Premax. fenestrae / Plateosaurus

[Martin Baeker <martin@raptor.ifw.ing.tu-bs.de>]

Dear dino-experts,

just unlurking for a minute for two questions:

1. Is the function of the premaxillary fenestrae (I hope that is the right
term for the "holes" in front of the orbit in dinosaur skulls) known? 

2. I just saw a skeleton of Plateosaurus this week (in the Jura-Museum
Eichstaett), which was constructed with a strongly down-bended tail. An
accompanying plate said that this was done on close investigation of the
specimen (by Wellnhofer, I think) and that this would point to
Plateosaurus being rather a slow quadruped than a fast biped.
The bend did look very strange to me, though. Can anyone tell me more
about this new reconstruction?

BTW, the world did not end on wednesday  ;-)

Martin.


                   Dr. Martin Baeker
                   Institut fuer Werkstoffe
                   Langer Kamp 8
                   38106 Braunschweig
                   Germany
                   Tel.: 00-49-531-391-3073                      
                   Fax   00-49-531-391-3058
                   e-mail <martin.baeker@tu-bs.de>