Re: Preview of new stegosaur plate paper

[Renato Santos <dracontes@hotmail.com>]

Cliff Green wrote:
> Dear List,
>
>     They're not making this claim about stegosaur tail spikes are they?
>
> Really getting sick of Horner's  %##@@! Peaceful Kingdom theories Cliff

Seldom is the case where one structure has only one function so I would bet 
my money in both defense and display.
When one looks at the diversity of arrangements of back plates and tail 
spikes have in stegosaurs, I'd think first that they were display structures 
either coopted from or coopted to defense weapons.

I think the same about ankylosaurs: they to could have used their awesome 
array of armour and the tail club to assert mating rights. Actually what 
else could males prove than the imperviousness of their armour and being 
good enough foragers to maintain such structures and still be strong enough 
to lug it around. I can imagine male ankylosaurs in the mating season 
squaring off with powerful swipes of the tail and generally trying either to 
scare off or to turn the opponent on it's belly. (See the glyptodont 
Doedicurus)
Stegosaur could use their profusely irrigated plates to intimidate rivals 
and if that wasn't enough the tail spikes could be deftly used to prove that 
might makes right.

Renato Santos

Ben Creisler wrote:
> In case this news release has not been mentioned here yet:
>
> http://
> www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/05/16_stego.shtml
>
> Stegosaur plates and spikes for looks only, researchers
> say
> By Robert Sanders, Media Relations | 16 May 2005
> BERKELEY - The bizarre plates and spikes that lined the
> backbones of the long-extinct stegosaurs were probably
> extreme examples of the often elaborate and colorful
> displays developed by animals to recognize fellow members
> of their species, according to an international team of
> paleontologists. .....
>
> Padian, Main and coauthors John R. Horner of the Museum of
> the Rockies in Bozeman, Mont., and Armand de Ricqlès of
> the University of Paris report their analysis of dinosaur
> scutes and stegosaur plates in the spring issue of the
> journal Paleobiology, to be published later this month.
> .....

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