#because birds are dinosaurs

[pudding-parade]

One of the games I bought while in isolation was Prehistoric Kingdom. Which is basically Planet Zoo, only with (accurate! Don't get me started on the fucking Jurassic Park/World movies/games!) non-avian dinosaurs and prehistoric mammals like mastodons, woolly rhinos, and cave lions.

The game's still in early access, but I've read that much of it is functional, so I bought it on sale. I just fired it up tonight to see what it's about and figure out how it works. Which was a little bit difficult because the recent major update of it broke the tutorial, so the tutorial is currently disabled. But as it turns out, at least in terms of landscape sculpting and building stuff, much of it works an awful lot like Planet Zoo -- only with added (and awesome) scaling functionality, not to mention being able to turn off the grid and to paint entire swaths of trees/shrubs instead of placing things one-by-one -- so between that and the in-game help, I could figure out most things.

And then I bred myself some psittacosaurs, shown in the pic, because they're among my favorite non-avian dinosaurs, and plopped them in a habitat....and....Well, a bit of nerding ahead. But before I get to that, I give the game a thumbs up so far, and it has tons of potential ahead of it. I'll probably put the game in unlimited, creative sandbox mode and just check out and build for every dino species in the game before going back and actually playing the game in its challenge mode, where you have to unlock stuff and don't get unlimited money.

Now for the nerding. My psittacosaurs promptly escaped from their habitat because I didn't bother with any natural barriers to block the invisible fences I laid. LOL But that's OK because I just wanted to see what they looked like in the game, given that we actually know a lot about what they looked like in real life in terms of soft tissues and pigmentation and such.

And it turns out that they did a pretty good job with the psittacosaurs! They got the dorky bristles at the base of the tail and the bizarre-o head correct. And they got the countershading right! That is, darker on top and lighter on the belly, which is typical for animals that live in dense forests. We know that psittacosaurs had this because there've been some specimens preserved with soft tissues, which included skin which included preserved melanosomes, so we could find out about the coloration of these buggers. So, the devs got the countershading as well as the subtle stripes/spots correct. I'd say they still look a bit too shiny/plastic-y, so they probably need to crank down the speculars a little, but otherwise? Pretty damn good.

I'd read that the developers of this game were trying to be more scientifically accurate, as opposed to...you know what...but I'm still pretty impressed. Can't wait to see if they did a similarly good job with the dilophosaurs, which are my favorite non-avian dinos. (Fucking Jurassic Park...Dilophosaurs are not tiny, venom-spitting frilled lizards, for fuck's sake, and yes, that was well-known in the early 90s, so there's no excuse!)

[makenna-made-this]

Take off in 5, 4, 3, 2...

NYOOM

[natelia-aldelliz]

1 : Soap never had any idea that woman wanted him carnally, he's not the most observant on that front (he never noticed Ghost flirting with him and thought his love was one-sided for the longest time, but tbf Ghost was also very discreet about it)

2 : He sewed the hat, eyepatch and hook himself, because he's the best uncle and then got distracted as he was wrapping it up, so now he's watching a tutorial on youtube about how to build a voice box. Honestly how hard could it be, he builds explosive devices as a hobby (listen, Price doesn't have to know)

3 : He is out to his family, but doesn't want his mum to know he has a boyfriend because he knows she'll insist on meeting him and welcoming him to the family and making a big deal out of this, and he knows that Ghost isn't ready for that.

4 : Christmas is obviously a very hard time for Ghost, but he is very very in love with Soap and some days still can't believe that it's mutual, but then his Johnny does something like that and his head gets quieter while he's melting a bit.

5 : For the people that didn't see my other post : the bird is a Caique parrot, and they're supposedly very energetic, a bit loud, medium sized, unintelligible, very friendly to what they consider their family, adventurous and danger prone, with an explosive personality and a hate of boredom, so basically the adhd bird.

[and-his-hands-were-24-crows]

I did a quick Garrus in my current style.

[tanadrin]

the inability to use modern expressions like "jesus christ" and "oh my god" when writing people speaking in a modern, colloquial fantasy in fiction is actually really awkward sometimes. because almost anything you replace it with is going to sound naff as hell. tempted to just leave the culturally-contextual oaths in and trust people to understand that they're translation conventions. turn linguistic smeerps into rabbits, as it were.

