Did I mention that Triceratops is my fave dino? Judging from the comments to yesterday’s Triceratops, Stegosaurus may be more popular among the readership here. But this is my blog, so here’s a nicely-presented Triceratops skull.
Once again, a tribute to the good taste and comprehensiveness of The Tyrrell.
Comment feed for ongoing:
From: Alex Waterhouse-Hayward (Jul 17 2009, at 15:46)
I favour the flying dinosaurs as I think they are far more exciting and not as lumbering as the big dinos. For the ultimate novel (a little one at that) there is the odd The Dechronization of Sam Magruder written by paleontologist George Gaylors Simpson.
I wrote about this book here:
http://alexwaterhousehayward.com/blog/2006/12/chronic-argonauts_28.html
Alex Waterhouse-Hayward
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From: Stuart Dootson (Jul 17 2009, at 16:31)
"Did I mention that Triceratops is my fave dino?"
There's good taste - it's always been my favourite too, since I was about 8.
It was probably a little more dynamic and action-oriented in my childish mind that in reality, though!
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From: Tony Fisk (Jul 18 2009, at 22:22)
I don't recall having a *favourite* dinosaur, although T.Rex's probably chewed up the most pencils!
The tale of Sam Magruder got a critical assessment in Scientific American (Sep. 1999) in light of what had been learnt since it was written. It was found that it stood up pretty well, apart from a fatal first misstep when the hero stood still, thinking a Rex wouldn't see him. It would probably have smelled him out with ease, since the olfactory lobe was very large.
Another example of a large brained dinosaur is Troodon, a little runt of a thing with a very developed visual cortex adapted for life in the (unfrozen but still very dark) Antarctic winters. A mere eight million years separates us from small, lemur-like beasties. So, who knows? Maybe the layers just below the K-T boundary will yet reveal tantalising hints of chipped flints, and charcoal pits?!
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