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| Hip block. Yowza. |
I know I've spent a lot of my previous blog posts focusing on the
Platecarpus skull we were getting ready to send off witht he travelling circus to Tucson. Well, they're out the door and I can swing my attention back to our
Daspletosaurus "Pete III".
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| Need some claws |
Preparation is about 98% finished, with a few straggler parts and the pelvis block to finish up. We've also begun the restoration of some of the bones, partly for increased stability and partly because they're much less ugly now. Mark Wildman posted on his
blog recently a tidbit mentioning
Daspletosaurus had the longest forelimbs of any tyrannosaurid. I'm not sure if that's correct, however comparing our measurements with others published for
Tyrannosauurs rex, we're a bit longer overall, even though we estimate Pete III to be nearly 10 feet shorter in overall length than "Sue".
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| The beginning of restoration of the arms |
One of the nice things about preparing and restoring these bones (finally) is that we can uncover some new information about Pete III. Based on the size of its femur, we can estimate it was around 20 years old when it died, which is pretty old for
Daspletosaurus. I've starting to use "it" when referring to Pete III because one of the next mysteries I hope to solve is whether it was male or female. Stay tuned for updates!
Very nice. But Mark Wildman is correct to say Daspletosaurus "have proportionately the biggest forelimbs of any tyrannosaurid", as Dapletosaurus and T.rex forelimbs are about the same size, yet T.rex had larger body.
ReplyDeleteBut I think you are unclear in your post; "comparing our measurements [of Pete III] with others published for [T.rex], we're a bit longer overall..."? Do you mean Pete III's forelimb bones are longer than corresponding ones in T.rex, or do you mean the forelimbs of Pete III and T.rex are the same size, and "a bit longer overall" refer to the size of the arms compared to body size?
As I look at your pictures, the arm bones of Pete III does not look larger than T.rex, I think. Have you published any measurements of Pete III's arm/hand bones?
"Do you mean Pete III's forelimb bones are longer than corresponding ones in T.rex, or do you mean the forelimbs of Pete III and T.rex are the same size, and "a bit longer overall" refer to the size of the arms compared to body size?"
ReplyDeleteWe've done some comparisons, and Pete III's arms are indeed longer than any T-rex so far. We haven't compared them to the oferall length of Sue yet, maybe someday soon we'll get the chance.
We have not published any measurements for Pete III's arms (or anything else), however once the specimen is in a repository we will do so.