to see stuff like that work out, and I try try try to see it fulfilled. I'm glad I didn't come off as overbearing, too XDD
... unless I did... O_o
Of course you didn't! I'm actually glad that you told me that you hoped I would finish the story; otherwise I wouldn't have felt obliged to tell you: "Sorry, but that's never gonna happen; the story I started is way too old now for me to just continue working on it," then: "Well, I guess I could conceivably continue working on it if I remade the whole thing, but it was such a silly idea that that's unlikely to happen. Here, let me tell you more about why it was so bad…", and finally: "Wait a minute, this could be a viable story after all; something I might actually be able to get published!"
Lol like I said, it was coming off too much like Dinotopia ;) but I wonder how it would have turned out using dinosaurs...
Personally, I think the world of fiction could use a lot more stories about humans and dinosaurs that aren't just all about them killing one another. :p
-
I'm sure it's obvious by now that your favorite science subject is biology or palaeontology. My question is, what are your thoughts on something like physics?
(The reason I'm asking is because my favorite science subject is physics and astronomy while I was never any good in biology, and I've got the suspicion that your interests may be the exact opposite of mine. Not that it's a bad thing in any way, I can assure you. :) )
-
Pangaea, have you watched Extreme Dinosaurs? :DD :p :lol :smile
-
Wow I never thanked the answer!Well thanks!
if female Tyrannosaurus did turn out to be bigger than the males, that wouldn’t necessarily mean the same was true of all theropods.
Indeed it's like saying all male fish is smaller than female fish becose of only one example.Lol don't know why I haven't thought about that when I wrote that.
Those facts about t-rex were very interesting.I always thought that it was proven that female t-rexes were bigger,since not only documentary films show it,but also people see it as proven fact on forums about dinosaurs.
Now I can’t help but mentally compare male Pteranodon bills to jousting lances. Jousting Pteranodons…now there’s a cool image for you (As if pterosaurs weren’t awesome enough already dino_laugh.gif).
:lol Jousting Pteranodons would be quite a sight,though I wonder how they would fly in those shiny armors.
Finaly I have another question for you :smile
I read a very interesting thing about a dinosaur called Homalocephale (http://www.avph.com.br/jpg/homalocephale.jpg).The strange thing about the bones of this species is the unusually wide hips.Some asume it as a protection from impacts,while others think that this dino were viviparous.Yep,instead of eggs,viviparous.This sound very strange to me becose I haven't heard about dinosaurs being viviparous before.(also,for me it's strange that if all of them had those hips,than why males needed those if the viviparous theory is true.Maybe all specimen found were female,or even males had smaller,but still large hips compared to others,but still it sounds weird for me.)What do you think about this theory?Do you think that it can be true?Also,have you ever heard about viviparous dinosaurs before?
Ok,that's 2 question. :p
-
So this is a debate my boyfriend and I have every time we end up talking about dinosaurs. Basically:
Him: Deinoncyus can take down a tyrannosaurus rex. They work in packs, are fast, and are smart. It would be like wolves attacking a really big moose.
Me: No they couldn't. Tyrannosaurus could crush them like bugs. Yes, deinonychus are smart, but smart enough to know that they should stay the f*** away from tyrannosaurus rex. They know they would get their tails handed to them. I can imagine they'd attack a small one, but not a fully grown adult! It's what they did with sauropods-attack the small ones. (I never brought this up to him, realizing it later, that wolves don't hunt healthy moose, but elderly/sick/wounded moose. They'd be crazy to go after a healthy one.) And as thick as their claws are, I'm not sure they can get through a T-Rex enough to kill it.
This came up yesterday at a restaurant and I even asked the waiter his opinion. He agreed with my boyfriend.
But since you're so full of dinosaur knowledge, I was wondering about your opinion.
-
Remember the days when I used to answer questions? Yeah, me neither. :rolleyes :bang
I'm sure it's obvious by now that your favorite science subject is biology or palaeontology. My question is, what are your thoughts on something like physics?
(The reason I'm asking is because my favorite science subject is physics and astronomy while I was never any good in biology, and I've got the suspicion that your interests may be the exact opposite of mine. Not that it's a bad thing in any way, I can assure you. :) )
Physics is one of those subjects that I find intriguing, but not quite to the point that I want to research it fervently. I love watching physics demonstrations, and I always enjoy the physics explanations given on MythBusters (which, incidentally, is where I picked up most of what I know about physics). I honestly wish I had a broader knowledge of physics, but I don’t think there’s enough room in my head. :wacko
Pangaea, have you watched Extreme Dinosaurs? :DD :p :lol :smile
Short answer: no. :p (Not sure if you’ll ever see this response anyway. :neutral)
I read a very interesting thing about a dinosaur called Homalocephale (http://www.avph.com.br/jpg/homalocephale.jpg).The strange thing about the bones of this species is the unusually wide hips.Some asume it as a protection from impacts,while others think that this dino were viviparous.Yep,instead of eggs,viviparous.This sound very strange to me becose I haven't heard about dinosaurs being viviparous before.(also,for me it's strange that if all of them had those hips,than why males needed those if the viviparous theory is true.Maybe all specimen found were female,or even males had smaller,but still large hips compared to others,but still it sounds weird for me.)What do you think about this theory?Do you think that it can be true?Also,have you ever heard about viviparous dinosaurs before?
I think I vaguely recall hearing about the idea that pachycephalosaurs (and I think sauropods too) were viviparous or ovoviviparous. It is an interesting subject to ponder, considering how many times viviparity and ovoviparity have independently evolved in vertebrates, from sharks, to bony fish, to amphibians, to lizards, to snakes, to synapsids. Birds are one of the few exceptions, probably at least partly because it’s easier to fly when not burdened with developing offspring, though I’ve also heard that anatomical constraints may be a factor; namely, the structure of the avian eggshell and uterus, which supposedly would make oxygen exchange within the parent’s body virtually impossible. Also, according to one book I’ve read (The Complete Dinosaur, Second Edition), archosaurs may have been evolutionary “canalized into obligate oviparity” due to their unique reproductive tract. You see, in most oviparous amniotes, eggs remain stationary in the uterus as each set of membranes, and ultimately the outer shell, forms around them sequentially. Archosaurs, however, have a uterus structured like an assembly line: the eggs are constantly moving, with different regions of the uterus depositing membranes and shells around them as they pass through. The argument is that this system precludes eggs from being retained within the uterus for any length of time, and so ovoviparity or viviparity could never evolve in an archosaur.
