Re: Suchomimus vs Baryonyx: Dare to Compare

["Jaime A. Headden" <qilongia@yahoo.com>]

I wrote:

<<...Tracy's illustration of the arrangement of vertebrae as shown on
the DinoDoings of Dinogeorge on Skullduggery. The neural spines are
arched higher more close to the shoulders than the back, and it looks
more dramatically visual this way. If the animal had a reason to
display his back, even secondary to a heat-regulator function, then
one would make more dramatic use of that sail.>>

Stanley Friesen wrote:

<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").>

  This would be true except that all living humped animals
(specifically bison and camels) have enlarged knobs on the distal ends
of their neural spines, knobs that connected to a string of tendons.
Whales have 'em, too. Elephants, horses, etc. Carnivores, I might add,
before I get pedantic :). All dinosaurian animals with "sails" or
"humps" lack these distal knobs except for hadrosaurs, and they only
have them on the anterior dorsal vertebrae, right where you might
expect them to terminate their nuchal ligaments. The dinosaurian
"sails" (*Spinosaurus*, *Ouranosaurus*, *Hypacrosaurus*, *Iguanodon
atherfieldensis*, to name the most dinstinctive) are all blade-like,
except in the iguanodontian taxa, and in *Ouranosaurus* and
*Spinosaurus* are _very_ thin, not transversely broad, as also in
humped mammals. See Norman (1983) (his _Illustrated Encyclopedia of
Dinosaurs_) for a comparison of Ourano to Iguano. These dinosaurs are
inconsistent, essentially, with humps, but as seen in the 
"pelycosaurs" *Dimetrodon*, *Sphenacodon*, and *Edaphosaurus*, all of
whom have front-to-back elongated neural spines, they not need be
fatty reservoirs but either/both sail and/or thermoregulator.

==
Jaime A. Headden

Qilong, the website, at:
http://members.tripod.com/~Qilong/qilong.html
---
All comments and criticisms are welcome!

_________________________________________________________
DO YOU YAHOO!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com