Hmm… I don’t know! This is a trciky question- I know that Ornithischians, had “leaf shaped” cheek teeth. I also, thought that Ornithischians had cheeks because, its what let them eat more resistant plant material. Please look at the picture below of an Ornithischian dinosaur.
From: dinosaur-l-request@usc.edu [mailto:dinosaur-l-request@
usc.edu ] On Behalf Of Yazbeck, Thomas Michael
Sent: Wednesday, April 12, 2017 3:58 PM
To: dinosaur-l@usc.edu
Subject: [dinosaur] "cheeky" question
Good day DML,
I have a *gnawing* (pun intended) question. Did ornithischians have cheeks? I was under the impression that ornithischians probably had them, due to inset tooth row, etc. But I know there's dissenting voices on the matter. Some pushback against the lipped-theropod hypothesis (the Daspletosaurus paper) has occurred so I'm wondering if there is also some reexamination of the whole ornithischian buccal apparatus, since we've been depicting them with cheeks since at least the 70s (I believe Galton was first to propose cheeked ornithischians). So cheeks or no cheeks?
Thomas Yazbeck
Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
Email: tholtz@umd.edu Phone: 301-405-4084
Principal Lecturer, Vertebrate Paleontology
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