Admittedly, I have some reservations about this hypothesis: First, if there’s anything I’ve learned about evolution, it’s that it’s far more creative and resourceful than we humans can imagine or predict
(although it must be said that I know very little about the biology of viparity, and if I understood it better I might be more convinced of these projected limitations). Second, although all living crocodilians (the only other surviving archosaurs besides birds) lay eggs, they have a system of laying large numbers of small eggs (from 20 to more than 100) at once, whereas most birds produce smaller clutches over a period of several days (for example, the snowy owl lays one egg every two days or so, for a total clutch size of three to eleven eggs or even more, depending on the availability of food). As for dinosaurs, both methods were evidently used: sauropods laid eggs en masse, while troodontids laid them sequentially. Until I am further enlightened on the evolution of ovoviparity and the limitations of the crocodilian reproductive tract, the fact that crocodilians evidently retain their eggs within their bodies for at least a brief period of time implies to me that there is some potential for ovoviparity to evolve, which may also hold true for dinosaurs…maybe. Third, there was a group of Mesozoic crocodylomophs, the metriorhynchids (http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/2012/10/09/awesome-sea-going-crocodyliforms-of-mesozoic/), that were highly specialized for marine life. The Mesozoic’s other major marine reptile groupsóichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and mosasaursóare all conclusively known to have been live-bearers, but no such evidence is available for metriorhynchids, so it’s not known whether they crawled ashore to lay eggs like sea turtles or if they had overcome the supposed restrictions of the archosaurian assembly-line uterus and evolved live birth. If it is the latter, then the possibility that some dinosaurs could have been viviparous or ovoviparous would seem more plausible (though it would not prove that any of them actually were).
An alternative explanation for the wide hip canal of pachycephalosaurs like Homalocephale is that it would have allowed for a longer, roomier digestive tract. Pachycephalosaur teeth and jaws were poorly equipped for chewing, so a longer gut would presumably have been advantageous for helping them digest their food as thoroughly as possible and make the most of its nutritional content.
I have not been able to find any information on pachycephalosaur eggs; it could be that none have yet been discovered. Pachycephalosaurs themselves are known mostly from their skull domes; very few body fossils have been found, so they are rather poorly known compared to other dinosaur groups. I haven’t heard live-bearing discussed seriously among paleontologists as a possibility for pachycephalosaurs, and for that reason I personally doubt it myself, but there does not yet seem to be any concrete evidence either for or against this hypothesis (None that I know about, anyway). In summary, I think it’s unlikely that pachycephalosaurs were viviparous or ovoviviparous, but I don’t believe it is impossible that they were.
So this is a debate my boyfriend and I have every time we end up talking about dinosaurs. Basically:
Him: Deinoncyus can take down a tyrannosaurus rex. They work in packs, are fast, and are smart. It would be like wolves attacking a really big moose.
Me: No they couldn't. Tyrannosaurus could crush them like bugs. Yes, deinonychus are smart, but smart enough to know that they should stay the f*** away from tyrannosaurus rex. They know they would get their tails handed to them. I can imagine they'd attack a small one, but not a fully grown adult! It's what they did with sauropods-attack the small ones. (I never brought this up to him, realizing it later, that wolves don't hunt healthy moose, but elderly/sick/wounded moose. They'd be crazy to go after a healthy one.) And as thick as their claws are, I'm not sure they can get through a T-Rex enough to kill it.
This came up yesterday at a restaurant and I even asked the waiter his opinion. He agreed with my boyfriend.
But since you're so full of dinosaur knowledge, I was wondering about your opinion.
Well, even ignoring the fact that Deinonychus and Tyrannosaurus lived more than 30 million years apart and never could have encountered one another, I seriously doubt that a group of Deinonychus (or equivalently sized period-appropriate dromaeosaurs) would chance attacking a fully grown T. rex under anything approximating normal circumstances.
To envision how such a scenario would play out realistically, I don’t think it’s as important to consider whether the dromaeosaurs could do it, but whether they would do it. Sure, a pack of dromaeosaurs could kill a T. rex if it just stood there and did nothing to fight back, or if it had fallen and broken its neck, but attacking a healthy adult Tyrannosaurus fully capable of defending itself? That goes against just about every rule in the predator’s playbook.
It’s true that many predators will attack prey larger than themselves at times, and not necessarily only weak individuals (though those do make easier targets), but because of the inherent risk of injury, they will usually only do so if they have some sort of advantage over the prey. For example, a pack of wolves may occasionally attack a healthy adult moose, but they will probably first engage it in a prolonged chase to tire it out, allowing for an easier kill. Or it could be a matter of strategy, whether simply ambushing the prey and attacking its weak spot, or progressively learning over time (even generations) the most efficient way to hunt a certain prey item.
Predator-prey conflicts in nature are seldom anything like the head-to-head, videogame-style battles many people imagine them to be. Nor were dinosaurs supernaturally powerful, dragon-like juggernauts with some magical ability to destroy anything they sunk their pointy appendages into. As magnificent and fascinating as dinosaurs were, they were still animals, and even the most formidable among them would have had the same self-preservation instincts and predatory pragmatism as any of their present-day counterparts.
For the record, I shouldn’t think the Deinonychus would have a problem penetrating a tyrannosaur’s hide; studies of tooth marks on Tenontosaurus bones suggest that the bite force of Deinonychus was stronger than that of a spotted hyena, and in fact it may have been their jaws rather than their claws that were their primary killing tool. If dromaeosaurs did use their sickle claws for killing, then they probably would have targeted the throat, where a slash or puncture wound would be the most lethal. When dealing with large prey, it’s in a predator’s best interest to avoid a drawn-out struggle (again, because of the risk of injury). A precision strike that quickly kills or cripples the prey is usually the best option. Even a prey animal that has been mortally wounded may still be able to fight back or flee (I saw one video of a zebra whose belly was torn open by a crocodile while crossing a river, but it still made it to land and escaped, though it probably died later), but severing the arteries, spine, or windpipe (or, in the case of the latter, constricting it or otherwise preventing air from reaching the lungs) will put a struggling animal out of commission almost immediately. If you were to examine the killing styles of all predatory tetrapods that hunt other vertebrates capable of wounding them, you would find that most employ some variation of this technique to some extent. Cats, weasels, and falcons break their prey’s necks. Crocodiles drown their prey. Cheetahs clamp antelopes’ windpipes shut. Polar bears crush seals’ skulls. Pythons constrict their prey’s lungs. Wolves bite moose in areas that bleed out rapidly, and sometimes attempt to clamp their muzzles closed. And so on.
