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Nice arms, loser.
Debunking 13 common dinosaur myths, this video reveals surprising facts about dinosaur anatomy, behavior, and extinction.
Key Takeaways
- Popular dinosaur myths often misrepresent their physical traits and behaviors.
- Birds are modern dinosaurs, highlighting evolutionary continuity.
- Fossil records are incomplete and biased, affecting our understanding of dinosaur diversity.
- Dinosaurs were highly advanced and dominant before their extinction.
- Extinction was gradual, not sudden, with some species possibly surviving longer in isolated pockets.
Summary
- T-Rex had powerful arms capable of curling over 400 pounds, contrary to popular belief.
- Dinosaur sounds are mostly unknown except Parasaurolophus, which likely sounded like an air horn due to its unique crest.
- T-Rex had exceptional vision, with eyes sharper than humans and excellent depth perception.
- Birds are the closest living relatives of dinosaurs, meaning dinosaurs never truly went extinct.
- Feathers and scales coexisted among different dinosaur species, debunking the feathers versus scales debate.
- Dinosaurs varied greatly in size, from tiny bee hummingbird-sized species to massive Argentinosaurus.
- Fossil preservation bias favors large bones, so many small dinosaur species remain undiscovered.
- Many prehistoric animals commonly mistaken for dinosaurs, such as Pterosaurs and marine reptiles, are not true dinosaurs.
- Some mammals coexisted with and preyed on dinosaurs, challenging the idea that mammals were insignificant during the dinosaur era.
- Dinosaurs were highly adapted and ruled Earth for over 165 million years, with their extinction being a prolonged process rather than instantaneous.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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I may have spoken too soon.
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Turns out almost everything you think you know about dinosaurs is wrong.
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Everybody loves a joke about how T-Rex had weak, puny arms.
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But what we found is that these things were ridiculously ripped.
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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.
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So obviously, these Sam Sulak-looking arms weren't useless.
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But that's just one of the many dinosaur lies you probably still believe.
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And in this video, I'm going to go over 13 of the biggest.
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And this next one is one you've probably fallen for.
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You ever go on TikTok and see something about how Spinosaurus sounded like this?
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So that's not how they sounded at all actually, because that's just a loon call slowed down.
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In fact, every single dinosaur noise you hear is total BS.
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Truth is, we have no idea what most dinosaurs sounded like.
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Except one.
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Parasaurolophus.
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You see that giant crest sticking out of its skull?
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Well, it was filled with tubes and airways.
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So scientists 3D modeled it, pushed air through it, and it sounded like this.
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Oh yeah, I'm 99% sure this dinosaur sounded like an air horn.
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Pretty cool nonetheless.
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Then again, that's not the only lie you've been told by media.
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Yeah, that's just totally wrong too.
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T-Rex had the biggest eyes of any land predator.
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And I know size isn't everything.
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At least that's what I tell myself.
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Though for T-Rex, it did actually make a difference.
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Its vision was estimated to be up to 13 times sharper than yours.
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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.
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But the real question is, what would you see if you were looking back?
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Because when most people picture a dinosaur, they think of something scaly like a crocodile.
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Except crocodiles aren't even that closely related.
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Their actual closest relatives are birds.
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Because dinosaurs never really went extinct, only the ones that couldn't fly did.
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So get that myth out of here.
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A weird fact, but that does technically mean that birds are reptiles.
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So then, if all birds are dinosaurs, does that mean all dinosaurs look like birds?
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No.
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Birds evolved from theropods.
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But that's just one of three branches on the dinosaur family tree.
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Which means while some dinosaurs definitely look like birds, which we could see preserved in fossils and even trapped in amber.
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We also know others look totally different.
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Sauropods probably didn't have feathers.
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T-Rex had scales over most, if not all of its body.
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But it gets even weirder.
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Some species, like Ceratopsians, had quill-like structures on their tails.
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So, the whole feathers versus scales debate, just throw it out the window.
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But you know what wouldn't fit through a window?
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A dinosaur.
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Because they're all massive, right?
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Not exactly.
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The smallest dinosaur we've ever found is a bee hummingbird, which is like two inches long.
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Though, if we're talking non-avian, you got stuff like Microraptor.
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About the size of a crow and barely a couple pounds.
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We got really lucky with Microraptor too, it lived in the perfect environment to fossilize.
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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.
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And this thing lived over 100 million years ago.
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But here's the thing.
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Most dinosaurs didn't live in conditions like that.
