RE: Rapetosaurus's head

["Tracy L. Ford" <dino.hunter@home.com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Jaime A. Headden [mailto:qilongia@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2001 7:45 PM
To: dinosaur@usc.edu
Cc: dino.hunter@home.com
Subject: Re: Rapetosaurus's head

Tracy Ford (dino.hunter@home.com) wrote:

<The identification of the maxilla looks wrong to me. I don't think
they have it right and it does not in anyway 'the smoking gun' for
the skulls of Titanosaurids (does anyone remember Malawisaurus? That
skull doesn't look at al like Rapetosaurus's). No sauropod that  I
know of has a maxilla that looks like Rapetosaurus's. Could they have
part of the premaxilla (the 'bar')? I was looking at Huene & Mately
and they have a maxilla from India that does look like the back half
of the maxilla. I think the front fenestra is the naries and the
second the ant-orbital fenestra. Which would mean that the skull
doesn't look like a diplodocid.>

  Tracy ... I looked at the skull, and see that the maxilla actually
resembles the same thing in *Nemegtosaurus*, including having the
post dentigerous portion of the jaw with a concave ventral margin
(autapomorphy for Nemegtosauridae?). Also, the paper states the other
maxilla, not shown, is more complete, including a dentigerous margin
with 13 alveoli. The nasals and lachrymal also differentiate the
external nares and the antorbital fenestra, and they are exceedingly
long in *Nemegtosaurus*, as well.... The bones are probably not
premaxillae given their morphology, having the caudal and dorsal rami
expanding distally.


You know is always gets me, they talk about a better version and then not
show it. Why show the bad one when the good one would help so much. I looked
at the skull of Nemegtosaurus (the photo of the skull, not a drawing) in D.
Glut's book and I really can't tell what's going on there. It's broken and
not a good angle. Now looking at my drawing from D. L. and D. G.'s Dinosaur
Society Dinosaur Dictionary, skull doesn't look anything like the skull of
Rapetosaurus. The 'hole' is extremely far back in Nemegtosaurus, much
further than Rapetosaurus.

Tracy L. Ford
P. O. Box 1171
Poway Ca  92074