Wednesday, November 10, 2010

A new wave of dinosaur research

Confuciusornis, an early bird/theropod
dinosaur from 125-120 mya
The 1970s saw a resurgence of dinosaur research - new thoughts on endothermy, social behavior and bird evolution.  The last decade has seen another wave of novel dinosaur discoveries.  Some examples:

1 comment:

  1. Two legged dinosaurs are portrayed in museums and television with their bodies held horizontally and their legs vertical. This is not at all possible because their center of gravity is above their hip bone (or forward of the hip when the body is horizontal). If they had attempted to walk horizontally with their legs vertical they would have toppled forward and protected themselves from impact with the upper part of their huge head. Almost certainly they walked almost erect, but at least at a 45 degree angle, often with the tail held aloft in order to prevent tripping by thrusting it back and to prevent an assailant from jumping on their back. To see a discussion of this see http://charles_w.tripod.com/dinosaur.html or in this journal article http://gsjournal.net/Science-Journals/Essays-Paleontology/Download/4718 . If you see any errors in them, please let me know. You may also see an explanation why vertebrate size, extent of bone, and teeth declined during the Cretaceous on the savannas in http://www.angelfire.com/nc/isoptera/termites.html as caused by a phosphorus famine produced by Amitermitinae plant smothering termites starting probably in late Jurassic Australia. Loss of teeth was probably much accented in birds and pterosaurs because of the young eating termite mating insects which had iron oxide and bauxite in their guts.
    Sincerely, Charles Weber

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