Controversial opinions on dinosaur toys

[SidB]

The solution that I arrived at regarding the PNSO tsunami is to only collect the terrestrials, and the forego practically all other brands, with a very few exceptions. Safari helped this year by only releasing two that I like and it looks as i won't be buying any Papos and only one Collect plus a single Mojo and no Schleichs. My solution.

[Stegotyranno420]

Deleted

[stargatedalek]

Putting feathers on cryolophosaurus is annoying , implausible,  and I am glad we havent had a feathered cryolophosaurus yet, though I am not a big fan of skinny ones either

You can dislike it all you like, but nothing about it is implausible.

We know feathers, or rather "soft integument directly ancestral to feathers that doesn't have its own name yet", is ancestral to ornithodirans as far back as their common ancestor with crocodiles. We know this because modern crocodilians are secondarily bald, having dormant genes that are specifically used for creating feathers.

With that established it means dinosaurs were ancestrally feathered, and several different groups lost all or most of their feathering independently. This also matches well with our understanding of dinosaur scales, and in particular how vastly disparate scales were between different dinosaur groups, despite non-branched feathers all being extremely similar even between theropods and ornithopods (and frankly pycnofibres too).

[Bread]

Putting feathers on cryolophosaurus is annoying , implausible,  and I am glad we havent had a feathered cryolophosaurus yet, though I am not a big fan of skinny ones either

Why can Cryolophosaurus not have feathers? Correct me if I am wrong, but if I recall correctly there hasn't been any feather or scale impressions discovered on this genus. To add to that matter, this genus came from somewhere in Antarctica which it most likely experienced cold seasons. Again, I am not familiar with this genus.

I almost forgot about this thread, but a recent opinion of mine came about with the more images arriving of those Retrosaurs by Rebor. Invicta is overrated, but I do understand why.

[Libraraptor]

Is there a Cryolophosaurus figure with feathers?

[Faelrin]

@Libraraptor I don't believe so, although I am aware there has been some support over the years for such a figure (such as from Safari Ltd for example) in the numerous wants threads.

[Sim]

Putting feathers on cryolophosaurus is annoying , implausible,  and I am glad we havent had a feathered cryolophosaurus yet, though I am not a big fan of skinny ones either

Come on now, that isn't nice.  stargatedalek put it well, you can dislike it but nothing about it is implausible.  What's implausible is skinny featherless Cryolophosaurus, Cryolophosaurus needed something to keep it warm in the cold environment it lived in.  Why do you not like feathers on Cryolophosaurus?  If I'm remembering right you feather your tyannosaurids and they are less likely to be feathered than Cryolophosaurus.


As for whether there has been a feathered Cryolophosaurus figure, the PNSO mini has feathers on its neck and back, but that really isn't enough covering if you ask me and it doesn't look good either.  There still isn't a good feathered Cryolophosaurus figure.

[Ikessauro]

My controversial opinion and a half-wished hope - please, oh please PNSO, stop the production lines, pause for several months, and give us collectors some time to appreciate the landslide of gems that you have already issued over the last year!

I love PNSO dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures, but I too wish they would just take a, preferably long, break. The same goes for Nanmu, specially with the multiple variants. I sometimes miss the days when we only had a handful of releases per year per company.
Now we have way more companies, making way more figures, and they are way more expensive then they were before. So keeping up with all of it is almost impossible. Takes a bit of the fun in collecting and creates a sort of FOMO for figures you can't buy.

[suspsy]

I think 2021 was the year that PNSO hit its peak—and that it can only crashing down from here. The increasingly obscene prices are turning off more and more collectors, including myself. They've become less like CollectA, Safari, and Schleich and more like Sideshow or Nanmu or I-Toy. They won't collapse completely, but they've lost the child market.

[Stegotyranno420]

Putting feathers on cryolophosaurus is annoying , implausible,  and I am glad we havent had a feathered cryolophosaurus yet, though I am not a big fan of skinny ones either

Come on now, that isn't nice.  stargatedalek put it well, you can dislike it but nothing about it is implausible.  What's implausible is skinny featherless Cryolophosaurus, Cryolophosaurus needed something to keep it warm in the cold environment it lived in.  Why do you not like feathers on Cryolophosaurus?  If I'm remembering right you feather your tyannosaurids and they are less likely to be feathered than Cryolophosaurus.


As for whether there has been a feathered Cryolophosaurus figure, the PNSO mini has feathers on its neck and back, but that really isn't enough covering if you ask me and it doesn't look good either.  There still isn't a good feathered Cryolophosaurus figure.

