Re: Could dinosaurs have ears?

[Phillip Bigelow <n8010095@henson.cc.wwu.edu>]

>...<stuff deleted for brevity>...So now that you all know the whole story, 
>Andrew and I would like to know what evidence there is to support dinosaurs
>having fleshy ears...

Good question.  I have wondered about the evidence myself.  So, until one of
the experts answers this....
I am presently holding in my left hand (yes, it is possible to type with one
hand...just watch the keyboard *really* carefully) a skull of one of our
Holocene (present-day) dinosaurs.  The skull comes from the feathered dinosaur
Bonasa umbellus.  Since this dinosaur's skull and ear openings are small, I
need a hand lense to confirm that the outside surface around the skull is
smooth.  Well, after checking at X10 magnification, it looks ambiguous to me.
There are parts of the skull that appear a little knobby around the meatus
(ear opening).  So, if we only had a fossilized skull of this dino, some 
could argue that it had tendon attachments, and others may argue against.
Since we know this dino doesn't have fleshy ears, this whole experiment is
starting to go awry for me...
 I also have across the room a skull of Canis latrans, (a wild "pooch").
After checking the area around the external auditory meatus (the ear opening)
on this skull, I see a lot of processes (bumpy places) over the meatus
that *could* be tendonous attachments....funny thing, though...they are no
more remarkable or prominent than on my little dino skull.  Since we know
that Canis latrans has big movable ears, my experiment is now nothing more
than the presence of negative evidence.  I think we need the dino-experts
to answer this.
    <p.s.  Bonasa umbellus is the best tasting dinosaur I have ever eaten!>