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Turd-In-Your-Pocket t1_issw0dg wrote

Reply to comment by varialectio in How can we know details about animals that lived thousands of years ago if all we have are bones? by DemetrioGonz

Don’t forget the little holes on bones where blood vessels attached help us know what kind of blood flow the animal needed to oxygenate its organs. Combine that with what we know of the oxygen levels in its environment and you can accurately guess the mass that was supported along with whether it was endothermic or exothermic (warm or cold blooded). We compare these to bones of existing animals, along with brain size and shape of the inside of a skull to come up with stuff like “Allosaurus ate meat and likely had the metabolism of an ostrich and the hunting and eating behaviors of a crocodile”.

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mrockracing t1_isvh0q1 wrote

Why do I feel like one day a metric ton that we thought we "knew" about the past will be radically altered or just downright proven wrong?

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triplefreshpandabear t1_isvlpf6 wrote

Probably because that's already happened a lot, but there are things we get right, science is an ongoing process, it's why scientists are very reluctant to say things definitively and instead say stuff like "research indicates" or "it's likely that" or so on to that extent. I think this makes science more trustworthy, of course media often skips that and says things like "scientists say chocolate causes cancer" or something when in actuality it'd be more like "mice who were exposed to this chemical that can also be found in small amounts in the cacao plant had higher rates of cancer than a control group that wasn't exposed to the chemical" and this sort of misrepresenting makes science seem less credible. It's why media literacy is important. A lot of what we "know" isn't things we know as fact but things that we have indications of and science acknowledges that, unfortunately popular media often ignores that.

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StrangeAsYou t1_isvlvod wrote

Of course it will be.

We now know that some dinosaurs had feathers and that's relatively new information.

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Xanderbell0120 t1_isvnuhz wrote

what indicates feathers?

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Pholidotes t1_isw1vv6 wrote

In exceptional conditions, the feathers themselves can be fossilized! China's Liaoning province is one place where this happened - it had very fine-grained sediments capable of preserving exquisite detail in fossils. For example, we know that this small theropod dinosaur (Sinosauropteryx) had a layer of fuzz similar to down feathers. And Microraptor, a smaller cousin of Velociraptor, had full-on wing feathers, plus long leg feathers and a small feathery fan on its tail.

When feathers aren't preserved in a fossil, other evidence may tip off paleontologists to the likely presence of feathers. Quill knobs, bumps on arm bones where feathers attach, have been found in several dinosaurs (including Velociraptor itself). In addition, if a certain dinosaur has no direct evidence one way or the other, but has close relatives with confirmed feathers, it can be reasonably assumed it had them too. This is akin to how extinct cats are depicted with fur because all their modern cousins have it.

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StrangeAsYou t1_isvqb46 wrote

I'm assuming they used previously unstudied fossil markers plus new examination of DNA as it relates to currently alive animals.

Advances in technology change everything.

Cars, dinosaurs, energy production, what's really alive in dirt. Everything!

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MaybeImTheNanny t1_isvyrx7 wrote

They found feather impressions first and then extrapolated. We find new things and form new theories. This particular theory is like 25 years old so not so new.

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StrangeAsYou t1_isw1yd3 wrote

25 years out of 100 thousand is pretty new.

We don't think they are mythical creatures anymore either. Dragons, griffins, hydras, unicorns.

All dinosaurs.

The real cause of the dinosaurs demise was only confirmed in 1988. There were competiting theories prior to that.

Our modern understanding is all pretty new.

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ThisVicariousLife t1_isw41rm wrote

I read an article just recently that said that scientists are starting to rethink the cataclysmic meteor theory and leaning more toward massive volcanic eruption to the scale of Mt. Vesuvius. Nat Geo Article Link

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jeveret t1_isvybia wrote

Because that’s exactly what good science does, its constantly trying to disprove/improve our current understanding. We are refining our understanding of the cosmos at an exponential rate, but we will never have all the answers, but that is not a reason to stop asking questions and looking for answers.

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Decent-Connection944 t1_iswjjsm wrote

Science is an ever evolving thing. Some answers change upon new information so what we thought was once correct is now given something different upon the presented information. So just think that it’s not wrong but there is a possibility that the theory could change and what we once thought something was is just an alternate form.

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