What is your least favorite dinosaur?

[bmathison1972]

I don't have a least favorite dinosaur but there are groups I like less than others. I would say broadly my least favorite group are large theropods, followed by sauropods. Whereas my favorites are ceratopsians, hadrosaurs, ankylosaurs, and other ornithischians.

[GojiraGuy1954]

Tooth or fragment taxa.

Note that there are distinct exceptions to this rule

[CityRaptor]

I think the worst offender I can think of in recent memory is "Thanos" which is literally known from a single neckbone but all the paleo-art inevitably showed this fully realized abelisaurid that was always purple and in some cases even had the trademark comic book Thanos "chin wrinkles"...just literally trying to shoehorn this single bone into a dinosaur that looks like a movie/comic book character.

"My father is many things. Being more than a neckbone is not one of them."

Great, now I want Mattel to make one. Would probably be ones of those figures where we get the full name.

[Nanuqsaurus]

Either geese or seagulls, they're loud and agressive

[suspsy]

I also do not dislike any dinosaur, but I certainly have encountered many a dinosaur fan who was thoroughly dislikable.

[Halichoeres]

I'm loath to say that I dislike any particular ancient animal, but I am pretty bored of tyrannosaurids, most allosauroids, and spinosaurids, so I'd have to name those as my least favorites.

This is how I responded three years ago, and it's still pretty true. I am unable to choose favorite things, and as a corollary I'm unable to choose least-favorite things, but in general I like a lot of variety. When there isn't much variety in terms of figures it's usually because companies are pouring all their effort into making things that look roughly like this:

(drawn by me in Paint just now, number of fingers intentionally unclear)

so I kind of resent things that look like that. I also find their fan clubs pretty objectionable. Neither the glut of figures nor the fan clubs are the fault of the animals themselves, but all the same I find myself unable to muster enthusiasm for them. I'm particularly irritated with PNSO just at the moment.

[Sim]

@Halichoeres, you better not check out Dino Scream's video on the PNSO Meraxes or its comments, there's wishes for PNSO to make Tyrannotitan!

As for fandoms, the only one I've encountered is for Tyrannosaurus, and it is tiring to read how people seem to worship it.

[Eatmycar]

Yeah the T. rex worship is weird. Like, don't get me wrong, it is an amazing animal from a lot of perspectives, but my goodness. It feels like a lot of people love it because it is this symbol of unbridled violence in nature.

I do want to clarify something about my least favorite earlier. I don't *hate* Nodosaurs or anything, they're just boring to me. I'm sure they were charming creatures in nature, though!

[Halichoeres]

I don't really watch video reviews, but you see the same requests for Tyrannotitan everywhere else. I think some people just like the cringe-inducing name and don't have any idea what a poorly-known taxon it is.

As for fandoms, the only one I've encountered is for Tyrannosaurus, and it is tiring to read how people seem to worship it.

Yeah the T. rex worship is weird. Like, don't get me wrong, it is an amazing animal from a lot of perspectives, but my goodness. It feels like a lot of people love it because it is this symbol of unbridled violence in nature.

All the big theropods that have ever had a plausible claim to "BIGGEST LAND PREDATOR EVER" or even "BIGGEST LAND PREDATOR OF __________,"
 or have had a star turn in a bad movie, seem to have acquired a fandom, and they're all pretty similar in tenor. I agree with Eatmycar that the animals themselves are interesting in their own right, but they aren't the ONLY interesting thing. When I see an all-theropod collection, it's kind of depressing, because that buying pattern just makes the overall dinosaur market more homogeneous and dull. But because of my own style of collecting where I replace old figures when improved ones are released, I've bought an outsize share of them too. To counteract that I've been adding more and more mega-theropod genera to my won't-buy list. So far it's Tyrannosaurus, Spinosaurus (unless it has a fish), Giganotosaurus, and Carcharodontosaurus, but I might have to extend it to all carcharodontosaurids.

I get that people arrive in this hobby from lots of different angles, and the biggest angle is probably monster movies. But I came to it from an interest in morphological evolution and paleoecology, so a bunch of highly similar animals all occupying the same niche is just the most mind-numbing thing I can imagine.

Edited to add: I'm not trying to cast aspersions on anyone who likes these animals, I'm talking about a very specific flavor of fanboy that is way more common in all other dinosaur figure communities than on the Dinosaur Toy Forum, which is why I hang out here more than in those other communities.

