I hate the fact that orcas are the apex marine predators of today. Such a boring and lame creature, they are oversized dolphins with panda patches and hunts in pods like pussies. Why? I thought everything in nature was perfect but killer whales as the top ocean predator does not feels right. Not so long ago there were giant mega-toothed sharks and macroraptorial sperm whales with ugly, monstruous heads in our oceans. We were supposed to still have this, but we're stuck with panda dolphins that perform circus tricks instead (literal CLOWNS).
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Anonymous05/05/26(Tue)21:31:03
>>5122217(OP) Orcas are living proof that nature isn't a PvP game like a lot of people like to pretend
>>5122838 I can’t read the paper because it’s paywalled. Somebody explain how we know the wear marks are from chewing on reptile bones and not ammonite shells
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Anonymous05/10/26(Sun)05:13:06
>>5123510 Reposted from an anon in another thread. >Frequent durophagous predation on hard-shelled prey causes wear of their jaw tips and jaw edges, which is absent in nondurophagous cephalopods such as squids >This wear provides reliable evidence of durophagy, in a broader sense carnivory, in fossil cephalopods. The wear was found on adult jaws of Late Cretaceous Cirrata, but not on their juvenile jaws. It is also absent in co-occurring fossil squid jaws, including both juveniles and adults >In the largest specimens of N. jeletzkyi and N. haggarti, the loss of jaw material caused by the accumulated wear reaches ~10% of the total jaw length, which is more severe than in modern durophagous cephalopods >These wear patterns suggest that Late Cretaceous giant Cirrata were active carnivores that frequently crushed hard shells and bones. The long scratches distributed on wide areas of their jaw reflect the dynamic use of the entire jaw for dismantling prey. Asymmetric loss of the jaw edges suggests lateralized behavior, which has been linked to a highly developed brain and cognition >This, in turn, suggests that the earliest octopuses already possessed advanced intelligence. Laterality is known in modern octopuses, whose high intelligence matches that of vertebrates >so essentially the heavy wear on cephalopod beaks imply eating shellfish rather than fish. But in this case, there's extreme wear, up to 10% of the beak which is significantly more wear than modern shellfish eating cephalopods have. The fact that there are long scratches on the wide areas of the beak indicate the use of the beak to rip apart large animals, rather than just crushing shells. And the fact that bones are much thicker and tougher than shellfish shells explains why the beaks are proportionally worn down much more than modern shellfish eating cephalopods.
TLDR: We actually do have good evidence supporting its lifestyle. But the paleo community is full of lamefags who think boring = realistic.
>>5122217(OP) isn't the 17 meter Livyatan estimate dependent on the animal sharing the body plan of a much more elongated and lighter of Zygophyseter, whereas a sperm whale build as depicted here would land the same animal at 13.5 meters.
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Anonymous05/11/26(Mon)16:58:41
>>5122217(OP) I love how these two animals actually lived at the same time and actively beefed with each other. None of this pussy "niche-partitioning" crap.
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Anonymous05/11/26(Mon)17:00:47
>>5123510 >Somebody explain how we know the wear marks are from chewing on reptile bones and not ammonite shells Why is it assumed to have been from ammonite shells until and unless definitively proven otherwise?
>>5123985 More conservative "tame" ideas are automatically considered the default until proven otherwise. It's like how when sauropods were first discovered, it was assumed they were semiaquatic because no land animals today reached such sizes and we believed an African Elephant was the biological limit. Or how Jack Horner claimed T. rex was a scavenger because the idea of a superpredator many times larger than a polar bear was too extraordinary to believe. Or when Quetzalcoatlus was discovered and it was thought to be flightless because surely Argentavis already represented the physical limit of how big an animal could get while retaining flight. Even though these are all old antiquated lines of thought we ridicule today, people ironically go on to do the same thing with newer discoveries. It's not even a scientific type of thinking. It's literally just people making up their own headcanon based on vibes and passing it off as fact.
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Anonymous05/12/26(Tue)01:00:46
>>5124065 except jack horner claimed t. rex was a scavenger based on nothing more than contrarianism
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Anonymous05/12/26(Tue)02:59:30
>>5124138 Except he did make arguments for it which have a striking parallel with the current octopus shit. >There is no way T. rex was an active predator. It can’t run fast and its arms are too small to hold prey, there is no modern animal like that. Its powerful bite was probably for eating carrion it didn’t have to chase after. I know this sounds more lame than your awesomebro fantasy, but real life isn’t always exciting, sorry. >There is no way Nanaimoteuthis was an active predator. No macropredatory cephalopod exists today, even giant squid only hunt small fish. It’s powerful beak was probably for crushing the shells of ammonites that can’t fight back. I know this sounds more lame than your awesomebro fantasy, but real life isn’t always exciting, sorry.
