DOWNY STEGOSAURS

[Jonkeria@aol.com]

<< In a message dated 10/6/98 1:51:56 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
jdhexen@unr.edu writes:
 
 <<  How's about feathery plumes on the dorsal plates???  >>
 
 If we're getting this silly...
 
 It is now apparent that, like the defenses of the South American ground
 sloths, ankylosaurs had some manner of bony armor under their dense layers of
 feathers. (Oh, yeah, and the keratinous tail club was a predator-distraction
 device covered with feathers that served as a display structure, a heat-
 dissipation device, and were used in brooding, all of these features of
course
 being derived from that of the ancestral arboreal ankylosaur which leaped
 gracefully from tree to...well, the ground).
 
 -Christian Kammerer