The structure of their skulls also resembles those of elephants, so it’s possible they also had long trunks.
This is an old theory that is no longer supported by most paleontologists AFAIK. Trunks require specific musculature, more blood vessels, and more nerves than a regular nose does, and those things leave evidence in the structure of the facial bones.
I’m no scientist and I’ve never seen one in real life, but I can promise you penguins do not have trunks iirc
Is that a long neck between your shoulders or are you just happy to be a skeleton?
Does anyone know if this is something that was actually possible? Like, how sure are we they looked one way and not the other?
Do you think a penguin of that size could get anywhere? The process of reconstruction is a very complex one, but basically they look for clues in the remains and speculate what is evolutionarily most likely.
Actually, they preferred bullet trains and cable cars, dependent on distance.
Nope, sauropods were already right up against the limit of what’s physically possible for a land animal on Earth. If they were that chonky they would have been too heavy and would have overheated just from their body heat.
“Every reconstruction involves some level of inference and speculation to literally ‘flesh out’ details not preserved in the fossil record,” Celeskey explains. “In the process of creating paleoart, artists and the researchers have discussions about how to fill in these missing pieces, which helps everyone involved to think about how they are interpreting the actual evidence at hand.” From a NatGeo article I found
“I asked around the office and everyone agreed that giving the t-Rex wings looked dope”
Of course it’s possible. It’s highly improbable due to weight, of course, but it’s not impossible.
There’s a lot of information that was not recorded in fossil, and we have very few fossil recorded, compared to how many animals of a species lived. How we reconstruct existinct animals keeps on changing with every new information, so it’s always cool to challenge the way we view a creature.
Big big Chungus!
