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I love the stuff on your etsy! Shame I'm in the UK, international shipping is pricey :') Keep up the great work, I get excited whenever I see one of your videos arrive in my subscription box
If the adult size of the horns developed in a quick growth spurt as that subadult suggests, that would make a lot of sense as to why there's so much variation. They were very specifially 'individual', whatever had already happened in the animal's life, healed injuries or random genetic chance had a chance to put a mark on the bone before those horns grew in to suit their conditions. Things like individual fitness would probably have had a huge effect too, weaker or less nutritionally healthy individuals might grow wonkier or smaller horns. And let's not forget that keratin sheath~
Very good points! Their coloration could also vary write a bit. (Not thinking in terms of technicolor extravaganza? Just lighter and darker skin and horn color shades and variation in spots and or stripes of they had any.) And another point besides sexual selection. I'm sure as they had no known sexual dimorphism or any morphs but high individual variation the similar individuals search out other similar ones. I cannot remember it's name but I've read this about humans that humans search for similar characteristics in their sexual mate. Both physically and socially. Social similarity means that similar intelligence, social status, religion and sets of values are subconsciously preferred. Even though they were probably socially and philosophically way less complex, they could still have some additional traits they were looking for, a 'value set'. Social status within the heard for sure, but maybe also temperament and food preference.
Funnily enough, in the past when I've been looking at the multiplicity of ceratopsians distinguished by slightly different frill spike arrangements, often I've often pondered the possibility that some of these are just individuals with slightly wonky spikes.
It would make perfect sense based on how general it is among living organisms to have substantial developmental plasticity. Look at red deer for example - we see mature individuals with anywhere from 4 to 16 (or more!) prongs, and everything in between. Why would dinosaurs not have similar variation among individuals within a species?
This whole thing basically stands and falls with the standard deviation of spike shape. If that is relatively wide, you might be absolutely correct. But if sigma is relatively narrow, even a small size or position difference could mean an entirely new species, or subspecies. In that case the paleontologists who want to discover new species are correct. Problem is, the sample size is not large enough to reliably calculate sigma. tl,dr Don't know, could be both.
If you look at deer, antelope, bovines, ect. it's the case that sometimes the animals with wonky horns/antlers do have preexisting health conditions that means they're more fragile and likely to die from stress compared to normal animals. Maybe there's just more of them that died and left fossils at key sites
I mean...considering how diagnostic teeth are to describe mammals, one palaeontologist could grab two human jaws and say "this one has wisdom tooth, this one doesn't. Therefore, they're two different sub-species of human". And that's not the case. At the end, I thought you were describing a case of wisdom tooth :O
No, they wouldn't. One tooth not being there, when all of the others are the same, would *not* cause them to say they're different species. Teeth can be diagnostic, but aren't _all_ that's used. Plus, with all of the other teeth being the same, they would consider it as being the same species.
Would be really interesting to know if it was Styracosaurus that was uniquely weird or if it was Centrosaurus that was uniquely consistent. Do we have a large-enough population of Pachyrhinosaur specimens to check for parietal angle asymmetries?
Eh, not really, they lived several million years ago away from each other, and all Centrosaurus specimens we discovered had nearly identical frills and spikes.
Could be worse, they could have been like a Red deer, i.e. both shed and regrow their spikes every year, and they grow slightly differently every year too :D Also speaking of comparing them with Red deer, they don't have perfectly symmetrical antlers either so maybe palaeontologists in the far flung future may decide every single male deer is a separate sub species due to this :P
I recently found this show and have probably watched a hundred of these YDAW videos. They are some informative and this guy’s gotten a lot better at it over the years. I really appreciate all the cool information!
I would be interested in an episode on dubius genera that were standard dinos in the 70s like monoclonius, androdemus, trachodon, etc. Thanks and eagerly awaiting the next episode.
Sometimes authors are just more inclined to name new taxa instead describing new specimen of a already known genus or species... This is somewhat even more common within ceratopsia (do you remember the 11 “species” of Triceratops?)
Well who wouldn't want to be the one who discovered a "new" specimen? But sometimes it's really hard to draw the line since we only have the bone structure to work with
The whole point of species and genera is determining when differences are large enough so that classifying them as something else would be useful. These are all made up human concepts but someone at some point will draw a box around individuals that are closely related, and determining where that border is changes how useful that box is. In palaeontology especially for the first 120 years or so we just kinda dumped a bunch of species into the same genus and that led to a lot of confusion and ultimately wasn’t helpful than seperating out taxa.
