Re: JP3 Thoughts (frilled Dilophosaurus revisited)

["Ken Kinman" <kinman@hotmail.com>]

Christopher,
     It is not that a neck frill is impossible.  The fossil record is very
imperfect and we can never be completely sure about most things.  Even I am
skeptical about some things most dinosaurologists take for granted (strict
monophyly of Thyreophoran dinosaurs, for example).
    But the probability that Dilophosaurus had a neck frill, from the
evidence that is available, is not good.  And the probability that it spit
venom is extremely low.  One should never say never, but you have to develop
a feel for the probabilities from the kind of evidence that is available.
    I'd give a neck frill in Dilophosaurus maybe a 0.2% probability, and
the spitting venom about a 0.0001% probability.  The neck frill in my view
is therefore 2000 times more probable than the venom spitting, but even then
the odds would still be 500 to 1 against the frill.   Therefore, the
probability that the movie-makers got both the frill and the spitting venom
right is so extremely low that it seems about as likely as the Publisher's
Clearing House knocking at my door with a $10,000,000 check.  In other
words, I'm not going to hold my breath by any reasonable stretch of the
imagination.  But never say never.
           ----Cheers, Ken
*****************************************
> From: Christopher Srnka <theclaw10@home.com>
> Reply-To: theclaw10@home.com
> To: dinosaur@usc.edu
> Subject: Re: JP3 Thoughts (frilled Dilophosaurus revisited)
> Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 23:24:14 -0500
>
> Before everyone starts thinking I'm completely insane: no, I don't
> necessarily
> think that _Dilophosaurus_ had a neck frill. However, I honestly did not
> know
> that enough fossil evidence existed to completely rule it out in known
> species
> of _Dilophosaurus_. If all anyone could present were reasons related to the
> animal's  size or place in the food chain, that to me isn't good enough to
> completely rule out the neck frill-type structures. But if such a structure
> would show evidence of muscle attachment scars on the bones supporting the
> frill, and none exist...well, that still makes me wonder; how do we know
> that
> _Dilophosaurus_ specimens have preserved all of the muscle attachment scars
> without any being eroded into obscurity? I would imagine that the muscle
> attachment scars for a neck frill would not be very large.
>
> Getting the answers to these types of questions is one of the main reasons
> I
> subscribe to this list; I'm not a scientist (which is painfully obvious to
> most
> of you), and I haven't gone on any digs yet (hopefully sometime soon,
> though).

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