Rico Penguin

One Website Owner + Magic Cards + Other People = No Time to update.

I’m sorry about this I’ll see about updating before Magic the Gathering next week.

Lesson learned.

  Now I’m not sure if this will actually last 7 days but we DO have 7 study guide questions for the next exam so I will cover one question per day to get myself prepared far earlier than the day before this time around. I received a 95% on the first exam if you were curious.

Sauropodomorpha:

Prosauropoda and Sauropoda: Life habits of, including use of tails, speed, evidence for aquatic or terrestrial habit, feeding methods as suggested by teeth, ability to move necks, herding as suggested by tracks, purpose of v-shaped dorsal spines on neck.

  Well lets flesh this question out to be a few questions and work from there.

What are the life habits of Prosauropoda and Sauropoda?

      First it is important to say that these dinosaurs were a bit unusual. That had big hind legs and somewhat shorter arms. This made it quite apparent that they were bipedal, however for a portion of them this is hard to grasp because their sheer size would mean that being bipedal given their proportions would be very difficult. They are considered the transitional phase of a creature going from bipedal to Quadra pedal, they are just in that really irritating limbo stage. Now that I look back this describes the PROsauropods, the sauropods (which came later) were fully Quadra pedal as far as I can tell.

    My personal opinion is that when they weren’t in a hurry to get somewhere or when they were going long distances they went bipedally, however when they wanted to do something quickly or travel short distances they’d (somewhat awkwardly) move quadrapedally.

Prosauropods, more than likely did not stand like this. But it is for you to see their arms.

Sauropods. You knot the big herbivores. Quadrapedal. This and the previous image are from the slides and not me. Full Credit to whoever originally made them (as well as the Professor for providing them).

Expanding upon the previous question what was the use of their tails?

  Their tails were likely used for balancing. They aren’t short or flexible enough to drag on the ground, why they would drag them is beyond me. It seems more a consequence of gravity for low level reptiles than an evolutionary perk.

The Speed at which they moved?

  As stated before I’m relatively convinced that they didn’t move very fast. Well the Prosaurapods actually might have been fast, they were much smaller. But the Saurapods were most certainly slow.

The evidence for aquatic or terrestrial habit?

  Both groups have body types that are very very similar to elephants. It is likely given the similar walking styles and their body shapes that the saurapods and Prosarapods were terrestrial, but may have enjoyed a swim just like Elephants.

The feeding methods as suggested by their teeth?

 
Again from course.

      Now while the teeth might look long you’ll notice they are all blunt. This is one of multiple skull related traits that lead us to believe they eat leaves. The next thing to notice is their lower jaw and the hinge for it. On a carnivore this would be above and lead down to the teeth however on an Herbivore it would be below. This is because they didn’t need to sheer flesh but instead would yank large quantities of food off of trees.

      This image from the slides shows you in the middle a carnivore and on the right an herbivore. You will notice that the herbivore has extra space on the sides of their teeth to store food to aid in grinding it. Carnivores have no sides and you can usually see their teeth on the sides of their mouth without much work. Whereas one party (the carnivores) don’t really care where the meat drops I’d be pissed if I spent a bunch of time yanking leaves off a tree just to drop a bunch.

What do we know about their neck mobility?

      This one is tricky. For the Prosauropods it was likely similar to all other small bipedal dinosaurs. The Sauropods however couldn’t (or rather it is very unlikely that they could) raise their heads higher than the highest level of their spine. This is probably because frankly when you are as big as they are you don’t really need to lift your head much higher. I mean…what would you lift it for? Peek on some other dinosaurs who are bathing or something. Jeeze not all dinosaurs were perverts. However for visual aid here is a nice picture from our slides to see the sheer size of these beasts.

How do tracks found of these animals suggest herding behavior?

    Considering that the tracks that have been found tend to not overlap (unless there are vast quantities of tracks) and move with one another it is highly likely that these animals herded.

What is the purpose of their v-shaped dorsal spines on the neck?

    Well the massive size of these animals required any reinforcements it could possibly get. This would have helped to support a ligament known as the Nuchal. Essentially it was a really long reinforcement line to help keep everything from falling apart. Likewise I’m pretty sure ligaments like this mean the animal wouldn’t have to straight to keep its head up (it would be able to relax and still have its head not slouch). Which is pretty important I’d say.

    Run! It’s a Swine Flue!

