Tyrants, Stegos, and Dromies

["Dictator-for-life Calvin" <MWEDEL@gslan.offsys.ou.edu>]

After reading over the posts from recent months, I've reached some 
rather startling conclusions, which I am at last ready to unveil.

Tyrannosaurs were, in fact, scavengers.  Healed tyrannosaur bites 
on various Cretaceous fauna are the product of the none-too-smart 
necrovores attempting to scavenge living animals.  The obvious 
skeletal and muscular adaptations for cursorial predation are clearly 
the results of racial senescence, a currently overlooked mechanism that 
is long overdue for revision, publication, and public acclaim.

Stegosaur "plates" were actually bony parasites resembling 
leaf-hoppers in lateral view.  Stegosaurs would bound across the 
Jurassic landscape in an attempt to blow the offensive pests off of 
their backs, which led the parasitic plates to assume an 
aerodynamically optimal conformation.  This could be either a single 
row, a double paired row, a double staggered row, or the rare "Red 
Baron" triple row, depending on the gait of the host stegosaur.  Only 
the very smartest stegosaurs ever learned how to amble, much less 
gallop, thus accounting for the confusing array of plate 
configurations.

Dromaeosaurs were clearly derived from arboreal proto-birds.  
However, proto-birds such as Archaeopteryx lack the grossly expanded 
foot claw, leading me to theorize that dromaeosaurs, which lacked 
wings, employed the claws as climbing spikes to get down *out* of the 
trees.  This "trees-down" phase was followed by the "ground-up" 
phase, in which the animals tried out new uses for their "terrible 
claws," settled on grooming, and sliced each other to pieces.

Well, that's all I have for now.  Back to the archives, me scabby 
henchmen!  Bwa-ha-ha-haaaa!!

Matt Wedel