
'Enigmatic' footprints reveal prehistoric crocodile that walked on two legs - clouddrover
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/11/world/footprints-ancient-two-legged-crocodile-scn/index.html
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fractallyte
Science Digest magazine, September 1983, had a short note about one type of
dinosaur: _If dinosaurs were not extinct, reptilian humanoids might have
replaced us. Stenonychosaurus inequalus, a 10ft dinosaur, had a brain-body
ratio nearly that of primitive mammals. It is a likely choice._

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toohotatopic
Like cpu and programs, the mind is one thing, culture the other. Would it be
possible for dinosaurs to have something like human culture?

Children are attached to their parents for years to learn culture. A bondage
that to some extend is formed in the womb. How would dinosaurs have a
'natural' way for education when they hedge from eggs and are left to
themselves? All their culture has to be encoded in DNA which most likely takes
up more brain tissue and much more time to evolve.

There are breeding birds, so some form of attachment is possible. But that
needs another limit. Birds need feathers before they can live on their own.
Which limit could exist for dinosaurs? Crocodiles and turtles have kept on
non-evolving for quite some time.

(And there is no place for sapiened birds because the head is too heavy.)

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dTal
Why do you assume that being hatched from eggs means they have to fend for
themselves? Birds are usually brought up by their parents.

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toohotatopic
I have edited my comment shortly after posting and added a paragraph. In
short: Birds need to develop feathers. How would a dinosaur be bound to its
parents?

It's the other way round: hatching from eggs means being able to fend for
oneself which means that they don't learn that they have to stick around.

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aristophenes
What if the mud that preserved the prints was covered in water at the time the
foot prints were made. Then the croc was just floating along with its back
legs down.

I suspect some paleontologists extrapolate too much from small data points.
Which is somewhat safe in their field, hows it going to be disproven?

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Gracana
From TFA:

"We ruled out swimming because the trackways are so regular," said Martin
Lockley, a paleontologist and professor at the University of Colorado and an
author of the study.

"Modern crocs sometimes use hind feet to punt along, but the tracks are
irregular incomplete, washed out splayed and not in a regular one foot in
front of the next trackway pattern."

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georgecmu
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_of_Eden](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_of_Eden)

In the parallel universe of this novel, Earth was not struck by an asteroid 65
million years before the present. Consequently, the Cretaceous–Paleogene
extinction event which wiped out the dinosaurs and other related reptiles
never happened, leaving the way clear for an intelligent species to eventually
evolve from mosasaurs, a family of Late Cretaceous marine lizards closely
related to the modern monitor lizards.

The intelligent reptiloid species is called the Yilanè, and represents the
dominant life form on most of the planet. However, during the evolutionary
process, the species became non-viable on the North American continent and
Caribbean area, leaving them free of Yilanè for millions of years and opening
an ecological niche for a top predator. A human-like species, the Tanu,
evolved to fill the niche in North America, but are only found on that
continent. Unlike humans, which evolved from African primates, the Tanu have
evolved from a lineage of New World monkey. By the time the novel begins, the
humanoids have reached a late stone age level of technology and culture, with
a number of societies having developed farming skills.

The Yilanè, having had millions of years of civilization, have a very advanced
society primarily based on a mastery of the biological sciences, especially
genetic engineering, so much so that almost every tool and artifact they use
is a modified lifeform. Their boats were originally squids, their submarines
are enhanced ichthyosaurs (here called uruketos), while their guns are
modified monitor lizards which eject projectiles using pressurised gas.

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tsegratis
Foot print and gait like an emu. Is this a pre-bird, or simply big-bird

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4gotunameagain
Phew, lucky we skipped that one

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RickJWagner
Interesting. Are you sometimes confused about how you can distinguish between
an alligator and a crocodile? There's a simple rule of thumb, based on the
relative time that the animal is sighted.

If you see it when it is later, then it is an alligator. But if you see it
after while, then it is a crocodile.

Easy peasy!

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WalterBright
Found a better picture:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorn#/media/File:StarTrek-
Gorn...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorn#/media/File:StarTrek-Gorn.jpg)

