RE: Dino sex

[Pieter.Depuydt@rug.ac.be]

Nathan Myhrvold wrote:
> The late British paleontologist Beverly Halstead worked on dinosaur sex,
> and gave some lectures on it which are remembered to this day by people
> who saw them (alas I never did, but I have talked to some who have).
> This included acting out dinosaur sex with an assistant on stage.
 
> I believe that Halstead suggested that the position used was for the
> male to stand right beside the female, with both front feet on the
> ground.  The mail would then throw one rear leg over the female's back,
> and twist his tail under the female's tail, at almost a right angle,
> putting their cloaca in the right vicinity.   I believe that something
> like this is done by crocodiles and some lizards.
> 
> Note that this is not my theory - it is Halstead's.  However it does
> make a certain amount of sense.

The scene described above is illustrated in Halstead's book 
'Dinosaurs' (I don't know the exact title, I got the Dutch 
translation) published in the mid seventies. A nice painting of 
Giovanni Caselli depicts a pair of mating Camptosaurus.
Worth seeing it.

(by the way, the book has also an illustration of Halstead's original, 
however isolated vision on the arrangement of plates on Stegosaurus: 
horizontal, with the points sideward, and a reconstruction of 
"Compsognathus corralestris" with the flipper-like front arms. I love 
that book, I got it when I was eight)

Pieter Depuydt