My opinion was not directed at you my friend, so sorry if it seemed as such.
Also tyrannosaurs are far more likely to have feathers. And Cryolophosaurus was able to thrive in Antarctica because it was much more warmer, even a bit tropical. And don't all archosaurs have recessive genes for feathers/ thin scales, hence why they evolved many times?

[stargatedalek]

Putting feathers on cryolophosaurus is annoying , implausible,  and I am glad we havent had a feathered cryolophosaurus yet, though I am not a big fan of skinny ones either

Come on now, that isn't nice.  stargatedalek put it well, you can dislike it but nothing about it is implausible.  What's implausible is skinny featherless Cryolophosaurus, Cryolophosaurus needed something to keep it warm in the cold environment it lived in.  Why do you not like feathers on Cryolophosaurus?  If I'm remembering right you feather your tyannosaurids and they are less likely to be feathered than Cryolophosaurus.


As for whether there has been a feathered Cryolophosaurus figure, the PNSO mini has feathers on its neck and back, but that really isn't enough covering if you ask me and it doesn't look good either.  There still isn't a good feathered Cryolophosaurus figure.

My opinion was not directed at you my friend, so sorry if it seemed as such.
Also tyrannosaurs are far more likely to have feathers. And Cryolophosaurus was able to thrive in Antarctica because it was much more warmer, even a bit tropical. And don't all archosaurs have recessive genes for feathers/ thin scales, hence why they evolved many times?

I don't disagree with you on Tyrannosaurs. People really are jumping the gun on "JP was right all along" scaling when we have such patchy tissue samples. And I say tissue and not scale because some of them aren't even clearly scales.

Antarctica went through periods of warming and cooling, and while it was sub-tropical later through the Eocene it was actually temperate for much of the Mesozoic, including the period Cryolophosaurus is from. Seasonal winters were likely to have been pretty bad and had at least occasional snow.

Recessive genes are not a taxonomic concept at all, nor are they a type of gene. That term refers to the relationship between specific genes. Unused genes are very different from recessive ones.
https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/Recessive

We only have two, potentially three, living groups of arthropods. Birds just have feathers, crocodilians have dormant genes for making them showing that at one point their ancestor had feathers, and turtles, assuming they are even archosaurs, are not known to have these genes.

It's technically possible these structures are ancestral to archosaurs as a whole, but it's considered unlikely given we don't see any in archosaurs earlier than Pseudosuchia (which is to say none outside of crown Archosauria).

As for whether it was feathers that re-appeared in multiple groups, that doesn't explain why they're practically identical (by comparison) between early Coelurosaurs, Ornithopods, and Pterosaurs, despite the scales in all of these groups (and within Ornithopods and Theropods) being so vastly different.

And when you think about Pseudosuchians at large and especially their common ancestors with Ornithodirans, the idea of "feathered crocodiles" looks a lot less silly, as these animals were very similar to carnivorous dinosaurs. Then it follows that they became bald as they became aquatic.

[GojiraGuy1954]

Putting feathers on cryolophosaurus is annoying , implausible,  and I am glad we havent had a feathered cryolophosaurus yet, though I am not a big fan of skinny ones either

Come on now, that isn't nice.  stargatedalek put it well, you can dislike it but nothing about it is implausible.  What's implausible is skinny featherless Cryolophosaurus, Cryolophosaurus needed something to keep it warm in the cold environment it lived in.  Why do you not like feathers on Cryolophosaurus?  If I'm remembering right you feather your tyannosaurids and they are less likely to be feathered than Cryolophosaurus.


As for whether there has been a feathered Cryolophosaurus figure, the PNSO mini has feathers on its neck and back, but that really isn't enough covering if you ask me and it doesn't look good either.  There still isn't a good feathered Cryolophosaurus figure.

My opinion was not directed at you my friend, so sorry if it seemed as such.
Also tyrannosaurs are far more likely to have feathers. And Cryolophosaurus was able to thrive in Antarctica because it was much more warmer, even a bit tropical. And don't all archosaurs have recessive genes for feathers/ thin scales, hence why they evolved many times?

I don't disagree with you on Tyrannosaurs. People really are jumping the gun on "JP was right all along" scaling when we have such patchy tissue samples. And I say tissue and not scale because some of them aren't even clearly scales.

Antarctica went through periods of warming and cooling, and while it was sub-tropical later through the Eocene it was actually temperate for much of the Mesozoic, including the period Cryolophosaurus is from. Seasonal winters were likely to have been pretty bad and had at least occasional snow.

