13 Dinosaur Myths You Still Believe

Nice arms, loser.

I may have spoken too soon.

Turns out almost everything you think you know about dinosaurs is wrong.

Everybody loves a joke about how T-Rex had weak, puny arms.

But what we found is that these things were ridiculously ripped.

Sure, they were only three feet long, roughly the size of your arm, but they were still packed with enough muscle to curl over 400 pounds.

So obviously, these Sam Sulak-looking arms weren't useless.

But that's just one of the many dinosaur lies you probably still believe.

And in this video, I'm going to go over 13 of the biggest.

And this next one is one you've probably fallen for.

You ever go on TikTok and see something about how Spinosaurus sounded like this?

So that's not how they sounded at all actually, because that's just a loon call slowed down.

In fact, every single dinosaur noise you hear is total BS.

Truth is, we have no idea what most dinosaurs sounded like.

Except one.

Parasaurolophus.

You see that giant crest sticking out of its skull?

Well, it was filled with tubes and airways.

So scientists 3D modeled it, pushed air through it, and it sounded like this.

Oh yeah, I'm 99% sure this dinosaur sounded like an air horn.

Pretty cool nonetheless.

Then again, that's not the only lie you've been told by media.

Yeah, that's just totally wrong too.

T-Rex had the biggest eyes of any land predator.

And I know size isn't everything.

At least that's what I tell myself.

Though for T-Rex, it did actually make a difference.

Its vision was estimated to be up to 13 times sharper than yours.

With forward-facing eyes and incredible depth perception, if you were in front of it, even from miles away, it was going to see you.

But the real question is, what would you see if you were looking back?

Because when most people picture a dinosaur, they think of something scaly like a crocodile.

Except crocodiles aren't even that closely related.

Their actual closest relatives are birds.

Because dinosaurs never really went extinct, only the ones that couldn't fly did.

So get that myth out of here.

A weird fact, but that does technically mean that birds are reptiles.

So then, if all birds are dinosaurs, does that mean all dinosaurs look like birds?

No.

Birds evolved from theropods.

But that's just one of three branches on the dinosaur family tree.

Which means while some dinosaurs definitely look like birds, which we could see preserved in fossils and even trapped in amber.

We also know others look totally different.

Sauropods probably didn't have feathers.

T-Rex had scales over most, if not all of its body.

But it gets even weirder.

Some species, like Ceratopsians, had quill-like structures on their tails.

So, the whole feathers versus scales debate, just throw it out the window.

But you know what wouldn't fit through a window?

A dinosaur.

Because they're all massive, right?

Not exactly.

The smallest dinosaur we've ever found is a bee hummingbird, which is like two inches long.

Though, if we're talking non-avian, you got stuff like Microraptor.

About the size of a crow and barely a couple pounds.

We got really lucky with Microraptor too, it lived in the perfect environment to fossilize.

And some are so well preserved, we even know its feathers were black, and if the light hit it just right, they'd shimmer blue and green.

And this thing lived over 100 million years ago.

But here's the thing.

Most dinosaurs didn't live in conditions like that.

Now, say you've got some pinky-sized bone from some tiny dinosaur.

And an eight-foot femur from an Argentinosaurus.

Which one's more likely to survive 70 million years underground?

Exactly.

That's preservation bias.

Big bones fossilize better, so we find them more.

But that also means we're probably underestimating how many small dinosaurs there really were.

And considering we've probably found less than 1% of all dinosaur species.

Who knows what else is still out there?

Even so.

Dinosaur fossils are a lot less rare than most people think.

As long as you're in the right place.

This is the Hell Creek formation.

And if you know what you're looking for, you can literally walk for a few minutes and find a fossil.

How complete they are?

That's a different story.

When your average dinosaur dies, it probably gets scavenged.

So finding one that didn't get eaten, but also got perfectly buried, and then stayed intact while the earth shifted for millions of years, that's the miracle part.

And something you might not realize is even with the dinosaur fossils we do have.

They're embarrassingly incomplete.

I mean, for God's sake, I made an entire video about the life of Quetzalcoatlus, and all we have is a single arm bone.

If you were listening closely there, I just made the cardinal sin of paleontology.

Thinking every prehistoric animal was a dinosaur.

However, a lot of those animals weren't dinosaurs at all.

Let's start with the ocean.

Ichthyosaurs, Plesiosaurs, Mosasaurs.

Not dinosaurs.

They're part of their own weird aquatic branches on the reptilian family tree.

Same with the ones in the sky.

You've probably heard the word Pterodactyl.

But that's actually not the right name.

That's just one species of a much bigger group called Pterosaurs.

And they were flying reptiles.

Not dinosaurs.

Speaking of animals that aren't dinosaurs, let's talk mammals.

You always hear that mammals back then were small, helpless, and lived in holes in the ground.

But some of them.

Actually ate the dinosaurs.

This is Repenomamus, a badger-sized mammal that we know for a fact.

Had a taste for dino meat.

Because one fossil was found with a baby Psittacosaurus in its stomach.

And this wasn't just a one-time thing.

In another fossil, it's straight up mid-attack, latched onto another Psittacosaurus's rib cage.

So, some mammals were already out here devouring dinosaurs long before we turned them into nuggets.

But that doesn't mean dinosaurs were somehow losing.

There's this idea that mammals took over because dinosaurs were slow or outdated.

That couldn't be more wrong.

Dinosaurs were some of the most well-adapted animals to ever live.

Ruling the Earth for over 165 million years.

Nearly three times longer than mammals have.

In fact, they were around so long that we live closer to T-Rex than T-Rex did to Stegosaurus.

So, no, most of your favorite animals sadly wouldn't have met.

Unless they tripped over each other's fossils.

And yes, dinosaurs were actually more advanced in a lot of ways.

Especially their breathing.

While mammals breathe in and out through the same lungs.

Dinosaurs and modern birds have a totally different setup.

They have air sacs spread throughout their bodies, which keeps fresh oxygen flowing through their lungs even while exhaling.

In fact, dinosaurs' overspecialization may have been part of what led to their downfall.

While our smaller, more adaptable generalist ancestors were able to cling on.

And yet, despite all their advantages, their entire existence supposedly ended in a single afternoon.

An asteroid hits Earth and boom.

Dinosaurs gone.

Well, we already know that's at least a little wrong.

Because.

And even for the non-avian ones.

They didn't vanish overnight.

It might have taken decades, maybe even thousands of years.

For the last of them to die out.

Look at the mammoths of Wrangel Island.

Most mammoths went extinct around 10 to 14,000 years ago.

But a small group survived in isolation until just 4,000 years ago, around the same time the pyramids were being built.

This same thing could have happened with a few dinosaur species, holding on in small pockets before eventually disappearing from genetic collapse.

Bad luck or another disaster.

But what's even stranger is that despite how it sounds.

This wasn't even the worst extinction Earth ever gone through.

Not by a long shot.

There was one even earlier that made the asteroid look tame.

And it nearly wiped out everything.

And if you want to learn about that, go watch this video.

Thank you so much for watching, please like, subscribe, and comment.

I really do read every single one, that is literally my favorite thing to do.

I probably waste too much time reading the comments.

But as always.

I'll see you next time.

And Jay Huna.

Out.