Tyrannosaurus Skeleton: Your Dinosaurs Are Wrong #10

I'm afraid we don't have any fancy device to bring in this episode's dinosaur for you guys it turns out that we have a fan at everything tiny whom you can reach by going to tiny soar us which is a rather clever URL and these are people that make exceptionally tiny dinosaur skeletons they also happen to be exceptionally fragile in fact in setting up for this episode I may have swept it off the table not noticed and and run it over with my chair you would think that with the amount of effort that it took to actually assemble the poor thing I will never be a watchmaker these products are not intended for people with hands as shaky as mine I would be more careful about it I even brought it I brought it into the room in a glass case or a plastic case but the second I took it out of it i damaged it but that's ok because it's too tiny to really point out anyway I would be pointing at the entire creature with one hand I happen to have a big one easy this is by far the most common of the wood kit skeleton dinosaurs that you see well for obvious reasons Tyrannosaurus is the most popular dinosaur by far in fact the only difference between the everything tiny version and the wooden version that we happen to have here at the lab is that the everything tiny version has one extra caudal vertebrae with vertebra with transverse processes on it transverse processes which we will get to this is such a common configuration for the the Tyrannosaurus would kits that when I was a lad in Lemont Illinois at the japanes grocery store I saw a magazine on the rack by the cash register with a Tyrannosaurus on the front and I found that if you subscribe to this magazine they will send you more magazines with dinosaurs in them in fact each one will come with a part of this guy who is exactly the same just a little bit bigger and also cooler because he glows in the dark and I painted the tongue red because I was young and naive made sense to me at the time to have a glow-in-the-dark Tyrannosaurus with a red duck now I suspect that the posture that they have adopted for this particular dinosaur is partially out of the practical consideration of making a bipedal toy stand up it's much easier I know this first hand by the way because I've been trying to design something that's better it's very difficult to make a bipedal toy stand up non tripod ollie it's not impossible though and I can prove it probably I'm going to get the little fragile one out of the way before I drop something on it and damage it further and go back in your little case but I can prove that you can make the stand on two legs you see as long as they're offset as long as one foot is in front of the other the center of gravity needs to fall somewhere between those ideally centered but nobody's perfect but if you make it so that the center of gravity is just in front of the hip the dinosaur will rest on its feet and will not fall forward or backward now obviously I have not made this accurate I have simply demonstrated an element of physics I guess this counts as Newtonian physics I assume which is not my area I I simulate and exaggerate physics to do my job I do not study them I actually looked into where this particular wood kit originated because you see it all the time and various brands sell or at least resell import and resell this kit I couldn't actually find an origin for it it looks superficially like the initial reconstructions that we had of Tyrannosaurus when they first discovered it at the beginning of the 20th century there was a gentleman by the name of Barnum brown who went to a lot of western states but he found some remains in Wyoming and some more in Montana and sent them back to the American Museum of Natural History where Henry Fairfield Osborn wrote a description of Tyrannosaurus Rex I wonder if anyone's done a study on the enduring nature of dinosaurs based exclusively on their name because Tyrannosaurus Rex is a really good name if you want the dinosaur to be popular the point I'm trying to get to is when Osborn published his paper he included a picture that that was drawn by WD Matthew I believe that was postured in this manner and it was consistent with what we thought about dinosaurs at the beginning of the 20th century which is that they were luggage that they were obsolete and they were just sort of waiting around to go extinct once mammals appeared on the scene which is a very attractive narrative to someone like Osbourne incidentally this idea of suiting the Natural History narrative of suiting evolutionary relationships such that humans are on top and everything else is underneath us rather than us being just a super specialized animal would fit really well with naturalism in the early part of the 20th century but it doesn't fit nowadays and that is why I get a little bent out of shape about dinosaurs still being presented in this manner dragging their tails upright in a very uncomfortable posture especially when it's relatively easy to correct the the spine should be roughly parallel to the ground the hip should be roughly parallel to the ground the center of gravity I've said before on the show that the center of gravity was at the hip that's not really accurate that's useful if I'm trying to explain that the tail should be longer or to give you an approximation but strictly speaking the balance point of the creature wasn't at the hip joint it was at the knee joint like in modern Birds when they're on the ground I really can't balance this guy he doesn't and he's falling apart but you get the idea I believe that if you're going to make an educational toy even if it has to you know have half the number of ribs it should or or not have the articulation on the arms that the legs do because you need it to be able to be assembled by a five-year-old and not fall apart or you are making a really really tiny one so if you include any more detail it just won't come out or there would be yeah I really don't want to put twice that many ribs onto a tiny sword dot US herb I understand the physical constraints that go into making a toy but if you're going to cheat cheat in such a way that you can also not miss inform like put in life it would have had fleshy pads under