The whole animal needs to be looked at.

[tlford@ix.netcom.com]

This is in reference to some of the talks at Dinofest.

Geist, et al reallllly need to look at aquatic aniamls. Thier claim that
Sinosauropteryx was aquatice because they 'had' colligen fibers along
the tail are missing the point. Some one behind me at the talk brought
this up but they didn't get it. Aquatic animals have high caudal neural
spines and deep haemal arches (Snakes, lizards, early diapsids, etc).
The coligen 'wraps?' connects? or is tighly associated with the caudal
neural spines, which Sinosauropterx lacks. It has a normal theropod
tail, a normal theropod body, it was a 'normal theropod'. It was not
aquatic.

The talk on Tyrannosaurus dislocated its jaw if it bit onto anything is
wrong. Yes, the jaw muscles alow the animal to 'clamp' down on it's
prey. Tyrannosaurus has the largest lower jaw, the largest area for jaw
muscle attachment, the largest jaw muscles of any theropod. But these
muscles are for closeing the jaw, not opening it. I imagine that the
jaws of a T. rex could be held closed with two hands, just like a
crocodilian can be held closed with two fingers. The jaws don't have
that much opening power. Also, the neck of T. rex is short and had large
muscles. IMHO, T. rex could 'clamp' down on what it wanted and stay
'clamped' down as long as it needed to (uh oh, I can see Tom rolling
this eyes at this. Doesn't he relize he could go blind by doing that?:->
all in fun Tom). We know for a fact that T. rex could bite into bone and
take a chunk out of it. There is the Triceratops ilium and the
Triceratops femur bisket that has severial bite marks and tooth holes in
it. I can see both a scavanger and predator lifestyle.

Mononykus digging. When you were a kid, did you ever sit in a sand box
and pull the sand into your lap? Well, that's excatly what Mononykus
would be doing. The author of the talk talked about how the arms moved
and they moved mainly inward. You don't want to bring the sand/dirt into
your chest, you want to through dirt to the side. Also Mononykus has one
large claw on each hand, you need more claws to throw out more sand, she
did address the neck problem though.

I've kept my mouth shut about the Baryonyx thing, but hey, while I'm at
it...True Baryonyx has a long low skull like a crocodile, but the rest
of the body is like a theropod. It couldn't live in the water, it
couldn't act like a crocodile, because it wasn't like one. The body,
pubis, legs, ribcage would get in the way. The large claw isn't like a
fish hook, it's large and thick (I have a cast of it) and it is unlike
an animal that could fish. Sure there are fish scales near the body
cavity, and yes it could have eaten it, but that fish, as others have
brought up, could have been lying on shore.

Enough for now
Tracy