Re: CASSOWARY CRESTS REVISITED

[John Bois <jbois@umd5.umd.edu>]

On Thu, 11 Jun 1998 darren.naish@port.ac.uk wrote:

> Use of crests as foliage deflectors is, as I think I said last time I 
> mentioned this, speculative. However, please understand the context. 
> One should not imagine an enraged, speeding cassowary ploughing 
> headlong through the rainforest, robustly swatting aside all branches 
> and other obstacles that invade its path. Those informed in 
> dinosaurological matters may have gleaned this impression given what 
> has been written (in Norman) about proposed functions of 
> lambeosaurine crests. A _Parasaurolophus_ that whacks a branch with 
> its crest is probably a _Parasaurolophus_ with a broken crest.

Yes.  And there is still a middle-ground view which I favor, that the
cassowary's casque is analogous to a knee-cap; that through the
cassowary's life time they have a high probability of inadvertently
banging their heads.  They are, after all, relatively big animals confined
in a biome with lots of obstructions.  
I have lost a reference(did I dream it?) which correlates shoulder height
in mammals with average (I think) lowest branch height of their habitat.

I'm not arguing the casque cannnot serve other purposes.