General Discussion

I live in germany so we have mostly more mundane fossils (read: boring) in our region.
I know we found some exciting dinosaurs like the holotypes of Juravenator and Archeopterxy, also tiny pterosaur.
But that's in Bavaria. And Bavaria is not really germany anymore XD

But seriously; I'd love to be more savy on dinosaurs but I am a little overwhelmed. I just don't know where to start? I know there are boring parts to it, and you've got to memorize things .I know the mundane fossils are pretty important, but not as rare XD

@LizardKing

I was up in Canada and got to hike around in the area! It was pretty darn cool. I WISH I could have done some excavation! I'm not trained in that kind of stuff though, so I'd probably hurt the fossils even if I got a chance.

They've got some nice fossils in the national park's visitor center though, which were great to get to look at!

@Violetah

Hey, nothing wrong with liking velociraptors! They're cool critters.

I've got some mixed feelings about feathered T. rex... I really like feathered dinosaurs and would love it if T. rex was completely fluffy, but we don't know enough to be sure. We know other tyrannosaurs had feathers, so T. rex probably did too, but I never know how feathered to imagine them.

The preserved skin impressions of scales also don't exclude the presence of feathers... just makes things more complicated!

Yi qi is also the coolest dinosaur discovered recently in my opinion. Lovely little wyverns!

I think if I was to go anywhere to look at fossils, I'd go to Australia. Way too hot there, but there are some well preserved early fishes down there, which are really interesting to me!

@Godspeed I recognize your problem haha! I live in the Netherlands, where everything deeper than 1 meter underground belongs to the state so there's no finding fossils here. We do have the Mosasaurus I believe? At least they're named after one of our rivers if I'm not wrong. The rest of the fossils here can be mammoths we fish from the sea, but that's it. We send our paleontologists to other countries for research and they bring back fossils for our natural history museum in Leiden. It's my favorite museum, and since a few months we have a Tyrannosaurus skeleton! I haven't seen it yet, tho

I went to Germany, my uncle has a small house for holidays there and we spent a week with him, and we went to a building site. There were many uncovered fossils just being treated as if it was regular dirt, and my uncle and I spent like 2 hours wandering around and looking at the fossils. He has a basket full of ammonites there now, and I have one ammonite here at home.

I have a question for other paleontology enthusiasts:
What do you think of cutting fossils in pieces for research? Like I've seen a documentary about dinosaur aging and they used a fossilized triceratops horn (?) and cut off a piece to see how it grew (I hope anyone understands this because I literally cannot describe things).
I've never felt comfortable with cutting off pieces of fossils, I like to keep them intact, but I know it is necessary for research.

We should totally invite Dr. Ross Gellar to join this discussion, just saying.

Oooo I thought I posted here before? (???)

Anyways , I've been into paleontology since kindergarten and I still want to actually go into the professional wards of it. My favorite prehistoric creatures are Smilodon (haha , I'm basic I know) , Allosaurus ,Cryolophosaurus , and the dire wolf. I'm also a sucker for prehistoric figurines , too (sorry not sorry)

Awesome!
I've always wanted to be a paleontologist, ever since I was small
In kindergarten, my friends said they will be doctors, actors etc and I was like 'I'm gonna be a paleontologist' and no one else even knew what that was
I also remember getting mad at other kids for saying 'sharptooth' or 'longneck' instead of the correct Latin names
To the point where a kindergarten teacher tried to end the crisis with making a circle of chairs and then showing plastic dinosaurs to all the kids and telling them the Latin name, hoping that I'd be less angry about it... but then the teacher said Brontosaurus instead of Brachiosaurus and I got upset again, haha
Sadly, I lost track of it somewhere along the line

@PrehistoryMaker

• Yeah, that's what I'd imagine big theropods had; crests and manes used for display. Just imagine being charged by a T. rex, and as it gets close to you it flares the feathers on/around it's head to make itself look even bigger...
• Yeah, the potential that Yi qi represents as possible bird evolution is so amazing. I mean, if they'd become the ancestors of modern birds dragons would actually exist!
• China would be such an interesting place to work on fossils! All the feathered dinos and strange creatures being discovered there. Hell Creek would also be really cool, given it contains so many famous dinosaurs.

@LizardKing
That's really interesting that you got the teeth from different place. I guess that means that your state was underwater at one point. Fossil hunting in rivers sounds like something really interesting to do.

• Yeah, feathered dinos are really cool. Land eagles I tell you! XD
• Cute and cool is the best way to summarize Yi qi.

@KurtSwagner
Wow, such interesting prehistoric creatures! I hadn't heard about the ones from the late Triassic Chinle formation before, but looking them up I find it kind of funny one's a non-croc that looks like a croc and the other's a relative of the crocs that looks like a theropod XD
I had a feeling the first drawing was a Velociraptor for some reason, and I love the creepy goat eyes you gave the Nasuto. It looks realistic but so alien at the same time.
Yeah, fluffy baby Rex's I can also easily imagine. Being small, they'd probably need the insulation, like baby birds.
China, Alaska and Australia would be all really interesting places to look for fossils. They'd have such different dinosaurs, all being so far apart from each other.

@Strychnos
Yeah, I'd like to imagine they have at least some feathers, but we just don't have enough evidence to be 100% sure either way. Like you said, the skin impressions just make it a little more complicated.

Yep, Yi qi are little real-life wyverns! So awesome, and really shows the diversity of dinos.

Australia's pretty cool, and it isn't always hot down here! If you don't like the heat, come in winter instead :P I mean, just last week it was -7 C at 8 in the morning. The fossil fish are cool, though I'm not that interested in them. Saw a huge block of rock absolutely covered in fish impressions from Canowindra in a museum recently, and that town even has an Ancient Fish museum!

@PotateTheGreat
On cutting up fossils for research I can understand why it's done. I don't have much of a problem with it if the species has a tonne of fossils and the one being used isn't display quality, so it can inform people some other way. I'm not that comfortable about using fossils from species with very few fossils, because I can't help but wonder if the fossil might be accidentally destroyed in the process.