Recessive genes are not a taxonomic concept at all, nor are they a type of gene. That term refers to the relationship between specific genes. Unused genes are very different from recessive ones.
https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/Recessive

We only have two, potentially three, living groups of arthropods. Birds just have feathers, crocodilians have dormant genes for making them showing that at one point their ancestor had feathers, and turtles, assuming they are even archosaurs, are not known to have these genes.

It's technically possible these structures are ancestral to archosaurs as a whole, but it's considered unlikely given we don't see any in archosaurs earlier than Pseudosuchia (which is to say none outside of crown Archosauria).

As for whether it was feathers that re-appeared in multiple groups, that doesn't explain why they're practically identical (by comparison) between early Coelurosaurs, Ornithopods, and Pterosaurs, despite the scales in all of these groups (and within Ornithopods and Theropods) being so vastly different.

And when you think about Pseudosuchians at large and especially their common ancestors with Ornithodirans, the idea of "feathered crocodiles" looks a lot less silly, as these animals were very similar to carnivorous dinosaurs. Then it follows that they became bald as they became aquatic.

If we infer from closely related genera, such as Daspletosaurus and Tarbosaurus, along with scale impressions from Rex itself, we can safely assume that Rex was largely featherless. I do believe that Rex would have elephant-like integument though

[stargatedalek]

If we infer from closely related genera, such as Daspletosaurus and Tarbosaurus, along with scale impressions from Rex itself, we can safely assume that Rex was largely featherless. I do believe that Rex would have elephant-like integument though

Tarbosaurus scales are about the best evidence we have that rex was feathered. Tarbosaurus scales are normal, traditional, easily and inherently recognizable scales. Nothing about them is strange or subjective, they just, are scales. And from the legs and feet, for the record, so on their own completely irrelevant to feathering.

The Tyrannosaurus "scales" meanwhile are weird lumpy nonsense. Random sizes, irregular roughly round shapes, and they even vary in height, some rising higher than others. No other animal has scales like this, least of all it's closest relative Tarbosaurus whose scales are about as "regular" as they possibly could be.

Some people have compared them to the armoured skin on the heads of crocodiles and some chameleons, which they are certainly more similar to than scales. But those firstly aren't actually scales, and secondly they're also much flatter than regular scales let alone whatever this Tyrannosaurus stuff is.

This armoured or cornified skin is what we know from the Gorgosaurus impressions, which are on its lips. The describing paper positioned this as evidence for lip-less crocodile like oral structures, but it could just as easily have been sitting on top of lips and it would serve even better as armour if it was. Not sure how that's relevant to feathering.

So what do the Tyrannosaurus impressions look like? Well to be frank they look like turkey skin. Turkeys have round "lumps" or bubbles of skin that give them a warty appearance very similar to the impressions identified from Tyrannosaurus. Turkeys use them to change the colour (and theoretically patterns) of their skin at will by flushing them with blood to change their colour from grey, to blue, to red. A large animal like Tyrannosaurus may have made use of similar structures to manage blood flow near the skin for thermoregulation.

And ultimately the impressions in question are tiny. Millimetre segments of an animal tens of meters in length. Regardless of what they are, trying to infer the entire animals appearance from them is going to be speculative. Which just kind of leaves us where we were, which is the genetic evidence in favour of feathers. Plus we now (as in, as of this week) have hard evidence that at least the chicks of crown carcharodontosaurids and megalosaurs were feathered. So having feathers in at least some stage of life was the norm for a probable majority of large theropods.

Ultimately a bald reconstruction for Tyrannosaurus and kin is perfectly defensible. But the evidence in direct favour of that is entirely lacking in substance. Make/prefer bald Tyrannosaurus as you want, again, it is completely defensible and plausible, but don't go saying it totally definitely had scales just because a few overreaching papers said so.

[GojiraGuy1954]

If we infer from closely related genera, such as Daspletosaurus and Tarbosaurus, along with scale impressions from Rex itself, we can safely assume that Rex was largely featherless. I do believe that Rex would have elephant-like integument though

Tarbosaurus scales are about the best evidence we have that rex was feathered. Tarbosaurus scales are normal, traditional, easily and inherently recognizable scales. Nothing about them is strange or subjective, they just, are scales. And from the legs and feet, for the record, so on their own completely irrelevant to feathering.

The Tyrannosaurus "scales" meanwhile are weird lumpy nonsense. Random sizes, irregular roughly round shapes, and they even vary in height, some rising higher than others. No other animal has scales like this, least of all it's closest relative Tarbosaurus whose scales are about as "regular" as they possibly could be.

Some people have compared them to the armoured skin on the heads of crocodiles and some chameleons, which they are certainly more similar to than scales. But those firstly aren't actually scales, and secondly they're also much flatter than regular scales let alone whatever this Tyrannosaurus stuff is.