Another rule of thumb for most hunters is to be economical. Since many hunts end in failure even at the best of times, predators choose targets that they perceive as taking the least amount of effort to bring down with the greatest payout of food. (Even an ambush predator such as an angel shark will pass up a fish that swims within striking distance if it is too large to swallow, as hilariously demonstrated at 22:33 in this documentary (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmvc35pnCYE), where an oblivious halibut settles down right on top of a camouflaged angel shark. :lol) From a dromaeosaur’s perspective, a T. rex may be an enormous source of meat, but it is also such a powerful and dangerous creature that there is a high probability that the attack will be unsuccessful, and potentially even fatal. The mere presence of such an enormous carnivore would imply that there is enough food in the vicinity to sustain it (unless the encounter occurs during a famine), in which case there is bound to be easier prey for the dromaeosaurs to take their chances with.
There’s also the size difference to consider. Estimating dinosaur mass appears to be an incredibly tricky and debatable business, but all figures I have seen for Deinonychus’s weight fall between 100 and 200 pounds (mostly 150–160 pounds), while estimates for Tyrannosaurus range from 4 to 9 tons. Even if you assume a high-end weight for Deinonychus and a low-end weight for T. rex, the Deinonychus would be taking on a creature 40 times their weight. By comparison, the average wolf weighs 50–100 pounds, while moose fall between 400 and 1,800 pounds. Even a worst-case scenario for the wolvesóa pack of 50-pounders going after a record-pushing mooseówould have closer weight ratios than the aforementioned large Deinonychus attacking a small T. rex.
There’s another present-day case of predators collaborating to bring down enormous prey that may be even more comparable to the Deinonychus vs. Tyrannosaurus scenario: The Savuti lions (http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2009/02/04/lions-as-macropredators/) of Botswana, a population that specializes in hunting elephants. (This behavior was famously featured in an episode of the BBC natural history series Planet Earth; if you’ve never seen it, watch it here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2ZW0EvMzSM), though perhaps not if you’re easily disturbed.) There are several caveats, however. First and foremost, these lions have developed specialized elephant-hunting techniques over the last few decades; they started with calves, and have “graduated” over the years to hunting subadults, and eventually fully grown elephants. Nearly all of their hunts take place at night, when the lions have a major sight advantage over the elephants. They also seem to employ psychological scare tactics, roaring in the dark to panic their prey into fleeing, whereupon the pride can attack the elephant from behind, forcing it to the ground and killing it. And finally, elephants are fairly abundant animals in the lions’ environment; a massive food source that few other predators can take advantage of. Even in 1990, researchers estimated that elephant accounted for 20% of the Savuti lions’ diet, a percentage which has probably risen since then. By comparison, Tyrannosaurus rex, an apex predator in its environment, would have been quite rare, so there wouldn’t be many individuals for dromaeosaurs to practice hunting; given their position in the food web, they would have been less inclined to flee from a much smaller foe; and their senses were probably comparable to those of dromaeosaurs, or at the very least dromaeosaur night vision was nowhere near as superior to tyrannosaurs’ as lions’ night vision is to elephants’.
And there’s one more reason why the argument of the wolves hunting moose and lions hunting elephants does not apply to the scenario of Deinonychus attacking T. rex: as big and powerful as moose and elephants are, they are still herbivores. Certainly herbivores can be extremely dangerous (indeed, I cannot emphasize enough that the common perception of “herbivore = peaceful/harmless” is utterly, grievously wrong), they do not make a living by killing. Predators are natural assassins: everything about themótheir bodies, their senses, their reflexes, and the skills they learn throughout lifeóare honed for dispatching other animals as quickly and efficiently as possible. Every time they feed (assuming scavenging or kleptoparasitism is not involved), they must put these skills and tools into practice, while at the same time running the risk of injury or death at the proverbial hands of their prey. Naturally, most are equally adept at utilizing their natural arsenals in self-defense. A pack of Deinonychus that dared to attack a Tyrannosaurus would be taking on a highly proficient killer with a massive size advantage and perhaps two decades of hunting experience (the amount of time T. rex is thought to have taken to reach full size). With the possible exception of a large ankylosaur or giant sauropod, that’s just about the most hazardous prey they could choose to tackle, if you ask me. :blink:
I could imagine a group of dromaeosaurs mobbing a big tyrannosaur, motivating it to move elsewhere (much as small birds will harass a bird of prey or some rodents will drive off snakes), and maybe a particularly large and persistent bunch could even pester one to the point that it abandons its kill and lets them have it, but as far as attacking a T. rex as prey, unless it was extremely weak or wounded, and the dromaeosaurs were absolutely desperate, I can’t see it happening.
-
Pff, of course the bites are on a Tenontosaurus :lol . I'm not surprised there. Hello, gazelles of the time.
But yeah, that's pretty much my stance, and it's good to see it in more informed detail :) .
-
After seeing (well, mostly reading :p) how much fun you had with the bats, where do you suppose your next trip will take you :)?
-
Pff, of course the bites are on a Tenontosaurus :lol . I'm not surprised there. Hello, gazelles of the time.
Well, I wouldn't say Tenontosaurus was much of a gazelle analogue; :p it was closer to the size of a large horse (a horse with a tail one-and-a-half times the length of the rest of its body). Poor, poor Tenontosaurus…ever since the skeleton of one was found associated with a group of Deinonychus, it has been cursed to never occupy a piece of paleoart without being set upon by a pack of ravenous raptors. :( Spread the word: be kind to Tenontosaurus in your artwork! Let it be something more than just theropod fodder!
But yeah, that's pretty much my stance, and it's good to see it in more informed detail :) .
