Re: Archaeopteryx, Othnielia & pachycephalosaurs

["Steve Brusatte" <dinoland@lycos.com>]

On Wed, 15 Jan 2003 19:36:42  
 Tetanurae wrote:
>Both Homalocephale and Goyocephale fall into the "flat-headed" 
>pachycephalosaur group.  It has been suggested that they employed head 
>pushing rather than head butting, so rib injuries might not be readily 
>apparent in these guys.  What would be nice would be about 50 skeletons of 
>Pachycephalosaurus, or Sphaerotholus or other Pachycephalosaurids.  Well and 
>about $10,000,000 would also be nice, but I feel I will get $10M before I get 
>50 complete pachycephalosaurids :-)

Ah, yes, true.  Didn't immediately think of that...  Even head pushing could 
leave some marks, perhaps?  And, I wonder how much less forceful head pushing 
would have been compared to flank/head butting?  Additionally, how do the 
sacra/sacral ribs differ between the "flat headed" forms and the more fully 
domed forms?  It seems as if they are similar in _Homalocephale_ and 
Prenocephale_ (a fully domed form), but differ in _Goyocephale_ (with _G._ 
having more weakly fused sacral verts and a few other features).  Strange.

Steve

---
******************************************************
Stephen Brusatte
Geophysical Sciences
University of Chicago
Dino Land Paleontology-http://www.geocities.com/stegob
******************************************************



_____________________________________________________________
Get 25MB, POP3, Spam Filtering with LYCOS MAIL PLUS for $19.95/year.
http://login.mail.lycos.com/brandPage.shtml?pageId=plus&ref=lmtplus