I'm so early! Love your videos! You made me dive back into my dinosaur obsession and I thank you for that, but my wallet doesn't :p About the symmetry, mutations like that are fairly common, I mean, about teeth, well I had 7 extra teeth (thet were extracted, thanks god) and none of them were symmetrical. They also fused with "normal" teeth and we had to get the good one removed too. Sometimes nature can do scary things to the body!
If dinosaurs were alive today, the genuses wouldnt be so strict. I think we should merge a few genuses together. I mean, panthers and tigers are the same genus but if we only knew about them through fossils, they would TOTALLY be different genuses.
Not likely on a skeletal level Tigers, Lions, and most of the genus panthera look identical this actually is the cause for a lot of debate when it comes to fossil big cats as it is extremely difficult to tell members panthera apart especially if you are dealing with a more basal member of the genus
I agree, to a point. I'm pretty sure that a lot different genuses and species of dinosaurs are really probably the same. But given that we only have their skeletons to go with and human nature in general (the desire to be able to say that you identified a new species or genus of dinosaur) it's not going to happen. That is, not unless/until someone comes up with a foolproof method of telling which animals are really the same genus/species and which aren't. It would probably take something like being able to read DNA like a book, but, as we all know DNA decays over time and dinosaur DNA would/is fragmentary, at best. But you get the idea. We need a system that doesn't rely solely on physical appearance in order to truly tell which dinosaurs are the same and which are not.
@@Riceball01 I agree with you and my solution to this issue is that we shouldn't focus only on the physical characteristics , but also the temporal and spacial data given by the fossils. Using both systems combined is what i belive will get us a close as we can to the true diversity of Dinosauria.
I love how much credit Steven gives me for thinking all these meaningful things. “You may be thinking...” yes. I presumed very science-y knowledgeable things like that. Please explain. 😆 BTW shameless plug, the ornaments in the YDAW Etsy shop are fantastic, mine are already wrapped and waiting for Christmas!!
Could the subadult Styracosaurus discussed by Brown et al also have been a younger female? It’s typically males that do the fighting over mates, so a female may have not have had a need for large horns, similar to the lack of antlers on some species of deer or tusks on Asian elephants.
That styraco is just an inmature adult, like a 3 years lion that only needs to grow his hair for 2 more years to be a full lion able to compete for some love.
Really interesting video! I'd love to see a paleoartist's life reconstruction of the specimen with the deformed skull, it would probably have looked really interesting. Your theory about an extra epiparietal 3 seems to make sense too, especially considering the shared anchor point as you demonstrated. Either way, Styracosaurus is definitely more varied than I had ever realized. As a small recommendation, it could be interesting to look at dinosaur depictions in video games as opposed to toys :) games like ARK: Survival Evolved, The Isle, Jurassic World: Evolution, and the upcoming Prehistoric Kingdom
About Styracosaurs big horns being for sexual selection: It might be that the horns are more of a psychological deterrent than physical deterrent. If they are herding/flocking animals, a predator might see a couple bull or mamma bear Styracosaurs and decide to stay away from the whole group, whereas a young Styracosaur isn't going to be scary looking no matter how big its horns are. So grow big first, grow horns later. Also, if there's a high rate of injury and funny growing horns, it might just be safer to grow horns later in life than as rambunctious youngsters. Also worth pointing out that evolution doesn't necessarily have a purpose. As long as it doesn't get you killed, random features can grow in or stick around that don't make any practical sense. Humans have plenty of these.
In one of your episode can't remember which one you said that archosaurs can have five digits but only three of those digits had claws but on a theropod's dewclaw has a claw thats four claws on a foot thats doesn't make sense can you explain this sometime also do a giganotosaurus ydaw episode
Well for starters, _Coelophysis_ is often depicted as just this "long" lizard on two legs, which was probably incorrect since a new study shows it may have needed feathers for insulation
You mentioned the frill variations being tested again time, but I'm curious whether geographic distribution was tested against? Assuming we have fossils from more than one locale.
Oh, good question! Wilson, et al. considered that, but concluded we don't have evidence that eucentrosauran populations got split up, though they were forced to move as the interior seaway coastline did. As far as Styracosaurus itself, it was very restricted geographically (or at least the individuals we've found were). Brown, et al.'s Styracosaurus specimens all came from within ~20km of one another.
Awesome! The additional P3 reminds me that my missing permanent tooth causes my whole teeth shifted, and finally it gets me two canine teeth next to each other (got abraded by the upper true canine teeth).
