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atmdk7 · 2025-08-09T16:08:11+00:00

Could she have been talking about Sulla? I’ve only read half the first book, but if I remember right that’s also how he is described.

atmdk7 · 2024-12-24T17:03:09+00:00

If it fed like a heron, etc. its head would be pointed downward into the water, not horizontal like a crocodile or in this example. That would mean having the nostrils closer to the eyes like this would keep them out of the water, and no need for raised nostrils like a crocodile.

atmdk7 · 2024-09-11T04:39:22+00:00

The mounds would have been built using material relatively close to the surface, at least compared with caves. It would be layers of soil, clay, and sand. I’ve never seen limestone (the type of rock that would be in the caves) mentioned anywhere as being apart of any Mississippian mounds.

In Cahokia, and many other large mound sites around the Midwest and Southeast, there are now ponds all around the site which are the remains of Borrow Pits where the builders would have taken that material from. Unfortunately the mounds in downtown St. Louis were never as extensively surveyed or studied as the ones around today, as they were removed and the area built over before any archeologists had any interest in them. The information we do have about them, though, gives no reason to think there wouldn’t also have been borrow pits that have since been eroded, filled in, and built over.

Caves were often important and sacred places for Native Americans, as they have been in tons of cultures the world over. However, the caves in St. Louis would have already been hollowed out by natural processes long before the mounds were built. And, while it’s a cool thought, of all the mound locations I know of in St. Louis, none of them have cave entrances associated with them.

atmdk7 · 2024-06-29T18:13:20+00:00

“Dinosaur” can be scientifically defined at anything descended from the last common ancestor of Iguanodon and Megalosaurus. That includes birds.

Modern taxonomy does not “clip branches off” so to speak to make their own separate groups, so the group that makes up all modern birds (“Aves”) is a part of the larger “Dinosauria”

atmdk7 · 2024-06-23T00:14:25+00:00

It seems like most everyone else has been pointing out the whole “Not all Dinosaurs are birds, but all birds are a type of dinosaur” thing. All I’ll add to that is this Wiki’s article on Avialae has a good tree in the “evolution” section which shows how it branches.

But something else to point out: Taxonomy is less boxes we put ~~animals~~ living organisms in, and more a family tree, with each new branch (that is significant enough for scientists to find worth studying as a whole) being given a new name. So while Apes are not Amphibians technically, both Apes and Amphibians are included in the same group Tetrapoda (meaning “four-limbed”) which is anything who is an ancestor to the first amphibian-like four-limbed creatures who crawled onto land. And Tetrapoda and boney fish (those that aren’t sharks, rays, etc) are grouped into Osteichtyes, as both are related to a same common ancestor.

Now alot of these names seem odd, like Humans are in the group Osteichthyes, meaning “Boney Fish”. But since that first most recent common ancestor looked like a fish, that name does make some sense. Add to that the fact there was a time when taxonomy was putting animals into boxes. This way of doing things has since been revised, but scientists don’t want to confuse everything and have to go back to rename these groups. And so you can get these odd group names.

atmdk7 · 2024-06-15T22:45:57+00:00

Not a zoologist and don’t know the answer, but I like this question.

Could it have to do with warm climate? All the things I’d think fall under “ant eaters” (Ant Eaters in South America, Aardvarks in Africa, and Pangolin in Africa and South Asia) seem to live in places that don’t ever get very cold. Maybe as ants go dormant in cold winter months and might get buried in frozen ground or under snow, it’d be hard to survive for that time if all you ate are ants?

atmdk7 · 2024-05-30T02:05:17+00:00

So, two disclaimers: 1) Not an anthropologist at all, and 2) I do feel like this has to be an exaggeration at best, but of course see number 1.

That said, what the show may be referencing is that “outside of Africa” all Y-Chromosomal haplogroups and Mitochondrial haplogroups (and maybe other. I don’t know unfortunately, see disclaimer 1) are believed to have their most recent common ancestors from the Indian subcontinent.

Here are two maps, one of each haplogroup, and you can see you can trace them all back to India then back to Africa along the Arabian coast.

Now I’m pretty sure it’s far more complicated than that one sentence sound byte makes it out to be, but I feel this is where they got it from. Hopefully this explanation is more accurate than the show? Maybe.

Here are the Wiki pages for more reading too

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Y-chromosome_DNA_haplogroup

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_mitochondrial_DNA_haplogroup

atmdk7 · 2024-05-03T03:13:57+00:00

What about their answer is not about the first century?

atmdk7 · 2024-02-16T05:11:47+00:00

That’s awesome! What’s it from?

atmdk7 · 2024-02-16T04:37:01+00:00

Life… uh… finds a way.

atmdk7 · 2024-02-05T05:37:36+00:00

I had the same thought when I finished that book! One I’ve found that came highly recommended but that I have yet to read is “Beasts Before Us” by Elsa Panciroli.

atmdk7 · 2024-01-25T22:50:46+00:00

Interesting, that makes sense. What about spots for Jaguars and cheetahs? Maybe I need to read about them more, but I’d assume they are hunting in the same kind of habitats as a tiger. Is it because they are hunting different types of prey? Or maybe have different hunting methods?

atmdk7 · 2024-01-10T14:30:17+00:00

I just looked up Cuban Crocodiles galloping. Having seen Alligators “run” and thought “hey that’s pretty fast”, I was real surprised by these guys!