This armoured or cornified skin is what we know from the Gorgosaurus impressions, which are on its lips. The describing paper positioned this as evidence for lip-less crocodile like oral structures, but it could just as easily have been sitting on top of lips and it would serve even better as armour if it was. Not sure how that's relevant to feathering.

So what do the Tyrannosaurus impressions look like? Well to be frank they look like turkey skin. Turkeys have round "lumps" or bubbles of skin that give them a warty appearance very similar to the impressions identified from Tyrannosaurus. Turkeys use them to change the colour (and theoretically patterns) of their skin at will by flushing them with blood to change their colour from grey, to blue, to red. A large animal like Tyrannosaurus may have made use of similar structures to manage blood flow near the skin for thermoregulation.

And ultimately the impressions in question are tiny. Millimetre segments of an animal tens of meters in length. Regardless of what they are, trying to infer the entire animals appearance from them is going to be speculative. Which just kind of leaves us where we were, which is the genetic evidence in favour of feathers. Plus we now (as in, as of this week) have hard evidence that at least the chicks of crown carcharodontosaurids and megalosaurs were feathered. So having feathers in at least some stage of life was the norm for a probable majority of large theropods.

Ultimately a bald reconstruction for Tyrannosaurus and kin is perfectly defensible. But the evidence in direct favour of that is entirely lacking in substance. Make/prefer bald Tyrannosaurus as you want, again, it is completely defensible and plausible, but don't go saying it totally definitely had scales just because a few overreaching papers said so.

No?

Tyrannosaurus

tarbosaurus

Even if Tyrannosaurus did have irregular scales as you describe, that doesn't prove feathers. We have zero evidence of feathering in any Tyrannosaurid. The closest is Yutyrannus, which is a Proceratosaurid.

[stargatedalek]

Even if Tyrannosaurus did have irregular scales as you describe, that doesn't prove feathers. We have zero evidence of feathering in any Tyrannosaurid. The closest is Yutyrannus, which is a Proceratosaurid.

Feathers didn't evolve in Yutyrannus, they are ancestral as far back as, well actually as far back as ornithodirans on the whole, but lets be simple here and just say they predate coelurosaurs. Thus the genetic evidence is in favour of feathers as in that is the default for animals in this group, not because X close relative had them.

No?

Tyrannosaurus

tarbosaurus

They look a lot less similar in closer examination. Look again at the Tarbosaurus scales, they are all near perfectly round and more importantly they are evenly spaced. Then look at this weird nonsense again;



And again, it doesn't even matter what they actually are. Look at these impressions, look at where they're placed on the body, now forget it because that's complete speculation. These are using a millimetre as a scale bar, how exactly are we supposed to know where on the body these are from? These aren't large sections of tissue that show the general shape or curvature of the animal to allow us to place them on a reconstruction, like we have from Triceratops and Edmontosaurus, they're tiny little chunks.

They're found in rough placement relative to bones sure, but fossils aren't exact replicas of an animal, they're replicas of a corpse. Large animals bloat and swell, scavengers tear tissues apart and discard them haphazardly, skin ruptures or peels back and collects towards the animals back and underside.

[Stegotyranno420]

Feathered and/or Scaly tyrannosaurus/tyrannosaurs are perfectly fine. Safari's Tyrannosaurus is amazing, and it's the reason why I started to like feathers on that taxon. On the other hand, scales are great too.
People are really over estimating the scale supporting papers tho

[Bread]

People are really over estimating the scale supporting papers tho

I think people are over estimating the feathering of a Tyrannosaurus. Like you said, it is the same for scales, too. I don't mind either, but collecting wise, the feathering on a Tyrannosaurus can not be covering the entire body.

I always thought this was an annoying argument, whether Tyrannosaurus had feathers or not. I want to even note that when I call this controversy annoying is the fact that it is everywhere and ongoing. Until we have enough evidence, I am going to see feathers or no feathers possible. Same goes for lips.

[Gothmog the Baryonyx]

Ur, not for lips. Them having lips seems a no brainer to me. I don't know why anyone (apart from people who see them as bipedal crocodiles) would think otherwise.

[Bread]

Ur, not for lips. Them having lips seems a no brainer to me. I don't know why anyone (apart from people who see them as bipedal crocodiles) would think otherwise.

I think there is good arguments for lips or no lips. To me at least, my favorite depiction is the mix of the two. Partial lipped if you may call it.

[Sim]

@GojiraGuy1954, where is that Tarbosaurus skin impression from?  I've never seen it before.