How To Estimate Extinct Animal Mass Like a PRO

Darius Nau walks you through a detailed explanation of how to use the programming language "R" to estimate the volumes of extinct animals based on life reconstructions. Thank you to Darius for allowing this to be posted! This GDI Tutorial video is part of an expanded project that involves nearly a dozen paleontologists working with me to create a DIY mass-estimation resource involving volumetrics, isometry, and allometry.
Check out his software package here: cran.r-project...
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[@DreadEnder]

I used to wonder how computer science could help in palaeontology. Now I know it’s key.

[@ferociousrazordino3581]

@@DreadEnder exactly! I am thinking about majoring in comp sci... its just so versatile

[@DreadEnder]

@@ferociousrazordino3581 yes go for it! As long as you’re interested in it you can master it. I talked to some palaeontologists at my local university and they said that at least there there is a coding element to it. We have to make a code on some aspect of palaeontology whether it’s estimating mass or volume or something else entirely.

[@Cosmik7]

Vividen uploading the hard hitters

[@juliusnovachrono4370]

Honestly, its been so long since I've last seen you or your videos (the last time I saw you was in your Dumbledore vs Gandalf video). I hope you are doing well.

[@STRIKER_MAN1]

Chat this is too much math for me, ima just stick with research papers.

[@andrewrubenazcaratemolina1627]

Wow thats hella incredible

[@teosworld5001]

Had a statistics elective and learned R programming. I was hoping to never see it again but now that it’s in the context of dinosaurs…😁

[@mullaivendanmullaivendan]

Thats cool darius

[@DreadEnder]

Awesome!

[@superiorcybergodzilla5670]

Very interesting 😮

[@ferociousrazordino3581]

Gotta get R first...

[@DreadEnder]

You sound very different in this

[@TheVividen]

This isn't actually me--this is paleontologist Darius Nau, who's one of the paleontologists helping me out with my size estimation methods video. This is a tutorial that he recorded and I uploaded separately from the main video.

[@DreadEnder]

@@TheVividen cool! (I knew it wasn’t you) I’m sad I missed the stream. I didn’t even know you did these interviews and it’s absolutely awesome! Have you heard of the Cambridge Biology Challenge? It’s a nation wide competition to make a presentation on a biology related topic. The current question is “does behaviour fossilise?” So I’m in my element. If you haven’t read it before I highly recommend locked in time by Dean R. Lomax which explains 59 examples of absolute amazing cases of behaviours captured in time!

[@TheVividen]

@@DreadEnder That sounds amazing! Sorry your joke went right over my head haha. Locked In Time has been on my list for a long time, but I still need to get a copy of it...

[@DreadEnder]

@@TheVividen yeah my local museum was selling signed copies. It’s a great read! It has 5 chapters; sex, parental care and communities, moving and making homes, fighting biting and feeding, and unusual happenings. It covers basically every major discovery on ancient behaviours to date such as lekking in dinosaurs, the oldest case or arthropod parental care, a mass moth migration, the fighting dinosaurs, fossilised farts and much more!