There are five factors involved in defining a dinosaur’s appearance. First, the studies of fossils. The shape and size of the bones and how they connect are observed, in addition to the marks left by the muscles that would be associated with them.
Second, comparison with other species that have similar bones. The paleontologist puts this puzzle together, often using “pre-assembled” parts of potentially similar animals, in order to fill in the gaps.
Third, studies of reconstitution of other tissues, such as tomography, which allows reconstituting the brain of animals and comparing it to that of modern animals.
Fourth, when you find a very well preserved fossil, called a “perfect fossil”, it is possible to determine details. One example: by using microscopy techniques on feathers from Chinese fossils, scientists saw where melanosomes (cell structures responsible for pigmentation) accumulated. Thus, they discovered patterns in the feathers, such as stripes and different colors.
Finally, there is still a lot of speculation. The good old «kick».
monster factory
How science determines the main characteristics of dinos
Format
By observing the scars on the bones, it is possible to know how the muscles and skin were accommodated in the body. Comparative anatomical studies also help the paleontologist to understand the movements that the animal made.
Color
Compares to current animal standards. If the skeleton (especially the teeth) shows that it was a bipedal and fast predator and the fossils of related plants indicate that the animal lived in an open environment, it probably had a color that helped it to camouflage itself, as it happens today with lions in the savannah
Environment
Plant fossils help show what the environment was like. Analysis of microfossils (fossils that cannot be studied with the naked eye, such as pollens, seeds, invertebrate shells and isolated scales) also provides important information
dimensions
The size of the bones is crucial. When you have footprint trails, you can define the space between one leg and the other, measure their height and calculate the speed of the dinosaur.
Brain
Tomography studies of well-preserved skulls have allowed us to reconstitute the size and shape of the brains. Thanks to this, we know that dinos’ brains were more similar to those of birds than those of reptiles. Therefore, their behavior was also more similar to that of birds.
Eyes
It is based on current animal eye color standards. In nature, there is not much variety. Most are brown, green and blue as these are the shades that work best.
Posture
In addition to the footprint trails, the arrangement of the bones gives the clue. If the pelvis is stout and the forelimbs small, then it was bipedal. If the forelimbs and hindlimbs are stout, it is more likely to be a quadruped.
Skin
Little ones are increasingly depicted with feathers, due to their resemblance to birds. Larger animals, on the other hand, do not need protection against heat loss (the larger the animal, the slower the heat loss). So they were probably naked, like elephants.
-At the time of the first Jurassic Park (1993), this was not discussed. But today it is consensus that the velociraptor was a feathered dinosaur (in the image above, we see a Velociraptor mongoliensis)
O Carnotaurus lived in present-day South America at the end of the Cretaceous period. At 9 m long, it had characteristic horns.
READ TOO:
– Were dinosaurs warm-blooded?
– What types of dinosaurs inhabited the Earth?
– What was the life of a dinosaur like?
– What were the biggest dinosaurs found in Brazil?
CONSULTANCY Bruno Vila Nova, postdoctoral fellow at the Laboratory of Paleontology of Ribeirão Preto at USP, Cesar Leandro Schultz, professor of Geosciences at UFRGS, and Reinaldo J. Bertini, professor at the Nucleus of Evolution and Paleobiology of Vertebrates at the Institute of Geosciences and Exact Sciences at Unesp-Rio Claro. SOURCE Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History website