And depends on the level to which you will push "hip height." A shorter tail
for an oviraptorosaur, if the animal were like birds, would indeed make the femur a far
less important element of the effective limb length (and therefore hip height). However,
unlike birds, the femur is quite long compared to the rest of the body, and we would
assume it was far more vertical than in, say, a pigeon or ostrich. As such, the effective
limb length, despite the short tail (the tail is known, it IS short) would be closer to
the total limb length than it would in a bird. Moreover, the animal was likely tilted
upwards at the hip, would places the anterior ilium above the midlength height of the
ilium, so if we really wanted to, iliac height increases the body profile above the hip
quite significantly, unlike in, say, *Tyrannosaurus bataar.*
Cheers,
Jaime A. Headden
The Bite Stuff (site v2)
http://qilong.wordpress.com/
"Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B. Medawar (1969)
"Ever since man first left his cave and met a stranger with a
different language and a new way of looking at things, the human race
has had a dream: to kill him, so we don't have to learn his language or
his new way of looking at things." --- Zapp Brannigan (Beast With a Billion
Backs)
----------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2010 16:51:39 +0200
From: david.marjanovic@gmx.at
To: dinosaur@usc.edu
Subject: Re: New paper on pre-Archaeopteryx coelurosaurian dinosaurs
Rescued from truncation:
That sums to 322.4 cm (assuming totally erect hindlimb posture,
which of course is wrong). I can see where you'd add on a few extra
cm for the cartilaginous joints, but a whole 80 cm?
and please keep in mind that Senter and Robins (2010) assume less
cartilage,
so you'd have to add some cm to *G.*, too. Assuming identical limb
flexion
angles in both taxa, *G.* stays taller.
:)
Heinrich
I'd assume a bit more limb flexion in *G.*, though, because as an
oviraptorosaur it probably had a shorter tail.