56
votes
What's your favorite dinosaur?
I'm by no means a dinosaur expert, but I'd consider myself an enthusiast.
My favorite is the Carnotaurus. It's not quite as big as the classic T-Rex and has even tinier arms, but dude had bull horns on its noggin! And it'll still chase you down and gobble you up.
Everybody's got a favorite. And if you don't, find your poor lost inner child and ask them;
What's your favorite Dinosaur?
Stegosaurus, because it's the coolest looking one.
Also sporting the thagomizer which adds to the coolness.
RIP Thag Simmons
One of the best names for something in all paleontology.
Did this name come from The Far Side, or did The Far Side come from the name?
Yep coined by Gary Larson in the Far Side
It’s cooler than a polar bear‘s toe nails.
My name is Stegosaurus. I'm a funny looking dinosaur.
That was an unexpected nostalia hit.
The legend.
I know to watch what I say while in thagomizing range
Ankylosaurus The tank with the club on its tail
YES! Anky for the win. There are days I’d make great use of a club tail.
Ankylosaurs have always been a favorite of mine.
You can't prove it can't curl into a ball and perform a spin dash
Quetzalcoatlus, an actual giant flying feathered dinosaur the size of a Cessna. How cool is that?!
Very cool! Small nitpick, but technically pterosaurs are not dinosaurs.
My five-year-old votes, "Triceratops, because they have three horns, and I like how they fight."
The kid knows their stuff alright, keep up the good work, parent
That would be the Argentinosaurus, just because I am amazed by the idea of seeing something of that size moving around Earth.
You know with a name like that it could totally stomp Utahraptor
I'll say the dimetrodon even though it wasn't a dinosaur, and the affinity came from having someone explain the sail/fin as something that gave it temperature regulation to a young mind that conflated that with Storm from the X-Men.
Yee dinosaur as a 2nd choice.
Wait, that’s not a dinosaur? Dang. Gonna have to go back to Stegosaurus, then.
It's actually from the group of reptiles that later evolved into mammals
They weren't reptiles, but synapsids (like all mammals), whereas reptiles are diapsids. The differentiating factor between the two being the number of holes in the skull.
I consider myself a dinosaur/pre-history... uh, enthusiast. Your comment is the only one that taught me something new. TIL that dimetrodon was a synapsid, not a sauropsid. They could be our ancestors!
Some people want dinosaurs in movies to have feathers and I'm here waiting for another dinosaur to Yee!
Somewhere a Gen-Z Crichton is cooking up the yeetosaurus, the world just isn't ready for the human-faced Jurassic Park antagonist (or implications).
Parasaurolophus, mainly because when I was 10 I was super proud to be able to spell and pronounce its name. 😄
But I also think it looks really cool and is always recognizable.
Beat me to it.
I’m fascinated by the possible sound they could make. OG Vuvuzela.
Those beasties look so cool and yeah, super recognizable though lol at remembering the name!
Probably plays in the horns section of the Dinosaurchestra
Patagotitan, because titanosaurs were huge! My institution has an excellent exhibition on right now which I'd heartily recommend if you find yourself in London. A good friend of mine works on digging them up in Argentina, and I could relay questions to them. :-)
I helped out on the Children Museum of Indianapolis' dig site in northern Wyoming last year for a project called 'Mission Jurassic'. At that site they're excavating sauropods, alongside well-preserved plant fossils and a bunch of miscellaneous float. Not as exciting as Patagotitan, certainly, but since I'm not a palaeontologist that was an exciting experience!
I'm going to be in London this winter.
Also I want to mention an entertaining animal perspective book Raptor Red. It's fun and the author was knowledgable for his decade when he wrote it. @BoomertheMoose
The plesiosaur. Which I just learned technically isn't a dinosaur, but screw it, I'm counting it for the purposes of this question anyway. I can't give a specific reason why I like it so much, it's just always appealed to me.
They have such a pleasing form. Seals could never.
I mean it inherently knows the surf ability, and that commands respect
Brontosaurus, because I'm a simple, simple man. Also Littlefoot.
How do you feel about the whole brontosaurus/apatosaurus dispute?
I remember brontosaurus when I was a kid... Then suddenly being corrected and told it's apatosaurus... But now they're two separate species? What's going on there?
The Brontosaurus is back baby! https://youtu.be/PKOIHTuSGeQ?feature=shared
I gotta say that is why I love science. Self correction, a willingness to acknowledge when we were wrong about something.
The more dinos, the better.
I'm going to go with the Utahraptor because it was actually about the size of the velociraptors in Jurassic Park whereas real velociraptors were smaller. Everytime I see a roadrunner, I get the distinct impression that it acts like raptors acted 90 million years ago. They're absolutely vicious and I'm grateful those things are small.
The 'raptors in Jurassic Park were based on Deinonychus antirrhopus, which were for a time classified as Velociraptor antirrhopus, as in a larger species in the same genus as the now type-species, Velociraptor mongoliensis. Taxonomic convention moved on, but the movies kept the old naming schema from the novel - which was appropriate when it was written, probably because it sounded cooler.
Utahraptor was discovered later, and were even larger.
