Re: Bone Growth on Pathogenic Dinosaur Fossils

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

On Mon, 29 Jan 2001 zenlizard@juno.com wrote:
> On Sun, 28 Jan 2001 20:03:25 -0800 Waylon  writes:
> > Do reptiles heal slower than a bird or mammal when, say, 
> > a rib  is broken?
> 
> Most assurredly.  Now, I can't gie you exact data on rates of recovery
> for bone tissue as you requested.  However:
> [...]
> 
> What this says about the metabolism of dinosaurs is very indistinct:
> better questions would be, I think,  to ask:  in the cases of healed
> injuries found in dinosaurs, is the fossil record of sufficient
> resolution to determine the rate of recovery?  If so, then can that rate
> be related to the animals' metabolisms?

At my Big Al page

 http://w3.uwyo.edu/~rtravsky/big_al.html

you can see some pics of an Allosaurus that has 14 skeletal injuries. Two
of the pics show injuries.

This specimen was a juvenile. I don't know what it's age at death was, nor
its age for any of the injuries.

It apparently recovered from all of them. This one critter is a lab in
itself for this consideration.

This page

  http://museum.montana.edu/www/paleocat/beccabigal/bigal.html

has more complete info as well as better pics of some of the injuries.

As for other examples of dino injuries, that would be an interesting list.