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Now, say you've got some pinky-sized bone from some tiny dinosaur.
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And an eight-foot femur from an Argentinosaurus.
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Which one's more likely to survive 70 million years underground?
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Exactly.
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That's preservation bias.
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Big bones fossilize better, so we find them more.
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But that also means we're probably underestimating how many small dinosaurs there really were.
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And considering we've probably found less than 1% of all dinosaur species.
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Who knows what else is still out there?
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Even so.
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Dinosaur fossils are a lot less rare than most people think.
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As long as you're in the right place.
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This is the Hell Creek formation.
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And if you know what you're looking for, you can literally walk for a few minutes and find a fossil.
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How complete they are?
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That's a different story.
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When your average dinosaur dies, it probably gets scavenged.
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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.
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And something you might not realize is even with the dinosaur fossils we do have.
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They're embarrassingly incomplete.
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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.
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If you were listening closely there, I just made the cardinal sin of paleontology.
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Thinking every prehistoric animal was a dinosaur.
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However, a lot of those animals weren't dinosaurs at all.
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Let's start with the ocean.
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Ichthyosaurs, Plesiosaurs, Mosasaurs.
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Not dinosaurs.
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They're part of their own weird aquatic branches on the reptilian family tree.
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Same with the ones in the sky.
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You've probably heard the word Pterodactyl.
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But that's actually not the right name.
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That's just one species of a much bigger group called Pterosaurs.
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And they were flying reptiles.
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Not dinosaurs.
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Speaking of animals that aren't dinosaurs, let's talk mammals.
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You always hear that mammals back then were small, helpless, and lived in holes in the ground.
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But some of them.
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Actually ate the dinosaurs.
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This is Repenomamus, a badger-sized mammal that we know for a fact.
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Had a taste for dino meat.
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Because one fossil was found with a baby Psittacosaurus in its stomach.
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And this wasn't just a one-time thing.
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In another fossil, it's straight up mid-attack, latched onto another Psittacosaurus's rib cage.
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So, some mammals were already out here devouring dinosaurs long before we turned them into nuggets.
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But that doesn't mean dinosaurs were somehow losing.
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There's this idea that mammals took over because dinosaurs were slow or outdated.
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That couldn't be more wrong.
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Dinosaurs were some of the most well-adapted animals to ever live.
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Ruling the Earth for over 165 million years.
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Nearly three times longer than mammals have.
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In fact, they were around so long that we live closer to T-Rex than T-Rex did to Stegosaurus.
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So, no, most of your favorite animals sadly wouldn't have met.
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Unless they tripped over each other's fossils.
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And yes, dinosaurs were actually more advanced in a lot of ways.
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Especially their breathing.
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While mammals breathe in and out through the same lungs.
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Dinosaurs and modern birds have a totally different setup.
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They have air sacs spread throughout their bodies, which keeps fresh oxygen flowing through their lungs even while exhaling.
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In fact, dinosaurs' overspecialization may have been part of what led to their downfall.
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While our smaller, more adaptable generalist ancestors were able to cling on.
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And yet, despite all their advantages, their entire existence supposedly ended in a single afternoon.
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An asteroid hits Earth and boom.
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Dinosaurs gone.
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Well, we already know that's at least a little wrong.
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Because.
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And even for the non-avian ones.
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They didn't vanish overnight.
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It might have taken decades, maybe even thousands of years.
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For the last of them to die out.
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Look at the mammoths of Wrangel Island.
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Most mammoths went extinct around 10 to 14,000 years ago.
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But a small group survived in isolation until just 4,000 years ago, around the same time the pyramids were being built.
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This same thing could have happened with a few dinosaur species, holding on in small pockets before eventually disappearing from genetic collapse.
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Bad luck or another disaster.
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But what's even stranger is that despite how it sounds.
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This wasn't even the worst extinction Earth ever gone through.
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Not by a long shot.
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There was one even earlier that made the asteroid look tame.
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And it nearly wiped out everything.
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And if you want to learn about that, go watch this video.
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Thank you so much for watching, please like, subscribe, and comment.
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I really do read every single one, that is literally my favorite thing to do.
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I probably waste too much time reading the comments.
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But as always.
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I'll see you next time.
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And Jay Huna.
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Out.
Topics:dinosaursT-Rexdinosaur mythsParasaurolophusfossil preservationdinosaur extinctionfeathers vs scalespaleontologyprehistoric mammalsdinosaur sounds
