Misc Replies & thoughts

[steve.cole@genie.com]

Sorry that much of this is in reply to old posts. I've been
behind on my reading and am catching up. Hopefully those
who wanted the info didn't have to wait this long to find it,
but if they did, here it is...
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Judy Molnar asked about T-rex tracks on 25 April:
There is only one known T-rex footprint.
It's a reverse print (the lump instead of the hole) in
north-central New Mexico. (I actually know where it is but
was told not to pass that on.) It's on a slab that is about
ten or twelve feet long. The slab came out of a hole in
a cliff that overlooks the site, and presumably the entire
trackway is still up there. But considering that you're
talking about multi-ton slabs which are halfway up a very
high cliff, recovering them is impossible without a
construction project on the order of Hoover Dam.
There are "casts" of this footprint available commercially.
I bought one from a dealer who has since sold out, and in
fact sold it back to him at a profit less than a month later.
(seems the wife kept asking about when I was going to
do something about that four-foot square of fiber-glass
taking up space in the library)
Given that there is only one print, none of your questions
about pigeon-toes, stride, or spread can be answered.
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Andrea Spreafico asked about Stegosaur footprints (27 April)
This was covered in Dinosaur Discoveries #2 (Nov-Dec 96).
They were in the outback of Australia.
Aborigines thought they were footprints of gods or spirits.
Thieves cut them out of the rock with powersaws.
They're presumably in the private collection of some rich
jerk by now. May have been stolen to order.
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Richard.L.Dieterle
Spitzbergen is an island north of norway. Has lots of coal
mines. Also NATO warning posts and Russian coal miners.
(go figure; the cold war never really made sense.)
There have been several VERY big hadrosaur fragments
found. The odd bone here and the odd footprint there.
Dr Brian Witzke reported in Dinosaur Discoveries #4 the
evidence for hadrosaurs up to 16 meters long and 20 tons.
These were found in the US. I didn't know about the prints
in Spitzbergen, but that would seem to show that the
whole Iguano-Hadro-Lambeo group had the potential to
get really really big, as big as medium-sized sauropods.
===================
DinoGeorge mentioned on 12 May that the only Late
Cretaceous Stegosaur (Dravidosaurus) had been identified
as a plesiosaur. This factoid (which came up just over a
year ago) was what inspired me to create Dinosaur
Discoveries newsletter, since there was (since George quit
doing Archosaurian Articulations) NO single-source for all
current and new dinosaur information. Now, of course,
Dinosaur Discoveries provides this.
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Phorusracids
What are these and when did they live?
===================
Postcranial and other tough to figure out words...
Jeremy: I joined this list a bit over a year ago and was quickly
overwhelmed by the language that the true scientists used.
I just gritted my teeth, shook my head, and waited until it
sorted itself out. Sometimes I asked someone want it meant,
sometimes I used a (gosh) dictionary, sometimes I found it
in a dinosaur book, and eventually I started looking for the
various on-line dinosaur dictionaries that are posted several
places (often with illustrations of the various bones).
I wish that professional phd paletontologists would use
"foot bone" instead of "metatarsal" but they don't and there
isn't any point in joining a group and insisting that THEY all
start using YOUR terms and definitions and manners of
speech. This list includes a lot of professionals, and without
them it wouldn't be the list that it is or have half of the value
that it has. Learning the proper terms is part of growing up in
ANY hobby, from stamp collecting (where "fiscals" and
"semi-postals" are stamps but not "philatelic") to guns
(where 9x17 ".380" ammunition will not function in a 9x18
"markarov" or a 9x19 "luger" even though it WILL fit).
You can rant against the darkness or you can light up the
old candel and get down to seriously learning thet language.
I CAN tell you one ray of hope. DINOSAUR DISCOVERIES
(the newsletter/magazine my company produces) provides
[in square brackets] and plain-english translation of all
technical terms, allowing both fans and scientists to read
through the text without missing a beat, and allowing fans
to slowly (without really realizing it) learn the terms.
===================
Dunn1: Gasparinisaura
This was profiled in Dinosaur Discoveries #4.
===================
how did the dinosaurs out-compete the therapsids?
===================
ARTICLES WANTED:
Someone want to write up the Sudanese dromaeosaur for
publication in Dinosaur Discoveries? Contact tiger@arn.net
I could also use an article on the French and Romanian
dromaeosaurs whenever the data becomes avaialble.
Not to mention the madagascar stuff when it's available.
Morganucodon sounds worth a short one-paragraph article.
===================