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Tyrannosaurus rex
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 (10-16-2020, 10:39 PM)tigerluver Wrote: @DinoFan83, are you aware of source that has photo or measurements of therapod mandibula? I ask because the larger Giganatosaurus fragment is often said to be larger due to chance and not larger skull (which as you've mentioned can go the other way too). However in cats, the larger the horizontal ramus (akin to the dentary), the proportionately larger the skull. In other words, the ratio of skull length to horizontal ramus length is higher the largest the animal gets. I want to test this in therapods. I don't think I can give you anything like that for carcharodontosaurids specifically (due to the incompleteness of their cranial material), but we can potentially compare dromaeosaurids, abelisaurids, and megalosaurids to get an idea of what trends carcharodontosaurids may follow regarding the horizontal ramus vs proportional head size. Dromaeosaurids: Comparing Scott Hartman's skeletal of Dromaeosaurus to his skeletal of Utahraptor, the mandibular ramus structure of both animals appears to be very similar despite the skull of Utahraptor being considerably larger proportionally. If anything the Dromaeosaurus' ramus may be larger despite its smaller head. Abelisaurids: Comparing GetAwayTrike's Carnotaurus skeletal to Blazze92's skull reconstruction for Ekrixinatosaurus (the latter has a proportionally larger head by quite a bit), there don't appear to be any major differences for the ramus size proportionally. Megalosaurids: Comparing my cross scaling for Megalosaurus (GetAwayTrike+Scott Hartman composite) and GetAwayTrike's Torvosaurus (the former has a head about 10.9% larger proportionally), the proportional size of the ramus remains similar once again. While we can't make any definitive conclusions until we have more complete cranial material from carcharodontosaurids, I would say that going by the trends of some other theropods, carcharodontosaurids did not have the same ramus trends as cats did. Quote:Also, apologies for me missing this, but could you please direct me to a read showing T. rex as overinflated? Thanks for sharing newer aspects of discussions in the dinosaur community here. No problem. Hutchinson et al. 2011 (the study where my corrected estimate of 7.47 tonnes for Sue is based on) states that: "the torso of the mount is inflated in width due to a dorsal displacement of the transverse processes on the trunk vertebrae, which forced a dorsal displacement of the tubercular articulations and a lateral expansion of the rib cage as a whole." The dorsal ribs on the mount are also strongly swept anteriorly instead of strongly posteriorly as they should be, which inflates the torso's volume further still. |
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