[harpysongs]

Btw if anyone has any mask, gear, or quadrobic content that focuses on mythic creatures or non mammals, especially reptiles, birds, and dinosaurs youre so welcome to send them to me

[1dinodaily]

11/30/22 California Condor

[prince-snatcher]

“THIS ONE AIN’T RUBBER!”

(Higher quality version on Twitter)

[transingthoseformers]

would you rather have dinosaurs or Transformers actually exist in the world today?

This was a very difficult choice, but I eventually decided (with a heavy heart) the non-avian dinosaurs had their chance, and that the implications of aliens being real and here too enormous for me to pass up

[emperorcandy]

Saw a bunch of crows recently and just go to thinking about dinosaurs and like birds are dinosaurs,we already know this.

One of the dominant groups of animals for 160 million years until the impact.

But despite the asteroid and the losses of the non avian dinosuars and a number of avian ones too they're still alive,still kicking after millions more years, diversifying into so many varieties of species even as mammals come to largely dominate the earth.

Just go outside in most places and you can see Dinosaurs

And I just love that and think it's a beautiful thing.

[willgrahamsbecoming]

wren chicken post got me thinking about how i cant comprehend birds . chickig.....those are real and you can just . have one. its an animal.a real creature. it eists. tgis football feathered beast with lizard legs. and they will just make funny noises and manifest an egg regularly. who authorised this

[makenna-made-this]

The leggy girls are really not appreciating this wet snow

"How am I supposed to Live, Laugh, Leghorn in these conditions?"

[swan2swan]

I still don't understand Bird Nesting Instincts, but it probably translates back to the dinosaurs.

I assume dinosaurs went "oh, it's windy here, I'm gonna pull these leaves closer to me." And then they went "Oh, it's windy here, too, so I'm going to pull these...actually, I'm just gonna circle myself fully with leave sand mud. I'm in a hole."

Obviously that helped with survival, so the freaks with that particular neurotic impulse wound up surviving. And they laid their eggs in those things ("WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THESE well they smell like me I'll sit on them oh look at this it smells like me too I guess I'll feed it to make it stop making dangerous noises"), and the eggs survived. So they got used to eggs being in the circles. And started making the circles.

Then when they lived on cliffs, they did this. Then they started bring rocks and sticks up to cliffs. And then sticks into trees when some of these weirdos started living in trees.

And now there's just...an instinct in their head to Make A Big Bowl of Sticks when they find a nice tree. Live in that. Lay eggs. Tend to the eggs.

[crowsyart]

Some of these have way more meaning than others some are just vibe based I’m a bird guy I gotta birdify the soul eaters

Maka - Carolina Wren

Soul - Osprey

Black☆Star - Common Kingfisher

Tsubaki - Black Heron

Kid - Black Vulture

Liz - Red Tailed Hawk

Patty - Rough Legged Buzzard

Crona -Kauai o’o’

Ragnarok - Loggerhead Shrike

Medusa - Crested Serpent Eagle

Marie - Buff Orpington Chicken

Spirit - Red Crested Cardinal

Stein - Harpy Eagle

Death - Andean Condor

Justin - Turtle Dove

Giriko - Hoatzin

Eruka - Potoo

Mifune - Snowy Owl

Sid - Ostrich

Hero - Grey Catbird

Asura -Magnificent Frigatebird

Naigus - Groove Billed Aini

Asuza - Western Jackdaw

[flygonscales]

New D&D character, who dis?

Ok so this is Huxley. He’s a lizardfolk druid (Circle of the Moon) and he is a naturalist. He’s doing adventuring because he wants to travel and categorise the local fauna and flora, and the funds from adventuring can go towards the next big trip to somewhere exotic. Also the DM said that this world has dinosaurs, which I’m VERY excited about! (for anyone not familiar, dinosaurs count as ‘beasts’ game-wise, so I can wildshape into them). (!!!!!)

Personality wise I’m thinking he’s like a chill professor sort of guy, but he can be really hands on with his work (I’m thinking like a cross between a cartoon Victorian explorer and Steve Backshall (childhood hero, honestly)). I’m so happy to have a d&d group again!

[violeteyedkiller]

DINO TRACKS

It's just baffling to think of all the environmental conditions necessary to preserve fossils and to be somewhere these amazing animals were millions of years later.