Making Things Look Funny — Again

Discussing body posture and its artistic expression has had me going back and revising my reconstructions. It has led to something of an exploration in the artistic presentation in what we see based on our expectations.

Walking Sledgehammers

Scott Persons and Phil Currie made waves late last year with a study that showed everyone’s reconstructions of dinosaur tail anatomy was wrong. We, they said, had incorrectly measured the mass of the m. caudofemoralis longus, the muscle that runs from the mid-femur and along the transverse processes of the caudal vertebra, and as such had undersized the muscle and thus aspect of the tail. We’d drawn the tail way too thin, as shown here in W. Scott Person’s explanation at Dave Hone’s Archosaur Musings and Brian Switek’s Laelaps, but also Scott Hartman’s great review at Skeletal Drawing and Virginia Arbour’s interview with co-author Scott Persons at Psuedoplocephalus.

Incredulous Teeth, II: The Many Similar Teeth of Zanabazar

Zanabazar junior is a troodontid, named for famed Mongolian Öndör Geγeen Zanabazar (Өндөр Гэгээн Занабазар), an icon who brought Buddhism to the Mongols from the north from China. The name is translated from Mongolian as “known-vigor” and is derived from the Sanskrit Jnana-vajra, which means “thunderbolt of wisdom.” How peculiar that this is a name given to a “brainy” troodontid, animals known for their legginess and apparent adeptness at running down hatchling Maiasaura (and little else). But what is most peculiar about it is not that it is among the largest of troodontids, but that most if not all of its teeth were essentially homodont, or having the same morphology as one another.

Diet in Oviraptorosaurs VII – Measuring the Mandible: Part 3, Measuring Points

It is finally time to figure out where good and useful places are to measure. We’re going to be doing this twice, and use these points to show HOW orienting our mandible changes things.

My previous entries on this series include positioning the jaw, or Alignment (part 1) and knowing what you’re looking at, or Labeling (part 2).

Caenagnathid mandible with points of interest highlighted, in left lateral and dorsal views. Mandible modified after Currie et al., 1994.

Hypercursorial Killer Crocs

There are quite a few “croc-grade” archosaurs out there that are peculiar, virtually most branches up until we get to “modern crocs” (i.e., gavials, crocs “proper” and gators, including caimans) seem fairly “croc-like” but differ in some peculiarities. We’ll discuss one of these in a bit.

Diet in Oviraptorosaurs VII – Measuring the Mandible: Part 2, Labelling

Stepping aside from the issue of actual measurement, I continue from the last post in this series with a discussion on what and how to call the elements we are measuring.

Making Things Look “Funny”

When playing around with the idea that how we orient our material when we measure it, it struck me how alien the images look when you reposition them.

Diet in Oviraptorosaurs VII – Measuring the Mandible: Part 1, Alignment

It’s been a while since I’ve added to my overarching plan to describe the diet of oviraptorosaurs, and now is time to continue. But first,

Why Don’t Tyrannosaurs Have All Bananas For Teeth?

Shortly after my last post, a little discussion ensues, and I realize there is a little more I should say here on the subject.

In a message sent to the Dinosaur Mailing List (the original of which can be found here [when the link is available!]), I wrote:

Strange Snouts in … Oviraptorid Dinosaurs (Diet in Oviraptorosaurs IV)

This is part four of my ongoing “Diet in Oviraptorosaurs” series. Parts one, two and three (follow the links) explain other aspects of this detailed perspective.

There are some odd cranial-facial oddities among amniote vertebrates out there, doing all sorts of odd things with their skulls, such as cyamodontoid placodonts, which lost virtually all of their margin teeth but expanded their palatal teeth while forming thin struts with the tips of their jaws, or the strangely “upside down” skulls of flamings, or the twisted and Hoover-vacuum-like skull of Nigersaurus (and apparently other rebbachisaurid sauropods). So it would then appear odd to speak of another group as potentially more odd: that of members of the strange group called Oviraptoridae.