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TarnishedGalahad t1_j03gaxa wrote

So since birds are descended from dinosaurs, does that mean the mighty T-Rex used this technique? Asking for a friend...

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[deleted] OP t1_j03orrz wrote

[deleted]

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TarnishedGalahad t1_j03pnj4 wrote

Like a marriage sack? A bag that one throws on their potential marriage choice? I doubt a t-rex could throw one far enough with those stumpy arms. Yep.

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garry4321 t1_j03vm8f wrote

cant tell if this was said with absolutely ruthlessly saturated sarcasm, but I choose to believe it was. Like in my mind you ended it by shaking your head and looking at the guy next to you with a "Can you believe this clown" look.

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mobitzIII t1_j053wrg wrote

weight of the scrote pulled its arms short....

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flippythemaster t1_j04lq3x wrote

I'm not a paleontologist.

Since soft tissue doesn't fossilize, non-avian dinosaur reproductive organs are few and far between. But we have some ways of tackling this issue.

As far as I can tell, the presence of an endophallus (which is analogous but not homologous to a mammalian penis) which emerges from the cloaca is basal to archosauria, which is the clade to which dinosaurs (including modern birds), crocodilians, and pterosaurs belong. How do we know this? Crocodilians have one, and most modern birds have one. Birds that don't and use the cloacal kiss seem to have evolved to do so secondarily.

We also have a single fossil that indicates that Psittacosaurus, an ornithischian dinosaur, had a phallus that would emerge from its cloaca to aid in sperm depositing rather than using a cloacal kiss.

However, Psittacosaurus was an ornithischian dinosaur, and ornithischians are a branch that diverged from their common ancestor with saurischians, which is the branch to which theropods, which includes modern birds and T. rex, belong. So it's not necessarily a given that T. rex wouldn't have done the cloacal kiss.

At this point we're bumping up against the lack of evidence for non-avian saurischians, though. We know that there's a startling amount of internal diversity when it comes to the shape of the reproductive organs in modern theropods, so it's entirely probable that the ancient ones had a variety of options to choose from. Some have reconstructed the T. rex as participating in a cloacal kiss just like modern birds.

For me, though there's one thing that modern theropods don't have that mesozoic ones did--that's a long fleshy tail. While there seems to be a good amount of evidence that the tails, which provided the theropods with balance, were pretty flexible, I feel like the cloacal kiss posture becomes much more difficult when you aren't able to just ruffle the tail feathers out of the way. This, combined with the fact that having an endophallus is apparently the basal state, makes me think that T. rex would've needed some sort of hardware in order to reach its mate's cloaca to deposit the sperm.

I'm not a paleontologist though! So someone who knows more may come and correct me.

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GoAheadMakeMySplay t1_j04v67g wrote

> I'm not a paleontologist.

Then proceeds to provide 6 paragraphs of information about dino junk

I'll admit that I had to stop about three sentences in to make sure I wasn't getting ShittyMorphed. Assuming you posted this in good faith I'd say you're squarely in the realm of "paleontology enthusiast"

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flippythemaster t1_j04vt74 wrote

I think enthusiast is a fair descriptor. I follow paleontological news and took a paleontology class in college but I have a film degree and my day job is video editing. I’m pretty squarely in the “not-an-expert-but-enjoys-the-topic” category

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wegqg t1_j069j91 wrote

I hereby award you an honorary doctorate in dinosaur penises.

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Excellent-Practice t1_j058544 wrote

It sounds like it's not just a lack of evidence that those dinosaurs were bumping into

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Macjeems t1_j04hb4q wrote

I believe there was once a science-based dragon RPG that covered this…

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MattyKatty t1_j06bshr wrote

Birds did not descend from dinosaurs; they are the only extant species of dinosaurs.

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