Fun day for paleontology related news!
The Telegraph is running this story:
Dinosaurs hit rivals like athletes hit balls
Glyptodont dinosaurs had a finely-adapted tail with a "sweet spot" which clubbed rivals in the same way as tennis or cricket players hit balls, scientists say.
The two-ton prehistoric beast - which grew to the size of a small car - killed predators by swinging its spiked tail with the skill of an Andy Murray backhand.
The clumsy, bizarre-looking mammals were covered with a thick tortoise-like shell and roamed the planet up to 23 million years ago. They had bony tail 'clubs' that could be used as weapons to hit rivals in the same way tennis players such as such as Roger Federer, the Williams sisters and Andy Murray hit the ball.
New research now shows the tail was finely adapted to deliver accurate powerful blows with the largest spike - just like the "sweet spot" in tennis rackets and cricket bats.
I don't think the journalist is to blame though, notice that the rest of the article goes on to call them mammals, and even later in the article, they acknowledge that glyptodonts are fossil armadillo relatives-
Glyptodonts died out at the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago were much larger relatives of the modern armadillo. They originated in South America and spread northwards as far as southern North America.
I suspect that unfortunately for the journalist, this is the fault of an editor's @$%# up. Glyptodonts aren't dinosaurs. This is something as simple as which could have been confirmed through something as simple as Wikipedia or a quick search using Google. Even the article itself (as I already noted) calls them mammals, so I'm fairly hard pressed to get why the headline calls them dinosaurs.
Photographs of a fossil mount of Panochthus, a glyptodontid mammal, taken by Ryan Somma via Wikipedia.
Now, on the other hand, here's a news story about tail clubs in actual dinosaurs!
From Wired, CT Scans Show Dinosaur Tail Was a Bone Crusher
An Ankylosaurus probably couldn’t kill a Tyrannosaurus rex with the club at the end of its tail, but new research suggests the bony bludgeon could definitely break its ankles.
To estimate just how hard Ankylosaurus could hit with its tail club, Canadian researchers examined CT scans of several fossilized tails from dinos of different sizes. Combining the imaging data with measurements of the dinosaur’s backbone, they determined the Ankylosaurus could swing its tail in a 100 degree lateral arc, and that larger clubs could generate forces strong enough to crush bone.
"The small ones would be like hitting something with a bowling ball,” said dinosaur researcher Victoria Arbour of the University of Alberta in Canada, author of the study, published Tuesday in PLoS ONE. “And you really wouldn’t want to be around when the bigger ones are swinging.”
Scientists have long speculated that heavily armored ankylosaurids used their tail clubs to fend off other dinosaurs, but until now, no one had studied whether the club was a biologically feasible weapon. Using CT data and three-dimensional computer modeling programs, Arbour calculated the volume, mass and impact speed of both small and large tail clubs from dinosaurs in the Ankylosaurus family.
A much better article than the one running in the Telegraph. Another plus is that there's a really awesome looking drawing in this article too. Check it out
Life reconstruction of Ankylosaurus by Mariana Ruiz Villarreal, obtained via Wikipedia.
h/t to Michael Barton for noticing the article in the Telegraph about glyptodonts, and to Andy Farke for pointing out the new ankylosaurid paper
edit: added a trackback link (I think)...
3 comments:
Don't know if you've ever seen geckos (leopards in particular) do this, BUT: when the leopards are threatened, they lower their head and raise their tails up, then move the tail left and right in a slow, sinuous way. It's obviously a threat display.
Gotta wonder if ankylosaurs did the same kind of thing, lowering the body and moving the tail around to remind predators of what they're dealing with.
that's really cool sounding Zac, do you think you could get a video of this behavior without stressing your geckos?
cheers,
Nick
I could certainly try. I don't have a digital camcorder, but I do have a digital camera, so I can take some pictures.
They don't do it very often. Solid used to do it more, but now he just tries to eat anything that comes in the tank (including people!). Mr. Fat will do it too, but it's totally random, and not obviously connected to being threatened.
But I'll definately try to catch one of them in the act.
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