code_biologist 17 minutes ago

Related only topically, a 1hr YouTube talk I enjoyed a lot: "Hatchling T. rex and the Evolution of Vertebrate Parental Care" by Nick Longrich: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd0dR2n9hLA

He's a paleontologist and the talk starts with some pretty interesting statistical analysis aiming to estimate T rex clutch sizes (66 eggs) and hatchling weights (1.5kg) as well as T rex parental care. It ends with looking at evolutionary history trends in increasing parental investment in radically different animals.

He talks a little slow, so a little playback speed bump won't go amiss.

niwtsol 3 hours ago

I would love to know the day-to-day ins and outs of being a archaeologist in today's world. A glamorous edition is "the fly around the world to exotic places to find fossils", but I'd love any good books or blogs that talk about the nitty gritty details I wouldn't expect or even know to look for.

  • jonah 2 hours ago

    Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week - https://svpow.com - is one that shows up on Hacker News from time to time. (There's much more to it than the title might suggest.)

  • georgeburdell an hour ago

    Not a paleontologist but my 2 sons went through a dinosaur phase not long ago. It seems like the vast majority of known dinosaur samples come from the northern rockies.

  • stevage 2 hours ago

    You mean paleontologist. Finding new fossils is a tiny part of their work. Mostly it's analysing existing fossils, general research and teaching.

kazinator an hour ago

Consider that the bigger the egg, the smaller its surface-area-to-volume ratio, and so the easier it hangs on to heat, and so the smaller the temperature differential that is required to keep it heated.

dearing 3 hours ago

As a complete layman, I wonder if it's not how adaptive life is and instead how infectious survival is.

abstractspoon a day ago

So big ass dinosaurs did in fact have big asses

  • doginasuit 2 hours ago

    Jurass-thicc Park theme music