    So here we are. With the momentary pause of the US’s apparent goal to have one war with every nation on the planet there had to be something. We have a disease known as the Swine Flu, indeed not all that uncommon. Apparently if you are in constant contact with pigs you just may acquire a human strain of this mean little bug.

  So what does it do to you? Well if you live in Mexico it is apparently fatal, however if you are anyone else in the world it is essentially just like every other flu. It is a supreme pain in the butt, you will probably vomit, but eventually be ok. So why now with .00000001867 of the US population infected by this disease and many already recovering (only what…4 people have been hospitalized and will likely recover) it has become the job of news stations to color entire states (and countries) bright red once a single person has the disease there. Millions of people put in fear over a small outbreak of a disease that is only fatal in a country where you can’t even drink the water most times.

  I sometimes wonder if we have a viral fear of a time without fear. We work so hard to make mountains out of molehills that I often wonder when people will learn how to instantly die from panic. As if our own genetic code desires us to end the reign over the land. Perhaps that’s a bit dark, but nowhere near as dark as the nonsense flying across twitter or anywhere else for that matter. This site not an exception I’m sure .

  Just for a second here lets list the differences between Swine Flu and the Flu systematically. If the symptom is in both it will be bold. If it is only in the Swine it’ll be Underlined and if it is just the Flu it’ll be Italic.

  Fever, Lethargy, Lack of Appetite, Runny Nose, Sore Throat, Coughing, Nausea, Vomiting, Aches, Headache and Diarrhea. That’s right, the only thing that Swine Flu will give you over a Flu is the runs. Oh wow. Lets all not defecate ourselves to death at once. The Flu however gives you joint aching, Nausea, Aches, AND Headaches on top of everything else besides Diarrhea. So until we see a regular Flu Outbreak (you know every single year) I wouldn’t worry.

  A bit of advice below:

  If the world really does start having a huge outbreak of the Swine Flu, you know what you do? You stay at home for a week and eat the food you have at home and use your tap for water. If the death rate is really as dramatic and quick as people are trying to make it out you just need to wait out the dying and you’ll be fine. This isn’t 28 days later, sick people don’t hunt down healthy people and infect them. In the US you are more likely to be shot by your local gang or ticketed by the traffic police than die from Swine Flu.

  For those that have wondered what my workspace looks like here is a brief glimpse into my life. These were all taken with a particularly stubborn 99 dollar camera, I love the little guy but focusing with it is sort of like hitting yourself in the groin with a hammer. So excuse the grains .

 
You’ll notice it’s relatively clean. This is purely doctored I assure you, took this image while holding my Coffee .

  This is where all the mess is hiding. We’ve got rubbing alcohol, a bunch of writeable dvd’s and CD’s, games galore…oh and is that a PSP and a DS laying with one another…the hubris!

 
You’ll notice the tacky grey and white drives in a black case. Oh and clutter…lots of clutter. Just barely you can make out my sexy headphones on top of the tower. I love those guys.

This is actually the lightest my action figure collection has ever looked. I may take a picture of all my DnD miniatures sometime. I’ve got a whole bunch of them, once I get a job its going to get grotesque too I’m certain. That’s Daemon in the back there with his hands outstretched, one of my favorite old toys.

 
About the only thing my SPORE game does anymore is sit inside its exceptionally nice case. I ended up getting that for 10 dollars cheaper than the regular copy. It wasn’t a bad game if you don’t play it. Also that’s Doraemon, the best Japanese kids show character ever.

I have limited space on my shelves. So you’ll see graphic novels stacking on top of one another .

Another shot of some of my books, I have a pretty large DND collection I might take a shot of sometime as well. Add it to this little series. 

Alien Hominid . Got this from PAX with the game.

One of the Maps on the walls here. I love maps and any game that comes with one gets an automatic thumbs up.

Just another shot of the same map, I dunno, whichever you like best.
 
This is another map, from the box of Elder Scrolls: Oblivion.

A map that came with the expansion, Shivering Isles. Great detail .

  So that is it for now. I’m sure that I’ll have a plethora of other images from the various nerd points in the apartment. Need to take them soon before we destruct and move. Obviously none of the images will reveal our location, don’t want any of my ravenous (and entirely fictitious) fans coming here .

