Dean's World

Researchers at Berkeley are suggesting that the distinctive back plates on my favorite dinosaur, the Stegosaurus (as well as some of the plates and spikes on dinosaurs like the triceratops) may have served no real purpose except ornamentation.

"Our studies of bone histology are telling us a lot about dinosaur social behavior and lifestyle," said Kevin Padian, professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a curator in the campus's Museum of Paleontology. "We cut up and compared the internal structures of stegosaur plates and the smaller scutes of their ancestors, and found that a functional explanation for these plates doesn't make sense for all the stegosaurs. So we think that they're more likely involved in some type of species recognition, as with many African antelopes - you have to be different from all animals in the area so you don't get mixed up with other species."

The rest of the story can be read here on Berkeley's web pages.

You know, I always did have a hard time seeing just how useful those back plates could be. They always looked like they'd snap right off. Other researchers have suggested maybe they were for heat exchange, but these guys have reasons for dismissing that as well (the blood vessels in them don't appear to go anywhere).

I have a harder time with the notion that the horns on triceratops were purely ornamental, but obviously these guys would know better than I would.

This story suddenly brought to mind one of my all-time favorite childhood books: The Shy Stegosaurus of Cricket Creek. Anyone else remember that one? I was enthralled with it as a boy.

(link)

Michael Demmons (mail) (www):

Berkeley? Seriously??

That's just a bunch of Leftist professors trying to change the traditional definition of Stegasaurus!!!

5.18.2005 11:09am

Dawn_Braun:

Well, they have to support their chosen profession somehow.

5.18.2005 12:44pm

Paul Burgess (www):

Dude, my favorite dinosaur is the Ankylosaurus.

5.18.2005 2:54pm

Jeremy Parker (www):

The Triceratops was much cooler.

And I'm with you...it's hard to imagine that three giant spikes on the head of an animal don't serve some sort of purpose. But perhaps not.

5.18.2005 3:00pm

Sandi (www):

Maybe it just goes to show that "natural selection" doesn't acutally know what it is selecting. ;o)

5.18.2005 3:17pm

Matthew B. (mail) (www):

I thought I was the only person alive who remembered that book.

5.18.2005 3:32pm

M. Scott Eiland (mail):

I loved that book too--though I remember not a word from it, and only the rather garish jacket illustration remains at the edges of my memory.

5.18.2005 4:22pm

Ken Hall (www):

For dinosaurs I roll old school, yo...T-rex all the way. ;-)

The title rings a bell, though. Can't claim to have read it for sure, but I may have.

5.18.2005 6:10pm

There was also a sequel: "The Shy Stegosaurus of Indian Springs." Unfortunately, while he was on his way to Phoenix for the third novel, George had a fateful run-in with a nasty gang of Gila Monsters and perished. He was found by a wandering paleontologist, stuffed, and currently resides in a large broom closet next to the display of Trigger at the Roy Rogers Museum. :-P

5.18.2005 7:54pm

I always loved reading the fictional description of a T-Rex hunting in a book about dinosaurs that I first read when I was five. The big guy wanders onto the scene, and all the little plant eaters skeddadle, leaving an Ankylosaurus and a Triceratops. Rex goes after the Ankylosaur and gets a broken tooth and a sore jaw for his troubles. He turns on the Triceratops, and they fight it out for a while, with the T-Rex trying to get a solid bite on the back of the Triceratops (behind the bony crest), and the Triceratops trying to impale the T-Rex. After a few moments, the Triceratops drives both horns into the T-Rex's guts, and it staggers off and falls, mortally wounded. The Triceratops walks off slowly, with wounds that will scar it for the rest of its life. Thus ended another day in the late Cretaceous.

5.18.2005 8:03pm

Bryan AWS (mail) (www):

I wish I could remember the name of the scientist who's been shunned by most of the scientific community because he's been saying for a number of years that the stylized drawings of dinosaurs in most of our books are quite fanciful and possibly not at all the color, composition, etc. of the dinosaur skins.

I remember hearing a story with him on NPR (I believe).

5.18.2005 9:13pm

Dean Esmay:

Brian: Well when I was a kid, dinosaurs were almost universally painted in colors of varying shades of brown or green--which strikes me as every bit as fanciful as the notion that they were wildly colorful.

Truth is we just don't know, do we?

5.18.2005 10:53pm

Yes, Dean, and that was this scientist's point. I believe he also made a big deal about some dinosaurs having hair and that they could have been wildly colorful.

At outside the beltway a few weeks ago, there was a thread about some particular "transitional" species that they had discovered and someone made the point that the thing was "feathered." Now, the ONLY evidence they had of any kind was some bones. And yet the article stated "feathered" as if it were fact.

Maybe all the dinosaurs were drag queens.

5.18.2005 11:26pm

Trudy W. Schuett (mail) (www):

Not only do I remember the book, I think I might still have it somewhere!

5.18.2005 11:47pm

Bryan: A more interesting thing to consider is that there are still some holdouts who believe most dinosaurs were cold-blooded. That was the reigning viewpoint when I was a kid, and eventually became the minority view. But, there are still some holdouts who say that some of them may have been warm-blooded but most were cold-blooded.

That's science: debate still happens. Although it's sad how in certain fields debate is actively shunned.

5.19.2005 12:26am