Re: Eagle eyes

[Betty Cunningham <bettyc@flyinggoat.com>]

a muscle attachment for wiggly eyebrows?

-Betty Cunningham

dbensen wrote:
> 
> I was studying some skeletal reconstructions of ornithopods today and I 
> noticed
> something that I had never thought much of before.  Many (I won't say all, for
> there may be exceptions) ornithopods have a nob of bone extending over their
> eyes.  This palpebral bone, as it is called, would give  them a fobidding 
> "eagal
> eye" (that forbidding glare common to raptors) in life (I remember reading
> something to the effect in a Gregory Paul essay).  My question is this: "Why 
> would
> you evolve a palpebral bone?"  Obviously, it is something good, for both 
> raptors
> and ornithopods had them, and since predatory dinosaurs didn't have them, must
> have evolved the structure independantly (right?)
> 
> So, what is their function?

-- 
Flying Goat Graphics
http://www.flyinggoat.com
(Society of Vertebrate Paleontology member)
-------------------------------------------<,D,><