Thursday, July 22

Name That Dino!




Each one is worth 2 points, for a max of 10 points. Spelling doesn't count, unless I can't even make sense of what you typed. If you're close on the species, I'll give you 1 point (half credit). These are all common ones, and common names are fine. Hungarian names are fine too :) If you give me the scientific names, you get 3 points and win the next three quizzes automatically! Lastly, (A) is not a Brontosaurus. And their tails are not chopped off; that's the picture's borders. I would never do that to a dinosaur.

Good luck and try not to be too scared.
(Answer in the comments section and don't cheat!)

25 comments:

Metamatician said...

Tell me if you like this kind of quiz, too (identification quizzes). They're pretty easy to whip up in Photoshop.

Sara said...

A. Diplodocus
B.Tyrannosaurus Rex
C.Triceratops
D.Stegosaurus
E.Extracutiedocus

Metamatician said...

Our first participant!

A. 1 point, very close.
B. 2 points.
C. 2 points.
D. 2 points.
E. Hehe.

Total = 7 points. Good job.

Mandula said...

I only know two of them: B is Tirannosaurus Rex, C is Triceatops. I saw all the others too, but cannot remember the names... :S

"A" could be Nessie too... :))))

Mandula said...

And yes I liked this quiz. :D

billybytedoc said...

I never could remember, even when you kids were little. They all look like Rex to me. Any points?

Good idea, Dino's not my thing.

Metamatician said...

Ok,

Mandula gets 4 points (2 correct)

and

BillyByte gets 2 points (1 correct)

Better luck next topic!

Unknown said...

A.Brontosauro
B.Tirannosauro
C.Triceratopo
D.Stegosauro
E.BOH! Nessuna idea ;-)

Nice to visit your blog again! Hi Mandula!!!

Unknown said...

E.Velociraptor???

Metamatician said...

Molto bene, Giuseppina! Ma ho detto nelle istruzioni, "(A) non è un brontosauro"! Ci dispiace, devo dare 0 punti per lui. :(

A. 0 punti.
B. 2 punti.
C. 2 punti.
D. 2 punti.
E. 0 punti.

Totale = 6 punti.

So far no one has guessed (A) or (E), so I guess those are the hard ones!

Still, thanks for playing, I enjoy when you come over here and participate, because I know how busy you are. Grazie! Ci sentiamo presto. :)

Metamatician said...

BOH! I didn't see your second comment! Sì, 'velociraptor' è corretta.

Totale nuovo = 8 punti!

Sorry about that!

An Gabhar Ban said...

A - hmm... Allosaurous?
B - T-Rex
C - Triceratops
D - Stegasaurus
E - Velociraptor

Hans said...

hey, mine didn't show up - i have them written down still:
a. brachiosaurus
b. T Rex
c. Triceratops
d. Allosaurus - now I see what it is - just blanked out
e. .....raptor?

An Gabhar Ban said...

no no... wait.. what was littlefoot in the land before time... not allo... apatosaurous!!

An Gabhar Ban said...

oh and yes I like these quizes... anything that stretches my brain!

Metamatician said...

Hans...

A. 2 points. First one to get it!
B. 2 points.
C. 2 points.
D. 0 points. Allosaurs look a bit like T-Rex.
E. 1 point. Velociraptor. Good going!

Total = 7 points.

Metamatician said...

AGB

A. 0 points. Good guess, though.
B. 2 points.
C. 2 points.
D. 2 points.
E. 2 points.

Total = 8 points. Well done.

Metamatician said...

I'll wait for Raelha one more night before wrapping it up.

No perfect scores yet...

I like that Mags knew about Diplodocus, even though it was wrong, and several of you knew about Allosaurus, again wrong. Still, impressive answers!

Unknown said...

Nice dino pic, not what I was expecting, but much better :)

Anyway:

A Brachiosaurus
B Tyrannosaurus Rex
C Triceratops
D Stegasaurus
E Hmm, it looks cute, so is probably not a Veloceraptor (thank you Jurassic park for that one), however I have no other idea, so will stick with that.

Unknown said...

And thank you for waiting for me :)

Metamatician said...

Ladies and Gentleman, we have a winner! And our first perfect score!

Congratulations, Raelha, you got all five (good thing you stuck with your hunch on the last one - Spielberg literally told his crew he wanted to double the size of true velociraptors so they'd be more menacing: In reality they would have come up maybe to your thigh, though they still could probably kill you).

Total = 50 points.

You even spelled each named correctly! Great job.

Metamatician said...

Ok, now that this quiz is over, a few clues.

