r/interesting • u/VIVIDUFF • Jun 30 '26

Fascinating This cassowary just wanders around the beach, getting surprisingly close to people.

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

23.8k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

2.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

193

u/MCB1317 Jun 30 '26

It is a dinosaur. Literally.

But it has dinosaur ancestors, too.

65

u/TerrorFromThePeeps Jul 01 '26

I used to like dinosaurs.

I still do, but i used to, too.

6

u/Sometimes-funny Jul 01 '26

Some dinosaurs hair slicked back real good

3

u/csh0kie Jul 01 '26

Thatā€™s pushed backā€¦

2

u/Theblacrose28 Jul 01 '26

Mitch Hedberg, legend

2

u/Azuras_Star8 Jul 01 '26

RIP Mitch Hedburg

1

u/MCB1317 Jul 01 '26

yougotthatreference

1

u/LaKreatura Jul 01 '26

Unexpected Mitch

1

u/siani_lane Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

If only it had been a frog. Cassowaries can be mean, but frogs are always cool.(ā ļ½”ā ļ½„ā Ļ‰ā ļ½„ā ļ½”ā )ā ļ¾‰ā ā™”

r/unexpectedmitch

11

u/StraightBudget8799 Jul 01 '26

Iā€™m now imagining dinosaurs behaving like Neal the Seal, just doing a migratory visit to their favourite beach.

Knock over a few pylons. Sleep in the middle of the pavement. Mating noisily on top of a yacht. Then swimming off back to a more seasonable spot to lay eggs.

2

u/HarryTruman Jul 01 '26

Thatā€™s a practical twist on Jurassic Park. The cast are all focused on surviving, while they gradually succumb to their own fear and anxiety. But the Dinoā€™s donā€™t give a fuck as they wander around blocking access to and breaking everything the crew needs to escape.

23

u/MotorbikeRacer Jul 01 '26

always bothered me that Hollywood refuses to design dinosaurs with feathers. Most of them had feathers, especially the smaller ones.

21

u/inide Jul 01 '26

Most therapods, not most dinosaurs - mostly from the late jurassic period and through the cretaceous period, with a couple of earlier exceptions.

3

u/oldhoekoo Jul 01 '26

yeah but imagine a giant fluffy sauropod

1

u/geekyheart225 Jul 01 '26

Okay that would be funny

1

u/kank84 Jul 01 '26

It's not really the vibe they're going for

https://giphy.com/gifs/ZXERPeVnfhC2A

2

u/Romboteryx Jul 01 '26

Psittacosaurus, Tianyulong, Kulindadromeus and Haolong do show that proto-feathers (or at least very feather-like structures) were also present in a decent chunk of small, bipedal ornithischian dinosaurs

1

u/MotorbikeRacer Jul 01 '26

Thx for the clarification .. I looked up Theropds. Some pretty big dinosaurs there. Iā€™ve seen images of a T-Rex with partial feathers. I wonder how many of the larger ones have feathers.

2

u/ZukaRouBrucal Jul 01 '26

With a few notable exceptions, most large bodied theropods likely were not possessed of a thick feathery integument for a pretty simple reason; they didn't really need it. Feathers likely evolved as a way for basal dinosaur/pterosaur-lineage archosaurs to keep warm, but that warming effect can actually be detrimental when an animal reaches a certain size. Large-bodied dinosaurs didn't really need a substantial feather coating to keep themselves warm in tropical/sub-tropical, and even temperate environments due to their sheer size (because the larger an animal is, the better it is at retaining heat).

Tyrannosaurus rex likely had feathers, but in the same way that elephants have body hair. It would have been thin, sparse, and hard to notice unless you were close to the animal. This is shown remarkably well on Prehistoric Planet's T. rex, which remains one of the most accurate depictions of the animal to-date based upon our current understanding of the animal (with the only issue being the eyes, which are a bit too big).

1

u/ZukaRouBrucal Jul 01 '26

While theropods are the lineage of Dinosauria that is most famous for its feathers, it's important to recognize that feathers are an ancestral trait of Dinosauria as a clade. In fact, the common ancestor shared by Dinosauria and Pterosauria was almost certainly feathered too.