In Response to this Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/health/policy/27care.html?_r=1&hp

  There comes a time when a country such as ours realizes that greed has caused serious problems. In this case the cost of medical school has (without just cause) gone skyward for many years. As is stated in the article the average medical student ends up owing 140,000 dollars by the end of the ordeal. This with interest is a fantastically large amount of cash for a job that should be thrown at people (there is no such thing as too many doctors).

  That’s the problem. When it can be cheaper to become a lawyer than a doctor and with every new bundle of lawyers you have a new bundle of ridiculous lawsuits that make the cost of being a doctor go even higher. This means that more talented people become lawyers and more lawyers compounds the problem till you…well…till you reach where we are (and may continue going).

  The system doesn’t work and I can’t recall a time when it did work. Insurance rarely pays a fair enough amount and those without insurance are hard pressed to get any care at all. It’s an unfortunate reality check that will hopefully be alleviated. Health care should be one of three primary concerns of any civilization. If it is not that civilization is not doing the simplest of its jobs well.

  As I heard on television earlier. “Oh yeah I said it.” The US is holding up like a house with termites, we’ll see how long till an earthquake or strong breeze hits.

  It is unfortunate that humans in many places work until they are dead, or at the very least poorly functioning. To me it seems silly to come this far, advancing technology to such a degree, and still have folks working for so long.

  I am of course speaking for the US, since I have little knowledge of other countries, but that doesn’t make it any less disturbing. I also find it interesting that generally speaking those with the least work get paid the most.

  One might argue that a sports star does have a hard job. I would of course respond by waving the bullshit flag in all its steamy brown glory. If someone paid me millions of dollars to play Dance Dance Revolution non-stop for hours on end I would do it and not feel the least bit overworked. Likewise if I was playing it constantly every year I’d have a very good track record. I’ve not really seen more than a handful of sports player in any field that has performed extra ordinarily, the rest are about on par with what you would expect with endless hours of training.

  CEO’s tend to be paid high amounts of money to do a job that is supposedly specialized and complicated. They make millions because frankly there are few people who could work the logistics. That’s the story at least. Again as with the sports analogy, anyone put in the position of CEO would have the same competency of most CEO’s within the first year.

  I’m not one to belittle people for their profession, if you are doing something well that is always to be appreciated. But we act far too much like any job is too difficult for anyone to learn. I’ve found myself multiple times in the past lying about my knowledge of a subject and learning it during the first month or few months by watching others and researching. I am by no means special either, I have no rain man talent to speak of. This is something any average individual can do.

  Yet we act like we can’t. Paying some 20 something hundreds of dollars at a Best Buy to do a very simple fix on a Personal Computer. Or not dropping bricks when we hear about absolutely positively anyone getting a 7-9 figure bonus for any job.

  But I’ve gotten off on a bit of a tangent. In good faith however, my point is simple, we spend fantastic amounts of money on people to do pretty simple (relative to income) jobs. So what is left with everyone else doing the jobs that are frankly most times just as hard? They are left working for ages, many times until death. It’s sad.

  All in all I think the response people should give when they hear “If you are going to criticize them do it yourself then.” is “Give me their pay and I’ll get it done.” Because frankly, the same training for many individuals will net the same results. Special exceptions aside.

  Forgive the mini rant, It’s been a long day haha.

  Article in Question: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/science/21horse.html?_r=1&ref=science

  “If there was a fertility control out there, we’d love to have it,” Mr. Gorey added.

  Well I might not be the wisest or the most intelligent person you will ever meet, likewise I’m hardly the most creative. But it would seem to me that we have access to a very powerful fertility control for non-human animals, we can eat them. Now indeed there are tons of people who hate the idea of eating animals, I’m not here to discuss that (at least not today) but the fact that this is the least expensive (and actually profitable) option should make it pretty darn appealing.

  Now as with most big problems that have simple answers that are overlooked because of childish biases this too can be attributed in large part with the catholic church.

In 732 A.D. Pope Gregory III began a concerted effort to stop this pagan practice, and it has been said that the people of Iceland were reluctant to embrace Christianity for some time largely over the issue of giving up horse meat. In some countries the effects of this prohibition by the Catholic Church have lingered, and horse meat prejudices have progressed from taboos to avoidance to abhorrence. Today, however, horse meat is commonly consumed in many European countries. – http://www.igha.org/USDA.html

  Indeed people tend to look at eating horses with a similar light to kissing cousins however it isn’t a very warranted taboo. Every time I’ve heard people discuss consuming horse meat it is talked about in the same light as seeing the gates of heaven. I’m sure that is an exaggeration (or maybe the gates of heaven are made of horse jerky) however I’ve yet to hear a negative response to the taste.

