Comments on: Were Feathered Dinosaurs Venomous?

By: Sinornithosaurus Probably Wasn't Venomous After All | Dinosaur Tracking

Sinornithosaurus Probably Wasn't Venomous After All | Dinosaur Tracking — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 15:01:31 +0000

[...] bite, as was proposed by scientists Enpu Gong, Larry Martin, David Burnhamb and Amanda Falk several months ago. The idea was more interesting than it was well-supported, and now, in the journal [...]

By: You Can’t Use Venom On Your Friends & Expect Them To Just Forget, Sinornithosaurus. « Save Your Breath For Running Ponies

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 17:16:46 +0000

[...] more info: Dinosaur Tracking Blog // Not Exactly Rocket Science // Original [...]

By: Cale

Cale — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 20:59:25 +0000

“Other theropod dinosaurs have grooves in their teeth which appear to have reduced mechanical stress as they bit into prey. The tips of the teeth would penetrate into the prey but the grooves would provide a space for air so that the amount of suction on the tooth would be reduced as it was being removed.”

^ Not to nitpick, but I make swords as a hobby, and I hear almost the exact same thing said about the groove (fuller) that runs down alot of sword blades, that it let air in to reduce suction when pulling the sword out, or that it was a ‘blood groove’ to allow the blood to run. These are myths. The Fuller is there to lighten the blade, while providing strength. Much the same concept as an I-beam used in heavy construction.

Could not that be a more likely alternative explanation for the grooves in the teeth than that stuff aabout them ‘letting air in to reduce suction’?

I am of course, no expert, and have no education beyond the high-school level so I could be way off base here.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 19:00:31 +0000

Fry, the herpetologist who proved that venom was present in a variety of other lepidosaurs other than snakes and helodermatids, is taking this paper as evidence that venom was a basal trait in the common ancestor of archosaurimorphs and lepidosaurimorphs. However, he himself notes that some non-venomous animals have oversized teeth and grooves, such as mandrills. For all we know, Sinornithosaurus’ oversized row of teeth (and even that is in question) could have been grooved to keep them from breaking when they were used to deliver a killing bite to prey.

By: Neil

Neil — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 18:46:39 +0000

“The significance of this alternate view is that if Sinornithosaurus was a venomous bird derived from a more ancient stock of lizard-like reptiles (and hence unrelated to dinosaurs) it would have been evolutionarily closer to lizards and snakes, two groups that we know have venomous members.”

I’m pretty sure that Larry Martin (and others in the “Birds Are Not Dinosaurs” camp) still regard birds as archosaurs more closely related to living crocodilians than to lepidosaurs (lizards etc.) I haven’t had a chance to read the new PNAS paper yet, but if they are insinuating that birds are more closely related to lizards and snakes than crocs that would be a pretty radical statement that goes against basically all available morphological and molecular data.

Also, the enigmatic Triassic reptile Uatchitodon is another candidate for a venomous archosauromorph – though it is only known from isolated teeth so its archosaur affinities are pretty tenuous.