Re: Ankylosaurs and "mimicry"

[Crpntr@ix.netcom.com (Kenneth Carpenter)]

Ralph Chapman wrote:

> Ken Carpenter reviewed it, so his comments wouldq
>be of great interest. 

Ok.  My 2 cents.  I wasn't convinced when I reviewed the paper, but I 
was willing to let the idea be published.  I have no objection to 
someone being wrong :), since I am wrong often enough myself.  Only God 
and Bakker are never wrong.

Anyway, I felt the idea was novel enough that it should get a fair 
hearing and stimulate discussion (which it has with the postings I've 
read).  This is good to the science, as Ralph and I feel:
> I have a soft spot in my heart
>for those trying to throw monkey wrenches into conventional dogma, and 
>Tony is good at that and a very bright guy. It's worth a look.


As for the comments by Ron Orenstein:

>The trouble, of course, with speculation like this is that it is 
>utterly untestable

That's OK in science.  It is a healthy way of expanding our horizons and 
stimulating thought.  Face it, no one would have thought why tail club 
mimicry couldn't have happened unless someone suggested that it could.  
Who knows what testable hypothesis might develop from someone out to 
disprove Tony's hypothesis?


>Actually, I seem to recall someoner proposing a few years back that 
ankylo
>tail clubs could not be weapons because their bony tissue was so highly
>vascularized as to render them too brittle for such use; the suggestion 
was
>that they were somehow involved in heat exchange.  Any comments on 
this?


Groan.....
The idea was presented by Keith Rigby Jr. at the Austin SVP. Actually, 
he was mistaken in a number of points.  First, the soft tissue that 
would have filled the highly vascular tissue would have made the club 
resilient, not brittle. Keith forgot the soft tissue and got hung up on 
the club as a bone object. Second, the surface area of the club in 
thermoregulation is much, much less than the surface area of the scutes, 
which are vascularized.  I've had a manuscript on all this in Horner's 
Behavior volume for over 6 years now.  It is obvious the book will never 
appear, so I'm going to pull it, and two other papers soon.