Dinosaurs Could Hold Basketballs, But Not Dribble

Gre7g writes "Long before the invention of the photocopier, mud was the ideal way to preserve an image of your butt. 'We got lucky with this one [sitting] on a slope,' which brought its hands closer to the ground, said study author Andrew Milner of the St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm. Full disclosure: My wife did the artistic reconstruction."

Use Cases

[fm6]

Long before the invention of the photocopier, mud was the ideal way to preserve an image of your butt.

Some of us still consider mud to be far superior. Photocopiers may be more convenient, but they really can't compare with mud for capturing detail without distortion.

Now I'm going to be flamed by a lot of Xerox fan boys. For the last time: the best technology is the technology that works best for you!

Re:

[knapper_tech]

Flatulence could become entrapped in the mud, adding porosity to the surface and totally losing a portion of the information. For butt self-portraits, xerox copiers will not produce this defect...assuming it's a defect. The user may consider it to be an indicator of healthy digestive activity and even strive to achieve the effect. Of course, it seems like some unfair stereotyping to say that people who sit in mud are likely to have this problem anyway. Maybe it's insensitive to say it's even a problem

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[NotBornYesterday]

Mud would also obscure any, ahem, solid farts.

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[mooingyak]

This is the most absurd post I've ever read. Maybe this was true 15 years ago. You moronic mudophiles think that because you hear a squishy sound when you sit in the mud it's superior to Xerox. This really insults the BCT (Butt Capture Technology) advances that Xerox's researchers have made in recent years. It's really gotten to a point where mud just can't compete. Anyone who does Butt Captures professionally has known this for years now.

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[fm6]

Oh, right, your fancy BCT can unflatten your butt. Get real!

I think you just like having your posterior irradiated. Hope you're not planning to have kids!

Re:

[mooingyak]

I love the smell of irradiated posterior in the morning.

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[antifoidulus]

But consider the distribution problems that mud presents. With a scanner/copier I can scan my butt and send it round the world in seconds, lets see mud do that!

Plus, you insert a mud imprint of your butt into your boss's presentation.

Re:

[antifoidulus]

you insert = you cannot insert

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[somersault]

you insert = you cannot insert

You sound like my girlfriend.

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[fm6]

Go write for TV. What would you rather have, a quality product, or a big audience?

Re:

[symes]

Clearly there are a lot of openings in body casting

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[Hognoxious]

Excellent, it was about time I changed my desktop wallpaper.

Dinos Basketball Team

[whtmarker]

This looks like research from the University in Alberta (Edmonton) that the U of C Dinos [godinos.com] are guilty of a traveling violation [wikipedia.org].

Man,

[Paranatural]

These people put waaay too much effort into making fund of dinosaurs.

Re:

[GundamFan]

Was that the most subtle pun today or a typo?

The world may never know.

Clever girl

[GrumblyStuff]

Yet another reason to fear raptors....

Re:

[reverseengineer]

Speaking of which, what does this mean for the Toronto Raptors [wikipedia.org]?

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[antdude]

Oh they can, but not very well. ;)

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[dem0n1]

Oh they can, but not very well. ;)

Isn't that also the answer to "Anyone can sing."

Toronto Raptors!

[antdude]

Fear these Toronto Raptors [nba.com] because they can hold basketballs, dribble, and sometimes shoot!

Re:

[Iorek]

I was ready to post a "Cue the Raptors jokes" comment... Nice. :-)

Where's the basketball?

[biocute]

Well, I did read the friendly article and no where could I see any reference to basketball.

Re:

[Gre7g]

Sorry. National Geographic reduced the content way down to just the highlights. The original research is about the angles of their wrists and how we could see that in the mud imprints, but I thought it would be better to post the big name link rather than the high detail one.

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[Qzukk]

Unless you have to pay for the research, please keep in mind that in future submissions, you can have more than one link in the body of your submission. Even if it's just <a href="...">More details here</a>

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[jd]

Well, where's the more detailed reference in the comments, then? :)

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[Gre7g]

Sorry. Try this one: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0004591 [plosone.org]

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[DerekLyons]

Yet here, where people are asking for high detail, you still forgo linking it.

Re:

[Gre7g]

I posted it a little earlier in this thread. Here it is again: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0004591 [plosone.org]

Re:

[DerekLyons]

Didn't see it, hadn't been moderated high enough, my apologies.

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[Peeet]

Basically it is saying that Dinosaurs held their hands in a palms inward fashion rather than a palms down fashion. Palms in can hold a basketball but you need to put your palm facing down to dribble it. Obscure, not in the original link, and citing basic sports knowledge - I know, not usual Slashdot fare, eh?

But wait...

[InterruptDescriptorT]

How do you explain Yao Ming then?

it is satan himself

[circletimessquare]

who wishes us to believe dinosaurs could evolve to hold a basketball. the holy truth is of course intelligent dribbling, probably taught by 3 point all star jesus himself to intelligent basketball playing dinosaurs on jurassic half courts

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[Gat0r30y]

You owe me a keyboard and my dignity. Soda just came out my nose. And thank you sir.

how dare you laugh at

[circletimessquare]

what god has revealed, in his infinite wisdom, to an internet troll ;-)

You forgot to add . . .