Thoughts on the ontogenetic horn variance topic: The lack of "full size" horns on a young adult specimen doesn't 100% imply that the horns were totally ornamental, at least based on the "vulnerable youths" argument, if Styracosaurs lived in herds. Youths wouldn't need protective horns because their actual protection is in being close to many full-grown adults. Also, if a specimen known to be, for all intents and purposes, an adult, still has horns that appear juvenile, that might indicate that the horns continued to grow throughout life.
Looks like Majora's Mask from some angles lol. Also, it's neat to hear that deformities survive in fossils as well! Reminds us that they were real animals and not mythical monsters
The late horn and ornamentation growth certainly does imply mating purpose, but regarding defence it could also indicate strong herd defence with the fully ornamented adults protecting the juveniles in case of predator attacks.
its so amazing to me how just one specimen can teach us so much about a group of dinosaurs! that almost full-grown individual that had yet to grow in its horns is incredible! i wonder how prevalent that trait was among other genera.
(about the sub adult styracosaurus segment) this sounds similar to deer for me, think about how bucks grow to almost full size before getting their first antlers, these first antlers aren't very big, the bigger the antlers the older and stronger the buck. however, despite not having antlers when young and having very small antlers as fresh adults, healthy bucks will still readily use their antlers as a defensive weapon against wolves, bears and mountain lions, this could be equated to styracosaurus
This was so cool and interesting and just made me love Styracosaurus even more! It always helps to remember every species will have variation between individuals, and some species show it more than others. That can make it tricky to figure out what you're looking at, sure, but to me it also makes it more interesting and exciting. This channel is a godsend, btw. I'm glad I discovered it in 2020 of all times.
I love these videos. You guys have a great way of discussing in depth the small details of dinosaur biology that really flesh them out and make them seem like real animals that actually lived
I'm so glad you made a video about this. Watching it makes it much easier to understand than reading some scientific article, especially for a small brained dino like me.
Seems like the uniformity of later centrosaurines could be an example of a genetic bottleneck: tons of variation in styracosaurus followed by some severe population reduction primarily leaves individuals displaying stellasaurus traits, perhaps as a biological advantage or just random chance.
I have Greg Paul's Dinosaur Field Guide book with all the skeletal reconstructions, and though I do think he has a habit of dumping lots of obviously different related species in the same genus just for simplicity, I was struck by how near identical the post cranial skeletons of so many ceratopsids seem to be. Maybe there could be more to this...
I'm watching the thing about the parietal horns "crowding" makes me think of wisdom teeth in humans (and then you mention it as well). After hearing you talk about the juvenile, Im wondering if they developed in a sonic-hedgehog conveyor akin to our fingers. You also said the horns are initially ostederms. If an injury breaks a proto-horn, could it grow into two horns?
I'd say its more in line with protecting its neck. Same animals like water buffalo have horns growing backwards facing the neck, which is mostly for protecting its neck should a predator attempt to go for its vitals. Of course, it can be used as a weapon to a certain extent
I wanna make a dinosaur survival game one day with acurrate dinossaurs kinda like ark just so i can incorporate those random facts like individual variation, extra horns, itd be so fun to tame a styraco and see each of them have a diferent set of horns
Kind of makes me think of modern deer/elk/moose/etc other cervidae (I know the difference between horns and antlers, but hear me out) where there's a ton of variation between number and arrangement and shape of points on their horns/antlers, both within a species and between species. In the case of Styracosaurus, we don't know enough yet to tell if we're looking at two different deer or a deer and an elk.
Random idea. You know how tiger stripes are unique and so are finger prints? Imgine if some of the Ceratopsian species had that, but when it came to their frills (Either with patterns, ostioderms, spikes, lumps, etc). Idk just a random thought
How are we sure that the frill morphology variation seen in Styracosaurus is evidence of either temporal or individual variation within the same species? Could these variant Styracosaurus have actually been different styracosaur species that coexisted?
Maybe the horns grew differently because that's how they could tell each other apart instead of making a dozen or so different species of Styracosaurus consider them all one species also do giganotosaurus or another carcharodontosaurian for the YDAW series
Horner's video on Shape Shifting Dinosaurs is interesting... he talks about how there are so many different genus in a species... and it's all because palaeontologists have huge egos, and want to name what they find, rather than looking at the fossils correctly and calling them what they are, babies and adults of the same species.