  Horse is also healthier than Cow for consumption, Zoo’s often feed their big predators horse because of the much lower fat content of the meat. Horses also produce 3 times less feces per day compared to their bovine friends. This means you could safely farm 3 times as many horses without increasing the pollution resulting in the caretaking. Likewise you could even keep the same amount of horses as you had cows and cut back on methane output by 66%.

  A cow eats 50-90lbs of food per day, I believe the % is 2-2.5% of their body weight, a horse on the other end eats between 15-20 lbs of food per day, which again should be something like 1.5 to 2% of their body weight. This is another gain in profit and reduction in environmental impact because you require far less food to supply the same amount of animals. Now to be fair the average cow weighs 1400 lbs and the average horse weighs 1000-1200 lbs so there is a reduction in return from each animal…but even if you supplement that with a slightly higher population you have much lower fecal output and much healthier meat products.

  I’d like to live in a world where we don’t have to eat animals, because they are really cute when they are alive (some exceptions aside), but for now this is a truth that can’t be ignored and for the health of most people it can’t be intentionally omitted. If we have a problem with overpopulation of horses the best option is not to spend millions of dollars sterilizing the animals, it would make far more sense to eat them. If we phased out cow farming and replaced it with horse farming we’d even improve our current standing with the environment.

  Plus either way I think you are killing an adorable animal, so emotionally it shouldn’t be much more difficult. Albeit I think the sheer quantity of poo that cows drop is what gives people more ease with executing them. Something to take into account if you are quite active in the restroom.

  Note: I apologize for missing my update yesterday. I’m pretty glum about losing track of time, ah well. Onto the discussion.

  I was thinking recently about the entire debate over the legitimacy of piracy of digital media. As the cogs were turning I was reminded of a famous quote that anyone familiar with the Civilization video game series or just human history in general should be familiar with.

Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it.

Publilius Syrus
(~100 BC)

  With this in mind. I believe that Piracy may be an adequate measure of the quality of a product. There are first some misconceptions that must be clarified before we move on with this thesis. The first is that when an item is torrented by a new person that it is officially a lost sale. There is absolutely no direct connection between the sales of a product and the amount of people pirating it. There are however connections with piracy and quality.

  It is an irrefutable truth that quality sells. There are many real world companies that sell products that at one time were militantly marketed, at this point however they sell primarily on word of mouth, while you will indeed find pepsi or coke commercials they are nowhere near as prolific as they once were. Their products sell by word of mouth and a compounding effect that can be found all over the universe in various forms. Once you hit a certain point in sales you will always see an increase in sales until you over saturate the market.

  However there is a strong misconception that the price tag slapped on a product is that products worth. This is only true if people are purchasing it at that price point. If 10 people attend to a product and only 1 person buys it then the price is not indicative of the products worth. A 50 dollar game is only worth 50 dollars if the consumer feels it is, it is in no way decided by the developer. This is true for all products, car manufacturers have tried to slap ridiculous price points on outdated automotive products for a long time and it has more than once hurt them dearly.

  You will always be able to find people who will buy something regardless of the price point. However they aren’t buying the product because of its quality or usefulness, in most cases it is a matter of status. Most Apple products aren’t worth half of what they cost when you get down to the nuts and bolts of it all but they sell well to many people because of the status that comes along with them. It’s silly, it’s foolish, but since people traded stones for products we’ve had an unusual desire to put poo on a pedestal.

  There are a few major differences between digital products and physical ones. Digital products can be replicated a nearly infinite amount of times for almost no cost. The only literal loss the company suffers from the replication is a loss of time for the employees, which is hard to legislate against because we all cost others precious hours out of their life. We do it by contributing to traffic, by being slow at the grocery store, or simply be not planning things out before we leave the house. Old property laws were put into place not because of the time lost but because of the literal notion of physical products, once someone has stolen your car you no longer have that car. It is no longer a functional option for you, however is someone copies your car screensaver you still have a copy of it.

