Re: The Wild and Wacky *Carnotaurus*

[Richard W Travsky <rtravsky@uwyo.edu>]

On Mon, 23 Apr 2001, Jaime A. Headden wrote:
> [...]
>   There are two questions: 1) what are the brow horns for, 2)
> and why are the arms so small?
> 
>   Both can be explainable as sexual characteristics: 1) brow
> horns in extant animals are usually display devices or wrestling
> devices, as in cervids, and proposed for ceratopsids
> (Wellnhofer, 1993). Perhaps the style is reminiscent of bighorn
> sheep: there is a broad, flat surface on the forehead with
> dorsally-flat lateral horns that form a platform (conceivably
> you can have two male carnotaurs pressing their foreheads
> together in a sort of elephant-likeshoving match). Perhaps they
> interlocked and the style was deer-like, with twisting involved;
> displace the arrangement of the horns on one and you get a
> cantered head, with carnotaur #1 having the left horn above his
> opposite's right and the right horn below the opposite's left...

How many carnotaurs specimens are known? Can gender be determined,
and is there a correlation between the horns and gender?

> [...]