Colin Mochrie
The question was what's your favorite dinosaur, not who
But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't glad he's here
How has nobody said triceratops yet! I think that prorsus looks a little cooler than horridus, given the slightly more pronounced nose horn, but they're both brilliant.
There's so many ceratopsids, it's hard to pick just one. But Diabloceratops for me. Trades the one horn on the snout for a extra wicked pair on top of the crown. Metal af🤘🤘🤘
Saltasaurus! I love the idea of amoured sauropods and the name is just silly enough to make me smile
Now do you think they named it based on its demeanor? Or did someone taste it?
Hatzegopteryx because they're giant flying dinos
Too bad there aren't more pictures of it
At least the first one on the wiki page is a bit humerus
Acrocanthosaurus! It's a neat looking bipedal dino with with a spinal fin.
There are an estimated 50 billion avian dinosaurs living today. I ate some today, but it was not alive.
Truth is I usually encounter my dinos in nugget form
The Deinonychus antirrhopus. The extensible claw and agile build made me fantasize about this assassin like predator. Also I had to give this school presentation and had to practice the pronunciation a lot, which in turn probably etched this dino’s name in my memory.
Totally too cool for their name.
There's a reason they applied the name Velociraptor to them for JP
Velociraptors! They just seem like they would be the "cat" of dinosaurs just causing chaos. Plus the nostalgia of Jurassic Park immortalizing them through the Clever Girl scene.
They'd probably do a number on your carpets that's for sure
Mine is the humble Iguanodon. It took a long time for paleontologists to even figure out how the actual creature was shaped, which fascinated me as a kid. Besides, if we've got everything right now, those beasties were peaceful herbivores walking on all fours who nonetheless could rear back to impale a predator or just haul ass on their hind legs. Plus they are very friend-shaped.
Iguanodon was my first love
The first time I saw them they were always giving a thumbs up
Denver, the Last Dinosaur, he's my friend and a whole lot more!
Also, the single most 90s dinosaur this side of the Triassic.
My dad would make me toys out of pipe cleaners when I was little. Twisting them around and wrapping them and making figurines. One of my most memorable ones was a green raptor.
When my dad asked me what to name him, I decided on Denver after an obscure cartoon I remembered from my even earlier childhood that I only saw once before the sun even came up one morning.
Thanks for sharing that. That's the kind of true joy the world needs more of. Remember it well.
Cetiosaurus, which as far as my childhood brain is concerned is a small diplodocus.
But he was my favourite because there was a skeleton of one in the local museum so he was one of the first dinosaurs I learnt about, and I could actually visit him. Although I always liked sauropods, because they were easy to draw and wouldn't want to eat me.
That's a totally valid reason to prefer sauropods, the not eating you thing. Respect.
That's sweet to have the local connection, too.
Birds, birds are my favourite dinosaurs. There's so many of them, they're highly varied, and I can see them every day.
I'm a big fan of dinosaurs, specifically theropods (the meat-eaters) - my living room is decorated with dozens of figurines. But my favourite has always been Velociraptor in spite of the Jurassic Park movies' misconceptions and all the more impressive and enormous dromaeosaurid options. They're just so damned cute with their little upturned snout. I'd imagine they'd act pretty damned cute too when they're not ripping animals apart with finely-serrated knife-teeth that replace themselves like sharks' teeth, and all those huge curved claws on every limb that may have been terrifyingly flexible.
Microraptor, though I recently learned of Caihong and that's pretty cool too. I just love the almost-birds.
Australovenator, a half-tonne megaraptor from Australia with huge slashing claws on its hands.
I remember getting so excited when its discovery was reported in 2009, that we had a home-grown metal-as-hell theropod predator.
During the 2020 pandemic lockdown, Melbourne Museum put on these virtual visits presentations where if you signed up early enough, you could have questions in the live chat answered by paleontologists in real time.
I asked about ongoing research on Australovenator a decade on, and the resident paleontologist got really animated talking about developments over the years since discovery. Almost like he'd been hoping someone would ask about them. I was super stoked to be part of that moment. If 'venator wasn't cemented as my favourite dinosaur by then, that absolutely sealed it.
Oh dang, another dino named after a country but this one's also named after a continent?
Argentinosaurus better watch out
Man, I was going to answer something from playing ARK, but then I realized my absolute favorite thing I captured in that game was a Grizzly Bear that became so strong it was functionally immortal.
Ankylosaurus otherwise.
That's impressive, the most I was ever able to do in that game was poop on the ground and then get killed 😶
hell yeah ankylosaurus
Your question made me think of this gag (timestamp 16:33) from an old Patrick H. Willems video on Jurassic Park that made me and my kids giggle uncontrollably back when I first watched it.
Anyway, T-Rex is my boy, obvs.
I was wondering how long it would take for the King to enter the fight
Psittacosaurus!
It's a 2 legged ceratopsian in the three same clade as triceratops! But it's 2 legged! That's incredible!
A dead one. Jurassic Park scarred me. I am a grown ass adult that is terrified of dinosaurs. They are too tall and big with large teeth to then have a mind of their own. That's horrifying! I'm glad they're gone. Please, PLEASE don't actually bring any back.
💔