Re: dimorphism

["Steven Coombs" <gasperex@hotmail.com>]

> From: Graydon <graydon@dsl.ca>
> Reply-To: graydon@dsl.ca
> To: dinosaur@usc.edu
> Subject: Re: dimorphism
> Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2001 13:46:22 -0500
> It demonstrates no such thing; if you have enough sauropod specimens
> from _one_ species and _one_ locality, and you can get a set of
> characters that group tightly with different ratios, _then_ you _might_
> have an argument for sexual dimorphism.
>
> If you can do that -- and no such assemblage of sauropod material is
> known to exist -- you still have no way to tell male from female.


Even if you have all the individuals from one species juveniles, sub adults 
and adults it would be still hard to see which ones are male and female. It 
would take a long time to even sort them all out and some juveniles could 
belong to another species dinosaur that is quite related, but is not the 
same. I don't think that sexual dimorphism should be a big deal at the 
moment, because some of the dinosaurs that are the best known, still whole a 
few secrets that scientists still got to explore and learn more about. For 
example some hardrosaurid species, there well know from eggs to adult, but 
there is still research to be done on some of the adults that parade huge 
crests on there head and they are thought to be the males, but this really 
is just speculation, it could very well be a female, but I'm just 
speculating as well.

Merry Christmas,

Steven Coombs
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Steven's Dinosaurs: http://ca.geocities.com/steven16_84


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