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)
-If it had unhealed tooth marks
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)
-if it was found near dinosaur fossils, and its uncertain as there is no real guarantee that it
was dinosaur dung or some other animals unless found near dinosaur remains or if its size
would only leave the possibility of it being dinosaur coprolite.
3.
The ventral bones beneath the skeleton are called chevrons. What are the functions of
chevrons?
(1 pt)
-They were mainly there to protect the blood vessels/nerve vessels to 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)
-
I can’t really tell from the ankylosaur/titanosaur, but the Spinosaurus has a neural
arch/spine and from the bone structure it could be assumed that all three of them had it
including a centrum, however I do think the ankylosaur and the titanosaur had a more
limited transverse process compared to the Spinosaurus. Its hard to tell with the
ankylosaurs/titanosaur but it can also be shown that all three had chevron, osteoderm,
caudal, sacral vertebrae.
Ankylosaur:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure/image?
size=large&id=10.1371/journal.pone.0006738.g001
