Re: Suchomimus vs Baryonyx: Dare to Compare

["Jonathan R. Wagner" <znc14@TTACS.TTU.EDU>]

Stanley Friesen wrote [about _Suchomimus_]:
>Umm, I thought that the evidence for the tall spines supporting a
>bison-like *hump*, rather than a sail, was pretty conclusive.  At least it
>seemed so to me.  (Essentially, very few dinosaurs had anything like a true
>"sail").
        I did not find the arguments used in this article to be very
convincing. The morphometrics were especially unimpressive. While I do agree
with the assertion that these spines did not form a *sail*, I seriously
doubt that they formed a "hump". It seems more likely, in my humble
oppinion, that long neural spines on the backs of dinosaurs supported a
fleshy ridge (razor-backed dinosaurs?) as Greg Paul and others have illustrated.
        Anyone interested in seeing a long and detailed review of the paper
and a thorough accounting of exactly why I am in favor of the ridge-back
please feel free to send me $1,000, teach my classes, write my sequence
stratigraphy paper and take all my exams. :)

        Wagner
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     Jonathan R. Wagner, Dept. of Geosciences, TTU, Lubbock, TX 79409-1053
 "Only those whose life is short can truly believe that love is forever"-Lorien