I found this talk extremely interesting! Styracosaurus wasn't really a dinosaur that was in our minds and mouths when I was in elementary school, and only in the last maybe ten years or so am I learning that there were so many more than I could have possibly known back then. Also, and this is unrelated to the topic of the video, but how ridiculous is it that even though I was in kindergarten in 1988 I still pictured Iguanadon roughly like its 1930's appearance in the outro until I was in my 20's?
12:00 do we know if they cared for their young? If they did then the adults could've looked after the juveniles and it wouldn't necessarily be an issue.
Even in modern hooded mammals, the young are still vulnerable. Predators will try and separate calves from their mothers, as young animals are easier targets. Most calves will die from predators, hence why herds will all give birth within a few days, so that there are more calves than predators and statistically raise the chances that any one calf will survive.
It seems strange to me that SO MANY different styles are shown in that one era. But I am not a scientist, I don't know what the fossils look like or what sizes they are, but I can't help feeling that at least two or three of those are just life stages.
the endless war continues. i am working on a paper that aims to reclassify the lumpers (Paleontologos gooii) and splitters (P. pricklius) under a unified species. but im sure some new finding will be unearthed that will divide them again pretty soon..
Doesnt the same thing w horns showing up late in the growth of the animal happen with bovine because the adults protect the young but the horns are still for defense?
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If you like our stuff, and would like to help us keep making it, please consider chipping in over at patreon.com/YDAW, or taking a look at our products at www.etsy.com/shop/YDAWtheShop, or by buying Steven a coffee at ko-fi.com/ydawtheshow . All proceeds go back into making the videos you see here!
Puertasaurus
I love the stuff on your etsy! Shame I'm in the UK, international shipping is pricey :')
Keep up the great work, I get excited whenever I see one of your videos arrive in my subscription box
"its not a phase mom" ☠️
“But it bugged me, and now it might bug you. You’re welcome.” - that’s basically the whole reason I watch this show, honestly
LOL hard same
No joke, I scrolled down to the comments and saw this JUST as he was saying it in the video :P
5:25 Now I'm imagining a kids show featuring dinosaurs and there's this adorable Styracosaurus with braces, but for its frill horns.
Dear God, you are a genius!
Deformed fossils are so cool!
It’s such a good reminder these WERE living breathing organisms like us!
@Jacob Masten thanks 😂
Future scientists might think your fossil is cool
i like to imagine dinosaurs with really extreme defects which must have existed, imagine a new-born diprosopus t rex!
"It's not a phase mom!" Styracosaurus says as he walks out of hot topic
If the adult size of the horns developed in a quick growth spurt as that subadult suggests, that would make a lot of sense as to why there's so much variation. They were very specifially 'individual', whatever had already happened in the animal's life, healed injuries or random genetic chance had a chance to put a mark on the bone before those horns grew in to suit their conditions. Things like individual fitness would probably have had a huge effect too, weaker or less nutritionally healthy individuals might grow wonkier or smaller horns. And let's not forget that keratin sheath~
Much like a calico cat’s coloring is determined by a random flicker between genetic options.
This is a good point!
Very good points!
Their coloration could also vary write a bit. (Not thinking in terms of technicolor extravaganza? Just lighter and darker skin and horn color shades and variation in spots and or stripes of they had any.)
And another point besides sexual selection.
I'm sure as they had no known sexual dimorphism or any morphs but high individual variation the similar individuals search out other similar ones. I cannot remember it's name but I've read this about humans that humans search for similar characteristics in their sexual mate. Both physically and socially. Social similarity means that similar intelligence, social status, religion and sets of values are subconsciously preferred.
Even though they were probably socially and philosophically way less complex, they could still have some additional traits they were looking for, a 'value set'. Social status within the heard for sure, but maybe also temperament and food preference.
Funnily enough, in the past when I've been looking at the multiplicity of ceratopsians distinguished by slightly different frill spike arrangements, often I've often pondered the possibility that some of these are just individuals with slightly wonky spikes.
Huh funny
It would make perfect sense based on how general it is among living organisms to have substantial developmental plasticity. Look at red deer for example - we see mature individuals with anywhere from 4 to 16 (or more!) prongs, and everything in between. Why would dinosaurs not have similar variation among individuals within a species?
@@FuriosoDrummer Well to be fair, antlers and horns have pretty different developmental histories.
This whole thing basically stands and falls with the standard deviation of spike shape.
If that is relatively wide, you might be absolutely correct.
But if sigma is relatively narrow, even a small size or position difference could mean an entirely new species, or subspecies.
