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Extinct Animal Questions
Topic Started: Nov 26 2013, 10:24 PM (193,453 Views)
stargatedalek
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I'm not slow! That's just my moe!

Posted Image

I couldn't find a reference for stethacanthus, so I had to photo source this from the fossil (even more annoyingly I couldn't even find one for the female, so I just left off the "iron board" but I don't know if there should have been skeletal traces of it left)
sharks aren't really my thing so I'm wondering if anyone notices anything off
Edited by stargatedalek, Oct 12 2014, 02:21 PM.
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CyborgIguana
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It looks fine to me.
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Furka
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Gotta make some questions after coming out of a quite shocking Carnivora thread.

What do we know about Ceratosaurus and Torvosaurus feeding behaviour/strategies ?
Bakker (I think) proposed them as predators of aquatic animals, but that doesn't seem plausible to me.
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Yi Qi
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Furka
Oct 13 2014, 04:15 PM
Bakker (I think) proposed them as predators of aquatic animals, but that doesn't seem plausible to me.
Don't get me wrong, Bakker is AWESOME, and was the leading force behind the dinosaur renaissance

but he often cooks more crackpot theories than a drug dealer cooks crystal meth.
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CyborgIguana
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Well Torvosaurus is a megalosaurid, which IIRC is a family closely allied with spinosaurids.

Even so, the idea seems sketchy to me.
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Mathius Tyra
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Rat snake is love... Rat snake is life

Torvo's teeth look more like T. rex's teeth than fish-eater teeth to me....

But that's just rough personal view...
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CyborgIguana
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I think we can say with reasonable certainty that neither Ceratosaurus nor Torvosaurus were fish-eaters (to be fair though, all Bakker said was aquatic prey, which could also mean things like turtles or small crocodilians).
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Incinerox
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Āeksiot Zaldrīzoti

Furka
Oct 13 2014, 04:15 PM
Gotta make some questions after coming out of a quite shocking Carnivora thread.

What do we know about Ceratosaurus and Torvosaurus feeding behaviour/strategies ?
Bakker (I think) proposed them as predators of aquatic animals, but that doesn't seem plausible to me.
Not much has been thoroughly investigated.

But there are some other things worth noting about other aspects of their biology which might explain how you can have 3 apex predators in one area.

Ceratosaurus fossils are rarer than the other large Morrison predators, yet their teeth marks are extremely common on other dinosaur remains. Probably suggests that as the smallest of the 3 predators, they were the most opportunistic scavengers, and they probably favoured habitats which woulda left them less prone to fossilisation. Areas of harder ground and less flooding. Possibly more arid regions or highland areas. Also worth noting that it shares certain traits with Allosaurus in that it too probably attacked prey open-jawed - Both have jaws suited to dealing with forces far greater than their bites would allow, and most effective neck use as achieved when the jaw was open.

Not sure how common Torvosaurus was compared to the others, but my money's on it being somewhere in the middle. Its fossils are known from areas of the Morrison where there were saline lakes surrounded by lush wetland. Its European counterpart was also the top predator of a coastal ecosystem. Perhaps it was a large game hunter of wetter parts of the Morrison Formation. Probably the sort of thing that encouraged the evolution of spinosaurids later on down the line.

Allosaurus, being super common, known from several parts of the Morrison, with strong evidence of interacting with several prey species suggests that this was clearly the most successful, adaptable and opportunistic of all Morrison theropods, but had a particular soft spot for sauropod flesh as its cretaceous relatives suggest. We have at least one case where an allosaurus took a hard swipe from a Stegosaurus's thagomizer to the rear, indicating either a clumsy hunter or an act of desperation. Abundant fossils indicate that this thing was present in fossil prone areas ie. floodplains.

Also worth noting that there's a lot more information on Allosaurus-Ceratosaurus overlap, which to me seems like they were in more direct competition than Torvosaurus was because of proximity and prey type.

Other than the actual bite mechanism for Allosaurus and Ceratosaurus (nothing's been studied for Torvosaurus IIRC), they all seem to be fairly standard in size and build (except Torvosaurus being rather low slung for a Jurassic theropod of its size). Probably were capable of taking on all available prey species and their niches were more defined by their location/habitat and what prey so happened to be contemporaneous.

That said, I once had a good diagram of what herbivores ended up where, but I lost it and don't remember the details. That info would really be useful here.
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Furka
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Quote:
 
That said, I once had a good diagram of what herbivores ended up where, but I lost it and don't remember the details. That info would really be useful here.


Something like this ?

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0012553
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BossAggron
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Formerly Dilophoraptor

Is it possible that Kentrosaurus was somewhat nocturnal?
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stargatedalek
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I'm not slow! That's just my moe!

I don't see any evidence for or against either diurnal or nocturnal
so thats probably open to creative liberty
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TheLastPanthera
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Just call me TLP!

Hi, I have some questions about some dinosaur discoveries which were made a few years ago.

In 2007 IIRC two really big titanosaurs were discovered in Australia, Eromanga. I was wondering if "Cooper" and "George" are actually described scientific already? (Do they now have a scientific name or are they still known as C. and G.?)

And in 2009/2011 they found fossils of a big carnivorous dinosaur from Germany, from the mid cretaceous (~ 90 mya), but again I couldn't find a scientific paper about this dinosaur.

So are there some new information about the australian titanosaurs and the german carnosaur? It would be cool to get some information about them! :D

Thanks for help! c:
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Even
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No further info for both, until now... x.x considering how long research is, I think it'd be another 3-5 years before we see papers for these
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Furka
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Could some dinosaurs feed on bark during harsh times, like some modern herbivores ?
(not from a speculative behaviour point of view, more wondering if their jaws and teeth could allow that).
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Fluffs
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Pull my finger!

How would the feathers of non-avian dinosaurs be colored as? I've read up some sources that they shouldn't be brightly colored (red or orange or something), yet I'm also seeing others that they could be vibrantly colored.
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