Re: STEGOSAUR TAILS (WAS DUCKBILL NECKS)

[Brian Franczak <franczak@ntplx.net>]

Peter Von Sholly wrote:
> 
> Brian, as always you make good, well constucted arguments but still I say
> phooey on these lifted tails.  Since when are in situ fossils necessarily
> placed the way the animals were in life?  Let's have all dinosaurs walk
> around with their necks pulled back over their torsos.  There are lots of
> in situ skeletons like that.

Not a valid argument. First, if Ken Carpenter tells me that the tail
stood out straight from the hips of _Stegosaurus_, then I trust that
he's capable of discerning whether it was in this position because of
post-death distortion or not. This is not a matter of "artistic
license", this is a determination by a respected paleontologist.  

Then, of course, there is the evidence of such ligamental contraction in
the tails of sauropods (the juvenile _Camarasaurus_ comes to mind),
_Struthiomimus_, _Compsognathus_, _Archaeopteryx_, and _Sinosauropteryx_
(just to name a handful). In all these instances, the tail does *not*
articulate straight out from the pelvis, but is pulled up in the same
(if not quite as extreme) distorted manner as the neck and skull.
Looking at these examples, why would stegosaur tails be straight and not
similarly bent if that was what was happening to them?

Brian (franczak@ntplx.net)
http://www.paleolife-art.com