In that case the paleontologists who want to discover new species are correct.
Problem is, the sample size is not large enough to reliably calculate sigma.
tl,dr Don't know, could be both.
If you look at deer, antelope, bovines, ect. it's the case that sometimes the animals with wonky horns/antlers do have preexisting health conditions that means they're more fragile and likely to die from stress compared to normal animals. Maybe there's just more of them that died and left fossils at key sites
I mean...considering how diagnostic teeth are to describe mammals, one palaeontologist could grab two human jaws and say "this one has wisdom tooth, this one doesn't. Therefore, they're two different sub-species of human".
And that's not the case. At the end, I thought you were describing a case of wisdom tooth :O
I've been wondering this too.
No, they wouldn't. One tooth not being there, when all of the others are the same, would *not* cause them to say they're different species. Teeth can be diagnostic, but aren't _all_ that's used. Plus, with all of the other teeth being the same, they would consider it as being the same species.
maybe if they had good memory they could recognise each other by looking at the horns of each individual's spikes
Would be really interesting to know if it was Styracosaurus that was uniquely weird or if it was Centrosaurus that was uniquely consistent. Do we have a large-enough population of Pachyrhinosaur specimens to check for parietal angle asymmetries?
One would think the Colville River in Alaska would be a good site for that.
so, is this potentially implying that some centrosaurines are actually styracosaurus' with different horn growths?
@Jacob Kimber lmao same
Well it depends on when they are from, most ceratopsids didn't exist at the same time.
Eh, not really, they lived several million years ago away from each other, and all Centrosaurus specimens we discovered had nearly identical frills and spikes.
Could be worse, they could have been like a Red deer, i.e. both shed and regrow their spikes every year, and they grow slightly differently every year too :D
Also speaking of comparing them with Red deer, they don't have perfectly symmetrical antlers either so maybe palaeontologists in the far flung future may decide every single male deer is a separate sub species due to this :P
I hope Brown hears your hypothesis and tests it. It could help to understand better what is going on with this dinosaur.
Always great to see more YDAW
Makes you wonder if the asymmetrical dinos had a hard time with attracting mates or not. I wonder if it was a big deal for the animal.
Could also go the other way - it may be seen as unique and sexy, like suddenly developing blonde hair.
Makes me think of goat horns and deer antlers. Goat horns can be pretty nuts and deer antlers can be ridiculously asymmetrical with their prongs.
I recently found this show and have probably watched a hundred of these YDAW videos. They are some informative and this guy’s gotten a lot better at it over the years. I really appreciate all the cool information!
They didn't have orthodontics because orthodonts didn't evolve until the late Paleocene. (They were offshoots of glyptodonts.)
I would be interested in an episode on dubius genera that were standard dinos in the 70s like monoclonius, androdemus, trachodon, etc. Thanks and eagerly awaiting the next episode.
Ah yes, Troodontidae.
Named for a species that doesn’t exist.
Sometimes authors are just more inclined to name new taxa instead describing new specimen of a already known genus or species... This is somewhat even more common within ceratopsia (do you remember the 11 “species” of Triceratops?)
imagine all the other dinosaurs speciment variations that where depicted as different species of genus of animal
I can't remember if it was PBS EONS, or SciShow, but they had a video talking about redoing the tree of life. Honestly, I couldn't agree more
Well who wouldn't want to be the one who discovered a "new" specimen?
But sometimes it's really hard to draw the line since we only have the bone structure to work with
Suppose it depends if they were actually contemporary.
The whole point of species and genera is determining when differences are large enough so that classifying them as something else would be useful. These are all made up human concepts but someone at some point will draw a box around individuals that are closely related, and determining where that border is changes how useful that box is. In palaeontology especially for the first 120 years or so we just kinda dumped a bunch of species into the same genus and that led to a lot of confusion and ultimately wasn’t helpful than seperating out taxa.
recently ive rewatched the styracosaurus video and wondered if you were going to do a synapisode about it. There you are doing a synapisode about it!
So we should give Styracosaurus braces, neat.
I'm so early! Love your videos! You made me dive back into my dinosaur obsession and I thank you for that, but my wallet doesn't :p
About the symmetry, mutations like that are fairly common, I mean, about teeth, well I had 7 extra teeth (thet were extracted, thanks god) and none of them were symmetrical. They also fused with "normal" teeth and we had to get the good one removed too. Sometimes nature can do scary things to the body!
I always look forward to a YDAW episode! Keep it up!!
