Re: maniraptoran pubic retroversion

["Jaime A. Headden" <qilongia@yahoo.com>]

Our Belgian friend, Luc Bailly (aspidel@freegates.be) wrote:

<Aren't _Khaan_ and _Caudipteryx_ quite mesopubic or just a bit propubic, and 
_Oviraptor_ strongly
propubic?>

  Hopefully I will have a paper out on this in the near future, but the short 
of it is this: it
really depends on what you define as propubic and where. There are three 
effective parts of the
pubis, and muscles attach to three different parts of it, corresponding with 
the proximal, middle,
and distal thirds of its length. Other tissues are generally restricted (except 
in birds) to two
of these thirds, but not all three (the gut in the first two, the pneumatic 
gastric sacs in the
bottom two, but this changes in birds). Pubic retroversion, as detailed in 
papers by Gatesy and by
Hutchinson, is related to neutral femoral rotation and shortening of the tail, 
so that the center
of gravity is brought between the knees. Further research is required to note 
how the pubes
revert, and in which state the oviraptorosaur and segnosaur are primitively.


=====
Jaime A. Headden

  Little steps are often the hardest to take.  We are too used to making leaps 
in the face of adversity, that a simple skip is so hard to do.  We should all 
learn to walk soft, walk small, see the world around us rather than zoom by it.

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