Do you miss the dinosaurs that never existed?

[andrewsaurus rex]

As new discoveries are made and knowledge increases, many of the dinosaurs we have known and loved for years have changed in appearance, sometimes dramatically, over the years.   Long legged Spinosaurus,  high arched back Stegosaurus, , lumbering swamp dwelling Brontosaurus, 60 foot Liopleurodon etc, all gone.  There are many other examples.  Do you miss the animals that never really existed?

[Stegotyranno420]

I hope it doesn't go away even though it likely would(or already had) but 60 meter sauropods like Amphicoelias.
Barosaurus might bring that back however.
I also miss long-legged Spinosaurus and featherless coelurosaurs. Do not get me wrong, I love the new findings aswell, and i despise JP knockoffs but the area between Dinosaur Renaissance and Modern Paleoart characterized by Luis Rey, Todd Marshall, and other great names is special to me and reminds me of simpler times.

[Faelrin]

Hmm I can't say I miss them when they are still there for me to appreciate in some way even if they aren't the current updated reconstruction anymore. They are a part of the history of the science. I certainly have a fondness for the older JP designs as well that I literally grew up alongside with (born in '91 here), and things like the Crystal Palace dinosaurs. Also the older interpretation of Carnotaurus skin arrangement.

I suppose we could say this about certain nomen dubiums like Microceratus/Microceratops, Troodon, Kronosaurus, or other older names that since were made synonymous like Seismosaurus, now D. hallorum.

I love both honestly, both those past interpretations and those made with more evidence as it is found. Who knows how things will be like even 10, or 20 years from now? I hope I live long enough to be able to see it.

Edit: Oh I can't believe I forgot about poor Deinocheirus. I was so enticed by the mysterious owners of those massive arms when I was a child. I always hoped we would find it someday, but doubted it would come. Much to my surprise came in 2014, even more so with how it looked. Nothing I ever imagined growing up, and now I adore it more then I did back then.

I suppose we could probably also put those heavily feathered Tyrannosaurus (etc) after Yutyrannus was discovered here. It was a unique primal beauty unseen before, and possibly not again. Still love Doug's sculpt from 2017 even if popular consensus is that it was mostly featherless at this point.

[Primeval12]

I miss Troodon and I miss the venomous Sinornithosaurus. Two-legged spino was cool too, but I love the new reconstruction.

[Pliosaurking]

Oh the days of 85 foot liopleurodon, they were great! It's now just a memory unfortunately  .

[Halichoeres]

I guess I found "Scaphonyx" easier to remember than "Hyperodapedon," but I think that's the closest I come to the feeling you describe.

[Faelrin]

@Halichoeres TIL. Well guess I miss it now, since I was more familiar with the former, lol.

Oh another was Othnielia, which is now known to be the same as Nanosaurus. Something about the former sounded beautiful to me, probably thanks to WWD using it in the past.

[Gwangi]

Nope! But like @Faelrin said, they are still around for me to appreciate in art and media. I value them for their historical significance but more than anything I want to know what they actually looked and behaved like, no matter how attached I am to a certain depiction of them.

[Stegotyranno420]

I guess I found "Scaphonyx" easier to remember than "Hyperodapedon," but I think that's the closest I come to the feeling you describe.

That reminds me, Kronosaurus is much easier to remember than whatever it is called now....

[Libraraptor]

That is an interesting question and an interesting title for a thread.

The image of many dinosaurs has been changing over and over again over the last 200 or so years. As for me I grew up with the nineties stuff. Paleoart from John Sibbick, Douglas Henderson or Mark Hallett were the first images I grew up with. And of course the Invicta dinosaurs to which I am deeply connected by a personal history.

Honestly, I don´t miss the old dinosaurs. The newer ones are even more fascinating, less dull and tail dragging. I miss the innocent view on prehistory, my own courage to believe in myself becoming a palaeontologist and the ability to be astonished by what I saw I used to have back then.

That means, I sometimes miss the part of me which once was a curious aspirant in a time when dinosaurs used to be something very special.

[Halichoeres]

I miss the innocent view on prehistory, my own courage to believe in myself becoming a palaeontologist and the ability to be astonished by what I saw I used to have back then.

