ExtinctZoo - Things About Dinosaurs That Sounds Impossible But Are True

Episode Date: April 18, 2026

Prepare to have your mind blown by the absurdities that were the dinosaurs.

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Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro. Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. Dinosaurs, they're old. Awesome. Large. Probably loud. Lovable, famous, and then maybe ironically, highly misunderstood. Over the years, be it thanks to a blockbuster movie in an accurate documentary, or what have you,

the general person's idea of what a dinosaur is has essentially been molded into a mixed bag of inaccuracies, and this has partially led to a pretty big trend in the dinosaur space of clearing up set inaccuracies, or dinosaur myths. Essentially things that may sound true about them, but are in reality false. And this got me thinking though, what about the things that may sound false at first, but are in fact actually true? The facts about our favorite prehistoric goobers, which simply seem impossible, yet are

reality. And because this group is so crazy, it turns out there is not a very true. one, but multiple statements about them that seem rather unbelievable, including for a start that dinosaurs evolved before grass and before flowers. Yeah, let that sink in for a minute. Flowers and grass, something most people see every day, and maybe even have in their house, did not exist when dinosaurs first showed up. And this seemingly out of whack timeline is simply a result of how insanely prehistoric

this group truly is. Considering, as far as we know, the evolution of the first true dinosaurs could date as far back as the middle Triassic, some 234 million years ago, or at the very latest, 233 million years ago during the Carnian stage of the Triassic, which would depend on which species one considers as the first real dino. And to really put this time into perspective, that is so long ago that many dinosaurs technically also lived on the other side of the galaxy, despite inhabiting the same Earth that we live on.

Because if you didn't know, the Earth and the solar system is always flying through space like a bullet, and since that time so long ago, it'd be able to be able to be. It has traveled through different galactic neighborhoods within the Milky Way. On top of this, dinosaurs evolved so long ago that none of the oceans and seas around now were a thing yet, and Earth's landmasses would have been unrecognizable to you on a map. And it's not just how old dinosaurs are, period, but how long their reign would go on for. I mean, sure, the very first dinosaurs were not the most impressive bunch, and in general they tended to be on the smaller side, were usually bipedal and possessed elongated tail-like

appendages, yet they still were able to get their foot in the door, metaphorically, and were partially aided by a mass extinction event, which would cause them to diversify into a huge amount of varying groups and families, where they achieved a level of success that's never been seen before or since, as they essentially reigned as the planet's most dominant group for over 165 million years straight. For comparison, the reign of modern humans is less than 0.2% of that. So, we have some ways to go, and based on how that way is going right now, I don't think that's going to happen. And because of this long rain, it's actually the majority of non-avian dinosaurs that never experienced grass nor flowers, with flowers popping up between 130 and

140 million years ago, while for grass, it was no earlier than 100 million years ago. In other words, every dinosaur to have existed through the Triassic and the Jurassic would never have seen anything like flowers or grass, and hypothetically, maybe would have been quite confused by their presence. And because of their absurd age and duration of rain, there are a multitude of other almost impossible statements which would be true as well. For instance, it's also true to say that do you live closer in time to a time to a a T-Rex than it did to a Stegosaurus, with a 76-millionaire gap in between them, while for us

in the Big King, it is just 66 millionaires. Now, this is one of the more common time facts regarding dinosaurs, so you might have heard of it before. But another way of looking at it is that by the time the T-Rex showed up, many of the dinosaurs you often think of living side-by-sighted were not only gone, but already fossilized. For example, take the halisaurus. It has been shown more than once in movies in another media fighting a T-Rex, and yet this sprawl is about as accurate as an alien making a movie in which humans are battling a

triceratops. So yeah, pretty crazy. And on a similar note, it's not just the time relating to dinosaurs that's hard to wrap our heads around, but also their physical distance, so to speak, because, and unsurprisingly, just like animals of today, the dinosaurs of old each had their own areas and environments where they called home. And this probably makes a lot of sense to you, but it does also mean that a lot of dinosaurs that people think live together, in fact, did not, even if they did somewhat line up roughly on the timeline. And this is perhaps best showcased by the first Jurassic Park, where in that final battle, a pack of quote-unquote velociraptors take on a tyrannosaurus, resulting in many considering