You're welcome. ;) One more thing I forgot to mention: I suppose a group of dromaeosaurs might conceivably approach (and maybe attack) a T. rex if they were infected with the dinosaurian equivalent of Toxoplasma gondii (a protozoan parasite that removes rodents' fear of cats), but it probably wouldn't end well for them. :p
After seeing (well, mostly reading :p) how much fun you had with the bats, where do you suppose your next trip will take you :)?
That's hard to say…My family has spent a lot of money this year, so we may not be able to afford another big trip for a while. :neutral I may do some minor traveling in the last week of October: apparently the Forest Service (at least in Minnesota) is planning a week-long celebration of bats just before Halloween, and one of its employees who had met me when I was volunteering at the aquarium on Endangered Species Day recently contacted me asking if I would like to volunteer at a facility at Sugarloaf Cove along the North Shore of Lake Superior during that week. I'm definitely interested, but if things don't work out I may just end up staying home and doing my part at the Great Lakes Aquarium (which will also be hosting "Bat Week"-related events and are a little reluctant to let go of me :lol).
-
Well, my Troodon Dinotopia character has been changed into a Tenontosaurus.
-
Thanks for the answer!
-
So of course I have three Dalek storylines running around in my head, two developing more and more as I work on it.
There's one that I'm struggling with on a scientific standpoint. I (http://bat-snake.deviantart.com/art/Doctor-Who-The-Daleks-of-New-Skaro-part-1-383659723) have (http://bat-snake.deviantart.com/art/Doctor-Who-The-Daleks-of-New-Skaro-part-2-383731773) extended (http://bat-snake.deviantart.com/art/New-Skaro-Parenting-385265030) my (http://bat-snake.deviantart.com/art/New-Skaro-casing-402940102) work (http://bat-snake.deviantart.com/art/New-Skaro-casing-colors-402957955) on the Daleks residing in New Skaro. In the last link I posted, you will see a discussion I had based on their reproductive biology...mainly the fact that they have eight genders.
My idea was that this was because their started as gonad-less androgenites (...yeah, I made that word up), and had to work up to having two separate genders.
It goes:
Androgynous - Gametes can mix with any other indiscriminately
Hermaphrodite - Masculine, feminine, and neutral
Male and female - There are also 'feminine males' and 'masculine females'...basically the same as seahorses.
My math is probably completely wrong, but there are 64 potential pairing mixes here, with only nine NOT resulting in offspring. Or less...since a masculine male and a masculine female technically can have their gametes mixed, it would just be a very difficult process...and I'm not really sure how it would get done.
One factor to keep in mind is that while they are socially monogamous, taking only one partner for a lifetime, they are sexually polygamous. For similar reasons to several species on earth. One sole partner to share a life and home with, but with short stands mixed in to propagate the species.
The person I was talking with stated that eight genders seems a bit complicated and senseless. And it's already clearly confusing as it is.
But with you as an 'armchair biologist', as you once called yourself...is there a way to make sense of it? With the New Skarorean Daleks having a fairly small population (at least compared to the Daleks during the Time War), how would having eight genders work?
I really need to write down their complicated social lives and gender structure...it's a mess.
-
If I remember correctly, you've said that you like the show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. I'd like to ask a hypothetical question: If the Mane 6 watched MythBusters, what do you think their favorite myths would be? (I already have a good idea myself, but I'd like to wait and see what you have in mind before revealing my picks. :p )
-
It's good to hear from you. :yes What made you break the silence?
-
So of course I have three Dalek storylines running around in my head, two developing more and more as I work on it.
There's one that I'm struggling with on a scientific standpoint. I (http://bat-snake.deviantart.com/art/Doctor-Who-The-Daleks-of-New-Skaro-part-1-383659723) have (http://bat-snake.deviantart.com/art/Doctor-Who-The-Daleks-of-New-Skaro-part-2-383731773) extended (http://bat-snake.deviantart.com/art/New-Skaro-Parenting-385265030) my (http://bat-snake.deviantart.com/art/New-Skaro-casing-402940102) work (http://bat-snake.deviantart.com/art/New-Skaro-casing-colors-402957955) on the Daleks residing in New Skaro. In the last link I posted, you will see a discussion I had based on their reproductive biology...mainly the fact that they have eight genders.
My idea was that this was because their started as gonad-less androgenites (...yeah, I made that word up), and had to work up to having two separate genders.
It goes:
Androgynous - Gametes can mix with any other indiscriminately
Hermaphrodite - Masculine, feminine, and neutral
Male and female - There are also 'feminine males' and 'masculine females'...basically the same as seahorses.
My math is probably completely wrong, but there are 64 potential pairing mixes here, with only nine NOT resulting in offspring. Or less...since a masculine male and a masculine female technically can have their gametes mixed, it would just be a very difficult process...and I'm not really sure how it would get done.
One factor to keep in mind is that while they are socially monogamous, taking only one partner for a lifetime, they are sexually polygamous. For similar reasons to several species on earth. One sole partner to share a life and home with, but with short stands mixed in to propagate the species.
The person I was talking with stated that eight genders seems a bit complicated and senseless. And it's already clearly confusing as it is.
But with you as an 'armchair biologist', as you once called yourself...is there a way to make sense of it? With the New Skarorean Daleks having a fairly small population (at least compared to the Daleks during the Time War), how would having eight genders work?
I really need to write down their complicated social lives and gender structure...it's a mess.
Wow, this is a hard one. :blink: Though it’s no excuse for me taking so long to respond to this thread (my apologies for that :bang), part of the reason was that I honestly wasn’t sure how to respond to it. I don’t know of any species in nature with a system of sexes or genders* like what you described, and my first thought was that it would be incredibly unlikely for something like that to ever evolve. But then again, I am inconceivably, incalcuably far from knowing everything about the natural world, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s to never underestimate the ingenuity and complexity of evolution.
*For the purposes of this discussion, I will be using the term “gender” to describe distinct morphological and behavioral phenotypes within sexes of a species, ignoring the human social and cultural application of the term.