[Stegotyranno420]

What makes me dislike the name tyrannotitan the most is
1)it's not a Tyrannosaur
2)it's likley not bigger than Tyrannosaurus
I used to be enamored by the beast as a kid watching pivot animations of the animal, thinking it was a impressively built sauropod butcher that outclassdd the tyrant lizard king, but that is nothing more than a far fetched possibility

This is why i wish we can change bad prehistoric names. No more basilosaurus, dinosaurus, titanosuchus, etc

[Eatmycar]

It's also frustrating that the 'big bad theropods' hog the limelight while better known contemporaries are drowned out or just ignored... yet provide MUCH more interesting material! Edmontosaurus is a perfect example of this. It's just the non-triceratops cannon fodder dinosaur disgustingly enough when it could probably take a T. rex down if it needed to, and it is known from such great material!

But no, big bitey dinosaur go chomp I guess.

I do wonder how much of this is rooted in our species and gendering animals...

[JimoAi]

Spinosaurus. nuff said. changes way too many time like a tech guy changes phones

[Libraraptor]

My answer isn't any specific dinosaur, but more the trend of a new "discovery" that consists of a jawbone or some teeth, and all the stories about the discovery show highly speculative paleo-art that makes the dinosaur seem super unique and interesting, despite being extremely fragmentary.

I think the worst offender I can think of in recent memory is "Thanos" which is literally known from a single neckbone but all the paleo-art inevitably showed this fully realized abelisaurid that was always purple and in some cases even had the trademark comic book Thanos "chin wrinkles"...just literally trying to shoehorn this single bone into a dinosaur that looks like a movie/comic book character.

I´ve been observing this trend over the last few years and I am not fond of it, either. To me it seems even the smallest fragment find is being inflated to a new, species with the coolest abilities and qualities.

[Paleo Flo]

My answer isn't any specific dinosaur, but more the trend of a new "discovery" that consists of a jawbone or some teeth, and all the stories about the discovery show highly speculative paleo-art that makes the dinosaur seem super unique and interesting, despite being extremely fragmentary.

I think the worst offender I can think of in recent memory is "Thanos" which is literally known from a single neckbone but all the paleo-art inevitably showed this fully realized abelisaurid that was always purple and in some cases even had the trademark comic book Thanos "chin wrinkles"...just literally trying to shoehorn this single bone into a dinosaur that looks like a movie/comic book character.

I´ve been observing this trend over the last few years and I am not fond of it, either. To me it seems even the smallest fragment find is being inflated to a new, species with the coolest abilities and qualities.

I share your thoughts. I'm not much into anatomy. But I had that thought when the Ceratosuchops and the Riparovenator were presented to the public in 2021. You could easily mix them up with Baryonyx. But I trust the paleontologist who named and discribed it. They know what they do.

[Halichoeres]

It's also frustrating that the 'big bad theropods' hog the limelight while better known contemporaries are drowned out or just ignored... yet provide MUCH more interesting material! Edmontosaurus is a perfect example of this. It's just the non-triceratops cannon fodder dinosaur disgustingly enough when it could probably take a T. rex down if it needed to, and it is known from such great material!

But no, big bitey dinosaur go chomp I guess.

I do wonder how much of this is rooted in our species and gendering animals...

I think you're onto something. There's a strain of dino fans whose idea of masculinity begins and ends with domination, and so does their sense of what is AwEsOmE; it wouldn't surprise me if they're the same guys with truck nuts on their F-150.

[Bowhead Whale]

Tyrannosaurus. I don't actually "h@ate" it, but it takes way too much place in the medias and toys. There are so many interesting species of dinosaurs out there to explore. We spent enough time on the T-Rex already. Now, I want to discover something new.

[DinoFan2010]

Same with Bowhead's opinion on T.rex, I enjoy the Triceratops, but I feel like we need to give other ceratopsians the spotlight, like one of  my personal favorites, the Chasmosaurus (I played the Carnivores Mobile Game when I was younger).

[Concavenator]

Here comes mine:

- Very fragmentary taxa: those that don't have an identity, unlike other fragmentary ones that at least are distinctive (like Cryolophosaurus or Megaraptor). I will be mentioning some particular examples of these scrappy taxa in this post.

