Re: Integument of Tyrannosaurus and other questions

[Mickey Rowe <rowe@psych.ucsb.edu>]

Another reformulated e-mail address; I think there will be three other
messages from Demetrios that were kicked back to me rather than
distributed.  Anyhoo, number one:

------- Start of forwarded message -------
Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2001 10:55:02 CDT
From: Demetrios M Vital <vita0015@umn.edu>
Subject: Re: Integument of Tyrannosaurus and other questions
To: dinosaur@usc.edu

Dear all:

I have three queries:

One.  HP Holtz and others mentioned from the Armour Symposium a while back
that tyrannosaurs may have been truly naked skinned.  How is this
reconciled with the news of mosaic scales form a tyrannosaur tail? 
Assuming the animal is naked skinned, how would there be keratinous growth
on cranial rugosities, like the nasals?  Would this look like a human's
finger nails?

Two.  Who coined the phrase "abscence of evidence is not evidence os
abscence"?  Was it HP Holtz?  I have used it often, and now friends in
psychology and various other scholarly enterprises use the phrase often. 
Its spreading, and I don't think they realize it originated in paleontology
(assuming it did).  Did it originate here?

[ FWIW, I'm pretty sure I saw it in talk.origins years before the
  dinosaur list was created, so no; it didn't originate here -- MPR ]

Three.  Can someone explain to me, or show me where an explanation is, of
the scutes = feathers hypothesis put forth by Zhou et al.?  I would
especially appreciate responses to this last question.

Anyone can reply off-list, if they like.

Thanks in advance for any responses.

- -Demetrios Vital
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