[SpeedyGonz]

who wishes us to believe dinosaurs could evolve to hold a basketball. the holy truth is of course intelligent dribbling, probably taught by 3 point all star jesus himself to intelligent basketball playing dinosaurs on jurassic half courts

... that he teached those dinos just before the tournament finals of 5500 bc

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[fractoid]

"intelligent dribbling"? I thought that was less the domain of Raptor Jesus and more the domain of Stephen Hawking...

A triumph for science!

[Inf0phreak]

They are beginning to puzzle the events of Godzilla vs Barkley [thatguywit...lasses.com] (*) together at least!

*: Warning! Contains flash video and may make you laugh uncontrollably at horrible plot.

New Extinction theory!

[erroneus]

There are plenty of theories about how the dinosaurs met their near-simultaneous end, but with the information provided in the article, I think I have an idea worth investigating!

Dinosaur Dodgeball Elimination Deathmatch!

If they can hold basketballs, then they can hold dodgeballs. And dribbling is not needed for dodgeball! So it all makes sense now!

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[betterpc]

I beg to differ, sir. Here's a perfect explanation why dinosaurs went extinct. [eatliver.com]

Wait, what...

[Arancaytar]

What the hell do the dinosaur, the basketball and the mud have in common here?

Am I the only one to whom this reads like a kind of dadaist ramble?

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[Neon Aardvark]

Fossilized mud-print -> angle of wrists -> palms up not down -> could hold basketball.

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[camperdave]

So, let me get this straight. One individual dinosaur leaves some palm up hand prints in the mud, and suddenly the thousands of species of therapods spread out over the millions of years can't play basketball? They don't have any bones, just a mudprint, so how could they tell it would dislocate its shoulder to make a palm down print? You can't tell range of motion of a limb from a single print in the mud.

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[TapeCutter]

"So, let me get this straight. One individual dinosaur leaves some palm up hand prints in the mud, and suddenly the thousands of species of therapods spread out over the millions of years can't play basketball?"

That's right, the global conspiracy to deny the fact that dinosaurs could dribble isn't science, hell it's not even sport, it's politics - specifically the IOC, NBA, and the Chinese government are to blame.

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[camperdave]

That's right, the global conspiracy to deny the fact that dinosaurs could dribble isn't science, hell it's not even sport, it's politics - specifically the IOC, NBA, and the Chinese government are to blame.

Sadly, that's a better explanation than what's in the National Geographic article.

Put down the crack pipe

[Jabbrwokk]

I had the same reaction. Ass... mud... dinosaur... basketball... *headasplode*

Seriously, how did this get approved? It has nothing to do with the article.

The actual newsworthiness of the article is that the fossil prints are the first found of a meat-eating dinosaur's front limbs. No fucking basketballs anywhere in the article.

The find has shaken up paleontologists' understanding of how dinosaurs evolved into modern birds.

Please don't approve any more submissions from "Gre7g" until he gets his substance abuse problem under control.

Could hold a basketball but couldn't dribble?

[dreemernj]

Yet another thing I have in common with dinosaurs.

Re:

[Culture20]

Take a heavy dose of pain medication. You'll be dribbling in no time.

Utah

[LBArrettAnderson]

Happened in Utah. Tagged as 'mormons'

extinction via weak back court

[roesti]

Now we know why the dinosaurs went extinct. You can't survive in this world without a decent guard rotation.

Still, England's guard rotation is still methodical and precise, and their empire is slowly diminishing. There's no accounting for team chemistry, I suppose.

In other words ...

[PPH]

...they're a lot like the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Re:

[gangien]

you steal a crappy NBA team, what ya expect?

whoa...

[MrPinstripeCom]

biggest. puffin. [wikipedia.org] ev3r. and I for one welcome our new Mega-Puffin-saurus overlords.

Well ofcourse!

[nog_lorp]

Dribble is much harder to hold than a basketball. It drips out of your hands!

Yes, but...

[Locke2005]

What the world really wants to know is: could they slam dunk?

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[thewils]

Depends if they were able to make the baskets.

This [zazzle.com] would seem to be evidence that they could...

Goddamnit timothy

[MrMista_B]

Stop hurting Slashdot.

Worse abstract ever

[tsa]

Oh boy that must be the worst abstract ever. I couldn't make anything of it. It's about dinosaurs who want to preserve images of their bottoms, an one of them put its hands closer together? I have to read the fine article to find out what this is all about. I guess this is a scheme concocted by Taco to get more people to read the articles.

Irrelevant

[j_166]

Basketballs would have been relatively tiny in giant dinosaur hands, so they would probably have gripped them in their dinosaur fists rather than in the palms like modern man. So it doesn't really matter which way their wrists were oriented.

Also, the dinosaurs would have eaten the basketballs, thinking they were cleverly shaped poppy air eggs. To the primitive dinosaur palette, this would have been something of a delicacy or novelty, like pop rocks are to modern man.

Re:

[j_166]

Would *you* want to be the one who calls the penalty on the T-rex?