>>5122469 I'm doubtful of the large estimates, but like...
The beak is just that huge. C in picrel is the beak of a giant squid. Even if going by a more conservative estimate, a 8-10 M octopus is insane and would be the biggest cephalopod today.
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Anonymous05/15/26(Fri)00:39:49
>>5122217(OP) I have the same thoughts about the cenozoic era on Earth in general. We used to have pterosaurs and fucking dinosaurs, warm blooded reptiles, owning the earth. Everything after the mesozoic has been massive decline besides humans. Mammals are gay and estrogen-coded. Furry faggotry isn't manly or evoking of testosterone like reptiles and scales. >mesozoic the apex predators were armored dinosaurs >cenozoic the apex predators are shit like fluffy bears and big kitties and smooth panda dolphins Cenozoic is gay as fuck outside of human brains and technology.
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Anonymous05/15/26(Fri)01:28:11
>>5125085 I don't like these things. They are scary
>>5125210 Don't let appearances fool you. They 100% had that feral lizardlike brain and were not just bigeye dolphins that ate fish and squid. >Guizhouichthyosaurus is a medium sized ichthyosaur, related to much larger species in picrel >>5125085 >One Guizhouichthyosaur was found with a large prey trunk belonging to a 4 m long Xinpusaurus, another marine reptile. >It dispatched it as prey and ripped its head and tail off and tried to swallow its torso whole, dying in the process. Their evolution is also insane, the timespan between them first becoming pelagic and then evolving into 40+ ton Cymbospondylus youngorum was ~5 million years.
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Anonymous05/15/26(Fri)12:29:10
>>5125142 You did imply it, since you asked for evidence only concerning the reptile bones. Implying ammonites should be considered the default explanation barring specific evidence.
>>5125324 >you asked for evidence only concerning the reptile bones Because somebody said that there was evidence for feeding on reptiles specifically retard. I asked what that evidence was because the paper was paywalled. Then the relevant part of the paper was quoted. Learn to read a thread
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Anonymous05/18/26(Mon)03:12:58
>>5125184 Mesozoic (And Paleozoic past the big bugs time period) becomes lame as fuck when you realize every single predator was different flavors of the same thing. All theropods are just sharks on legs that hunt prey with lacerating bites and occasionally mob together for big prey. Every theropod is the same fucking thing. Fast with long arms for grasping when small, shrink arms and get big head when they grow bigger. Cenozoic on the other hand has a way higher variety of predators thanks to mammals developing the advanced intellect for different strategies. >Conical toothed cats strangling their prey. >Sabertooths wrestling down their prey for to disembowel them with their sabers. >Smaller cats and Thylacoleo dropping from trees to ambush prey. >Canids hunting in advanced packs with social bonds that extend beyond primitive mobbing. >Raptorial whales like Ankylorhiza hunting by ramming into their prey with front facing tusks. >Creodonts like Megistotherium that went all in on their bite to specialize in megafauna hunting. >Bears being omnivores that can opportunistically hunt when needed. >Semiaquatic mammals like Enhydriodon or Ambulocetus that were probably doing jaguar and/or croc things. >Non-mammal predators like terror birds, land crocs, or Megalania. >Hominids. No further explanation needed. The history of megafaunal predation is like the history of human technology. The vast majority of it stagnated in the same stale shit. Then a sudden breakthrough in recent history (Industrial Revolution/Mammal takeover) made the meta accelerate at a blinding rate.
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Anonymous05/18/26(Mon)03:44:16
>>5126232 >All theropods are just sharks on legs that hunt prey with lacerating bites and occasionally mob together for big prey Yeah and that's metal as fuck you big gay mammalfaggot.
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Anonymous05/20/26(Wed)01:07:31
>>5126232 Megalodon would've treated orcas as a light snack
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Anonymous05/20/26(Wed)22:03:02
>>5126232 No amount of cope will ever change the fact that no mammalian land predator has conclusively surpassed the 1 ton mark much less done so tenfold
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Anonymous05/21/26(Thu)01:39:35
>>5122217(OP) Recent evidence suggest melvillei was a blubbery bottom feeder and megalodon had feathers and was gay.
