A study of Majungasaurus' little arms

Adam Khor · 17-01-2012 2:19am #1

Spoiler: We still don´t know what the hell they were used for.
Getting a hold of the female while mating is all I can think of right now. They were certainly not scratching their back at all.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-scientists-fearsome-meat-eating-dinosaur.html

Galvasean · 17-01-2012 2:38am

It's nuts that they don't appear to even have claws on them. The only thing that makes sense in my mind is that they had become vestigial through lack of use and on the way out. Perhaps if the abelisaurs had survived beyond the Cretaceous they would have evolved into completely armless forms?

Adam Khor · 17-01-2012 2:41am

Galvasean wrote: »

It's nuts that they don't appear to even have claws on them. The only thing that makes sense in my mind is that they had become vestigial through lack of use and on the way out. Perhaps if the abelisaurs had survived beyond the Cretaceous they would have evolved into completely armless forms?

Perhaps... maybe just a pair of little spurs like those of pythons and boas today, to use during mating?

Galvasean · 17-01-2012 2:44am

Such has been proposed of tyrannosaurs, but compared to abelisaurids the arms of tyrannosaurs were quite pronounced and useful looking. Even snake spurs have little claws on them though. In abelisaurs this does not even appear to be present.

Adam Khor · 17-01-2012 2:46am

Galvasean wrote: »

Such has been proposed of tyrannosaurs, but compared to abelisaurids the arms of tyrannosaurs were quite pronounced and useful looking. Even snake spurs have little claws on them though. In abelisaurs this does not even appear to be present.

Right, but the claws in the snakes' spur is corneal; it's actually the remnants of the femur, not a real claw, so the same could have happened with abelisaurs had they lost their arms almost completely.

I'm thinking tyrannosaurs probably did use their claws like this, by the way- have you seen lizards mating? Lots of scratching going on.

Galvasean · 17-01-2012 2:49am

Adam Khor wrote: »

Right, but the claws in the snakes' spur is corneal; it's actually the remnants of the femur, not a real claw, so the same could have happened with abelisaurs had they lost their arms almost completely.

Hmm, possibly. If the hand section were to fuse

a fairly decent 'scratching tool' could have potentially been developed.

Adam Khor · 17-01-2012 2:54am

Galvasean wrote: »

Hmm, possibly. If the hand section were to fuse

a fairly decent 'scratching tool' could have potentially been developed.

Yeah... except that, like I said, they would need someone else to scratch their back XD

Galvasean · 17-01-2012 3:04am

Short legs keep them low to the ground to make scratching easier - less distance to the ground if you fall off?

Man, Todd Marshall got that one wrong:

Adam Khor · 17-01-2012 3:08am

Galvasean wrote: »

Short legs keep them low to the ground to make scratching easier - less distance to the ground if you fall off?

Man, Todd Marshall got that one wrong:

Long gone are the days in which we thought all dinosaurs looked a lot like their relatives; simple size and slight shape variations on the same model. Yet now they are starting to look as diverse and strange as mammals themselves

The new Majungasaurus version looks almost like a serpent on legs.

Galvasean · 17-01-2012 3:14am

Even Q had longer legs, and he was a serpent!

Adam Khor · 17-01-2012 3:16am

Galvasean wrote: »

Even Q had longer legs, and he was a serpent!

>.< Not much to do with the real Q. He never had any legs to begin with.

Galvasean · 17-01-2012 3:20am

Adam Khor · 17-01-2012 3:21am

Galvasean wrote: »

Closer but still... I wonder where people got the idea that Quetzalcoatl had wings...he was more like a Chinese dragon. He was wingless yet able to fly anyways...

Galvasean · 17-01-2012 3:30am

I think it's a case of trying to apply real world restrictions to a being that exists beyond the realms of our laws of physics.
This is what he's meant to look like:

Adam Khor · 17-01-2012 3:32am

Galvasean wrote: »

I think it's a case of trying to apply real world restrictions to a being that exists beyond the realms of our laws of physics.
This is what he's meant to look like:

I think the original version is way cooler than the "restricted" ones. I mean, he is supossed to be a god that came from another world (the legend itselfs says so), not an earthly creature. It's either an alien being or from another dimension. There must always be a space for the supernatural, me thinks.

A study of Majungasaurus' little arms

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