RE: Ears

["Tracy L. Ford" <dino.hunter@cox.net>]

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-dinosaur@usc.edu [mailto:owner-dinosaur@usc.edu]On Behalf Of
David Marjanovic
Sent: Monday, April 08, 2002 1:21 PM
To: The Dinosaur Mailing List
Subject: Re: Ears

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tracy L. Ford" <dino.hunter@cox.net>
Sent: Monday, April 08, 2002 5:58 PM

> Considering theropods didn't have lips, they'd always be bearing their
teeth
> :)

Even if they had lips (lizardlike ones -- still no mimics), as many still
think, the teeth of a lot of theropods were too long to have been covered
entirely by lips anyway. <<
You have to look at why Lizards, tuatara, snakes, have lips and not
crocodilians; both have small fossa on the premaxilla, maxilla and dentary.
Lizards, etc, have labial oral glands that the fossa feed into (and some
inside the skull), while crocodilians have them inside the skull. In
crocodilians the fossa are for where nerve endings and give the 'face' a
tactile feature, which I think theropods had and would have published on if
Dinofest for 1998 was ever published!
Sometimes they were even longer than the lower jaw
was deep.<<
Yep. I've written a paper on this very subject.
Tracy L. Ford
P. O. Box 1171
Poway Ca  92074