Stegosaurus iconography

["A.P. Hazen" <a.hazen@philosophy.unimelb.edu.au>]

The 1899 Knight/Bond reconstruction of the "shingled lizard" (thanks, 
Tom  Holtz, for mentioning  shingles!) shows it semi-bipedal: not 
exactly standing on its own two feet (it is leaning against the tree 
it is browsing) but also not in the four-on-the-floor head-down 
posture of all the reconstructions I remember  from my childhood and 
youth (1950s/1960s).  Some time after I became an adult (which was 
about the time of Ostrom's Deinonychus reconstruction and the big 
warm-bloodedness debate) I came across suggestions that the 
disproportion between hindlimb and forelimb length, and the probably 
location of the  animal's center of gravity, made  it plausible that 
Stegosaurus habitually adopted an attitude like that in the 
Knight/Bond picture.

Relevance?  Evidence, perhaps, that (non-avian) dinosaurs were 
thought of as more active and more athletic  -- in short, were 
thought of in a more "modern" way -- in the late 1800s than they were 
in the first half of the  1900s.  Something for which there is other 
evidence, of course: cf. Knight's picture of the two battling 
theropods (Dryptosaurus?).

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Allen Hazen
Philosophy Department
University of Melbourne