I wasn’t sure where to look for more information on the subject. I checked the “Real Life” section on the TV Tropes page for
”Bizarre Alien Sexes” (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BizarreAlienSexes), which had a few examples of real-life organisms in which the division of sexes is different from what we humans are familiar with, including a species of nematode worm (Caenorhabditis elegans) in which individuals are either male or hermaphrodite, and the white-throated sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis), which may be in the process of evolving a second set of sex chromosomes. The sparrows come in two color morphs: one with a black-and-white-striped head, the males and females of which tend to be flamboyant, aggressive, promiscuous, and participate little in the raising of young; the other with a brown-and-tan-striped head, in which males and females tend to be milder-mannered, more loyal to their mates, and care intensively for their offspring. However, these sparrows (which, by the way, are socially monogamous) virtually never choose mates of the same color morph; white-striped females almost always mate with tan-striped males, and tan-striped females with white-striped males. With the two color morphs unlikely to diverge into separate species anytime soon, these birds effectively have four genders. (See the list of sources at the bottom of this response for the article on the subject.)
The sparrows made me think of another bird with an unusually complex breeding system. The ruff (Philomachus pugnax) is a species of sandpiper in which there are three genetically distinct male morphs. The first is the territorial male, which, during the breeding season, sports a homegrown Elizabethan collar of (typically) dark plumes on his head and neck (the “ruff” for which the bird is named). These males form leksócongregations in which each individual displays on a shared courtship arenaóeach defending his own mating court while the females take their pick of mates. The second is the satellite male, which also develops a neck ruff, but one that is lighter in color than the territorial males’. Instead of holding their own territories, these males wander the leks in search of mating opportunities: younger, lower ranking satellites “steal” mating opportunities from territorial males, while older, higher-ranking individuals are apparently actively “recruited” by territorial males to stay on their courts, as females are evidently more likely to visit a court where satellite males are present. The third and rarest form of male ruff is the faeder, or cryptic male, which never develops a neck ruff and resembles a female in plumage and size (though it is thought that this form actually represents the ancestral male ruff courtship plumage prior to the evolution of the other two male variants and their elaborate collars). Like the satellites, these males move through the leks in search of females, their feminine appearance perhaps allowing them to get close to females without the ruffed males driving them off, but interestingly, faeders often end up coupling with other males as well. Moreover, these males seem to know that the faeders are not females, because whereas the female ruff is always mounted by the male during mating, the faeder is just as likely to be the one “on top” as the other male during these pairings. Apparently, female ruffs are excited by male-on-male couplings, and male ruffs (both territorials and satellites) who learn to recognize faeders deliberately engage in this behavior as a ploy to draw female attention. (I wonder if this means we can add yaoi to the list of supposedly human innovations that other species beat us to. :p)
If your concept is that the Daleks are initially unable to reproduce on their own (and omitting asexual reproduction as a possible option for the time being), and have to “invent” a means of doing so, I think the most logical first step would be isogamy (pronounced “eye-SOG-uh-mee”). Isogamous organisms reproduce sexually, but there are no males or females; if there are gametes involved, they are undifferentiated. Instead of a tiny, motile sperm and a large, energy-stocked egg, you might have two identical-looking gametes that fuse to form a zygote. The parents themselves might be undifferentiated, but it’s also possible for them to have unique characteristics. According to some sources I’ve seen, at some species of fungi are considered to have literally thousands of sexes, most of them compatible with one another (though only two are needed for reproduction at any one time).
There’s another form of isogamy that doesn’t involve gametes at all. It’s called conjugation, and it’s used by bacteria, fungi, algae, and ciliate protozoans such as Paramecium to transfer genes laterally from one individual to another. For example, bacteria deploy hollow structures called conjugation pili to inject DNA directly into other bacteria. For example, an individual of Escherischia coli with a gene that enables it to digest lactose can stab another bacterium (not even necessarily another E. coli) with a conjugation pilus and inject it with that gene, and that bacterium will be able to digest lactose. Furthermore, when that bacterium divides, its descendents will all receive copies of that gene. And if the E. coli also transferred the gene that allows a bacterium to form conjugation pili, then the recipient (and all its descendents) will be able to grow its own pili and pass genes on to other bacteria.
Assuming the Daleks in your headcanon do not start out as identical clones (in which case individuals would have no unique genes to bother transferring), perhaps they could start out using conjugation to swap desirable genetic traits with one another (Actually, it would seem that Daleks are already capable of conjugation, based on the one that stole Rose’s DNA in “Dalek”, even if it only intended to absorb the artron energy she had picked up through time travel.) Once they figure out how to engineer themselves to produce gametes, they could become a race of isogamous “androgenites”, with no sexual differentiation. From there, it would only be a matter of engineering separate strains with unique biological features and reproductive compatibilities, leading to an assortment of sexes/genders consisting of various combinations of male, female, masculine, and feminine traits. I’m not sure why they would devise such an elaborate system, but then, the Daleks are all about large-scale experimentation. Having achieved the capacity for sexual reproduction (presumably as a means of more efficiently propagating their species), perhaps they decided to try every conceivable version of it, to find out which method worked the best. Either they decided that every method was advantageous enough to keep, or the experiment is still in progress.
Sorry again for taking so long to actually come up with anything in response to your question. I hope this is helpful, at least, and I’d be happy to discuss it with you further. It’s really a very interesting subject. :yes
Sources:
Nematodes: http://wormclassroom.org/teaching-model-organisms (http://wormclassroom.org/teaching-model-organisms)
White-throated sparrows: http://www.theguardian.com/science/punctua...m/2011/may/25/2 (http://www.theguardian.com/science/punctuated-equilibrium/2011/may/25/2)
Ruffs:
ï http://www.sfu.ca/biology/wildberg/ruff.html#field (http://www.sfu.ca/biology/wildberg/ruff.html#field)
ï http://www.willyvanstrien.nl/pdfs/engelspd...%20identity.pdf (http://www.willyvanstrien.nl/pdfs/engelspdfs/the%20faeder%20identity.pdf)
ï http://ardea.nou.nu/ardea_show_abstract.php?lang=uk&nr=1164 (http://ardea.nou.nu/ardea_show_abstract.php?lang=uk&nr=1164)
ï http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1618908/ (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1618908/)
Fungi:
ï http://www.independent.co.uk/news/scientis...es-1119181.html (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/scientists-discover-why-fungi-have-36000-sexes-1119181.html)
ï http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comm...have_more_than/ (http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1034gi/til_that_some_species_of_fungi_have_more_than/)
Isogamy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isogamy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isogamy)
Conjugation pili: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilus)
If I remember correctly, you've said that you like the show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. I'd like to ask a hypothetical question: If the Mane 6 watched MythBusters, what do you think their favorite myths would be? (I already have a good idea myself, but I'd like to wait and see what you have in mind before revealing my picks. :p )
Yes, indeed, I do like the show :yes (though, like LBT, I haven't watched it for a while now). And MythBusters + MLP:FiM is a formula that I've personally always thought of as fun. :p
I should note that, at this point, I have not yet watched Season 4 of MLP, so I am not privy to any new insights into the personalities of the characters that might influence my guesses as to which myths I think they’d enjoy. Also, with my choppy memory and the hundreds of myths the MythBusters have covered, I’m bound to come up with other ideas of myths the MLP characters might like that I hadn’t thought of at the time I posted this. Just thought I’d mention that.