If only they had horn braces
Add this to the list of reasons why styracosaurus is the most interesting ceratopsian
Besides Sinoceratops anyway
Why the sino?
@@Bullboy_Adventures because its the only advanced ceratopsian outside of north America, it was found in china, Asia's ceratopsians are primitive
If dinosaurs were alive today, the genuses wouldnt be so strict. I think we should merge a few genuses together. I mean, panthers and tigers are the same genus but if we only knew about them through fossils, they would TOTALLY be different genuses.
Not likely on a skeletal level Tigers, Lions, and most of the genus panthera look identical this actually is the cause for a lot of debate when it comes to fossil big cats as it is extremely difficult to tell members panthera apart especially if you are dealing with a more basal member of the genus
I agree, to a point. I'm pretty sure that a lot different genuses and species of dinosaurs are really probably the same. But given that we only have their skeletons to go with and human nature in general (the desire to be able to say that you identified a new species or genus of dinosaur) it's not going to happen. That is, not unless/until someone comes up with a foolproof method of telling which animals are really the same genus/species and which aren't. It would probably take something like being able to read DNA like a book, but, as we all know DNA decays over time and dinosaur DNA would/is fragmentary, at best. But you get the idea. We need a system that doesn't rely solely on physical appearance in order to truly tell which dinosaurs are the same and which are not.
@@Riceball01 I agree with you and my solution to this issue is that we shouldn't focus only on the physical characteristics , but also the temporal and spacial data given by the fossils. Using both systems combined is what i belive will get us a close as we can to the true diversity of Dinosauria.
I think on a skeletal level loads of modern Panthera species will fall into one species.
I believe the opposite will be the case.
I love how much credit Steven gives me for thinking all these meaningful things. “You may be thinking...” yes. I presumed very science-y knowledgeable things like that. Please explain. 😆 BTW shameless plug, the ornaments in the YDAW Etsy shop are fantastic, mine are already wrapped and waiting for Christmas!!
Could the subadult Styracosaurus discussed by Brown et al also have been a younger female? It’s typically males that do the fighting over mates, so a female may have not have had a need for large horns, similar to the lack of antlers on some species of deer or tusks on Asian elephants.
Great job, and there was a 2020 study on dilophosaurus.
That styraco is just an inmature adult, like a 3 years lion that only needs to grow his hair for 2 more years to be a full lion able to compete for some love.
Really interesting video! I'd love to see a paleoartist's life reconstruction of the specimen with the deformed skull, it would probably have looked really interesting. Your theory about an extra epiparietal 3 seems to make sense too, especially considering the shared anchor point as you demonstrated. Either way, Styracosaurus is definitely more varied than I had ever realized.
As a small recommendation, it could be interesting to look at dinosaur depictions in video games as opposed to toys :) games like ARK: Survival Evolved, The Isle, Jurassic World: Evolution, and the upcoming Prehistoric Kingdom
100% agree :)
Enjoyable! First thing I thought of when you were describing this amount of variation is antlers in Whitetail and to a lesser extent Mule Deer.
Omg, he said, "see you next time"!! I'm so happy 😭 I've missed the regular uploads
I hope we'll get a new spinosaurus episode soon, discussing all the recent discoveries and the different iterations it went through!
Can't believe you actually made the video I suggested
I won’t dwell at all on this but am I the only one who thinks Steven looks good with the salt/pepper hair?
About Styracosaurs big horns being for sexual selection: It might be that the horns are more of a psychological deterrent than physical deterrent. If they are herding/flocking animals, a predator might see a couple bull or mamma bear Styracosaurs and decide to stay away from the whole group, whereas a young Styracosaur isn't going to be scary looking no matter how big its horns are. So grow big first, grow horns later. Also, if there's a high rate of injury and funny growing horns, it might just be safer to grow horns later in life than as rambunctious youngsters. Also worth pointing out that evolution doesn't necessarily have a purpose. As long as it doesn't get you killed, random features can grow in or stick around that don't make any practical sense. Humans have plenty of these.
In one of your episode can't remember which one you said that archosaurs can have five digits but only three of those digits had claws but on a theropod's dewclaw has a claw thats four claws on a foot thats doesn't make sense can you explain this sometime also do a giganotosaurus ydaw episode
Great job, as always!
Could you do a coelophysis YDAW I think it’s pretty neat and would like to see if they got anything wrong, they probably did.
