On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 8:45 AM, Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.<tholtz@umd.edu> wrote:
From: owner-DINOSAUR@usc.edu [mailto:owner-DINOSAUR@usc.edu]
On Behalf Of Robert Schenck
e know how feathered their hands were; if they have
feathers coming off the fingers that might've made using them
as defense less likely. But you have to think, any animal is
going to do whatever it can to defend itself.
Two things:
No, we do not know how feathered the hands of therizinosaurs or
ornithomimosaurs were, although we have oviraptorosaurs.
But why would being feathered make them less used in defense? Even volant birds
can be pretty violent in clubbing each other or
predators with wings, and those are animals that use those forelimbs to fly
(unlike the dinosaurs in question here).
Ah yes, as a reader of Naish's Tetrapod Zoology I should've remembered
all the different birds that have spurs and clubs on their limbs. Not
to mention that Hoatzin chicks can grasp branchs with their clawed and
feathered hands.