Mini-Assignment 6: Prepare for the next excavation lab (caudal bones and trace fossils)
To answer the questions below, read pages 226-231 about dinosaur trace fossils and see box 6.1 and page 341 for information about the skeletal regions you’ll seen
in lab this week.
1.
What trace fossil could serve as evidence that main dinosaur you are excavating was predated upon? (1 pt)
Toothmarks
2.
What evidence could you use to support that a given coprolite was made by a dinosaur? What might give you uncertainty about what animal made the coprolite? (2 pts)
The size of the coprolite and richness in phosphatic material.
3.
The ventral bones beneath the skeleton are called chevrons. What are the functions of chevrons? (1 pt)
To protect vital parts of the tail.
4.
What are the two types of bones represented in the caudal region of the organism’s skeleton? (1pts)
Chevrons and Caudal Vertebrae.
5.
Examine the figures of these dinosaur tails. You may need to be logged in to the library using your NetID and password to view some images. Describe the differences you see among the taxa using at least 5 of the following terms
: centrum, neural arch, neural spine, transverse process, chevron, osteoderm, caudal, sacral (5 pts)
Ankylosaur:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure/image?size=large&id=10.1371/journal.pone.0006738.g001
Titanosaur:
https://media.springernature.com/full/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1038%2Fsrep06196/MediaObjects/
41598_2014_Article_BFsrep06196_Fig1_HTML.jpg?as=webp
Spinosaur:
https://media.springernature.com/full/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41586-020-2190-3/MediaObjects/
41586_2020_2190_Fig1_HTML.png?as=webp
On the Spinosaur, the chevron
on the caudal
area is much narrower than the Titanosaur and Ankylosaur. The sacral
area of the Spinosaur is much more obvious than the other two dinosaurs. The neural spin
e of the Spinosaur also appears to be longer than the neural spines of the other two dinosaurs. The Ankylosaur has very prominent osteoderm
compared to the others.
