
Small horned dinosaur from China, a Triceratops relative, walked on two feet - conse_lad
https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/small-horned-dinosaur-china-triceratops-relative-walked-two-feet-penn-paleontologists-find
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phil248
Kids these days get to grow up with much cooler dinosaurs. They've found like
eight sauropods larger than the brontosaurus since I was a kid in the 90's.
And now brontosaurus isn't even a species, they changed it to a genus!

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apatosaurus
No, brontosaurus turned out to be an incorrectly assembled/restored partial
skeleton with incorrect skulls substituted when unavailable, including bones
from two different animals (apatosaurus and diplodocus or brachiosaurus), to
depict a single animal. This naming fiasco happened starting around 1969 and
validity opinions became widely held toward the end of the 1980's.

That's why Jurassic Park went with brachiosaurus as the lead sauropod.
Brontosaurus, for a period of time, was viewed as incorrect and the product of
archeological errors.

Since then, naming conventions have re-adopted brontosaurus as a subtype of
apatosaurus to alleviate some of the confusion as to whether brontosaurus is a
valid dinosaur name. As of 2015, opinions have solidified with deeper context
and better data. It's sort of like the rebellion against whether Pluto is the
ninth planet or not. So many people just _like_ the name, brontosaurus, that
there's been a consensus to squeeze it back into a usable, valid place that
doesn't leave the world confused and dismayed.

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labster
I'm glad with articles like this and others recently[1], academia is finally
taking the possibility of lizardmen seriously.

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19707426](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19707426)

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i_feel_great
And one day, we may encounter them as dramatized in Star Trek
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distant_Origin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distant_Origin)

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ohso
That is extremely cool and they look extremely grumpy from that photo.

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hunglee2
For anyone interested in anatomically accurate depictions of dinosaurs, head
over to Dr Mark Witton's blog. He is a palaeontological researcher AND
paleoartist.

[https://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/](https://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/)

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SantalBlush
Looks bizarre at first, but then you start to see the similarities to a bird.

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ahje
Yeah, add feathers and it'll almost look like a chicken. The question is if
that's just the illustrator's bias, or if they actually did look like that.

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singularity2001
Many dinosaurs had feathers, can it be ruled out for this critter?

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senectus1
Am I reading too much into the picture? the thing has a "Red" head... just a
coincidental color or yet another bit of Chinese propaganda?

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nkozyra
You are reading too much into the picture.

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senectus1
ok fair enough.

