Dino Trivia!!!!!!!!

[tyrantqueen]

The Sinornithosaurus venom thing was totally ridiculous and I didn't believe even when I first heard it. Wasn't hypothesised by BANDits?

[Gwangi]

The Sinornithosaurus venom thing was totally ridiculous and I didn't believe even when I first heard it. Wasn't hypothesised by BANDits?

Most of the scientific community didn't buy into it. Unfortunately the media ran away with the story and I wouldn't doubt that this is still something passed around as fact. I think there was at least one BANDit involved but I cannot recall who.

[tyrantqueen]

The Sinornithosaurus venom thing was totally ridiculous and I didn't believe even when I first heard it. Wasn't hypothesised by BANDits?

Most of the scientific community didn't buy into it. Unfortunately the media ran away with the story and I wouldn't doubt that this is still something passed around as fact. I think there was at least one BANDit involved but I cannot recall who.

Ah, typical

[Simon]

The Sinornithosaurus venom thing was totally ridiculous and I didn't believe even when I first heard it. Wasn't hypothesised by BANDits?

Most of the scientific community didn't buy into it. Unfortunately the media ran away with the story and I wouldn't doubt that this is still something passed around as fact. I think there was at least one BANDit involved but I cannot recall who.

While I agree that interpreting grooves in teeth as channels for venom is highly speculative absent soft tissue evidence, here is an interesting tidbit:

For years it was believed that it was the bacteria in the mouths of Komodo Dragons that was their 'secret weapon' in infecting the bitten prey;  however, just recently it was discovered that the Komodo Dragon is in fact highly venomous, as venomous as many snakes. There is a series of venom glands in its jaw.  Here is the money quote from the National Geographic article:

" The team found that the dragon's venom rapidly decreases blood pressure, expedites blood loss, and sends a victim into shock, rendering it too weak to fight.

In the venom, some compounds that reduce blood pressure are as potent as those found in the word's most venomous snake, western Australia's inland Taipan.

While his colleagues expressed surprise at the findings, Fry said he wasn't so shocked.

His earlier research had shown that other lizard species—such as iguanas, legless lizards, and monitor lizards—are also venomous. "

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/05/090518-komodo-dragon-venom.html

So the idea that at least some dinosaur carnivores might have had poison to help bring down larger prey is not so far-fetched as you might believe.

[tyrantqueen]

Yeah, I knew about the venomous Komodo thing. But, venom evolved in a different family of reptiles (squamata), not archosaurs.

[Simon]

Yeah, I knew about the venomous Komodo thing. But, venom evolved in a different family of reptiles (squamata), not archosaurs.

..... as far as we know.....

[Gwangi]

The Komodo venom discovery does not surprise me, except that it took so long to figure it out. Like TQ pointed out, lizards belong to squamata along with snakes and we've already known about the other venomous lizards (Heloderma genus) for some time. While I will not discount the notion that some dinosaurs may have been venomous there is zero evidence that any archosaur (extinct or extant) had or has venom. Any speculation regarding venomous dinosaurs is just that, speculation.

[Newt]

*ahem*

What was the first binomial name applied to a dinosaur fossil?

[tyrantqueen]

Megalosaurus bucklandii (as Scrotum humanum)?

[Newt]

Bingo!

There's some uncertainty over whether Scrotum humanum met the requirements for a valid name, but in any case it is now a nomen oblitum.  Too bad.  We could all enjoy discussing Hawkins' huge Scrotum at the Crystal Palace, and so on.

[tyrantqueen]

Bingo!

There's some uncertainty over whether Scrotum humanum met the requirements for a valid name, but in any case it is now a nomen oblitum.  Too bad.  We could all enjoy discussing Hawkins' huge Scrotum at the Crystal Palace, and so on.

Speaking of Scrotum humanum, I live in the area where it was discovered (without giving too much away, it's around Oxfordshire). Pretty cool.

[Newt]

Neat!  Have you gone to search for the rest of him?   

I live in the middle of a huge slab of Paleozoic limestone called the Mississippian Plateau.  If you're into rugose corals, brachiopods, and bryozoans you can find lots of cool stuff here; dinosaurs, not so much.

[tyrantqueen]

Neat!  Have you gone to search for the rest of him?   

I live in the middle of a huge slab of Paleozoic limestone called the Mississippian Plateau.  If you're into rugose corals, brachiopods, and bryozoans you can find lots of cool stuff here; dinosaurs, not so much.

