I dunno, still might be aliens with this one.

Over the last few decades there have been massive improvements on telling which bones have attachment points for muscles and hints at how strong the muscles are likely to be, but it takes a long time to replace all of the existing artwork with newer and more accurate artwork.

Even with improvements to the muscle structure, any part of the body that has fatty buildup like breasts would be missed without soft tissues being preserved. I am fairly certain that a hippos nose and lip area wouldn't have enough detail to reconstruct accurately. Heck, tyrannosaurs most likely had lips to cover their teeth, but that is based on other animals with similar teeth all having lips to protect the teeth from dryness and rot that doesn't apply to crocodiles who live in a very wet environment.

As another idiot, there is a difference between tusks and teeth. They are different, tusks don't contain enamel for example and I think aliens could also determine this difference. It's rare for teeth to stick out like in the reconstruction.

They would also be able to determine that hippos can open their mouth extremely wide. Making it more likely for the long "fangs" to be at least partially covered and not exposed like the tusks of elephants.

I'll be honest, I double-checked your username to make sure I'm not going to read about Undertaker at the end

We need to bring back the chonkosaurs

Luscious kissable lips?

😗

IIRC the current theory is that many (likely most) had feathers but few of the large ones had actual wings beyond just a row of longer feathers on the forearms. The bodily structures that allow flight are absent on the vast majority of dinosaurs so it's thought they mostly used their arm feathers as rudders for better control when running (which the ostrich and other large flightless birds still use). However, it is thought that some smaller species likely did have wings which they used to glide much like a flying squirrel. Eventually they evolved larger chest muscles and a keel for attaching said large muscles, and at that point you could reasonably just call them birds, which are to this day a subset of dinosaurs.

Spoken like someone who thinks Pluto should still be considered a Planet.

But you are right, Jurassic Park would be a completely different movie if Genaro was eaten my something that looked like an oversized quail.

Just purchased. Now it will languish in my iBooks library with other illustrated books until some time in the distant future…

Yes, it captures the essence of the animal perfectly right.

The Alien Picture of Dorian Hippo.

I don't get how they can have so much energy to move such a bulky body quickly. Aren't they also herbivores?

I’m not sure most deadly animal is right, but they’re definitely top five. Mothers also supper protective of children and males are hyper territorial.

Is Pepsi okay?

There is a method of execution known as pressing, which was the crushing of someone under immense weight. One famous example occurred during the Salem witch trials where a man, not a woman, got so sick of salems bullshit that he refused to talk when questioned and so the town tried to get a confession out of him by stacking rocks on top of him, with the only response being "more weight". He eventually died from the crushing pressure of the rocks. Another famouse example involves an elephant crushing a person, though it was common to crush the limbs then the head.

How is this known?

Scale in mouth, bite?

How can anyone say that an Alien archeologist would make the same minimalist assumptions that humans have made as opposed to making their own assumptions about the muscle and cartilage structures based on the creatures they're familiar with or current creatures alive on earth at the time.

I am and I am!