I'm blanking on the exact phrase, but it's something like "never believe a number with unreported error".

To get further into the weeds there is a significant difference in approach between theoretical and experimental science. In experimental science it's not only enough to communicate what you "know" but to communicate the underlying biased, tolerances and precisions of the thing being measured and modeling approach being used.

these represent the threshold of the known.

I would argue that those representations are inherently bad science because they do not communicate the margin of error. Grue, I believe you are spot on with a concept in how you would make those drawings more scientifically accurate, but ultimately they are artistic renderings of scientific understandings, but not scientific themselves.

While I don't disagree with WoodScientist that modern scientific institutions are inherently conservative, the process of science is not, nor should it be. Apologizing for the inherent conservatism in science is unscientific, harms belief in vetted resulted, conflates institutions for processes and projects a people problem onto the inanimate.

i'd say these days paleo art is more "okay so we know what related animals look like, and we know what animals in the same general niche look like, so let's use those to fill in the blanks from the skeleton and make something that looks like you could find it in the wild"

honestly i feel like many people are quite a bit too generous towards people of the past, people just really liked to write fanfiction with fossils as the base for a lot of the history of paleontology.. Basically like what jurassic park did but they passed it of as enlightened science, conveniently forgetting to tell people that they just went ahead and moved a bone found near the legs up to the nose..
Certainly there was genuine attempts to recreate dinosaurs, but good lord a lot of it is just obviously biased, lord forbid dinosaurs not be portrayed as sluggish obsolete monsters!

We know from the bones many things such as the weight the animal could support and how they walked indicating how they balanced. Depending on the age and sediment the animal might have even left a pretty good outline, and in highly alkaline conditions some saponified tissue would remain (completely denatured, but the shape would be there).

The creature in the OP meme for example was a hind-legged walker, so it couldn't be too front heavy and it's front paws weren't heavy weight-bearing. Just like all of it's close relatives who came before and after it.

HOWEVER! This interpretation can change! Originally only two Spinosaurus specimen were collected in very small number of bones with which to make recreations, due to difficulties in and around the region of Egypt. It can be very difficult for archeologists to make digs given their history with the region and the local extremist factions who oppose the concept of things like dinosaurs and ancient cultures. Recently a 2014 study which looked at one particular rock proposed the Spinosaurus tail was webbed, indicating it was semi-aquatic, which would have an impact on weight distribution of the animal and support the idea of a more bouyant build.

jorking peanits

time to compare mass/cooling appendage area for dinosaurs and elephants (they use their ears for cooling).

problem.

Weren't spinosaurs aquatic? cooling surfaces like those aren't needed if you're in the water.

As continued in modern male birds having the more extravagant displays.

Part of the evidence for dinosaurs being birds is that female dinosaur bones show the same changes that female birds during their reproductive cycle - they build up like extra blood structures for support iirc.