I imagine Rainbow Dash’s favorite myths would generally fall into the category of “things moving fast and stuff blowing up”, so she’d probably enjoy myths like “Jato Rocket Car” (particularly the 10th anniversary revisit), “Torpedo Tastic”, “Water Heater Rocket”, and anything involving the New Mexico Tech rocket sled (e.g., the “Compact Compact” and “Snowplow Split” revisits). “Sonic Boom” might also pique her interest, if only because it involved creating sonic booms with the help of the Blue Angels (who are pretty much the Earthly equivalent of the Wonderbolts). EDIT: Oh, and “Beat the Speed Camera”; she’d definitely love that one.
EDIT: Completely forgot an obvious choice for one of Rainbow Dash’s top favorite myths that completely slipped my mind: “Beat the Speed Camera” (and its revisit).
Fluttershy would almost surely have a preference for animal myths, such as “Duck Quack”, “Skunk Cleaning”, “Bull in a China Shop”, “Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks”, and “Herding Cats”.
There’s a lot of myths I’m sure Pinkie Pie would love, but I think she’d be particularly fond of the flashy, quirky, cartoony ones, such as “Painting with Explosives”, “Carried Away” (via a massive bunch of party balloons), “Border Slingshot”, “360? Swingset” “Waterslide Wipeout”, “Diet Coke and Mentos”, “Square Wheels”, “Exploding Pants”, “Invisible Water”, “Bottle Rocket Blast-Off”, “Gunpowder Trail”, and “Party Balloon Pile-Up” (assuming she doesn’t have a problem with the fact that the clown would have died no matter what version of a party balloon airbag was used).
I can see Applejack enjoying a wide variety of myths, though I imagine she’d particularly like the ones that provide practical information, such as “Fire Without Matches”, “Walk a Straight Line” (though I’m not sure it applies the same to equines as it does to humans), “Slap Some Sense”, :lol and the duct tape myths (do they have duct tape in Equestria?). For some reason I think she’d also get a laugh out of the myths regarding idioms and proverbs, such as “Finding a needle in a haystack”, “Does a rolling stone gather no moss?”, and “Can’t teach an old dog new tricks”. Given her love of competition and rodeos, myths like “Row Boat Water Skiier”, “Pants on Fire” (starring Pistol, the psychic stunt horse :lol), “Red Flag to a Bull”, and “Greased Pig” might also be favorites. Finally, I would cautiously posit that Applejack would enjoy “Talking to Plants”. (I suspect she’d appreciate knowing that all the talking and singing she does to her apple trees has some scientific grounding, :p though then again she’d probably be indignant at the conclusion that it doesn’t matter what you actually say to them.)
Rarity is a tricky one; compared to the rest of the ponies, I have a hard time envisioning her deriving entertainment from the MythBusters’ typical routine of shooting, exploding, and otherwise destroying things (including their own creations), and generally making a spectacular mess. Still, if she can appreciate sonic rainbooms and death-defying stunts by Rainbow Dash, I don’t think it’s impossible that there would be a MythBusters episode or two she’d like. I can imagine her enjoying stories like “Breaking Glass”, “Voice Flame Extinguisher”, and “Let There Be Light”, as they have a certain elegant, artistic quality to them that I think might hold an attraction for Rarity. I also consider it possible that some of the high-speed shots of certain explosions might appeal to her (“Trench Torpedo”, “22,000 Foot Fall”, the lava lamps in “Exploding Lava Lamp”, the spray can in “Hot Bullets”, and the “Painting With Explosives” revisit being a few possible examples); they have an aesthetic quality that I certainly love.
As the most scientifically minded character, I think Twilight would like the myths involving physics thought experiments, such as “Bullet Fired Vs. Bullet Dropped” and “Vector Vengeance” (if you fire an object from the back of a moving vehicle at the same speed said vehicle is moving, does it simply drop to the ground?). I think she would also enjoy “Sounds Bogus” (movie sound effects vs. the real world) and the “NASA Moon Landing” episode. Her favorite myth might be “Archimedes Death Ray”, specifically the “President’s Challenge” revisit, because it so epitomizes the process of learning through scientific experimentation. (I personally consider Jamie’s speech at the end of that episode to be one of the finest in MythBusters’ history.)
Bonus character: I can easily envision Spike as a huge fan of the flashier elements of MythBusters, namely fire and explosions. “Fire Dragon” (surprise, surprise :p), “Hwacha”, “Rocket Man”, “Fireworks Man”, and “RED Bazooka” would be among his top faves. Also “Diet Coke and Mentos” and the experiments that the “Do try this at home?” episode concluded were safe to try at home, because he would see fit to try them out for himself. :lol
It's good to hear from you. :yes What made you break the silence?
Well, I hope this explanation doesn't sound as petty as I fear it does, :unsure: but honestly the biggest reason was because of my 5th anniversary as an active GOF member. Anniversaries, milestones, and events or objects that mark some sort of achievement or turning point hold a very special significance to me. Although I don't post so much on the GOF anymore (and I no longer feel like I have much of a role here or anything to contribute), the forum has affected my life immensely, and I have a lot to thank it for. I felt obliged to acknowledge that, so I made a point of posting that day. Also, my post count at the time was 4,391, so I decided, why not bump it up to 4,400 and make my big anniversary post honoring the GOF even more special? (Big round commemorative numbers are also significant to me.) Besides, it gave me the motivation to have a bit of fun posting in a bunch of random threads (most of them humor-oriented).
