Comments on: How Did the Biggest Dinosaurs Get it On?

By: Jon

Jon — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 20:31:41 +0000

Leigh Van Valen, the famous evolutionary biologist who proposed the Red Queen effect, used to teach a course at the University of Chicago entitled Evolutionary Processes. The last class of the quarter, he would show up and hand out sheet music, and then begin singing raunchy and ridiculous songs about dinosaur sex and other strange topics.

After he passed away in 2010, a website devoted to him was put up where you can find the lyrics to the songs.

http://leighvanvalen.com/songs/

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/18310184/songs/sex%20among%20the%20dinosaurs.pdf

By: Dinosaurs

Dinosaurs — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 20:37:23 +0000

If most dinosaurs are cold blooded then its possible that they would not get it on at all. They could drop the eggs and later the male makes them fertile, right?

By: Marko Bosscher

Marko Bosscher — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 23:46:12 +0000

“Halstead even imagined that the amorous dinosaurs might intertwine their tails.”

I remember one of the junior “science journals” I read as a kid had a rather vivid depiction of of “Iguanodon getting it on” in this way, they were apparently quite happy with the image since they devoted a two-page spread to this picture.
As I recall the accompanying text suggested that Dinosaurs may have had their genitalia in the tip of their tails…

By: C.

C. — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 19:17:56 +0000

Is there a real reason to assume that dinosaurs had a small penis? Some birds today- like ducks- have monstrously long members. Maybe sauropods evolved something similar not because of a female’s convoluted genitalia but rather because of distances…

By: Zhen

Zhen — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 14:08:15 +0000

Hmmm… I guess I lack imagination.

By: Mike Magee

Mike Magee — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 22:20:10 +0000

Isn’t the simple inference from all this that they copulated by pushing their cloacae together, rear to rear, one presumably with its tail raised and laying down one side of its partner, and the other with its tail similarly placed on the other side. The tails would serve as guides in the process, and their long necks would have had another purpose in enabling them to see what they were doing.

By: Henrique Niza

Henrique Niza — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:13:38 +0000

“Guys, all I’m going to say on this subject is Stegosaurus and Ankylosaurus.”

http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h134/T-PEKC/dacentrurus2.jpg

By T-PEKC.

By: Zhen

Zhen — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:35:31 +0000

Guys, all I’m going to say on this subject is Stegosaurus and Ankylosaurus.

By: Boesse

Boesse — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 22:45:47 +0000

Something I’ve overheard Horner say in conversation several times is appropriate: “Well, we know they could rear up temporarily, because we have little sauropods.”

By: Kathy

Kathy — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 21:16:03 +0000

Maybe T. Rex’s forelimbs performed foreplay: not so useless after all.
When I scratch my cat’s back she raises her tail and arches her back up.

By: Heinrich

Heinrich — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 19:45:08 +0000

and as I showed (Mallison 2011), rearing is so easy for diplodocids and other back-heavy sauropods that getting it on should not place much weight on the female.

Brachiosaurids and other long-forelimbed sauropods, however…….

Mallison, H. (2011). Rearing Giants – kinetic-dynamic modeling of sauropod bipedal and tripodal poses, pp. 237-250. In Klein, N., Remes, K., Gee, C. & Sander M. (eds.): Biology of the Sauropod Dinosaurs: Understanding the life of giants. Life of the Past (series ed. Farlow, J.), Indiana University Press.