  When a video game is pirated, there are a few outcomes that can result. The people will enjoy the product and will wait until the cost of the product is relative to the quality of the product, which can very well be at its starting price point. They could not enjoy the product and delete it from their PC, which more often than not is the case (more on this later). Finally they could download the product and enjoy it but never purchase it. We’ll start with these folks and work back up.

  People who pirate because they want things free are potentially dangerous to an economy. However there is absolutely nothing to gain by fighting them. Since their piracy of a product does not effect the overall number of copies available (as opposed to a corn or car thief) there is no reason to attempt to prosecute. They would never purchase the product in the first place, so if you ended all piracy you wouldn’t gain any sales or at the very least would gain negligible returns.

  The next group of folks that pirate a game and then delete it because of its low worth are equally harmless. Considering the state of marketing and the nature of misleading for profit it is unreasonable to assume that people would ever trust a companies description of their product. There are various phenomenon in play as well that cause people to see their own creations with a pretty substantial bias (look at Will Wrights statements on SPORE for instance, he is talking about an entirely different game). These people technically cost you sales because they might have purchased the product, however they only cost you sales because it is almost impossible to return the game. This snatch and grab tactic should never be promoted and it is one of the pillars holding up piracy as we know it.

  You can argue for Demos however it is no small secret that Demo’s are about as accurate to the representative nature of a games full worth as the text on the box. They always exaggerate how much more can be experienced with the full game, for instance counting all the renames of a same item to boost the number from 4 unique items to 40 thousand. Not since the mid to late 90’s has a Demo been anywhere near accurate of the full gaming experience and everyone deeply involved with the gaming world knows this.

  Finally we have the first group of folks who play a game, enjoy it, and purchase it once the price point matches the worth of the game. These people are incredibly important. They are the strongest estimator of a games actual quality. When a game comes out for 50 dollars and has almost no sales, but later drops to 30 and sells 2 million copies it is quality control in action. The company should spend less time trying to accuse consumers of theft (for reasons stated above) and work more on providing a product who’s worth is accurate to its cost. A thick layer of glitter on a steaming dog turd is not treasure, it is a turd covered in glitter.

  The day that we invent means to instantly replenish with no cost physical materials, such as food, or wood, or anything of that nature the rules in the physical world will match this medium. Indeed someone physically stealing a copy of a video game from a store is breaking laws and very literally costing the company money. Not only for the physical costly product but for the reduced quantity to supply consumers. However this is not, and never will be, the case with digital products.

  More than likely you will never find a company willing to admit the above. But much like that set of sunglasses on your head that you’ve been looking for for the last half hour, the most obvious information is generally the last information examined. When someone reports the losses they have received from piracy it should be taken with a grain of salt and a shot of bourbon, because it is entirely fabricated. The real damage to their income comes from the glittered turd phenomenon that has swept the gaming world over the last few generations of Consoles (and PC upgrades). The best companies can hope for at this time is that innovative and talented individuals will step forth and bring the next generation of games to a relative quality level that would match the original jumps in gaming. We are in need of another SNES generation, currently the unfortunate truth is that we’ve been stuck in an NGAGE rut for a bit too long and few people are willing to address it honestly.

Truly a tragedy
Worried more about
What we put in our Car
Than in our Belly
Absorbed into the Tele-
Vision blurred beyond use
Ignorance so great
It borders abuse
of Self
and those we love
Syrup on Sugar
Internal Scars
I wonder how
We made it this far

Praising Strategies
time bomb tragedies
building unreachable goals
and swallowing souls
as our air fogs
from burning Coals
Evolution a passing fad
more interested in
Hundred times translated
word of God
Children penalized
with sweet lies
minds being barred
I wonder how
We made it this far

Getting diced
utterly sliced
as tears flow
behind the guise
of the wise
oh what liars
they be
a billion bombs
couldn’t outdo
the damage
of fools
I wonder how
We made it this far

What are signs of a fast animal and what indicates their primary food source (carnivore, herbivore, omnivore)?

  When looking at an animal there are initial obvious hints. The stockier and thicker the bone the slower overall the animal will be. Now relative to humans just about any big animal will still stomp a hole through your torso if you try to slap them on the butt and run. A good rule of thumb when looking at the legs of an animal, the more ‘hinge points’ it has the faster the animal will move. Each hinge region (like your knee) essentially becomes a spring that helps an animal move much faster than even their muscles alone would allow. In Martial arts, people are told to stay on their toes which adds a new hinge at the Ankle.