Yup, I've been to the Ashmolean where many of the Megalosaurus bones are on display

[Gwangi]

Neat!  Have you gone to search for the rest of him?   

I live in the middle of a huge slab of Paleozoic limestone called the Mississippian Plateau.  If you're into rugose corals, brachiopods, and bryozoans you can find lots of cool stuff here; dinosaurs, not so much.

Likewise. I like what we have but would really like to find some fossil vertebrates, even fish will do. 

[Zhuchengotyrant]

Can someone please tell me what's happening. I'm confused....

[Tyto_Theropod]

Two things.

Firstly, about 'venomous' dinosaurs. It depends what you mean by venomous.

"Tyrannosaurus may have had infectious saliva used to kill its prey. This theory was first proposed by William Abler.[1999. The teeth of the Tyrannosaurus. Scientific American 281: 40-41.] Abler examined the teeth of tyrannosaurids between each tooth serration; the serrations may have held pieces of carcass with bacteria, giving Tyrannosaurus a deadly, infectious bite much like the Komodo dragon was thought to have. However, Jack Horner regards Tyrannosaurus tooth serrations as more like cubes in shape than the serrations on a Komodo monitor's teeth, which are rounded.[137] All forms of saliva contain possibly hazardous bacteria, so the prospect of it being used as a method of predation is disputable."
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrannosaurus#Feeding_strategies

Personally though I think that even if this did happen it was probably unrelated to the reasons why the teeth became serrated in the first place, simply because Tyrannosaurus was probably a waaaay more active hunter than a komodo dragon, and our current theory about it hunting is something along the lines of taking its prey by surprise and snapping the animal's neck (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about this), which would have killed it instantaneously without the need for slowly waiting for it to die from the bacteria.

On a more informal note, I live in Scotland. But not the interesting part with the fish and ammonites. My area is Carboniferous, and so although there are a load of fossil beaches near where my parents are, all they really have are crinoids, corals stromatolites, plant fossils... and bivalves. Lots and lots and LOTS of bivalves! XD

Last spring I spent two nights on Skye though for the sole purpose of fossil hunting! And found a beautiful ammonite in the Oxford Clay up at Dunans *is smug*.

[tyrantqueen]

If Tyrannosaurus had "infectious" bites, then wouldn't all theropods have had them too? What makes Tyrannosaurus so special? The Komodo dragon doesn't even have an infectious bite, it's known that it produces toxic protein (actual venom) in its mouth. When prey animals are bitten severely, there's more of a chance they'll die from shock/blood loss than anything, so what is the need for venom? And there's plenty of bacteria about in the animals' environment to do the infecting anyway

[Tyto_Theropod]

Indeed. And I wasn't implying that the komodo dragon used that method as I'm interested - and therefore pretty knowledgeable though I say it myself - enough about wildlife to know about its venom being discovered. (Also, apologies for the following text wall...)

Your point about shock and blood loss is a good one. After all, lions, which hunt in a very similar way to the theories about Tyrannosaurid hunting behaviour, probably wouldn't benefit from the addition of a poisonous bite - their strategy is perfectly efficient without that, and if the prey gets away, the two factors you pointed out earlier quite often apply. In fact, given the fact that there's this nifty little thing called an immune system, I'd say that they'd be much more likely to kill an animal than bacteria in a wound, even though there obviously aren't antibiotics in the wild. At least, bacerial infection might kill an animal if it were severe enough, but it probably wouldn't be as quick or as efficient as shock and/or loss of blood.

And yes, obviously if this applied to Tyrannosaurus rex it would also apply to other Tyrannosaurids, all of whom had pretty much the same tooth structure. But notice that Abler was looking at the particular shape of the serrations and arguing that they resembled those of a komodo, so whether this would apply to other theropods, with different kinds of serration, is a whole different ball game. Certainly it wouldn't apply to ALL other theropods because Spinosaurid teeth aren't serrated.

As I say, this is probably a totally invalid theory - not least because we now know komodo dragons have a venomous bite for a completely different reason. I'm not trying to make primeval12 look stupid here, because it's very easy to be fooled by theories like that. However, unless HIGHLY COMPELLING evidence is found to prove me wrong, I'd say that venomous dinosaurs will only exist in bad movies (and of course Planet Dinosaur, which was probably one of the best dinosaur programmes ever) for the foreseeable future.

Also, I'd like to offer my sincere apologies to primeval12 for us all being pedantic and dampening the spirit of fun in was what conceived as a silly game.