Re: Horner's Pachy Lumpin' - Your Thoughts?

[Denver Fowler <df9465@yahoo.co.uk>]

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No one is suggesting that Horner et al. are full of crap 
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Not in so many words.


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Sorry but we are nowhere near the point of work where we can suggest that all 
flat-headed pachys that are or will be found were immature 
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Of course we are. This suggestion opens the debate; we are not at a point where 
we can falsify either hypothesis, but that is not the same thing as a 
suggestion. Some of the language bombarded at the Horner & Goodwin paper seems 
to say that it should never have been published. They present good evidence 
that the non-domed pachycephalosaurini from the Hell Creek forms are immature, 
and would have had full domes in the adult form. From this we might investigate 
whether the same case can be made for other flat-headed pachys. What is wrong 
with that?

Of course, there will eventually be some basal form that lacks a dome as an 
adult... but since the oldest pachy has a fully formed dome (Latest Santonian / 
earliest Campanian), then making the suggestion that all Late Santonian and 
younger flat-headed pachys are immature is a good hypothesis, and pretty easy 
to test.

I fail to see why, with a small dataset, taxonomic diversity is a preferable 
hypothesis over ontogeny. The argument going on here seems to be against the 
principle point of Horner & Goodwin's paper, and that is that the dome forms 
through ontogeny.