the two to be arch enemies. And though these two species did technically coexist in time, they definitely never found, or even met for that matter, as the velociraptor was restrained to the Asian continent while the T-Rex was found in North America. And really the takeaway here is that dinosaurs lived all over the world. not just in one spot, with every single continent having some degree of dinosaur fossils in them. And because of this range, in their mind, numbingly long existence, dinosaurs came in just about every shape and size, and expanded to almost every niche you can imagine, which is why I also

find it quite hard to believe that during their entire rain, not a single one of them ever became fully aquatic. Now you may know this already, if you watched some of my other videos, but come on, that's pretty freaking insane. As across the entire board, none made the transition to being fully aquatic, whereas other groups like mammals, snakes, turtles, and more have made the return, which is pretty odd. Now, in reality, their absence from the water comes down to a multitude different reasons and chances that make things a bit more obvious.

But simply said, if I had to put three reasons as to why, the first part is that their naturally buoyant bones don't act as good water weights to counteract buoyancy. Second, their egg designs are made very poorly to resist the effects of being submerged in water, and then third is that tough competition already occupied the water during the Mesozoic. Looking at you, Pleasiosaurus. But what's also odd is that even now, no fully aquatic dinosaurs exist. You might be thinking, well, duh, there are no dinosaurs around. And yet, they are all around us.

As again, against popular misconceptions, the group never died, as birds are in fact dinosaurs. Shocker, I know. And I don't mean they're dinosaur-like, or just heavily related to them. Rather, they are dinosaurs in every sense of the word. Just as much as an allosaurus or Argentinosaurs is. And part of this confusion surrounding birds stems from how we refer to them as avian dinosaurs and the extinct group as non-avian dinosaurs.

But really all avian means is that birds are aviolay, the last clade of living dinosaurs. It would kind of be like if tyranosords had survived and then you would hear that the Tyrannosaurus lived while non-tyranosords did not. So in the end they are still obviously both dinosaurs, it's just a taxonomic thing. And because birds are dinosaurs and again every sense, it also means that dinosaurs are technically still one of the most successful groups of animals alive. And while they don't rule the land per se, like they used to, saying that dinosaurs rule the skies is a valid statement, especially considering that over the 11,000 known bird species, over 99% of them are flyers. So in a way,

their rule never ended. It just changed. Additionally, because those 1% of birds that still walk around parked or full time, you would technically still be correct in saying that dinosaurs still walk the planet this day, no matter how strange that sounds. Another fascinating thing of about birds and the relation to dinosaurs is that they are all theropods who belong to the Mani raptor clade. The very same clade, by the way, they give us Therazinosaurus and overraptors as well, which also means that a bird is way more related to dinosaurs such as the Therazenosaurus than the Therazenosaurus was to many of the quote-unquote traditional dinosaurs if lived alongside. Additionally, just because it's so famous, you should

also know that birds are more related to the T-Rex than the T-Rexes to either an alosaurus or jacinotosaurus, no matter how hard that is to believe. I mean, they look very similar to some and are definitely more similar in size, and yet a chicken is more related to a T-Rex than a T-Rex is to a giganodosaurus. So next time you see a chicken, put some respect on it. And understandably, some of you may be skeptical of this information, especially because at first it does seem like a bit of a stretch. However, this conclusion comes from years of research that involves many different independent

pieces of evidence. Firstly, while dinosaurs were diverse across the board, birds, did highly resemble near... When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed-sponsored jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills,

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Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed. sponsored jobs. Mers non-avian genera, such as Velociraptors or Microraptors, while even their plumage and soft tissue matched to what has been seen in other dinosaurs, suggesting a strong relation. Because while convergent evolution can explain feathers in multiple creatures, the exact details of the feathers are rarely the same unless two things are related, given how complex they are structurally.