- Otodus megalodon. Not a dinosaur, I know, but in this post I'm including my least favorite prehistoric animals, not limited to non-avian dinosaurs. I also include in this category other extinct animals that look like oversized versions of extant animals, like Titanoboa. I simply see nothing interesting about those.

- Dunkleosteus. I'll say that I find it a bit more interesting after learning about its downsizing, but to me it's still boring. I don't like how it looks nor that it gets that much attention in comparison to other prehistoric fishes (except the aforementioned one).

- Tarbosaurus and Zhuchengtyrannus. The thought I've always had about Tarbosaurus is: "The only reason I can see people liking this animal is because it looks like Tyrannosaurus 2.0." Now, I know Tarbosaurus has its own autapomorphies and that it could also result interesting from a paleoecological perspective as part of the Nemegt Formation and living alongside famous dinosaurs like Deinocheirus, Gallimimus and Therizinosaurus, but I just don't care about it. Recently, I thought that I should dislike Zhuchengtyrannus even more, since at least Tarbosaurus has good remains. So it goes into the same category.

- All carcharodontosaurids (except Concavenator, Acrocanthosaurus and Meraxes). I certainly like allosauroids, but except the aforementioned genera, the other carcharodontosaurids aren't very well-known, and as a result, they are all reconstructed to look very similar to each other. Add to that all the attention they receive because they're among the biggest theropods known... I don't find them interesting.

- Basically any titanosaurian. I've grown tired of those, with all the attention they've been receiving in recent years, it almost looks like they're the only sauropod group. In general, they have scrappy remains too, and so basically all reconstructions of them look pretty much the same, especially with the same osteoderm arrangement taken from that taxon I don't remember atm (as seen in CollectA's Ruyangosaurus, for example).

- Spinosaurus. And I'm tempted to include all spinosaurids here (except Suchomimus, which I love). Spinosaurus in particular has received so much attention in recent years that it's reached a point when I'm just tired of it. Add to that all the uncertainties surrounding its appearance, taxonomy and ecology, and all the memes about how it's changing its look every 5 minutes and I come to the conclusion that I just don't like it, even if the animal per se is interesting. I also dislike the other spinosaurines because their appearance is very speculative, they're based off Spinosaurus, which by itself isn't well-known either, and the inference may not be very safe because Spinosaurus was much larger and was potentially more specialized (who knows?). Then there's Baryonyx, which has relatively decent remains, but I don't care about it (even if it lived in Spain too, where I am from). I like its close relative Suchomimus a lot, though.

- Parasaurolophus walkeri and Parasaurolophus tubicen. The only Parasaurolophus species I like is P. cyrtocristatus. P. walkeri is the most famous hadrosaurid and I'm not very fond of it. I love Tlatolophus though.

- Triceratops. In my opinion, the most boring and overrated ceratopsid.

- Monolophosaurus. A generic tetanuran with a crest atop of its skull. I don't know why, but I find it soo boring.

- Pinacosaurus/Polacanthinae nodosaurids. I simply don't like how they look, especially Pinacosaurus.

- Ceratosaurus. I try to like it as it's certainly unique, but I guess I'm not a big fan of it.

- Centrosaurus and Einiosaurus. As happens with Ceratosaurus, I wish I liked these two animals, but I'm a bit on the fence about them.

I've tried to like both, especially Centrosaurus (more so after leaning a specimen suffered from cancer, I find the field of cancer biology to be very interesting, and was related to my degree thesis' topic) being an incredibly important and well-known taxon, but the animal itself still looks a bit unremarkable to me (especially compared to the closely related Styracosaurus, which I'm a big fan of). I think part of why I feel this way about it is because growing up I haven't had any real contact to it or just overlooked it for the most part. Recently, I've been appreciating it more. I might even consider picking up a figure of it at some point if I really like it, simply because of its relevance.

Einiosaurus on the other hand, not sure what to think of it. I think it looks cool, but unremarkable at the same time lol. I can't quite put my finger on why, exactly.

[Faelrin]

@Concavenator I love P. walkeri, so can't agree with you on that lol, but P. cyrtocristatus is underrated and I wish some company would make a figure of it. There was even a noteworthy find about it back in 2021 (if not after as well). It lived alongside Pentaceratops, which has quite a few figures already.

[Perotorum]

Technically, I hate geese the most of any dinosaur, but if you are talking about the non avian variety, it would be stellasaurus, for the sole reason that I find the David Bowie song Star Man to be interminable and quite annoying.