Re: VENOMOUS THERAPSID

[jabartle <jabartle@unity.ncsu.edu>]

And the tooth of Uatchitodon from the upper Triassic Richmond basin,
reported by Sues and company, represents the earliest
rept/archosauriform bearing such grooved structure.

Jeff.

__________
Jeffrey Alan Bartlett
Graduate Student in Paleoecology
Assistant to the Director
Center for the Exploration of the Dinosaurian World
North Carolina State University | North Carolina State Museum of Natural
Sciences

Box 8208, Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
Raleigh, North Carolina 27695-8208
jabartle@unity.ncsu.edu
(919) 515-7917

Jeff Hecht wrote:

> At 2:00 PM +0100 8/21/02, darren.naish@port.ac.uk wrote:
> >Steve asked....
> >
> >---------------
> >Sometime ago (years, that is) I read an article in Discover
> >magazine (I think) about therapsid predators who seemed to
> >have hollow fangs and may have been venomous. I've never
> >seen this mentioned since, so I was wondering if anybody
> >could provide any information on the actuality of this.
> >---------------
>
> A possibly venomous theropod based on a tooth from Baja California
> was described at the SVP meeting in 2000. Here's a draft of what I
> wrote for New Scientist at the time:
>
> ID: Venomous theropod
>
> A tooth from Baja California hints that venomous dinosaurs may have
> lived outside the fictional Jurassic Park. The two-centimeter tooth
> contains a longitudinal groove like those in the venom-carrying teeth
> of snakes, two Mexican paleontologists reported late last month at a
> meeting of the Society for Vertebrate Paleontology in Mexico City.
>
> No other evidence of venomous dinosaurs has ever been discovered. The
> small poison-spitting predators of Jurassic Park were based on real
> dinosaurs called dilophosaurs, but their venom was fictional.
>
> The curved blade-like tooth came from a small "theropod" dinosaur,
> the family of two-legged predators that included Velociraptor and
> Tyrannosaurus rex. "The general features of this tooth could be found
> in most theropod taxa," says Francisco Aranda-Manteca of the
> University of Baja California in Enselada. However, the groove-like
> structure is unique among dinosaurs. Aranda-Manteca says it resembles
> structures in the venom-delivering teeth of snakes and the two extant
> groups of poisonous (helodermatid) lizards -- the Gila monster and
> the Mexican beaded lizard. Neither group is closely related to
> dinosaurs, whose closest living relatives are birds and crocodiles.
>
> So far, paleontologists have identified only one isolated tooth,
> missing its tip, in rocks 70 to 80 million years old. Measuring 5.6
> by  9.5 millimeters at its base, the tooth could have come from
> several types of theropods, but lacks distinctive features found in
> others, such as tyrannosaurs, which are among the few other dinosaurs
> known from the same deposits.
>
> Other paleontologists at the meeting were intrigued, but share the
> caution of Aranda-Manteca and his colleague Ruben Rodriguez-de la
> Rosa. "It is not unquestionable evidence of venomous theropods," says
> Tom Holtz of the University of Maryland in College Park. "However, it
> does have an inverted serration pattern and groove down the back edge
> of the tooth, and indeed other animals which have a groove in that
> position are known to be poisonous."
> --
> Jeff Hecht, science & technology writer
> jeff@jeffhecht.com; http://www.jeffhecht.com
> Boston Correspondent: New Scientist magazine
> Contributing Editor: Laser Focus World,  WDM Solutions
> 525 Auburn St., Auburndale, MA 02466 USA
> v. 617-965-3834; fax 617-332-4760