the feet maybe that's what you need to do to be able to make it stand up and look more active just I know it takes work but stop perpetuating these myths so with the caveat that I understand the constraints on toy makers regarding conservation of detail let's get into this guy we we did a Tyrannosaurus Tarbosaurus but he had flesh on him so now we get to go bone by bone let's start with the spine it really shouldn't be bent like this now that's not to say that he a Tyrannosaurus omastar like this but it's similar to like imagine if every elephant toy you ever saw was rearing on its hind legs yes elephants can do that but it's not their natural posture that's what this seems to imply to me having it having its spine curved forward like this between the hip and the neck the spine should be effectively straight and again parallel to the ground behind the sacrum which is the part of the spine that makes up the hip the first thing that struck me about this because I was looking for differences between this and the the tiny Soros I drew my attention to the caudal vertebrae which have these little pieces that you see on all dinosaur kicks just about they're supposed to represent the spines that are on the vertebrae this top one is called either the neural spine or the spinous process and the side ones are called appropriately enough transverse processes this is a really unusual shape to arrive at when you look at what it's actually supposed to look like it is a cross when you look at it anteriorly but it is longer than it is wide in every dimension and I'm not sure why they felt the need to put these extra supports almost well probably for that reason it's for support but when viewed over head they aren't perfectly perpendicular to the spine they should be towards the sacrum there they're very much a v-shape distally and they get less so as they proceed down the tail although it is it is accurate that they have it that they have the transverse processes sort of die out halfway down the tail which is exactly what happened in the real one it's only the tail is accurately proportioned as far as I can tell it might look short to you but Tyrannosaurus in particular had short tails as far as theropods go the dangly bits on the bottom of the tail eye are called Chevron's because in life they would be a separate part that's actually a steep V connected to the bottom of the vertebra while I understand having them just be part of this one big mass that represents the spine they shouldn't start right after the sacrum there should be one or two they're called caudal vertebra once you're in the tail there should be one or two called a vertebra before you start seeing Chevron's while we're still talking about the spine the neck on this is terrible I'm going to go ahead and blame Osborne for this and lest you think that I'm anti Oz I respect everything he did for museums and getting the public interested in dinosaurs he was very much an advocate of dioramas and and showing people dramatic examples of dinosaurs postured as they would have been in life or as he thought they would have been in life he was working at one point on a diorama featuring two Tyrannosaurus and they both had their heads like this with their their neck sort of Swan arched so that the the it was the equivalent of a human having our chin on our chest and again it's possible that a Tyrannosaur can maybe do that pose but it would be uncomfortable and it implies some things about the neck that aren't true for instance it makes the neck really really short Tyrannosaurus did have short necks for theropods but extremely muscular necks to support their massive heads the problem becomes when you posture the neck this way the highest point on the creature is the top of the head when the highest point in the creature should actually be the second and third vertebras spinal process that should be the the top at least when it's in standard pose furthermore we have these dangly parts just like on the tail we have dangly parts on the cervical vertebra they're called the cervical vertebra when they're between the ribcage and the or well between the pectoral girdle and the bottom of the skull these I assume are representing the cervical ribs which the most recent studies I've seen are suggesting that they were actually ossified tendons which is muscular attachments that were under such stress that they calcified and it represents really strong neck muscles which is consistent with what we know about Tyrannosaurus but again I understand having them be just this one dangly part that's part of this mass of neck but they were actually symmetrical pairs I referenced the sacrum earlier that's what we call the part of the spine that's running through the pelvis I've actually always liked how they've constructed the pelvis on these tyrannosaurs I think it's really clever but they put spinous processes on the vertebra making up the sacrum which is accurate but they shouldn't be individual they were fused to the same way that the sacrum was now regarding the hip itself as I said before the hip should be parallel to the ground or at least the ilium should be parallel to the ground parts of a dinosaur hip Tyrannosaurus was a soros Qian which means it had a pubis which was perpendicular roughly to the ischium Soros Qian means lizard like hip which is interesting because Tyrannosaurus was actually much more closely related to birds than to any creature that we would describe as a lizard anyway starting with the ilium which is this large blade up top it wouldn't be rectangular it would be as long or longer than the femur which were exceptionally short in Tyrannosaurus but still it's it's not this short it was roughly triangular with the large end of the triangle being forward furthermore it didn't have these large horizontal blades projecting outwards from it I'm not sure what those are supposed to represent it could be the Toymaker representing the way that dinosaur hips had the legs underneath the hip underneath the creature rather than projecting sideways in which case I support that decision because that's an important part of what defines a dinosaur is having the legs under the creature but geometrically it doesn't make much sense to have these huge