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RE: Nanotyrannus - stirring the pot
> From: owner-DINOSAUR@usc.edu [mailto:owner-DINOSAUR@usc.edu]
> On Behalf Of B tH
>
> Finally got "Jurassic Fight Club" and was watching the parts
> I missed when it was on TV.
>
> So, how many finds of 'Nano' have been found?
> How complete are they?
0 to a few... If Nano is real, than there is the skull (nearly complete) in
the Cleveland Museum, and Jane (nearly complete skeleton, nearly complete
facial bones, lacking braincase) in terms of described (or at least
publically mentioned) specimens.
Also, isolated teeth.
> Where did they find the remains of the so-called battle
> between 'Nano' and T.Rex Jr.?
Unpublished, undescribed material. And what is found is "nano" teeth
associated with bones of Tyrannosaurus. No more evidence of battle than the
canibalized Majungasaurus specimens are evidence that male and female
Majungasaurus fought battles to the death.
> The narrator states that today, Nanotyrannus is considered a
> seperate animal. Is that true, or does it represent a
> non-overwhelming majority?
Or, option c, does it in fact represent a minority opinion?
Let me make this perfectly clear: the creators of JFC decided from the start
that they were going to regard Nanotyrannus as a distinct genus prior to any
of the interviews. Futhermore, the fight sequences in JFC were all plotted
prior to consultation of the interviewees. That is not to say they didn't
talk with some researchers before hand; however, do not think that the
scripts of JFC were done in an attempt to find a particular technical
concensus among reseachers.
They most definitely went to some effort to give a number of different
opinions during the talking heads sections, but the focus was the story they
wanted to tell. So (for example) none of the researchers who worked on the
canibalized Majungasaurus would have considered that evidence for the story
of that episode; nor would Cleveland-Lloyd workers say that the evidence
supported the exact scenario shown in that episode; and so forth. The JFC
shows are fun (and was a fun show to work on), and they helped to get some
scientific information out, but they are not scientific reenactments of
particular sites.
Hope this helps,
Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
Email: tholtz@umd.edu Phone: 301-405-4084
Office: Centreville 1216
Senior Lecturer, Vertebrate Paleontology
Dept. of Geology, University of Maryland
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/
Fax: 301-314-9661
Faculty Director, Earth, Life & Time Program, College Park Scholars
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~jmerck/eltsite/
Faculty Director, Science & Global Change Program, College Park Scholars
http://www.geol.umd.edu/sgc
Fax: 301-314-9843
Mailing Address: Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
Department of Geology
Building 237, Room 1117
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742 USA