this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca 73 points 2 months ago (4 children)

The teeth on the rabbit skull don't match up with the picture of what aliens would picture. They might misinterpret some things but not the obvious characteristics.

[–] 6mementomorib@lemmy.blahaj.zone 56 points 2 months ago (1 children)

do you think someone just actually whipped up a 3d model just for a meme?

[–] blackbrook@mander.xyz 7 points 2 months ago

That would be dishonest, I'm pretty sure they sourced that from aliens.

[–] notabot@lemm.ee 20 points 2 months ago

The hind legs also have the joints in proportionally the wrong places compared to the skeleton. I reckon they gave it to the intern to reconstruct, and they just hastily banged it out last thing on a Friday afternoon after a liquid lunch.

[–] rowrowrowyourboat@sh.itjust.works 16 points 2 months ago

The whole body doesn't match. Those must be some stupid-ass aliens.

[–] millie@beehaw.org 13 points 2 months ago

I think it's just jabbing at our early assumptions about dinosaurs seemingly lacking much in the way of bulk. We used to interpret them as these ultra-skinny weirdly mummified looking things rather than the plumper creatures many of them probably were.

The idea is that aliens find skeletons of animals we're more familiar with and come to the same kind of wildly mistaken conclusions about them that we might have if we'd found rabbit skeletons without having first hand experience of modern rabbits.

[–] Klear@lemmy.world 58 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] AnAustralianPhotographer@lemmy.world 17 points 2 months ago (1 children)

And the Lord spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.

[–] Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Best deus ex machina ever!

[–] Klear@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Machina ex deus, technically.

[–] Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee 2 points 2 months ago

Best Machina ex deus ever! (then)

[–] rikudou@lemmings.world 49 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I was in a dinopark recently and there were some bone replicas, footprints etc. and I was constantly like "how the hell didn't the scientists see that it's just a giant chicken?"

Some of it is extremely obvious.

[–] Muaddib@sopuli.xyz 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The only scientifically accurate scene in Jurassic Park has a little boy say the velociraptor looks like a turkey. They knew dinosaurs were chickens, they just didn't bother showing us in movies.

[–] dustyData@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They retconned Jurassic park saying the skin was like that because of the genes they had to splice up in order to bring them back to life.

[–] bramkaandorp@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

Not that weird, considering they already had that in the original movie. Frog DNA.

[–] tacosanonymous@lemm.ee 30 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Lagomorph sounds way cooler than it is too.

[–] SquirrelX@lemmy.world 26 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Has anyone actually tried representing dinosaurs like fluffy (or very feathery) animals?

[–] cynar@lemmy.world 26 points 2 months ago (1 children)

A 15' chicken with teeth would be terrifying.

[–] Donkter@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The common art keeps giving them long feathers on their arms but I would have assumed long feathers only evolved on flying birds and most of the feathers on the flightless dinosaurs would be pretty uniform.

[–] cynar@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I've also come across these. There's a lot we don't know, all of these could be entirely wrong.

[–] Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee 2 points 2 months ago

Sometimes we might never really know. It is part of the mystery. Can you imagine if you had dinosaurs that had trunks like elephants?

[–] tauren@lemm.ee 26 points 2 months ago (2 children)
[–] SquirrelX@lemmy.world 19 points 2 months ago
[–] mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 12 points 2 months ago

Most dinosaur recreations now just go "what would a bird with this skeleton look like?"

[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 17 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

unfortunately a lot of art just sorta glues a bunch of feathers to a deinonychus and calls it a velociraptor, but here's some stuff i feel makes more sense.
(Also side note: t.rex probably was actually mostly naked, however it was likely skin rather than scales, like a giant plucked monster turkey, which IMO is significantly worse.)

more images






[–] BeatTakeshi@lemmy.world 23 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I always wondered What if all dinosaurs were big furry balls with large ears...

[–] Donkter@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago

We're pretty sure now that they were more similar to birbs with proto feathers acting as fur. So many of them probably would be puff balls. Although it was also hotter back then.

[–] GoodLuckToFriends@lemmy.today 11 points 2 months ago

I didn't realize rabbits had such long tailbones.

[–] Derpenheim@lemmy.zip 11 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Love me some shrink wrap in my paleo art. The ones depicting baboons are especially nightmarish.

[–] raltoid@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

Hippos are mine.

[–] FinalRemix@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] El_Scapacabra@lemm.ee 2 points 2 months ago

It's got a vicious streak a mile wide!

[–] Rolive@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 2 months ago

Look at the bones!

[–] Midnitte@beehaw.org 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee 3 points 2 months ago

Fuck me the baboon image was serious nightmare fuel.

Can you imagine if we somehow were able to get 100% accurate images of dinosaurs (with the feathers... they were birds, not reptiles, and warm blooded, too) and the T-rex chirped and kinda looked like a giant chicken?

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 2 points 2 months ago

Imagine aliens finding earth a few centuries after we kill ourselves through climate change and war, they find a human skeleton but mix up a bunch of bones with dogs and cats, and they also believed we had feathers.