End of the Gliders Thread for Me

["Matthew Bonnan" <mbonnan@hotmail.com>]

Dinogeorge writes:

> I have
> little faith in arguments based on rearticulating limbs and in limb 
> elements
> preserved "the way they were held in life," though of course I'm always
> interested in hearing them.

Well, okay.  I don't know what you want then.  I was hoping we could discuss 
some of the bones and how they go together, but I suppose it would be a moot 
point for me to continue.  While it is true that the limbs of dinosaurs have 
joints which in some aspects do not fit like those of mammals because of 
missing cartilage, I conclude here by positing that there is still a great 
deal of useful functional information that can be extracted from 
articulating, measuring, and performing statistical analysis on bone 
elements.

The bones and joints and how they articulate provide some means of testing 
hypotheses on the types of activities dinosaurs were capable of and which 
terrains they possibly preferred.  We shouldn't ignore functional morphology 
because it is a pain in the butt and I applaud the efforts of all of those 
who take on dinosaurs, large or small, to attempt to understand biomechanics 
and the limits of locomotion.

Thanks for your time, George and everyone else on this thread.  It's been 
fun.

Matt Bonnan

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