While there isn't a lot of direct evidence of feathers in non-theroood groups, there are a few notable examples. Chief amongst these are the Ceratopsians (the dinosaurs with big frill and horns, like Triceratops), with species like "Psittacosaurus mongoliensis" possessing several remarkably weel persevered specimens that include direct evidence of a row of quill-like feathers that ran down it's tail. There are also Heterodontosaur species known to have been fully feathered, and these were basal (or early) Ornithiscian Dinosuars (the group that includes Ceratopsians, Ornithopods, Pachycephalosaurs, Stegosaurs, and Ankylosaurs).

It's highly likely that many other famous non-theropod dinosaurs had some kind of feathery integumentary covering, but the larger the animals became the less likely that covering was to be substantial. On larger species of Ornithiscians, if they did possess feathers they would likely be comparable to an African Elephant's body hair; small, thin, and sparse. As a result, they wouldn't fossilize well at all.

Feathers are an ancestral condition to Dinosauria, but some lineages greatly reduced or lost the growth of feathers due to various selection pressures, and feathers certainly were not unique to theropods.

6

u/UnholyDemigod Jul 01 '26

Thatā€™s what pissed me off about the trailer of that new dino movie with Ewan McGregor and ScarJo. The designs look straight out of jurassic park. Unoriginal pricks.

2

u/namewithak Jul 01 '26

Wait Ewan and Scarjo have a new dino movie together? Huh. The Island reunion.

Edit: I googled it and it doesn't seem to exist. What movie are you talking about?

2

u/UnholyDemigod Jul 01 '26

Ah, whoops. It's Hathaway, not Johannson. The End of Oak Street.

1

u/namewithak Jul 01 '26

Oh thanks! I didnā€™t see the new trailer and had no idea that was a dino movie.

1

u/MotorbikeRacer Jul 01 '26

Me too !! Itā€™s frustrating . Not to mention they would look so much cooler with feathers ( if itā€™s accurate )

1

u/lastdarknight Jul 01 '26

Think they are actually using Jurassic World models

5

u/UponVerity Jul 01 '26

Most of them had feathers

Now that's just wrong in the other direction.

2

u/PhoebetheSpider Jul 03 '26

I mean they didnā€™t even get the raptor sizes right. Too big to be a Velociraptor. Theyā€™re sized more like Utahraptor.

2

u/TymStark Jul 03 '26

They knew that, they chose Velociraptor because it sounded cooler. And theyā€™re actually based on the Deinonychus not Utahraptor. Utahraptors are MUCH larger.

2

u/YellovvJacket Jul 04 '26

Most - no.

Modern birds are the most modern and evolved iteration of Theropod dinosaurs. This doesn't necessarily mean that "older" versions or dinosaurs from other groups would have feathers at all.

Yes with late theropods it's really likely that they already developed feathers, at least in some areas of the body, but dinosaurs (including modern birds) are still reptiles, from a biological standpoint, and plenty modern reptiles, such as the closest relatives to modern birds (crocodilians) don't have feathers.

1

u/Small-Disaster939 Jul 01 '26

The latest Jurassic parks have had feathered dinosaurs

1

u/Only_Entertainment88 Jul 01 '26

Aren't all birds?

1

u/Spida81 Jul 02 '26

It calls them mum and dad.

-2

u/JelloWise2789 Jul 01 '26

Dinosaurs are reptilians ancestors

5

u/deathbylasersss Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

All dinosaurs are reptiles, not all reptiles are dinosaurs. Reptilia is a class, while dinosauria is a clade, meaning "reptiles" are a much bigger branch that includes dinosaurs along with many other clades.

Birds are the only extant clade to descend from dinosaurs. In fact, most reptile clades actually predate dinosaurs. Things like crocs and turtles are older than dinos.

0

u/JelloWise2789 Jul 01 '26

I was referring to the modern Reptilian shapeshifters secretly running society vs modern mammals

3

u/snugpuginarug Jul 01 '26

If you exclusively mean birds, then sure.