Honestly, despite being 1000% a dinosaur kid, I don't know that I ever really had one specific favorite dinosaur. Speaking broadly, I definitely tend toward the badass herbivore side of things, which hardly narrows it down. Pachycephalosaurus, Diplodocus, Anyklosuarus were standouts probably.
Also, shoutout to my favorite out of print dinosaur book, The Ultimate Dinosaur, which was a chonker anthlogy of pop science, lush illustrations, and science fiction short stories. I don't know if it holds up but I have very fond memories of it.
The Maraapunisaurus is considered by some to be the largest dinosaur that ever lived, by some estimates weighing over twice as much as the Argentinasaurus. If correct, this dinosaur would be the largest animal yet discovered to ever have existed.
Detractors point out that the fossil collection these estimates are derived from consists of part of one vertebra.
And that no one has actually seen that vertebra since the 1880's.
Look one of my book series is about dinosaurs fighting dragons. Picking a favorite dinosaur for me is nearly impossible.
BUT!
Lemme show you one I think y'all will like and probably haven't seen before:
Meet Yutyrannus, AKA the feathered tyrant. A member of the Proceratosauridae family of tyrannosauroid dinosaurs (basically Yutyrannus is a distant cousin of T-Rex that's still closely related enough to be a cousin), Yutyrannus was a bit smaller than the T-Rex, clocking in at about 30 feet/10 meters from nose to tail.
We know three things about Yutyrannus that I feel are important:
- Those thick feathers. They absolutely had them, covering their body like that. As in, we have found solid fossil proof that they had feathers, so much so it's in their name.
- They lived in a cold climate. That's just a fact.
- They were social animals. It's still debated if they were pack hunters or not, but if nothing else they did likely live in close proximity to each other based on fossils discovered.
Which means, putting those factors together, there is solid evidence that these 10 meter long, multi-ton tyrant fluffballs would have dealt with harsh climates via the manner preferred by many social animals today:
The cuddle puddle.
Enjoy that mental image.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure I have any one favorite dinosaur. However, I'm gonna start with one dear to me and science itself.
Iguanodon went from a literal giant lizard, to a strange kangaroo lizard, and now I think we've discovered enough about it for me to comfortably say it was the coolest hadrosaur of them all. Sure, it's not as flashy as parasaurolophus or ouranosaurus, but Iguanodon has a knife.
I like to imagine late cretaceous mid range theropods thinking Iguanodon is an easy meal, but this armed lizard horse has been watching and waiting while it grazed until that scrappy ceratosaurus or whatever got just close enough to get shanked. Then after it washes the blood off its hands in the river it uses those same hands to build MASSIVE nests and raise 8-9 Iguanodonlets.
I think the animal speaks to me because it has been misunderstood for decades, and even when it was alive, it was probably misunderstood by its predators. It also speaks for the duality of being a prey animal in the Cretaceous, in my opinion. So many herbivores of the era have such vastly different ways of protecting themselves- and I'll probably discuss more of them later when I talk about ceratopsids and ankylosaurids. However I wanted to start here because there's simply something to be said about a big horse lizard with a knife.