  When looking for hints on the primary food source of an animal you check their teeth. It is the first place food goes for processing (Well the mouth is) and thusly the best place to learn about the animals favorite snacks. Plant eaters will almost always have flat teeth, like a mouth full of molars. This is for grinding up plants and other soft organic material. Carnivores will have some gnarly fangs (canines) that are used for shearing, crushing, and otherwise maiming their prey. The larger the teeth generally the larger the prey. If the creature had raisin sized teeth you could expect they ate insects. Omnivores have clippers in the front usually and grinders in the back (like you or me).

Linnean classification and cladistic classification, The meaning of general and specific characters, How to construct and use a cladogram, and What are the closest living relatives of dinosaurs?

  Linnean classification is the one that everyone is familiar with, the whole kingdom phylum order genus species thing. I probably missed a few and ordered it wrong but you get the idea. I’m just proud of myself for remembering that many pieces. Cladistic classification is actually a bit weird and sort of the species equivelant of being racist. To me at least.

  When looking at Cladistic classification you have two groups of examination, the General Characteristics and the Specific Characteristics. The general being things that an animal has, like bipedal movement, something that helps describe the animal but doesn’t solidify its rankings in uniqueness and the Specific like the opposable thumb which is purely a human characteristic. It’s neat stuff but you have to be cautious to not use terms so broad (such as having a heart) that they are meanginless.

  Cladograms are basically line charts that take a group of similar animals, that is animals that share a ton of general characteristics, and organizing them through a system of Specific characteristics. For instance you might work from say a T-rex and slowly move towards its nearest modern relative. Along the way picking out the characteristic that it and all the animals before it have but none of the ones after it do. It would look something like this.

  While not very similar, the way this works is that you start with a backbone for fish, which is something all animals above it have but none before it, then you move to legs with Lizards and above have but Fish do not, then you move to hair which Dogs and above have but Lizards and below do not, then finally the Opposable thumb. Which where you start is somewhat arbitrary it helps to put like items together.

  One of the professors more detailed examples is below:

What is a tetrapod? What are the characteristics of a tetrapod that set it apart from a fish? How did tetrapods evolve from fish?

    A tetrapod, literally four legged creature, the major separation that I can think of that separates them from fish is that they have legs with fin like appendages (when dealing with water) whereas Fish literally have fins. Fish also have much thinner skeletal structures because most weight is supported by water. They also tend to have massive heads to body ratios. The evolution was likely the transition from fin to fin like appendage to appendage.

What are Behaviors of crocodiles that separate them from other reptiles?

  They tend to use pack behavior (pretty efficiently), they vocalize (albeit not exactly eloquently), and take care of their babies after they hatch. It’s pretty cute to watch…all things considered.

What is erect stance and what are its advantages? What tetrapod groups do and do not have erect stance?

  An erect stance is any creature that stands at or near verticle with two limbs that are the primary source of motion and a second set of limbs that is primarily used for grasping. Of the saurischian (lizard hipped dinos) prosaurupods and theropods were bipedal, of the Ornithischian (bird hipped dinos) the Ornithopods were bipedal. All other options were quadrapedal.

How do Saurischia and Ornithischia differ?

  As stated before, Saura were the lizard hipped and the Ornith were bird hipped. Has to do with the direction of the Pubis. With the bird hipped having it pointing it back, the others having it pointing down or forward.

What are the names of the Era, periods and dates of the periods when dinosaurs were alive?

  Now this part is a bit hard to remember. Basically working backwards keep adding 65 million years and you’ll get ‘close’ to the right years. 65 Million years ago was the end of the Cretaceous, which was the fall of the dinosaurs, 144 million years ago was the end of the Jurassic which was the time we built a park full of dinosaurs (wait a second), 208 million years ago was the end of the Triassic period, and 245 million years ago was the end of the Permian and more importantly the start of the dinos. If you are taking a multiple choice you should be able to get close to these dates by just remembering 65 MYA and keep adding 65 . Or maybe more accurately adding 50.

Coelurosauria vs Carnosaur

  Coelursauria is a group of Theropods that are identifiable by their (generally speaking) long necks, small heads, gangly arms, and small size. Carnosaurs are your T-Rex’s and Allosaurus’s. Big mofo’s that have lots of big stuff and tiny ass arms.

Attack methods of carnosaurs (a term which describes shape but has no cladistic/evolutionary significance)?