That means, I sometimes miss the part of me which once was a curious aspirant in a time when dinosaurs used to be something very special.

This is very poignant.

[Justin_]

Cheeks. I'm already missing cheeks, especially on ceratopsians. I know it isn't conclusive whether they had them or not but I'm still not getting used to recent reconstructions without.

[suspsy]

No. Not at all. You can't miss what never existed in the first place.

[dinofelid]

Cheeks. I'm already missing cheeks, especially on ceratopsians. I know it isn't conclusive whether they had them or not but I'm still not getting used to recent reconstructions without.

From what I understand, actual cheek muscles like mammals have were discounted by this paper, but a lot of herbivores that chewed their food probably still had a cheek-like flap of skin so food wouldn't fall out the side of their mouth when they chewed, with ceratopsians being the only plausible exception since they had a big muscle that could have blocked off the teeth. The paper noted that we do actually have fossil nodosaurs with osteoderms where such a flap would be, supporting the idea that they had them. And a second paper on the subject by the same author included some diagrams of the reconstructed muscle placement on different herbivores, you can see from figure 10 that the muscle wouldn't have covered the teeth on hadrosaurs and iguanodontids, so IMO reconstructions of them without cheeks (like in recent PNSO figures) are pretty unlikely. Meanwhile figure 11 seems to show that while the muscle would cover the teeth in later ceratopsians, it wouldn't have done so in Psittacosaurus which was one of the earliest ceratopsians, so I think it'd be likely that later ceratopsians evolved from ancestors that had non-muscular cheeks, in which case it seems at least as plausible they would have kept them as that they would have lost them.

[GojiraGuy1954]

I miss Troodon and I miss the venomous Sinornithosaurus. Two-legged spino was cool too, but I love the new reconstruction.

Spino is two-legged

[Halichoeres]

Just adding to dinofelid's thoughtful post above, cheeks are one of those things, like feathers on a large tyrannosaur, that in principle would be easy to prove the presence of--you'd just need one clearly preserved specimen--but are almost impossible to prove the absence of. Buccinator muscles are clearly not present in ornithischians, but a flap of skin could easily have been. It seems likely to me that something with huge tooth batteries like a hadrosaur would have had something to contain its food, as dinofelid suggests.

[bmathison1972]

Nope! But like @Faelrin said, they are still around for me to appreciate in art and media. I value them for their historical significance but more than anything I want to know what they actually looked and behaved like, no matter how attached I am to a certain depiction of them.

Me too, 100%

[Mellow Stego]

Nope! But like @Faelrin said, they are still around for me to appreciate in art and media. I value them for their historical significance but more than anything I want to know what they actually looked and behaved like, no matter how attached I am to a certain depiction of them.

Me too, 100%

Me three!

[Ludodactylus]

I definitely feel some nostalgia for the name "Monoclonius."

It was seemingly omnipresent in the dinosaur media I was exposed to in the very early 90s, along with a big Charles Knight-inspired mural in the reptile house of the Buffalo Zoo. The painting was faded with age but the Monoclonius and Woolly Mammoth images were still visible with legible lettering underneath identifying them.

As a kid I begged to be taken to three places as often as possible: the Buffalo Zoo, the Buffalo Museum of Science and the Niagara Aquarium. My parents more than got their money's worth out of annual memberships to all three, and the reptile house at the Zoo was especially enthralling to me, between the living specimens and that mural (which was removed probably 1997 at the latest).

Don't get me wrong, I love Centrosaurus today, but the name "Monoclonius" just reminds me of a very carefree, wonder-filled childhood.

[Faelrin]

@Ludodactylus That sounds like a great experience. You were lucky to be able to do that. Closest I go to that experience was the field trips to the Boston Museum of Science I went to as a kid in the 90's, back when I still lived in my birth place of NH.

I have a similar childhood fondness to Troodon as a result of it being claimed to fame as the smartest dinosaur discovered in a lot of dinosaur books I had read growing up. I think that was based on an older line of thinking that the brain body ratio was proof of intelligence back then. It's ultimately what led to the whole hypothetical and controversial dinosauroid thing Dale Russell came up with, which I also learned about way back when I was still in elementary school.