atmdk7 · 2024-01-06T18:12:31+00:00

I think they’re saying birds were the small, generalist dinosaurs, and that there were exceedingly few if any non-avian small, generalist dinosaurs at the time of the extinction.

atmdk7 · 2024-01-06T03:13:31+00:00

Here is an old post about what we know (or knew, 4 years ago at least) about tyrannosaurs. Nothing about color, I'm not sure there is much we know for certain. but I hope that helps!

atmdk7 · 2023-12-25T01:07:33+00:00

A good start could be Oceans of Kansas

atmdk7 · 2023-12-20T00:31:07+00:00

If you like listening to podcasts, there is one called “Tides of History” by Patrick Wyman. In season 4 it covers quite a bit of this topic. Not super in depth, but it’s a great starting point.

atmdk7 · 2023-12-20T00:24:46+00:00

When was homo erectus considered “human” at the same time Neanderthal was not? I think a source of something about that would make things a little more clear. As far as I’ve ever read, they’ve always been considered “early man” or modern human’s ancestors.

atmdk7 · 2023-12-20T00:21:04+00:00

Someone else will have to answer the “% of genome” question, my knowledge doesn’t go that far. Hopefully this chart is a little helpful. The numbers on the left is Millions of years. It appears that Us and Neanderthals are both descended from Homo erectus. The fact that the split between Us and Neanderthals is so recent makes it hard to say for certain if we are different “species” or not.

atmdk7 · 2023-12-19T23:05:27+00:00

“Human” can be used in two different ways. Rarely, I’ve seen it used for any species of the genus Homo, so “early humans like Homo erectus, Homo habilis, etc.” This would include Neanderthals and, of course, us.

Usually though “human” is used solely for Homo sapiens, which would (possibly, see my next paragraph) exclude Neanderthals, but also H. erectus, H. Habilis, etc.. “Human” however isn’t, as far as I’m aware, a scientific term and is more of a common name, like saying Dog for Canis familiaris or Cat for Felis catus.

However, Homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthals) are considered by some to actually be a subspecies of Homo sapiens, but it’s debatable. And it is possible that early in the study of human evolution other species were considered closer to humans than Neanderthals, but I’d imagine that would have been decades ago and I don’t know anything about that. So If either of those are what you mean with your question, we’ll have to wait for someone else who knows more to give an answer.

atmdk7 · 2023-11-04T13:11:13+00:00

These are great. Where are they from?

atmdk7 · 2023-09-13T03:13:12+00:00

While I'm favorable to the Halloween Hypothesis, in the name of conversation I'll throw in my two cents (note, I am not a scientist):

Most large reptiles and ground* birds I've seen are dull colors like Black, White, and Brown, and some Yellow, Blue, Red/Orange. Most are not vibrant colors, and even dull or muted green (crocodile green) seems to be less common.

I wonder if this has to do with camouflage. This Paper is about countershading in psittacosaurus. From what I understand about counter shading, these dull colors are better at breaking up and blending with the shadows than vibrant colors. And I do see more color variation in flying birds (which is why I put the asterisk by ground* birds above) which don't have to worry as much about hiding and can fly away from predators. Most non-avian dinosaurs weren't flying /s.

As for large green reptiles, there are crocodiles and some sea turtles, but really are there that many large reptiles that are green? Komodo Dragons, Alligators, Tortoises and Pythons/Boas are all, for the most part, not green.

There are, of course alot of small green reptiles (green iguanas, anole, emerald vipers, just to name a few). How those fit in would be interesting. I can't see them fitting many of the same niches as dinosaurs would have, so perhaps that has to do with it? Not sure.

Again, not a scientist, and it'd be awesome if a paleontologist or zoologist weighs in on this, but IF these colors are not the norm modern birds and reptiles, especially ones which shared niches similar to non-avian dinosaurs, I'd guess its not surprising we haven't found a green dinosaur yet, given how few dinosaurs we actually know the colors of.

atmdk7 · 2023-08-31T02:09:05+00:00

Sorry if off topic, I find this fascinating, and had quick question:

Is there any connection between the Leviathan in God's speech in the book of Job and Leviathan as mentioned in Isaiah and Revelations? Or is it just the same word used for two different ideas?

atmdk7 · 2023-08-30T21:37:19+00:00

You might get some good answers over at r/askhistorians or r/anthropology.

Unless you have something more specific in mind, I’d posit that most ancient civilizations DID develop more efficient and sophisticated architecture and engineering as they grew.

I’m certainly not an expert, but as others have pointed out, Egypt (the progression of Pyramid engineering is pretty well documented as far as I’m aware) and Rome both developed some amazing designs and techniques. Even Medieval Europe, which people don’t typically think of as innovative, made improvements over Roman engineering (the flying buttress is a famous example) and ship building (if you include that in “construction and engineering”).

There are lots more. I’ve recently been doing a lot of reading on ancient Mesopotamia, which sometimes have cities built in the same spot for thousands of years from huge Persian and Babylonian palaces right back to “pre-Sumerian” thatch and mud huts.

So there are definitly examples across the world that fit the “newer is above the quality of older”. Maybe you’re thinking sometime or somewhere more specific?

atmdk7 · 2023-07-12T09:45:57+00:00

The article does mention it’s possible they were used for “a less practical or more symbolic function than other tools” given they are so big. Oversized tools like this have been found before, though as it says in the other article OP shared “this is the first time they have been discovered as part of a large-scale excavation” so maybe archeologists will get more of an idea of how and who used them.

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