  I’m not sure what this question means. But we theorized in class that various carnivores of modern day may give us a good idea of how carnosaurs hunted. It is unlikely that they acted like fast animals given their size and more than likely were hunting relatively slow prey.

Compare and contrast Allosaurus and Tyrannosaurus

  Tyrannosaurus has a huge strong head whereas the Allosaurus has a smaller head that is not as good at surviving side torque of a moving prey. The Tyrannosaurus also has much larger teeth and is overall larger. The teeth on the T-rex look like big fat fangs whereas the smaller Allosaur teeth are more bladelike. Allosaurus has longer arms too, so he could possibly scratch his itchy knee . The T-rex probably took a more gator like approach to killing while the Allosaur may have acted more like a large raptor or something similar, using its arms and head.

Evidence for stance and pack behavior in carnosaurs.

  The size of the creatures suggests that they weren’t super fast, their bodies just wouldn’t do well to support the weight at high speeds. Likewise considering their similarities to crocs it would seem reasonable to assume that they too act in pack patterns. Also there have been Carnosaurs that have been found with healed broken tibias which really would only happen if there was a pack looking out for one another. As for stance, a T-Rex couldn’t stand upright, it would be putting most of its weight on the weakest part of its Hip and likewise it would have to snap its own tail (fracture it) just to bend it along the ground like they often show them in museums.

Know the conditions of Sue’s skeleton and the other individuals she was preserved with.

  Sue has multiple conditions in her bones that show she likely suffered disease. She had a broken and healed tail, broken and healed ribs, and broken or malformed tooth. She even had bite marks that looked like another t-rex had bit her neck (A little too kinky for my tastes).

What kind of dinosaur is T. rex most closely related to?

  T-Rex is more closely related to various coelurasaurs than it is to other carnosaurs. Even the cute little compy is more closely related to it than Allosaur. According to Cladograms at least.

What is the evidence for how carnosaurs held their backbone?

  As stated before it had to do with the strong and weak points in their hips and the flexibility of their tails. They most likely leaned forward using their tails to balance the wait of their front leaning body and head.

How did Oviraptor live?

  Oviraptors  Their unfortunate skull structure made people incorrectly label them as egg eaters, in actuality they probably used their beaks to crush shelled creatures. For those that think I might be exaggerating.

How did Ornithomimosaurs and Dromaeosaurs live?

    Ornithomimosaurs were the dinosaur equivelant to the Ostrich. They share very common body types and were likely very fast. They probably ate plants, insects, and other small things.  Dromaeosaurs are actually what were incorrectly labeled velociraptors in Jurassic Park! . Not only were they wrongly labeled but the ones in the move were even increased in size by a few feet to make them look more menacing. So imagine a small version of those dinosaurs and you have them.

  On a somewhat unrelated note imagine this chasing your butt:

Principles of size, volume and surface area relationships. Be able to estimate weight of an object based on increase in a linear dimension, e.g. I have a cube that is 2 inches on a side and weighs 1 lb. How much would a cube of the same material weigh if it was 4 inches on a side?

  The size of a 3 dimensional object grows disproportionately in respect to the volume vs surface area. The volume goes up to the power of 3 whereas the surface area goes up to the power of 2. So an object that is 2 inches on the side and weights 1 lb would result in a 1lb for every 8 cubic inches. With this in mind a 4 inch cubed object has a total of 64 total cubic inches, that is 8 times larger so 8 lbs.

Early evolution of feathers and their purpose

  Feathers initially were more than likely downy and used for keeping animals insulated. As time progressed some animals probably grew longer feathers in order to glide from trees to catch certain flying insects and animals…oh and to surprise and catch non flying animals . Eventually you’d have flight.

Birds, characteristics of, and origins.

  The first bird is the Archeopteryx, well bird-like dinosaurs. Beak like mouths, long asymmetrical feathers and an in between stage of the hand that is very similar to bird like hands.

What is the first “bird” and what dinosaur group is it most closely related to?

  I think that my previous answer still fits here. If not that’ll be something on the exam I get wrong . Most closely related to Coelurasaurs.

What are the characteristics of Archeopteryx that make it bird-like and what makes it dinosaur-like?

  Feathers, Backward Pubis, bird like feet (3 toes front 1 toe back), all make it bird like. Teeth, distinct fingers, and a Gastralia make it dino like .