Re:Tyrannosaurus eggs

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

Tom Holtz wrote in responce to Neil Clark:


>No, all the elongate eggs previously assigned to Protoceratops are now
>assigned to theropod dinosaurs.  Probable Protoceratops eggs have long 
been
>known, but are a different morphology.

Sorry, Tom, but some of the elongated eggs may indeed be those of 
Protoceratops.  The surface has
similar lineartuberculate nodes, but the ultrascruture of these eggs is 
prismatoolithic, whereas the Oviraptor
egg is avian.  Might the similar surface texture be convergence or 
Batsean mimicry?

>>Is it not possible that rather than
>>being the eggs of a _T. rex_ (or similar), the eggs could represent
>>some larger ceratopian dinosaur.

>Since (with one possible, earlier, more-central Asian exception) large
>ceratopsians (i.e., ceratopsids) are unknown from Asia, while the genus
>Tyrannosaurus and many species of tyrannosaurid are, it is more likely 
that
>the tyrannosaurid assignment has more valid.

The ultrastructure is ornithoid ratite, meaning that the eggs is closest 
to a bird ratite bird as would be
expected for a theropod egg.

> Since these eggs resemble
>those known from other coelurosaurs (Oviraptor, Velociraptor),

Sorry, no definite Velociraptor eggs known.


Kenneth Carpenter