A Skull for Masiakasaurus

[Jaime Headden <qi_leong@hotmail.com>]

  Some list members will know that I've been cuious about the skull of 
*Masiakasaurus knopfleri* for some time, and when the new material was brought 
up at SVP in 2003, I quickly realized that it looked for everything as though 
this dinosaur might have an overslung, overbitten snout, a feature seen in 
riojasuchids and proterosuchids, like *Archosaurus rossicus*. But rather than 
just go out there and draw that, I bid my time until Matt Carrano and 
colleagues published their latest monograph in 2011. I've been "writing" a post 
since then, and only now got it to a point where I wanted to "publish" it. This 
all depended on me getting around to reconstructing the skull in a way I was 
personally more satisfied with, and while I still see several issues with the 
product, it's still good enough to present as "an idea." It's an hypothesis, 
and I'd like some comments on how to fix it. Problematically, scaling the many 
specimens together is a challenge due to uncertain ontogeny and sex 
differentiation, if any, is present in the scattered material referred to this 
taxon.

  Anyways, the post is here: 
http://qilong.wordpress.com/2012/10/31/incredulous-teeth-iv-the-strange-case-of-dr-masiaka-and-mr-vicious/

Cheers,

Jaime A. Headden
The Bite Stuff (site v2)
http://qilong.wordpress.com/

"Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B. Medawar (1969)


"Ever since man first left his cave and met a stranger with a
different language and a new way of looking at things, the human race
has had a dream: to kill him, so we don't have to learn his language or
his new way of looking at things." --- Zapp Brannigan (Beast With a Billion 
Backs)