…it shrunk a bit…
Peaked in 2005
Oh my dear Baruch, what did they do to you…
When all you have is a few bone fragments and a bunch of teeth, it’s pretty hard to figure out what my dude looked like! With each new fossil we get a better picture.
He keeps getting better and bite-ier every year.
A friend of mine was cleaning out the home she grew up in and gave me some old dinosaur cards that she found for my nephew. I looked at them and had to laugh and said they are quite antiquated. She said yes, they are from the early 90’s. I said that they need an update badly. She was shocked and said dinosaurs didn’t change in millions of years. Yeah but our understanding. She really really did not believe me.
Aren’t these changes, because there are just have bones to look at, so skin properties etc are a guessing game?
But how did that jaw bone double in length in 2001? Was the skull a missing part until then?
https://palaeo-electronica.org/content/2023/3821-the-osteology-of-irritator
This is the Paper that started it. They used some (at the time) new techniques to 3d model an old fossil they had, if I recall it correctly.