wings when you look at them overhead in life they would be concave going towards the spine with with them flaring outwards in the front and in the rear in the rear so that it could attach some important muscles regarding the tail and in the front obviously to attach muscles for the legs the pubis and the ischium are far too short they should both be about the length of the femur you frequently see the pubis represented rather shortly I assume this has something to do with if I put them back together here when seen in profile it might be rather amusing to have a large projection coming out the front of the dinosaur there might look a little too erect for the younger audiences but remember that if we're posturing this correctly the femur is quite a bit forward of the hip because the creature is balancing at the knee and the pubis is essentially straight down the boot on the end of this is actually called the boot was about two-thirds the length of the pubis so as you increase the length of the pubis also increase that length and the two boots should be touching each other in the middle similarly the straight part of the ischium here should be touching its partner and run parallel to it along the length they have the shape right to know how it ends in a in a sharp point relatively sharp point farley bones go a final note I don't know exactly what this centre area is supposed to represent I assume it's just structural because based on my experience with my childhood toy that is the part that breaks so I assume it's to add strength but in life there was not a big massive bone in the middle of the head there were organs there since I've been talking about the femurs in relation to length I might as well mention these legs are relatively well proportioned unfortunately they've gone a little too far with the curviness of the femurs there was a bit of a curved knob at the at the distal end of the femur but that's not to say that there was one long curve along the entire length of the femur and in fact on the other side it's got its knee bending slightly backwards legs bend at the joints guys not at the bone but the tibia and fibula which is represented by this single length of wood is longer than the femur which is accurate the metatarsals are far too short about they need to be about twice that length metatarsals being the top component of the foot below the ankle but above the ground I enjoy that they've added the dewclaw but while it's accurate in proportion to the feet it's is too close to the ankle I'm not really sure what they're trying to represent by having the phalanges curved this way I hope it's just an effort to to make it have fewer points in contact with the ground and therefore a more stable toy but if in fact this is merely a representation of claws I'm afraid that's not accurate you would occasionally see Tyrannosaurus restor'd especially in life restorations rather than skeletal restorations with these large bird-like talons it would be more accurate to say that it had Hoos rather like an ostrich as opposed to some manner of sharp talons its feet were not primarily weapons they were primarily for walking on which sounds obvious but furthermore it had three large toes per foot which again conservation of detail but if you were trying to make a toy that could stand up on two feet having three toes per feet what might make it more stable and would just happen to make it more accurate in the process we have six ribs here which are a placeholder for the eleven to thirteen that you see on actual Tyrannosaurus the aspect ratio the the ratio of height to width is fairly good the there it's definitely a deeper creature than you would expect based on its width but their shape is not very good especially at the top it should really look like a curvy M and we have much like the tail vertebra we have a spinous process that is longer than it is wide and transverse processes as well that are v-shaped and longer than they are wide the shortest ribs were actually near the sacrum the longest ribs were in the middle furthermore they're all portrayed as perpendicular to the spine whereas only the ones closest to the hip would be perpendicular and they would get more and more inclined anteriorly as you move forward oh here's something Fairfield Osborn never knew about Tyrannosaurus had gastrula it's a series of essentially reverse ribs running along the the belly starting at the pubis and ending not quite at the second rib how you would represent that in a wood kit without making it too intricate to actually function I'm not sure but it would be cool and it would definitely help add dimension to the belly of the creature in a way that just having the ribs really doesn't and it would make the pubis look less weird so we have that one thing I'm relatively okay with is the way that they've just sort of hung the arms off of the ribs but they've hung them in the wrong place and furthermore in addition to being far too large the arms lack any sort of supporting structure the arm was was much much smaller than the the shoulder blade that was supporting it in theropods the shoulder blade while the whole arm really wasn't attached with joints it was attached with soft tissue with with muscle and tendon and sinew and it floated on the ribcage and the shape of the long skinny curved scapula would help to support it because it they essentially formed a pincer around the rib cage the it's called the the pectoral girdle which is made up of the scapula the shoulder blade the round bone that attaches underneath it to form the other part of the shoulder socket which is called the coracoid and the wishbone I'll bet you didn't know that Tyrannosaurus had a wishbone probably because it's too tiny to ever be included on a model like this but it is there the coracoid is almost touch it touched each other but didn't quite that's why you have the wishbone in the middle so that's how the arms were supported but the arms themselves are not postured properly the humerus should be essentially straight back just based on the position of the shoulder socket the range of motion that we see with Tyrannosaur arms is significantly greater than popular cultural representations might lead you to believe but it was still