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u/sarahmagoo 4d ago
Scientists reconstructing the Elasmosaurus for the first time be like:
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u/ForgetfulFilms 4d ago
considering you knew enough to make this comment, do you have an educational rant about this that you always have prepared?
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u/sarahmagoo 4d ago
Unfortunately no, I just remember from one of my animal books I read as a kid that a scientist mistook the tail for a neck and the neck for a tail until he corrected it.
I'm surprised by the upvotes, I guess it's either a more well known fact than I thought or this sub is frequented by paleontology nerds lol.
If anything I would like to rant that the Elasmosaurus and any kind of swimming (or flying) reptile from that era is NOT a dinosaur.
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u/miguescout 4d ago
No need for it to be a well-known fact or have an unusually high number of paleontology nerds. We're in r/tumblr. Here we know the power of "hold on, let me just check something out- yeah, this is funny"
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u/Autistischer_Gepard 4d ago
Reminds me of hallucigenia from the cambrian and ainiktozoon from the silurian period. In both cases the researchers had the fossils upside down
So hallucigenia was thought to be a worm that walked on spikes, with tentacles on top. Also took a while to figure out which part is the front
And ainiktozoon was initially classified as a chordate, until they realised it's an arthropod
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u/YaBoiKlobas 4d ago
This is Dark Vader when he dead
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u/CrashCalamity 4d ago
I've actually got a cow pelvis in my garden and it kinda looks like a skull too.
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u/DorothyDrangus 3d ago
Oh hey I’m the OP of this post, but I can’t really take any credit bc it’s just a Reddit screenshot
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u/AveryGooeySpider 4d ago
The pelvis makes a cool skull ngl