#JAKAPIL SWEEP

[scolop98]

VOTE JAKAPIL FOR DINOSAUR MARCH MADNESS

@a-dinosaur-a-day

No other contestant in the final four is such A Creature™️ the way that Jakapil is. Jakapil is simultaneously the ultimate being to exist from the perspective of a dinosaur-obsessed child and a fascinating, paradigm-shifting paleontological enigma. Literally the perfect dinosaur, what more could you want

Why vote for Jakapil?

the most likely scenario here is that this guy represents a hundred million year old ghost lineage of basal thyreophorans that we’ve never discovered before. The less likely scenarios are bipedal armored ceratopsian or a completely new kind of ornithsician, both of which have been genuinely considered by some paleontologists! Whatever the case, Jakapil represents a brand new, never-before seen lineage of dinosaurs unlike anything we’ve ever known before, and that’s SO COOL

Aesthetically, this is a bipedal armored dinosaur with tiny abelisaur-grade arms, estimated to be less than 5 ft long and 15 lb (or 1.5 m and 7 kg max). Literally perfect. I’m really bad at visualizing measurements but I’m pretty sure you could pick it up and hold it in your arms if you tried. Sure you could do that with Heracles or Caihong, but you don’t need a Time Machine to pick up parrots and shiny bird things - there’s nothing like Jakapil for you to hold and snuggle today

They’re so friggin weird. It’s got jaws like a ceratopsian or a heterodontosaur, a jaw bone that no other basal thyreophorans have, arm anatomy shockingly similar to abelisaurs, and THEY CAN CHEW. I know that chewing seems really normal to us humans but it’s so weird to see outside of mammals. Practically the only other dinosaurs that chew are ornithopods. Jakapil seems like it’s trying to be as many kinds of dinosaur as possible, which further supports my statement that it is the Ultimate Dinosaur

It’s armored and covered in spikes. ‘Nuff said

Also a friendly reminder that the only other known bipedal thyreophoran is Scutellosaurus, which was from Early Jurassic Europe. Jakapil is from late Cretaceous South America, so this guy just popped up across the world a hundred million years later with practically no trace of its ancestors. How did this happen? What the fuck were its ancestors doing in that time? Heracles may have given us neat answers to New Zealand-y questions, but Jakapil gave us questions we didn’t even know needed to be asked

I’ve said it once and I’ve said it again, South America’s fauna has been friggin' amazing since the Cretaceous and never stopped. Automatic points for being a South American dinosaur. This guy lived alongside Giganotosaurus and Buitreraptor!!

What about the other contestants, you may ask? Kholumolumo is only here for the meme. Outside of the funny name and it’s absurdly convoluted history to getting formally named, what do you actually know about it? How much does it contribute to our understanding of dinosaurs compared to the other contestants?

Caihong is basic. I’m sorry but I won’t back down from this (for another few months at least). I love dromaeosaurs as much as the next person, but literally all that Caihong has going for it is it’s ultra-inridescence. Any other Chinese dromaeosaur could provide the rest. Look past your instinctual love of shiny things and vote for something that breaks away from everything we thought we knew to become something truly unique!

As for Heracles... I actually have nothing bad to say about Heracles, I love New Zealand's fauna and giant flightless birds (especially on islands). But while I love Heracles for everything it stands for, I feel like Jakapil stands for so much more. Heracles is a wonderful addition to our knowledge of it's lineage and environment, but also... is it really that surprising to find a giant flightless bird in New Zealand that belongs to that a family endemic to New Zealand? Jakapil is just such a bizarre, fascinating, unexpected discovery from so many perspectives. It is truly the ultimate dinosaur, and we should honor it as such

As of the time of writing there's still four days left at the polls and Jakapil is a steady second place in all three of them. We still have time to win this for Jakapil and dethrone Caihong!

[justgoji]

Jakapil kaniukura with colors taken from the Midwife toad.