Comments on: The “unicorn” dinosaur http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/dinosaur/2008/10/14/the-unicorn-dinosaur/ Where Paleontology Meets Pop Culture Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:47:20 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Dinosaur Tracking http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/dinosaur/2008/10/14/the-unicorn-dinosaur/comment-page-1/#comment-134 Dinosaur Tracking Mon, 10 Nov 2008 17:24:45 +0000 http://dinosaur.smithsonianmag.com/?p=88#comment-134 [...] of the Arctic Circle, on Alaska’s North Slope, lie the scattered remains of dinosaurs like the horned Pachyrhinosaurus, the tyrannosaur Gorgosaurus, the hadrosaur Edmontosaurus, and the maniraptorans Troodon and [...] [...] of the Arctic Circle, on Alaska’s North Slope, lie the scattered remains of dinosaurs like the horned Pachyrhinosaurus, the tyrannosaur Gorgosaurus, the hadrosaur Edmontosaurus, and the maniraptorans Troodon and [...]

]]> By: Monado http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/dinosaur/2008/10/14/the-unicorn-dinosaur/comment-page-1/#comment-133 Monado Tue, 14 Oct 2008 19:01:50 +0000 http://dinosaur.smithsonianmag.com/?p=88#comment-133 It has been suggested that the beaked dinosaurs who lived on coarse vegetation would have large cheek muscles to crunch with those beaks and that therefore they would look more like squirrels and less like vultures in the cheek region. That makes sense to me. Is there any evidence on the bones of large muscles? One of the reasons it makes sense is that I recall from a long-ago botany course that some early trees (cycads?) developed seeds in the centre of the trunk, surrounded by wood, and depended on dinoasurs to eat the plant and liberate the seed. When the dinos died out, so did those plants that depended on them. Similarly, it is likely that heavy fruits like the Osage orange and possibly even the black walnut were spread more by giant ground sloths than anything else--which might explain why Osage oranges are uncommon these days. It has been suggested that the beaked dinosaurs who lived on coarse vegetation would have large cheek muscles to crunch with those beaks and that therefore they would look more like squirrels and less like vultures in the cheek region. That makes sense to me. Is there any evidence on the bones of large muscles?

One of the reasons it makes sense is that I recall from a long-ago botany course that some early trees (cycads?) developed seeds in the centre of the trunk, surrounded by wood, and depended on dinoasurs to eat the plant and liberate the seed. When the dinos died out, so did those plants that depended on them.

Similarly, it is likely that heavy fruits like the Osage orange and possibly even the black walnut were spread more by giant ground sloths than anything else–which might explain why Osage oranges are uncommon these days.

]]>