Well for starters, _Coelophysis_ is often depicted as just this "long" lizard on two legs, which was probably incorrect since a new study shows it may have needed feathers for insulation
Makes me think about Torosaurus vs Triceratops.
You mentioned the frill variations being tested again time, but I'm curious whether geographic distribution was tested against? Assuming we have fossils from more than one locale.
Oh, good question!
Wilson, et al. considered that, but concluded we don't have evidence that eucentrosauran populations got split up, though they were forced to move as the interior seaway coastline did.
As far as Styracosaurus itself, it was very restricted geographically (or at least the individuals we've found were). Brown, et al.'s Styracosaurus specimens all came from within ~20km of one another.
As a Ceratopsian fan, I really enjoyed this one. Keep up the good work!
Awesome! The additional P3 reminds me that my missing permanent tooth causes my whole teeth shifted, and finally it gets me two canine teeth next to each other (got abraded by the upper true canine teeth).
interresting as always, deformed fossils are fascinating
As Perpetually Rebranding says (and now it might bug you...) I like the way you deliver complex information, so that even I can understand it.
new YDAW video let's GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
It makes sense, modern animals that grow big horns have lots of variation within species. Just look at cow horns.
Really cool so these these understandings come to light in our lifetime. Please keep us up to date if things change again
An orthodontist for horn sounds like an adorable idea for anthropomorphized dinosaurs; an orthoceratist?
Thoughts on the ontogenetic horn variance topic:
The lack of "full size" horns on a young adult specimen doesn't 100% imply that the horns were totally ornamental, at least based on the "vulnerable youths" argument, if Styracosaurs lived in herds. Youths wouldn't need protective horns because their actual protection is in being close to many full-grown adults.
Also, if a specimen known to be, for all intents and purposes, an adult, still has horns that appear juvenile, that might indicate that the horns continued to grow throughout life.
There are no toys of Scansoriopterygids, but I hope they get a dedicated video in YDAW some day!
There is a miniature toy of Yi qi by PNSO, but I'm not sure anyone would send that in.
I'd really like to see the subadults. If these things were herd dinos maybe the young didn't need the frill because the adults would protect them?
Looks like Majora's Mask from some angles lol.
Also, it's neat to hear that deformities survive in fossils as well! Reminds us that they were real animals and not mythical monsters
The late horn and ornamentation growth certainly does imply mating purpose, but regarding defence it could also indicate strong herd defence with the fully ornamented adults protecting the juveniles in case of predator attacks.
its so amazing to me how just one specimen can teach us so much about a group of dinosaurs! that almost full-grown individual that had yet to grow in its horns is incredible! i wonder how prevalent that trait was among other genera.
Funnily enough, monoclonius went for a similar path
(about the sub adult styracosaurus segment) this sounds similar to deer for me, think about how bucks grow to almost full size before getting their first antlers, these first antlers aren't very big, the bigger the antlers the older and stronger the buck. however, despite not having antlers when young and having very small antlers as fresh adults, healthy bucks will still readily use their antlers as a defensive weapon against wolves, bears and mountain lions, this could be equated to styracosaurus
This was so cool and interesting and just made me love Styracosaurus even more! It always helps to remember every species will have variation between individuals, and some species show it more than others. That can make it tricky to figure out what you're looking at, sure, but to me it also makes it more interesting and exciting. This channel is a godsend, btw. I'm glad I discovered it in 2020 of all times.
I love these videos. You guys have a great way of discussing in depth the small details of dinosaur biology that really flesh them out and make them seem like real animals that actually lived
Could you guys do acrocanthosaurus? I’d especially love to hear about its phylogeny
Neoteny in paper 3 seems very interesting, great video as always!
So much information condensed and it’s still a light and fun video to watch. Awesome animations also! I love this channel 💚
I'm so glad you made a video about this. Watching it makes it much easier to understand than reading some scientific article, especially for a small brained dino like me.
Really interesting, thank you. Anything else you have on ontology especially would be extremely welcome. Fascinating.
Maybe Rubeosaurus was the friend we made along the way?
consider me properly bugged
Seems like the uniformity of later centrosaurines could be an example of a genetic bottleneck: tons of variation in styracosaurus followed by some severe population reduction primarily leaves individuals displaying stellasaurus traits, perhaps as a biological advantage or just random chance.
I have Greg Paul's Dinosaur Field Guide book with all the skeletal reconstructions, and though I do think he has a habit of dumping lots of obviously different related species in the same genus just for simplicity, I was struck by how near identical the post cranial skeletons of so many ceratopsids seem to be. Maybe there could be more to this...