And then beyond outside appearances, they also share many internal traits, including wishbones, hollow bones with air sacs, and more. with birds actually sharing more characteristics with dinosaurs than any other living animals of today. And this same logic is also how scientists were able to conclude that bats were mammals instead of a bird or something else, before we actually genetically tested them. And then the same rationale is also tied to how we know they're more related to the T-Rex than a giganodosaurus or allosaurus. As of now, there are two main groups of theropods, the carnosaurs and solarisores. And the latter is the one that scientists say birds belong to, as members of this group could have feathers.

Whereas carnosaurs, the group to which the giganodosaurus and allsaurus belonged to, were all scales. And then there's also many other little differences as well. And just for a nice little cherry on top, in 2007 a team of researchers were able to sequence a tiny, yet impactful piece of collagen protein, from a 68 million-year-old T-Rex, which closely matched the amino acid sequence seen in, wait for it, chickens. And of all the animals they tested, it was indeed chickens were the closest match, showing that they had been on the right track all along. And frankly, this area, in other words, regarding how we know things about dinosaurs, is also an area where certain statements can sound impossible at first.

To give an example, if someone finds a dinosaur tooth that is serrated and sharp, you probably wouldn't raise your eyebrows at them claiming that it belonged to a carnivorous animal. But if this tooth was the only thing found, and then they say something like, oh, it's a new species of dinosaur, let's say a spinosaurid. Then you might start questioning things, because I mean, again, it's just a tooth. But the reality is that dinosaurs can in many cases just be classified off a fragmentary remains alone, and this is primarily because bones are much more specific than one might think. In the case of dinosaurs, each group had unique characteristics that in some cases came down

to the skulls details, such as, for example, the density of each individual bone, which is why even now you took a tiny sliver of, say, a hyena bone, and put it next to a speck of a lion bone, someone could likely tell them apart, even disregarding any sort of genetic analysis. This is especially the case in certain dinosaur species and groups that have traits which are a topomorphic, meaning it's a distinct feature only found in that group of species. Spinosaurid teeth, for example, have a topomorphic features, meaning that if you found a lone tooth with the same traits, you could deduce that it must have come from a spino. And then if it has those traits, and then also other distinct ones that don't match anything

seen previously, you might be able to conclude that the tooth must have belonged to a new type of spinosaurid, considering the shared features and the new distinct ones. And this works with non-teeth too, as nearly every bone is special in its own way, and it's through these odd isolated features that it's possible to tell a dinosaur by a small piece of bone alone. Additionally, it also helps to match fragmented bones to other discovered ones, which can also serve as a method of identification. Now with this said, there's also plenty more of the dinosaurs beyond their general classification

that we're able to find out. A new tech has a lot of especially pretty impossible sounding stuff. Like for example, knowing some of their colors, which we can deduce from preserved melanosomes, understand the texture of their skin from fossilized skin impressions, and then even what some of their brains were like, as seen in the Tyrannosaurus wrecks. Now yes, no brain matter has actually ever been found belonging to the king, but exceptionally well-preserved skulls have, which has in turn preserved as endocasts, the internal cast created by the brain in life, which then, based off the studies, using still-living animals, is surprisingly accurate and at least

telling us the size of the brain and the general shape, allowing us to infer certain things, such as, based off of its shape, if the shape suggests an intelligence more similar to that of a crocodile or a primate. And so this is some pretty nifty stuff, and obviously perhaps a little bit controversial considering the statements made. And it has taken a lot to prove true. But one area that doesn't take too much effort to verify is the general size of dinosaurs. At least in the sense, if you find a big bone, you know that it's probably from a big dinosaur. And a small one, a small dinosaur, etc., etc. And perhaps the thing that documentaries and movies frequently get correct is that, at the very least, everyone knows,

that this group cooked up some pretty massive animals over the years. Yet the one thing that I'll say about this is that even through movies and documentaries, their sheer size is still hard as stomach and in some ways defies what seems possible. For instance, if you made a list of the 10 largest animals to ever walk, they'd all be dinosaurs. If you up that to 20, they'd still all be dinosaurs. And then if the list was 30, well, that would be a dinosaur-only invite, with not even the largest terrestrial mammals ever, like the Paleoloxidon or Paracerysterecturium, making the cut.

