PENTACERATOPS CORRECTIONS

[Tetanurae@aol.com]

Pete Von Sholly wrote:
<< Is this right?  The skull is more that 3 meters long, yet the whole animal
 was only more than 5 meters long? Or was the skeleton (postcranial, that
 is) alone 5 meters? >>

In a word, no.  If I actually would have read the paper, Lehman states that
the whole skeleton is almost 6.5 metres long.  I was using the scale bar in
the diagram and just measuring how large the animal.  In Lehman's drawing, the
tail goes straight to the ground, instead of pointing backwards, and the skull
is in a pose where the snout points straight down, which should account for
the foreshortened measurements.

Pentaceratops got to be huge apparently, as large or larger than Triceratops.
The estimated size of the skull (3 + metres) blows the previous winner,
Torosaurus, out of the water (2.5 + metres).

Peter Buchholz
Tetanurae@aol.com

You have a very strange name: Fish
Sticks and stones....  Ling.