a lot more restricted than say a dromaeosaurus a lot more restricted than we have you would have the humerus straight back and then basically a right angle going into the radius and the ulna and then the hand instead of being at a roughly 90 degree angle from that I assume this is supposed to be representing a pro which we know they could not do the hands would be facing each other the hands would be straight with the wrists regarding the fingers once you make it small enough that the arm is actually to scale with the creature there might not be much point to having fingers since you essentially have a stub sticking off the front of the creature but at its most minimal the first digit would be a curved hook pointing towards the center of the creature and the second finger would essentially be straight so it's it would sort of look like the rear half of a halberd but tiny I really should at least celebrate the fact that this has two fingers if it's accurate that this is based on that original illustration by WD Mathieu that was drawn before we had any four limbs for Tyrannosaurus first we inferred that they would have tiny two fingered four limbs based on related species most notably Gorgosaurus but then we found four limbs and though they confirmed that inference but until then it was often portrayed with long three fingered four limbs last but not least the head it's kind of terrible size-wise it's pretty good if this was a more robust adult it would probably be bigger but we have plenty of Tyrannosaurus with a head that's about this size in relation to the body the first thing that strikes me is they've given it a tongue I don't know why they think a skeleton needs a tongue but it has one they seem to have left out some rather important details for instance the temporal fenestra and the orbit are far too wide they're the right height proportional to the head but they're too wide and they both lack their characteristic nub that projects into the middle from the from bone behind them and they've completely omitted the Antar bateau finestra which is the biggest hole in the skull furthermore the nasal is really huge that was much smaller and much further forward we do have evidence that Tyrannosaurus was very good at olfaction but that comes from studies of its neurological system or its brain cavity and not so much from having huge nose they have at least included a slight bump over the orbit which is reasonably accurate they have not made the nasal rugose which is to say ridged rugose is a fancy term for ridge that you see in anatomy which is something you would see on an adult Tyrannosaur again I don't expect them to include every tooth that a Tyrannosaur had but they didn't have teeth filling their mouths it would be toward the front of the mouth also the longest teeth were at the very middle of the maxilla which is the front part of the jaw and they were longer than the teeth on the bottom at any point the shape of the bottom of the mandible is accurate but the mandible itself is too narrow vertically and then the snout is too big probably to make up for it it seems to be a very straight jaw whereas the maxilla should be convex and the mandible should or the dentary I should say which is the bone that's under the maxilla should be concave and they sort of fit together it had a bit of a three-dimensional overbite going on I like that the way they've constructed the skull has the widest part of the skull be this this Ridge right where the top of the skull contacts the mandible but it's produced this weird effect where the con the the skull contacts the neck at the jaw which is not accurate it contacted at the very back of the head it's also produced this strange effect where they've given it a more basal Carn asourian almost a dorsal view it would be characteristic of Tyrannosaurus to have a much more boxy dorsal view karna Soria being the group that Allosaurus belongs to among many others whereas Tyrannosaurus was a Solaris Orion which is the group that's closer to birds Tyrannosaurus are kind of cool in that they're there what happens when the little nippy dinosaurs grow to enormous sizes you get these very strange features like having a boxy cross-section with binocular vision that's ridiculous but it's the kind of really cool specimen specialization that you got in the giant dinosaurs that occurred at the end of the Cretaceous period and it's not represented in this model and I think it should be that's all I have to say about the ubiquitous 3d puzzle version of the Tyrannosaurus rexes skeleton Thank You herb for sending me a tiny soros I'm sorry it took so long to get to this one thank you for watching your dinosaurs are wrong please remember to Like comment and subscribe suggest dinosaurs for me to have on the show you could even send me a toy dinosaur our address is in the description please go to the geek group org to find out how you can get involved you can become a member you can donate we are open to the public and we'll see you next time this video is made possible by a grant from the Future girl Foundation this video was made possible by thousands of private donations from members and viewers like you please visit the geek group o-r-g for more information on how you can donate and become a part of our dreams of evelyn destroying continuity today is that gonna no please no I can do it again Thank You herb for sending me the dinosaur go to the geek group org donate send me dinosaurs larae Jia Li Jie is the continent that would later come up to me anyway North American interior seaway should I do it again

Channel: Chaotic Good

Views: 286,416

Keywords: the geek group, geekgroup, tgg, tyrannosaurus, rex, tyrannosaurus rex, jurassic park, jurassic, cretaceous, toy, toys, anatomy, anatomically correct, dinos, dino, dinosaurs, dinosaur, fossil, fossils, prehistoric, prehistory, paleontology, museum, natural history, spine, vertebrate, bones, structure, kid safe, kid friendly, child safe, child friendly, educational, science videos, science, allosaurus, femur, tiny arms, big head, evolution, ydaw, hackerspace, makerspace, wooden t-rex skeleton, wooden toy, t-rex

Id: 2kviuLWrOpk

Length: 32min 17sec (1937 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 20 2014