I'd certainly like to engage in more social interaction on here (I'm awfully lonely these days), but most of the members I was once friendly with don't seem to be around much anymore, and I'm not sure how to get back into the habit of posting or where I can contribute to the forum. (I think I've had a relapse of shyness, self-consciousness, and social awkwardness.) I'm sorry that the few posts I've made on this forum recently haven't been more substantial or contributive, and that they didn't signify a true return to regular posting. :oops It's comforting to hear that you and the other members who posted in my five-year anniversary thread were glad to see me back, at least. :)
-
The New Skaro questions were very helpful, and thought-provoking.
I do have a part dinosaur-related question, involving the recent new discoveries about Spinosaurus. Since then, I've considered it to be like a mix between a crocodile and grizzly bear. I even thought about it being like its version of a stork, which got me to thinking:
Is there a remote possibility, though there is no record of it (as of now?), that if it got a hold of a small enough fish, it could swallow it whole, much like the way many aquatic birds do?
Another dinosaur question relates to the Dromaosaurs. The more we learn about that family, the more bird-like they become. There's evidence to suggest that they were fairly intelligent. Could they have been intelligent enough to imitate human speech? I might never do it, but I'm considering writing a small AU Jurassic Park story as if it were being told in the modern era with all the new information we have. Some of which being tiny, feathered Velociraptors that are relatively annoying ankle-biters but not actual threats. I'm considering one of them hanging around with people enough that she starts imitating speech, which includes picking up on the "You didn't say the magic word" thing, and no one knows where she got it from until it was too late. Would it just be a bit of JP goofiness that would only serve the story (kinda?).
-
Have you seen The LEGO Movie?
-
Remember the days when someone would ask me a question and I would have an answer typed out and posted within a day or two? No, me neither. :neutral
I have decided that from here on in, whenever someone asks me a question, I will notify them by PM as soon as I answer it. That way, I hope to save you the trouble of checking this thread over and over again just to see if I have gotten around to answering your question.
The New Skaro questions were very helpful, and thought-provoking.
Thanks :) …or, er, you're welcome…whichever phrase is more appropriate for expressing how happy I was to help. :smile
I do have a part dinosaur-related question, involving the recent new discoveries about Spinosaurus. Since then, I've considered it to be like a mix between a crocodile and grizzly bear. I even thought about it being like its version of a stork, which got me to thinking:
Is there a remote possibility, though there is no record of it (as of now?), that if it got a hold of a small enough fish, it could swallow it whole, much like the way many aquatic birds do?
Spinosaurus almost certainly swallowed food whole. Its teeth certainly weren't any good for chewing, and I’m guessing the most it could have done as far as breaking up a large prey item was by pinning it down and ripping off strips of flesh, the way a bird of prey, a Komodo dragon, or a crocodile would. I don’t know much about the throats of Spinosaurus and other theropods, and how far they could distend to swallow food, but birds and reptiles today can swallow astonishingly big mouthfuls, as demonstrated in a number of videos that can be found on YouTube: this X-ray video of a tawny owl swallowing a bolus of food (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nXR7e6M6UI),
a darter (not a heron as the title claims) eating two fish (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo0WotEExEs), and a perentie (an Australian monitor lizard) catching and consuming a rabbit (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug-6Jll9P7A). (The last video is perhaps not recommended viewing for people who are sensitive about watching small mammals being eaten alive; you may console yourself with the knowledge that this is a wild reptile helping control an ecologically destructive invasive species.)
Another dinosaur question relates to the Dromaosaurs. The more we learn about that family, the more bird-like they become. There's evidence to suggest that they were fairly intelligent. Could they have been intelligent enough to imitate human speech? I might never do it, but I'm considering writing a small AU Jurassic Park story as if it were being told in the modern era with all the new information we have. Some of which being tiny, feathered Velociraptors that are relatively annoying ankle-biters but not actual threats. I'm considering one of them hanging around with people enough that she starts imitating speech, which includes picking up on the "You didn't say the magic word" thing, and no one knows where she got it from until it was too late. Would it just be a bit of JP goofiness that would only serve the story (kinda?).
Hmm…the idea sounds a little far-fetched to me (but no more so than the dromaeosaur antics we’ve seen already in the JP series). It seems to me that the biggest issue isn’t whether dromaeosaurs were “intelligent” enough to mimic human speech, but whether their vocal apparatuses were capable of making the requisite sounds.
The reason some birds are able to imitate human speech is because of their sound-producing organ, the syrinx. Unlike our larynx (voice box), which is located high in the throat, a bird's syrinx sits deep in the chest, at the point where the lungs split off from the windpipe. Instead of vocal cords, there are membranes on the walls of the syrinx which can be made to vibrate at different frequencies, allowing some birds to mimic human speech sounds even though they have no lips or teeth. Some birds can even modulate the airflow from one lung independently of the other, allowing them to sing two notes at once.
The question is, did dromaeosaurs have a syrinx? Honestly I'm not 100% clear on the answer. The sources I've read imply that syrinxes themselves don't fossilize, but apparently one requirement for possessing a syrinx is a system of air sacs within the bones and body cavity, namely the clavicular air sac, meaning that if a dinosaur had a clavicular air sac, it may have had a syrinx (though we can’t tell for sure). Unfortunately, there are (according to at least one trusted resource) only three groups of archosaurs known to have had clavicular air sacsópterosaurs, the large theropod Aerosteon, and true birds of the group known as Ornithothoracesóand it is believed that all three evolved these air sacs independently of one another. I don't know if there's any evidence as to where on the bird-theropod family tree the clavicular air sac inherited by present-day birds first appeared, or at what point after that the syrinx itself evolved, but the case may be that dromaeosaurs didn’t have them. Even if they did, it’s no guarantee that they were good mimics; only a few of the 10,000+ bird species alive today are capable of replicating human speech, and all of them belong to the parrot and passerine (songbird) families.
