this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
1179 points (99.2% liked)

Science Memes

13467 readers
2626 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 hours ago

I suddenly feel very small, but also the load off my shoulders lifted.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

OK, now I'm imagining dinosaur archaeologists (monocles and brushes, not bullwhips and quips).

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Birds are considered to be dinosaurs. Birds exist now. We are finding dinosaur fossils now.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago

That's what the XKCD that was posted says. Mostly.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 day ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago

There's always a relevant xkcd

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The popup text on that one is quite funny.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

Any idea how to access the pop-up text on a phone?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

It says:

Sure, T. rex is closer in height to Stegosaurus than a sparrow. But that doesn't tell you much; 'Dinosaur Comics' author Ryan North is closer in height to certain dinosaurs than to the average human.

😂

As a tall person I feel cooler now

[–] [email protected] 4 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

On my android, I just long press on the image, and it appears at the top of the popup menu

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 hours ago

Same on iOS

[–] WoodScientist 144 points 1 day ago (2 children)

There are fossilized humans. Fossilization really doesn't take that much time, geologically speaking; it just requires very specific conditions.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago

Also makes you wonder what fossils they mean, of the same species or then already extinct ones.

Because according to a quick Wikipedia search the oldest hominid fossils (?) are something like 7 millions years old

That's much much shorter than dinosaurs where around but hey " hominins are around long enough to unearth hominin fossils"!

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago (6 children)

About how much time are we talkin here?

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 day ago (4 children)
load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Also, water you are drinking has probably been peed by dinosaure. Several time. But probably not peed by a human.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago

Second relevant xkcd of the comments https://what-if.xkcd.com/74/

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 120 points 1 day ago (6 children)

It is more chronologically accurate to show a t-rex being hit by a car than it is to show a t-rex eating a stegosaurus

[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

I said I'm sorry. But if you're going to let your T-Rex out at night you should at least put a reflective collar on it.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Hi, I was just calling because I live down the street from you, and your daughter come to my house today and she kick my t-rex.

Your daughter come to my house today, And she come on my property and then she kick my t-rex. And now my t-rex needs operation.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 day ago (1 children)

How cruel.

My T-Rex ist mostly armless

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 day ago

This is the comparison I was looking for. It’s great to explain that media shows them together but untrue, it is a totally different idea to explain the staggering time difference between the two.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Which makes me ask, why were mammals able to evolve to produce an apex predator that relies on it's inventiveness (Humans) in quite a short time, but no similar "dinosaur" got to that point in a much longer period?

We're searching planets for signs of life as a pre-cursor to intelligent life, but there's no guarantee that life will evolve in the same direction as ours.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Evolution isn't aimed. A T-Rex needs to be good enough to hunt enough food.

Our ancient ancestors smashed the skulls of animals killed by African predators to eat the brains, smashed bones to eat the marrow.

Later as our ancestors became bigger and stronger they hunted and needed to communicate with each other to effectively track and take down an animal. Maybe they needed twenty words. Chickens have three words (or cluck patterns)

At the same time women collected stuff and needed to share how to identify this from that with younger women. They might have needed a hundred words.

Then those who could talk better were more attractive to the other sex than those who couldn't (even now being well spoken is attractive) then a few millions of years later we're making stone knives, hammers, axes; then ten minutes later aeroplanes and machine guns

In short: we had it hard enough we needed to share information. We later found communication sexy. T-Rex had no such trouble. We seem to be the only animal that solved "scavenging is dangerous" and "hunting is hard" with talking to each other rather than by getting bigger and getting claws or vicious teeth

I understand we selected for tall by fighting humans

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

Weird to leave at animals like crows with that last one.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Corvids and psittacines display human child level intelligence. They use tools. They recognize other people. Hell the psittacines can mimic speech.

I personally suspect it's a matter of energy density. Birds have to use almost all of their available calories on flying. Doesn't leave a lot of energy left over for a massively hungry brain. No clue what's holding back penguins, emus, and cassowaries.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 17 hours ago

Most birds are extremely light and efficient. Their bones have evolved to be light weight to help with this. Some species even fly in a V formation to conserve energy.

Evolution doesn't mean get better or smarter. It just means the species can survive and keep reproducing. Emperor Penguins in Antarctica for example, where they nest in a place where there are no predators. It seems insane the hardship and their silly walk which takes forever. But it works.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Birds have to use almost all of their available calories on flying.

But flying is quite energy efficient as a method of getting from point A to point B. That's why flying insects and birds have had such evolutionary success with that strategy.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (3 children)

Is it though? They have to eat an absolute ton relative to their own mass. At least all the birds I've ever interacted with were constantly eating, even when they mostly didn't bother flying. Chicken soccer is what I called feeding the chickens. No patience whatsoever.

My mother used to say that her sons eat like birds, a peck at a time, and twice our own body weight daily.

While we humans eat a lot, something like 50% of our calories are going to our brains. I'm not sure most birds could actually increase their caloric intake enough to be able to evolve bigger brains than they already have. Maybe if we designed them some super foods, but that seems to be cheating, to me.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 hours ago

My mother used to say that her sons eat like birds, a peck at a time, and twice our own body weight daily.

Aw that's cute lol

[–] [email protected] 3 points 18 hours ago

While we humans eat a lot, something like 50% of our calories are going to our brains.

I don't think that's right.

This article says that about 20% of an adult human male's resting energy expenditure goes towards supporting the brain's metabolism. Obviously for more active people, the higher denominator of total energy expenditure will mean an even lower percentage of energy being used for the human brain.

Flying is energetically expensive to start doing, but pays off in efficiency once an animal moves a far enough distance. How many calories does a goose need to consume to fly 4000 km, and how does that compare to terrestrial species like deer or wolves?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 23 hours ago

...something like 50% of our calories are going to our brains.

Dang, I'll have to remember this next time my ADHD pushes me to hyperfocus and I risk skipping meals again. O.O

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 120 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

This is only mind blowing because popular media likes to show every dinosaur at once. Like there's a lot of things depicting stegosaurus fighting T-Rex; but these animals never would have met. They're from entirely different periods.

[–] [email protected] 94 points 1 day ago (2 children)

How dare you suggest DinoTrux lied to us!!!

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

If gasoline is made from dinosaurs, what did the Dinotrux run on?

[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 day ago

The blood of their enemies!!!

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

We live closer to the time of T-Rex than T-Rex lived to the time of Stegosaurus.

67 million years separate us from T-Rex.
83 million years separate T-Rex from Stegosaurus. (150 million years between us and Stegosaurus)

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 day ago (4 children)

on a similar note: When cleopatra lived, the pyramids were already ancient

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 day ago (6 children)

Cleopatra lived closer to t-rex than us

[–] [email protected] 2 points 22 hours ago

Only if we assume they can't be ressurected

load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 64 points 1 day ago (3 children)

This meme made me gasp loud enough that my girlfriend was worried something was wrong.

Then I had to explain that I'm 41 years old and was just shocked by a dinosaur fact.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

To be fair, things can fossilise very quickly given ideal conditions. Still dinosaurs reigned for a lot more time than mammals and frankly nature is still feeling the loss in certain ways.

https://www.americanforests.org/article/the-trees-that-miss-the-mammoths/

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Another fun fact (dino facts are the best facts): There are more "dinosaur" species alive today than there are mammal species.
11,000 bird species alive today (approx)
6,000 mammal species alive today (approx)

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago

Forty-one?! You're practically a fossil!

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 day ago

Also, my favourite fact is we know almost nothing about dinosaurs from jungles and mountains. Most of our knowledge comes from wetland and oceanic creatures because of the way fossils are formed.

load more comments
view more: next ›