(A) Was a little hard because most sauropods (qv) look very similar. I said in the post it was NOT a brontosaurus, which will teach certain Italian translators to read more carefully =P ...The big giveaway here is 1) the upright posture; brontosaurs/apatosaurs were slung much lower to the ground, there body staying still while their head roamed around browsing on shrubs. The brachiosaur is likely to have spent much of its time in swampy water, like hippos do today, to support its great bulk; therefore 2) it has a funny little set of ridges on the top of its head where its nostrils are, so it can breathe while almost completely submerged. This is visible on the model.

Most everyone got T-Rex (this model was a bit generous with his arms, they were actually shorter than depicted), triceratops, and stegosaurus. People who were itching to get allosaurus in there did so, but allosaurus was a much earlier predator in the mold of T-Rex, though its line did not lead to T-Rex, but to extinction. It's a great example of convergent evolution (qv). It was, essentially, the T-Rex of its time, though it never coexisted with that somewhat larger beast.

(E) - The velociraptor threw some people for a loop because it was small and somewhat cute. What's hard to see in the toy is that it had a claw which was the analogue of your index finger which was quite elongated and razor sharp, likely a weapon for slicing open the bellies of small herbivores and waiting for them to bleed to death.

One thing I forgot to mention was that the "velociraptors" in Jurassic Park were actually modeled after a larger relative called deinonychus, confusing an entire generation of kids in a way only Hollywood has mastered.

Early paleontologists often found raptor bones associated with fossilized eggs, and thus considered them to be egg-stealers (I still have a book that describes them as such); but we now now that these warm-blooded dinos (therapods, like their later descendent, T-Rex) actually roosted on their egg clutches and provided at least as much parenting to their young as do modern crocodilians or turtles. They weren't stealing the eggs, the eggs were their children!

And lastly, unlike this toy or depictions in Jurassic Park, since 2007 discoveries of fine-silt fossilized velociraptors in China and elsewhere have shown unequivocally that they sported feathers - not for flight, but a luxurious plumage nonetheless, most likely evolved for thermal regulation as well as for sexual display, much like tropical birds today. This is intriguing because raptors lived early in the long history of dinosaurs, and had died out or given rise to much-modified descendants by the time the dinosaurs met their end. For various reasons, this strongly suggests that other therapods such as T-Rex also sported feathers, for display if nothing else, and perhaps in a crest down the back or some other configuration.

The jury is still out on so many things about dinosaurs. Did you know most scientists don't consider dinosaurs to be "reptiles" at all anymore? Reptiles are cold-blooded. At least some dinosaurs could regulate their body temperatures the way mammals do. And they show many other morphological differences from the reptiles of today. If they were still alive, likely they would form a class of their own, a bridge between reptiles and birds, but not properly belonging to either group.

Thank you for taking my quiz!

Metamatician said...

Misc:

Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus are different names for the same beast. It was once thought they were different species, but the fossils turned out merely to be regional variations on the same dude.

Allosaurus looked like this.

The plates on Stegosaurus have been speculated to be radiator fins for cooling off, or mating ornamentation. They may have been used for defense, but they were brittle enough that it's not likely. We still don't know their true function.

Raels, I jumped the gun. You did spell two dinos incorrectly, but since you got a perfect score, this is entirely forgivable :)

The favorite theory of "Nessie," as Mandi mentioned, is that of a family of Pleisosaurs which somehow escaped extinction. However, this is total bullshit, excuse my French. There's no such thing as Nessie, I'm sorry to say. I'm the first one who would love it if there were, but many very thorough studies as well as common sense and admissions of hoaxers just rule it out completely.

Extracutiedocus lives only in the mind of Magdalene, and often take the shape of a blue budgie, who is himself descended from the mighty "thunder lizards".

EVERYONE I invited ended up participating! This puts a smile on my face and I promise to produce more such light-hearted (yet educational) quizzes in the future. Thank you again.

Unknown said...

Thank you. I wasn't sure on the brachiosaur, but that was what I first thought when I saw the model, so I went with that and ignored the "diplodocus" that was whispered to me afterwards by my self-doubt. You make me sound very learned when in fact all of my information came from the one picture book I read over and over and over again when about six years old, and Jurassic Park, of course. Although I did have something in my mind about velociraptors with feathers that must have come from some later, less-visual, source of information.

I was surprised at the perfect spelling comment - knew it couldn't be right. Me? No typos!? :O

I remember getting excited years ago about a TV programme in which scientists with some special radar/sonar equipment "dragged" the whole of Loch Ness looking for Nessie, and beign heartbroken when they claimed she didn't exist. It would be fun, wouldn't it? Though it would turn a particulalry beautiful part of the world into a theme park, so perhaps it's for the best.

Metamatician said...

Thanks Bob!

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