That said, the dinosaurs in the Jurassic Park series certainly don’t adhere to paleontology’s predictions of what sounds they could make. For example, many paleontologists doubt that Tyrannosaurus was capable of roaring; it more likely bellowed, rumbled, growled, or hissed in the manner of an alligator.
I for one would love to see more research in the area of dinosaur (and pterosaur) vocalization: the internal structure of hadrosaur crests and what sounds they could have made; whether the hyoid bones of various dinosaurs might have influenced their vocal abilities; experiments with inflatable sacs and other soft tissues that might have served to resonate or modulate sounds; and so on. Until the vocal capabilities of Velociraptor and other dinosaurs are further researched, however, I would say giving your raptors the capacity to imitate human speech would be considered scientifically unlikely, but not necessarily impossible.
Now, it’s one thing for a creature to be able to mimic human words and phrases, but it’s something else entirely to grasp the meanings associated with them and to use them in the proper context. Human communication is extremely complex, and even especially “smart” animals with the capacity to mimic our language probably don’t usually understand the meaning and context of the phrases they repeat unless they’ve been expressly taught those connections (the most famous case probably being the late, great Alex, the African gray parrot (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO6XuVlcEO4)).
However, it’s actually not that uncommon for animals to use communication signals to manipulate other creatures. For example, many prey animals, from squirrels, to monkeys, to antelopes, are attuned to the alarm cries of birds, recognizing that if a nearby bird makes a certain call, it means that it has spotted a potential threat. But at least one bird, the drongo, has twisted this to its advantage when foraging alongside meerkats (as seen in this amazing clip from the BBC series Africa (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd5OlsdD794)). If it sees a meerkat unearth a particularly succulent morsel, it will give a false alarm call. When the meerkats run for cover, assuming a predator has been spotted, the drongo swoops down and helps itself to the abandoned meal. Moreover, the drongo has learned to mimic the alarm calls of other local bird species, and even the meerkats’ own sentries, as a backup strategy for when its hosts wise up to its false alarms. Even we humans aren’t safe from manipulative interspecies communication: as any cat owner could probably tell you, our beloved feline companions are masters of singling out the most pitiable, heartstring-tugging cries to use in persuading their owners to fill up the food dish, open the door, or otherwise give shower them with attention. One study found that the “solicitation purr” uttered by many cats contains a high-pitched element with a very similar frequency to the cry of a human infant. It’s not true mimicry, but it evokes the same nurturing response from us, and requires no research into human psychology and language on the part of the cat.
Here’s a scenario that I think might be feasible: the raptors in your story have the natural ability to mimic the sounds of other species for some natural purpose, such as impressing potential mates with their vocal repertoires (as lyrebirds do), or imitating the calls of more threatening animals to scare away predators approaching their nests or competing scavengers at a carcass. This particular dromaeosaur develops the habit of mimicking things she hears humans regularly say. To me it would be very feasible if she were to hear the “You didn’t say the magic word” phrase looping over and over again, learn to mimic it, and on a later occasion when she repeats it, it turns out to fit the context of the situation perfectly. For a more deliberate and sophisticated use of human-speech mimicry, let’s say the raptor hangs around the JP offices, and regularly hears the boss shouting, “Dennis, come to my office!” She starts mimicking it out of habit, and then learns that whenever she does so, Dennis gets up from his desk and leaves his snacks unprotected. So she develops the habit of mimicking the boss’s call, and as soon as Dennis leaves his desk, she swoops in and feasts on his beef jerky. It’s the same principle as the drongo fleecing the meerkats; the raptor would not need to understand anything more complicated than “when I make this human noise, that guy leaves his food”. Even if real dromaeosaurs weren’t “smart” enough to do this, it would certainly be a far less anthropomorphically exaggerated portrayal of their cognitive abilities than seen in the Jurassic Park films.
References:
http://albertonykus.blogspot.com/2011/02/s...ng-raptors.html (http://albertonykus.blogspot.com/2011/02/singing-raptors.html)
http://dinogoss.blogspot.com/2014/06/what-...-t-rex-say.html (http://dinogoss.blogspot.com/2014/06/what-does-t-rex-say.html)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrinx_(bird_anatomy) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrinx_(bird_anatomy))
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/20...ncespeak-hyoid/ (http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/09/sciencespeak-hyoid/)
http://qilong.wordpress.com/2013/06/20/pne...s-in-dinosaurs/ (http://qilong.wordpress.com/2013/06/20/pneumatic-air-sacs-in-dinosaurs/)
http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2...dded-in-a-purr/ (http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/07/13/cats-manipulate-their-owners-with-a-cry-embedded-in-a-purr/)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/art...-creatures.html (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2621584/The-bird-impersonates-MEERKAT-steal-food-Drongo-catches-quarter-meals-imitating-creatures.html)
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/science/profiles/wedel_0609.php (http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/science/profiles/wedel_0609.php)
Have you seen The LEGO Movie?
Nope. :p I’ve heard good things about it, but it’s one of those films whose animation style just doesn’t appeal to me that much. Also the theatrical trailer gave me a bad first impression that left me disinclined to see it; even when I learned of its critical acclaim, I had little interest in seeing it. At any rate, it’s not very high on my list of movies to watch.
-
Considering the potential that bird (http://willoughbyart.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-neck-is-lie.html) necks (http://svpow.com/2009/05/31/necks-lie/) lie (http://svpow.com/2011/09/01/necks-lie-redux/), it could be in the realm of possibility that they could have had a syrinx. Especially comparing them to parakeets, though they're probably much farther apart from each other; corvids and pheasants seem closer to true raptors. But then again, corvids like ravens and crows have mimicked speech. Though with less refinement than parrots.
Alex the Parrot's last words to his trainer is still something that tugs at the heartstrings...and honestly makes me wonder what Koko the Gorilla's last words will be. Though that seems far down the line.
I made a post looking for advice on yet another Dalek-based story I'm working on, one certainly touchier than my others. A lot of ideas [have changed since then, which I can communicate to you if you are able. Basically it's like putting The Grapes of Wrath in a blender with the Prometheus And Zeus Feud, but replacing the humans/mortals with Thals, and the Olympians and Titans replaced by Daleks. Then making Rose of Sharon the main character. Technically speaking, the story even begins where The Grapes of Wrath ends. If you know what I mean. And that's about as much as I can describe without going too much into detail.