I submit to you that the most iconic feature of any animal is either unlikely or impossible to fossilize.
If all we had of wolves were their bones we would never guess that they howl.
If all we had of elephants were fossils with no living related species, we might infer some kind of proboscis but we’d never come up with those ears.
If all we had of chickens were bones, we wouldn’t know about their combs and wattles, or that roosters crow.
We wouldn’t know that lions have manes, or that zebras have stripes, or that peacocks have trains, that howler monkeys yell, that cats purr, that deer shed the velvet from their antlers, that caterpillars become butterflies, that spiders make webs, that chickadees say their name, that Canada geese are assholes, that orangutans are ginger, that dolphins echolocate, or that squid even existed.
My point here is that we don’t know anything about dinosaurs. If we saw one we would not recognize it. As my evidence I submit the above, along with the fact that it took us two centuries to realize they’d been all around us the whole time.
XKCD
This is kind of why I don’t even have favorite dinosaurs because they all feel kind of samey to me as far as we understand them 😦
I get the point of this, but y’all. Y’ALL. Paleontologists are finding out what COLOR dinosaurs were, now. Like, not only do we know whether they had feathers, we know what color.
Not only that, but those same techniques would tell us if zebras have stripes, as long as enough fur was preserved. We know that cats purr thanks to the shape and rigidity of the bones in their throat. There are a few oddball bigger cats out there, but most follow a pattern that is visible IF the cat leaves fossils. We know that deer shed their antlers and they likely shed the velvet from their antlers thanks to how they grow, which is pretty distinct and leaves traces behind in the fossils. As long as some fur is preserved, we’d know the color of orangutans. We absolutely know that the oldest whale fossil showing signs of echolocation is 28 million years old. We also absolutely know that squid existed in the fossil record. (It IS hard to find their fossils, the situation needs to be JUST RIGHT for them to fossilize, but it has happened!)
So like, I get the point of this post, but my friends, do not underestimate how much a scientist nerds out over cool fossils and the lengths they will go to nerd out even harder over them. We are doing some truly amazing science, without the aid of a time machine.
PS: The oldest fossilized spider web is 110 million years old and was preserved in amber.
ifesbob 