Cranial skeleton vs postcranial skeleton

Having said what I said in my last post (about a few minutes ago...) I find it rather annoying that there is a huge abundance of literature on the detailed anatomy of the cranial skeleton but less so on the postcranial skeleton. If the dinosaur is known only from postcranial materials then there is a relatively good account of it - of course what else can you write about? Howver, if there is a perfect skeleton preserved, chances are, the description would be skull-heavy. The authors may even state that "the postcranial skeleton would be described elsewhere" but it probably won't be for another decade or so until this publication actually comes out.

I mean, I like cranial skeletons. Skulls are cool! That's what I work on.

But having collected measurements of postcrania from the literature, this popularity of cranial skeleton is really inconvenient...and I don't have the money or time (well for now) to go all over the world and measure these myself. And a lot of the times, it may be "politically" difficult to get access to these specimens...

Comments

Nick said…

Yes! This is especially true of ornithischian dinosaurs, where there has been an overwhelming assumption of uniformity in the postcranial skeleton. It's very frustrating for students who do not necessarily have the resources available to get access to the specimens.

10 January, 2008 06:52

The difference between Lion and Tiger skulls

A quick divergence from my usual dinosaurs, and I shall talk about big cats today. This is because to my greatest delight, I had discovered today a wonderful book. It is called The Felidæ of Rancho La Brea (Merriam and Stock 1932, Carnegie Institution of Washington publication, no. 422). As the title suggests it goes into details of felids from the Rancho La Brea, in particular Smilodon californicus (probably synonymous with S. fatalis ), but also the American Cave Lion, Panthera atrox . The book is full of detailed descriptions, numerous measurements and beautiful figures. However, what really got me excited was, in their description and comparative anatomy of P. atrox , Merriam and Stock (1932) provide identification criteria for the Lion and Tiger, a translation of the one devised by the French palaeontologist Marcelin Boule in 1906. I have forever been looking for a set of rules for identifying lions and tigers and ultimately had to come up with a set of my own with a lot of help...

Old drawings: Allosaurus

Recently, I came across a stash of old drawings that I had completely forgotten about. I'll try and upload them in the next week or two. Some are palaeo, others are not, but still quite interesting nonetheless... Here is the first. I think it is an Allosaurus head. At least the skull looks like an Allosaurus and it has lacrimal horns like an Allosaurus , so it must be an Allosaurus . Nothing special I guess...

R for beginners and intermediate users 3: plotting with colours

For my third post on my R tutorials for beginners and intermediate users, I shall finally touch on the subject matter that prompted me to start these tutorials - plotting with group structures in colour. If you are familiar with R, then you may have noticed that assigning group structure is not all that straightforward. You can have a dataset that may have a column specifically for group structure such as this: B0 B1 B2 Family Acrocanthosaurus 0.308 -0.00329 3.28E-05 Allosauroidea Allosaurus 0.302 -0.00285 2.04E-05 Allosauroidea Archaeopteryx 0.142 -0.000871 2.98E-06 Aves Bambiraptor 0.182 -0.00161 1.10E-05 Dromaeosauridae Baryonychid 0.189 -0.00238 2.20E-05 Basal_Tetanurae Carcharodontosaurus 0.369 -0.00502 5.82E-05 Allosauroidea Carnotaurus 0.312 -0.00324 2.94E-05 Neoceratosauria Ceratosaurus 0.377 -0.00522 6.07E-05 Neoceratosauria Citipati 0.278 -0.00119 5.08E-06 Ovir...

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