Re: Brachiosaur spines?

[The Armadillo with the Mask <armadilo@daft.com>]

On Wed, 4 Mar 1998, Gigi Babcock or Ralph Miller III wrote:

> Steve, "The Armadillo with the Mask" <armadilo@daft.com> wrote:
> > Paging through the "Complete Dinosaur" at breakfast this
> morning(Wonderful
> > book BTW, all of you who had a manus in it) and came
> > across GSPaul's piccys of Brachiosaur herds with spines going down the
> > neck. This is the first time I've seen a brachiosaur or possibly any
> > sauropod rendered with these. Obviously Greg wouldn't have rendered them
> > this wayt if there wasn't SOME evidence for it. Is this a relatively
> > recent discovery or is it more like the Parasauroplophus neck-flap?
> 
> Well, I hope you've got a copy of Currie and Padian's _Encyclopedia of
> Dinosaurs_, because this book includes Stephen A. Czerkas' entry on "Skin."
>  There you will find that these spines, which lack bony cores, were
> recovered from "an undescribed sauropod resembling _Barosaurus_ and
> _Diplodocus_."  The article includes a skeletal reconstruction of the

This would explain it. No, I haven't gotten around to picking up this
volume yet.I've been saving my paleo-pennies for the upcoming DinoFest 
and at $99 and $145 (approx) C&P and the Glut book together are at least
the registration and 1 night's hotel. 

Thanks for the info!

> The absence of the exceptionally rare dermal spine fossils in other
> sauropod specimens doesn't by itself prove whether they would have sported
> the spines in life or not, but in the absence of evidence disproving such
> spines, Gregory S. Paul has taken the trouble to update a number of his
> illustrations by adding the spines.

Fine by me(like my opinion really counts :) ). If you can't say for sure
it ain't so, why not?---it certainly makes for a more interesting and
dramatic image.

----Steve