I'm watching the thing about the parietal horns "crowding" makes me think of wisdom teeth in humans (and then you mention it as well).
After hearing you talk about the juvenile, Im wondering if they developed in a sonic-hedgehog conveyor akin to our fingers.
You also said the horns are initially ostederms. If an injury breaks a proto-horn, could it grow into two horns?
I think it makes perfect sense that such elaborate ornamentation has more to do with sexual selection than defense.
I'd say its more in line with protecting its neck. Same animals like water buffalo have horns growing backwards facing the neck, which is mostly for protecting its neck should a predator attempt to go for its vitals. Of course, it can be used as a weapon to a certain extent
I wanna make a dinosaur survival game one day with acurrate dinossaurs kinda like ark just so i can incorporate those random facts like individual variation, extra horns, itd be so fun to tame a styraco and see each of them have a diferent set of horns
Fascinating. I wonder how many species we have confused. Maybe Torosaurus and Triceratops are the same species after all.
you'll have to update this now that two juvenile orthodontists were identified in the dinosaur park formation this year
Are the sexes of many individual specimens known? It would be interesting to examine how much variation was caused by sexual dimorphism.
Kind of makes me think of modern deer/elk/moose/etc other cervidae (I know the difference between horns and antlers, but hear me out) where there's a ton of variation between number and arrangement and shape of points on their horns/antlers, both within a species and between species. In the case of Styracosaurus, we don't know enough yet to tell if we're looking at two different deer or a deer and an elk.
Random idea. You know how tiger stripes are unique and so are finger prints? Imgine if some of the Ceratopsian species had that, but when it came to their frills (Either with patterns, ostioderms, spikes, lumps, etc). Idk just a random thought
How are we sure that the frill morphology variation seen in Styracosaurus is evidence of either temporal or individual variation within the same species? Could these variant Styracosaurus have actually been different styracosaur species that coexisted?
Maybe the horns grew differently because that's how they could tell each other apart instead of making a dozen or so different species of Styracosaurus consider them all one species also do giganotosaurus or another carcharodontosaurian for the YDAW series
Now I'm picturing a young Styracosaur with braces on their horns.
Someone should draw that!
Please make more films about recent papers like this!
Probably a weird thought, but I'd love to see you collaborate with Clint's Reptiles
I wonder if these arrangements also happens with Pachycephalosaurs and Stegoceras, or any other head adorned dinosaur.
Rubeosaurus still sounds super cool tho soooo......
Horner's video on Shape Shifting Dinosaurs is interesting... he talks about how there are so many different genus in a species... and it's all because palaeontologists have huge egos, and want to name what they find, rather than looking at the fossils correctly and calling them what they are, babies and adults of the same species.
ydaw can u plz do some videos on cenozoic animals. i personally want you to do gastornis
Yay more videos!
I’d love to see you guys cover ceratosaurus
This was absolutely fascinating.
This is such a great video. Thank you
I found this talk extremely interesting! Styracosaurus wasn't really a dinosaur that was in our minds and mouths when I was in elementary school, and only in the last maybe ten years or so am I learning that there were so many more than I could have possibly known back then.
Also, and this is unrelated to the topic of the video, but how ridiculous is it that even though I was in kindergarten in 1988 I still pictured Iguanadon roughly like its 1930's appearance in the outro until I was in my 20's?
12:00 do we know if they cared for their young? If they did then the adults could've looked after the juveniles and it wouldn't necessarily be an issue.
Even in modern hooded mammals, the young are still vulnerable. Predators will try and separate calves from their mothers, as young animals are easier targets. Most calves will die from predators, hence why herds will all give birth within a few days, so that there are more calves than predators and statistically raise the chances that any one calf will survive.
Missed this
It seems strange to me that SO MANY different styles are shown in that one era. But I am not a scientist, I don't know what the fossils look like or what sizes they are, but I can't help feeling that at least two or three of those are just life stages.
Took a bite when young?;(
Grew back deformed?;) ...Valley of Gawanji bite splitting the p3
the endless war continues.
i am working on a paper that aims to reclassify the lumpers (Paleontologos gooii) and splitters (P. pricklius) under a unified species. but im sure some new finding will be unearthed that will divide them again pretty soon..
Styracosaurus didn't need and orthodontist, they needed an Orthocornist!
Doesnt the same thing w horns showing up late in the growth of the animal happen with bovine because the adults protect the young but the horns are still for defense?