Now it has been said more than once that the average dinosaur was just about the size of a dog or a sheep. But this is really a myth stemming from the early 90s, and actually a little bit from Michael Crichton's work, the man and legend behind Jurassic Park. And while this might sound true, it is, um, certainly not, with the average dinosaur in reality being far, far larger, making it an almost impossible challenge to randomly select a small species, with one meta-analysis stating that the average dinosaur was a whopping 4,282 kilograms, were 9,440 pounds, so in other words, over 4 tons, and similar to the weight of an Asian elephant.

And to give you a bit of a taste on how crazy that is compared to now, the average North American mammal currently is about 590 times smaller. So in a way you could say that life in North America has shrunk 600 times since the Mesozoic. And you have to remember, this was the average. Certain individuals got far larger. And it wasn't just the saropods who were stupidly large. For instance, the largest duck-billed dinosaurs, which we usually considered to be non-scary dinosaurs, were sometimes sauropod sized, and could possibly weigh over 20 tons.

Then the largest theropod, the T-Rex, was a walking, crushing machine that could be over five times heavier than a giraffe. And by the way, giraffes are already the largest land animals we have besides hippos, rhinos, and elephants. So the Rex was one big boy. Of course, though, with this said, it was truly the saropods who were the real. freaks of nature, with the clade reaching its pinnacle through the evolution of the Titanosaurs, a group of related saropods that emerged in the Cretaceous and were found across the entire planet.

Now, I will preface this with saying that saropods size as far as specifics go has always been somewhat of a finicky topic. But in the Titanosaurs, it is believed that the largest members were possibly over 80 metric tons, with what are termed as mega-sarpods, possibly even getting bigger than 100 tons. Another lot, one of the more well-known genera is the Argentinosaurs, and guys and girls. These animals were so big that a single leg without flesh or muscle was already taller than any elephant alive today. And things only get crazier with those mega saropods that might have existed, such as the Broughkeosaurus, or in the larger estimates given to already well-known giants, including again the Argentinosaurus. And in this realm,

as we go past 100 tons, we started to see sizes where a single freaking sarapod is somehow heavier than an entire subspecies. And what I mean by this is that going off of a 2023 study that suggested that Brewerhaffcaosaurus weighed up to 170 tons, we were then talking about a case where a lone individual could weigh more than the entire population of Siberian tigers, the population of the entire planet, that is. So kind of nuts. Now to be clear, this study is not set in stone. So there is quote unquote wiggle room for that impossible sounding statement, but the point is that dinosaurs were stupidly big. to such a point in fact that one of the main mysteries that scientists care so much about

is how they were able to get so big in the first place. Obviously whales today are mammals that can rival or beat the largest dinosaurs, but they're kind of cheating as they live in water which helped support their weight, whereas dinosaurs lived on land, making the interest that much greater. And because so many of them were so large, it was actually once thought that their science had to do with the planet itself, with one idea being perhaps that the planet had lower gravity during the domestic zone. This has obviously been debunked and instead knew growing ideas that it was a blend of various factors that allowed for the dinosaur's size, that unsurprisingly had to do with their own physical adaptations, such as hollow bones and bird-like breathing. And then there was, of course,

ecological reasons as well. But again, the bottom line is, we're still not 100% sure on how they did it. And that's pretty metal. When you are so freaking big, the scientists are pretty much like, well, beats me. And I think that's a great wrap-up for dinosaurs as a whole in this video. watching and until next time on extinct zoo. Enjoy more ways to save at Ralph's like low prices in every aisle. And when you download the Ralph's app, you can clip and save more with digital coupons every week. Plus, you can earn fuel points to save up to $1 per gallon at the pump. At Ralph's, you can enjoy more ways to save and more rewards every time you shop. So it's always easy to save big every day

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