Re: dino dental hygiene

[Rob Taylor <rjtaylor68@comcast.net>]

> I would think a large theropod would just open its mouth and let small 
> birds (once they'd appeared) to pick out the bits of meat between their 
> teeth.

Second time in a week I've had to go digging to find paleo-art owing to 
something in a DML post. As it happens, it was small pterosaurs rather than 
birds, but I knew I'd seen something along these lines. I imagine such 
behavior to have been quite likely, or at least no more unusual than some of 
the other symbiotic relationships seen in the animal kingdom.

Coincidentally, the artist is Fabio Pastori, who also turned out one of the 
few images of mating dinosaurs (as mentioned on the Trexes crossword 
thread).

See http://www.castaweb.it/fabiopastori/images/big/8.gif for his pencil 
sketch of T. rex and Germanodactylus.

Best,

Rob Taylor
rjtaylor68@comcast.net