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Living Dinosaurs!

There was a BBC series out a few years back called Primeval. It had plenty of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures.
Not BBC.
Sadly, that show ended because of low ratings. I enjoyed it anyway.
 
So what is the closest living animal to a dinosaur?

On superficial looks alone, I guess a Saltwater Croc, Komodo Dragon or those species of lizard that resort to a bipedal gait when in a hurry spring to mind.

In reality though, would it be a chicken, goose or ostrich?
 
proto teeth are still fairly common in some birds.

Lest we forget that geese are members of Theropoda - just like T Rex.
Here's a vicious looking set of gnashers!

teeth.png
 
So what is the closest living animal to a dinosaur?

On superficial looks alone, I guess a Saltwater Croc, Komodo Dragon or those species of lizard that resort to a bipedal gait when in a hurry spring to mind.

In reality though, would it be a chicken, goose or ostrich?

Crocodilians, as they're archosaurs like dinosaurs, pterosaurs and some assorted other scaly things. Birds can't be dinosaur relatives as they are themselves dinosaurs.
 
So what is the closest living animal to a dinosaur?

On superficial looks alone, I guess a Saltwater Croc, Komodo Dragon or those species of lizard that resort to a bipedal gait when in a hurry spring to mind.

In reality though, would it be a chicken, goose or ostrich?
Crocodiles share a more recent ancestor with dinosaurs than squamates (lizards and snakes). Among the dinosaurs, theropods like t-rex and velociraptor share a more recent ancestor with birds (which are also dinosaurs) than with triceratops or brachiosaurus. So the mighty t-rex is more closely related to chickens than to the triceratopses he was always scrapping with.
 
What about armadillos?

Armadillos are mammals. Both armadillos and their evolutionary predecessors the Glyptodonts arose after the asteroid (etc.) killed off the dinosaurs.

The similarly armored pangolins are also mammals (unrelated to armadillos), but their evolutionary history dates back farther. Pangolin ancestors arose before the asteroid took out the dinosaurs.
 
Another group the Meiolaniidae also adopted the characteristics of thick body armour and clubbed tail shared by glyptodonts and ankylosaurs, although as they were land turtles, the thick body armour part isn't too surprising. This lot get overlooked but like the land crocodiles they shared their environments with, they were remarkable animals which survived until very recently.
 
Another group the Meiolaniidae also adopted the characteristics of thick body armour and clubbed tail shared by glyptodonts and ankylosaurs, although as they were land turtles, the thick body armour part isn't too surprising. This lot get overlooked but like the land crocodiles they shared their environments with, they were remarkable animals which survived until very recently.
I didn't know about them. I'll Google them tomorrow.
 
So what is the closest living animal to a dinosaur?

On superficial looks alone, I guess a Saltwater Croc, Komodo Dragon or those species of lizard that resort to a bipedal gait when in a hurry spring to mind.

In reality though, would it be a chicken, goose or ostrich?

Birds are Dinosaurs so the question should be what are the closest living animals to birds?
 
Birds are Dinosaurs so the question should be what are the closest living animals to birds?

Extinct non-avian dinosaurs then (which is what most people mean when referring to dinosaurs.
When Alfred Hitchcock's brilliant thriller The Birds is shown on TV, the description will never call it a movie about dinosaurs.

As for what bird most closely resembles its therapod ancestors, goosy-teeth notwithstanding, I would have to plump for the Cassowary, Ostrich or, our old friend, the Shoebill Stork.

stork.png
 
Extinct non-avian dinosaurs then (which is what most people mean when referring to dinosaurs.
When Alfred Hitchcock's brilliant thriller The Birds is shown on TV, the description will never call it a movie about dinosaurs.

As for what bird most closely resembles its therapod ancestors, goosy-teeth notwithstanding, I would have to plump for the Cassowary, Ostrich or, our old friend, the Shoebill Stork.

View attachment 56778
Sorry I wasn't trying to be smart its just a lot of people don't think that birds are dinosaurs at all, in the same way that they think that Pterosaurs, Mosasaurs, pliosaurs etc were Dinosaurs when they were not.
 
*bump*

Living dinosaurs in Papua New Guinea?

"Tim Neville is an Australian who worked for the Wallindi Plantation Resort at Kimbe, West New Britain in Papua New Guinea. In 1992-93, Tim was diving off the east coast of Alage (Aui) Island, located off the south coast of West New Britain between Kandrian and Gasmata. While diving, Tim observed some large three toed foot prints of an unknown animal in the mud on the ocean floor. Tim later enquired at the neighbouring Ambungi and Sep Sep Islands about the existence of a living dinosaur. No one at these islands had knowledge of any such creature at that time. However, sightings of an animal resembling a theropod dinosaur commenced around Ambungi Island a couple of years later.1"

https://karlshuker.blogspot.com/2023/08/is-large-non-avian-dinosaur-alive-and.html
 
*bump*

Living dinosaurs in Papua New Guinea?

"Tim Neville is an Australian who worked for the Wallindi Plantation Resort at Kimbe, West New Britain in Papua New Guinea. In 1992-93, Tim was diving off the east coast of Alage (Aui) Island, located off the south coast of West New Britain between Kandrian and Gasmata. While diving, Tim observed some large three toed foot prints of an unknown animal in the mud on the ocean floor. Tim later enquired at the neighbouring Ambungi and Sep Sep Islands about the existence of a living dinosaur. No one at these islands had knowledge of any such creature at that time. However, sightings of an animal resembling a theropod dinosaur commenced around Ambungi Island a couple of years later.1"

https://karlshuker.blogspot.com/2023/08/is-large-non-avian-dinosaur-alive-and.html
There is nothing about these claims that is remotely believable. I very strongly disagree with Shuker's unfounded promotion of dinosaur survivors. The good evidence for this is nil.
 
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