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Anonymous05/21/26(Thu)06:01:25
>>5126946 The ocean allows vertebrates to get much bigger than their maximum size on land
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Anonymous05/21/26(Thu)06:16:03
>>5124065 Retard. People didn't think sauropods lived in swamps or Quetzacoatlus couldn't fly just because, that was what our actual science at the time showed with the knowledge we had then. Now that we know more about those animals with things like the pneumatized bones of sauropods or the pterosaur catapult mechanism, we know better, The point being we need actual evidence to make these claims and not "hurr it would be cool if this giant squid was hunting mosasaurs therefore it must be true".
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Anonymous05/21/26(Thu)06:24:07
>>5126232 >Cenozoic on the other hand has a way higher variety of predators thanks to mammals developing the advanced intellect for different strategies. This has nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with the fact that the continents were much closer together during the Mesozoic and therefore there was less opportunity for isolation to create more divergent forms.
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Anonymous05/21/26(Thu)06:31:23
>>5127076 >everything to do with the fact that the continents were much closer together during the Mesozoic Also generally just much less diverse habitats due to no grasslands, way less diverse forests, and warmer poles.
>>5127075 Retard take, we know the octopus was crushing bones based on wear patterns. And we know a massive animal is going to eat whatever it can, especially in a habitat like the open ocean. We literally do have the evidence you’re talking about, yet you’d rather be a dumbass and pretend it doesn’t exist because “macropredatory cephalopod” is something you already decided can’t exist. Exactly like Jack Horner calling Rex a scavenger when we have predation evidence on edmontosaurs.
>>5127600 NTA but I feel like bone crunching can just as easily be made into shell crunching. Ammonites were everywhere at this point in time so it ain't that big of a stretch.
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Anonymous05/23/26(Sat)05:17:57
>>5127721 Read >>5123542 , the paper itself compares its wear patterns to those of modern cephalopods. It is not a case of "We only know it was eating hard things and are assuming it was bones to make it sound cooler". It is "We specifically compared these wear patterns to modern day analogs and found striking differences that rule out the possibility it was a pure shellfish specialist".
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Anonymous05/23/26(Sat)05:40:10
>>5125284 >in the belly of the beast haha I wonder if it pats its belly after it eats you, like "mmmmm that was sooooo satisying" while you struggle inside getting digested and he gets all gassy
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Anonymous05/23/26(Sat)07:56:04
>>5126946 >Arctotherium would like to know your location
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Anonymous05/23/26(Sat)12:23:33
>>5126232 >says every mesozoic predator was just flavours of the same thing >creates a list of cenozoic predators that is almost entirely just different flavours of dogs and cats disgusting
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Anonymous05/23/26(Sat)15:28:58
>>5127076 Even in different environments theropods still did the same shit. What's the difference between Yutyrannus and Allosaurus when it comes to actual killing methods? Even though they are from wildly different habitats, enough for one to develop feathers, they are still identical on a functional level. Compare that to Smilodon and Homotherium, who are both cats yet differ night and day in how they were hunting due to their different teeth.
The only redeeming quality of Mesozoic theropods is that they appeal to the powerscaling faggots brainrot as seen with >>5126946 . Once you get bored of the retards fighting over what fragmentary glupshitto might have been 1 ton bigger than T. rex, most of what makes theropods interesting evaporates.
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Anonymous05/24/26(Sun)05:53:11
>>5127881 >Even in different environments theropods still did the same shit. What's the difference between Yutyrannus and Allosaurus when it comes to actual killing methods? Now do it again without intentionally cherry picking two similar theropods and comparing them to the two most different sabertooths you could think of
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Anonymous05/24/26(Sun)15:33:27
>>5128068 Funny you call that cherry picked when they are from completely different climates, but whatever, I'll bite. Carnotaurus and Allosaurus. They look different, are from completely different theropod lineages, but share the exact same design of a narrow skull with curved serrated teeth. This is how the majority of macropredatory theropods function, with only a handful of exceptions. >Megaraptors, which are just an upscaled version of the "Small head, long arms" body plan >Majungasaurus, which had unique teeth for holding onto its prey instead of lacerating bites. >Tyrannosaurs, which had bone crushing bites. Note that this scarcity isn't without reason either. The reason the steak knife bite is so common is because sauropods were the dominant herbivores for the majority of the Mesozoic. All the examples I mentioned above were Late Cretaceous animals. To give them credit dinosaurs probably would have gotten more interesting with time, but a big space rock cucked them.