#tracyn!

DHSJSIAIDJJS NO WAY YOURE GOING TO YORKTOWN??? ITS SO FUN YOURE GONNA LOVE IT

Okay so currently there are three different species of Allosaurus - A. fragilis, A. jimmadseni, and A. europaeus. There used to be a bunch more species during the Bone Wars era but after closer examination there were found to only be three. A. fragilis is the most common found and the best known because of it, and also the type species. Big Al is the most famous specimen of Allosaurus and was previously thought to be A. fragilis but it's actually A. jimmadseni! And the differences between those two species are most in bits of the skull, like the shape of the lacrimal crests and stuff. And the lacrimal crests are those crests over the eye that Allosaurus is best known for. They're not exclusive to Allosaurus, not at all, but it's the genus that is most famous for them. A. europaeus is the least well known of the three species and last I remember, might be a nomen dubium. Which just means it's a dubious name. I've spent too much time reading actual professional shit OKAY BYE NOW.

OKAY WOAH THATS COOL

i used to have a small dinosaur phase a while ago but it faded fast and i don’t remember anything 😭

KSKDKJSDJJSIS

Well, that's all fine and dandy, but how can I say with such confidence that birds are modern day dinosaurs? How we know this?

The first major player in this long and winding road is the Archaeopteryx. Please ignore that I can spell it right off the top of my head. Now, this dinosaur was discovered in Germany and immediately caught people's attention. What was it? A bird with a bony tail and teeth? With fingers that had not been fused into a wing as we know it? It seemed the perfection fusion between a dinosaur and a bird, a so-called "missing link." Side note - "Missing link" is an outdated term and frankly makes no sense. But now is not the time nor place for a digression. Archaeopteryx caused a stir, and rightly so. Oh, there were people claiming it to be a hoax, as there always will be, but it was not. Archaeopteryx was the first solid bit off proof for the connection between birds and dinosaurs, and is unspeakably important to our modern understanding of dinosaur to bird evolution.

This is the fossil. It's quite beautifully preserved, with individual feathers able to be discerned. It's one of my favorite fossils simply for how beautiful it is - the Tyrannosaurs specimen named "Black Beauty" is another of my favorites - never mind how crucial it is.

Enter Bob Bakker.

He was among the first to envision the dromaeosaurs as swift, agile hunters versus slow brutes.

His drawing of Deinonychus is quite famous, featuring a scaly and active predator. Now, we know now that it was fully feathered, but this was a huge step in the right direction for paleontology. And you can see the year he drew it - 1969. For that year, his depiction is wonderfully accurate. No, it's not at all perfect - The head is all wrong and the wrists are pronated and it lacks feathers and the body is too short - but it's still wonderful.

This is the best to-life restoration of Deinonychus we have today. Compared to Bakker's, the differences are clear but the similarities more so. An active, agile hunter well deserving of the name "terrible claw."

But how do we know that dromaeosaurus were feathered? Has there been enough evidence for it to say that all dromaeosaurs were almost certainly feathered? Well, yes! Straying into more familiar territory, an arm bone of Velociraptor was discovered with quill knobs on the bone! Quill knobs are the anchor point for pennaceous feathers, of which flight feathers are a part of. So there's some pretty hard evidence right there. And a small dromaeosaur known as Microraptor has also been preserved with a full coat of feathers. The most noteworthy feature of this little guy was its four wings. It had pennaceous feathers on its fore and hind limbs. There's still a lot of debate over how it would've flown - like a biplane or flat? - but for our purposes, that is inconsequential. This is another dromaeosaur with a full coat of feathers. Those are only two instances that I know off the top of my head and I know for a fact there's more, but it's not too much of a stretch to say that other very closely related animals also would've been feathered. Currently, it is most popular to depict them with a full coat with bare areas around the snout and feet, but for the most part, we don't know.

Now, this is where we throw in some cladistics and phylogeny. This shit gets really complicated really fast so I won't bog you down with too many details and just stick to the names and explain them in simple terms. This is not because I think you're not smart enough to understand it, simply that this is not the best format to explain. Wikipedia has some cladeograms (here's the relevant one) you can look at that are pretty easy to navigate and use and to understand.

Paraves are the group of dinosaurs that're more closely related to modern birds than to oviraptosaurs. This encompasses a broad swath of animals that are not relevant to us at the moment. Avialae is a clade within the paraves that is all modern birds. Phylogenetically, what placing avialae within paraves means is that the paraves are the closest relatives to the avialae. Now, lots of different methods - generics, looking at fossils and comparing, etc - were able to place avialae there. So. Paraves is a group of dinosaurs. Avialae is within paraves. Birds are dinosaurs.

Birds are dinosaurs.

It's been fourteen years, and those words still never fail to excite and inthrall me. Dinosaurs. These wonderful little dudes most people don't give a damn about are part of the most famous lineage in Earth's history. They're dinosaurs! You can go to a pet store!! And buy a pet dinosaur!! And nobody's stopping you!! You can own a dinosaur!! As a pet!! I own a pet dinosaur!!

Now, these are just examples from within paraves. I could go further out, to the Tyrannosaurs, to Sinosauropteryx, to Anchiornis, but this is long enough without those included. I bid you adieu, now.

holy shit tracyn that is genuinely FASCINATING OMG