[doc30]

science ping?

[pikachu]

Dino bling ping! Stego-fizzle fo' shizzle!

[newgeezer]

Great thinkers at work. (Quiet, please.)

[GSlob]

The bizarre plates and spikes that lined the backbones of the long-extinct stegosaur[us] were probably extreme examples of the often elaborate and colorful displays developed by animals to recognize fellow members of their species...
Well, it explains the genesis and function of punk hairdos.

[dead]

It makes them more interesting to look at, which makes them more likely to feature in movie dinosaur fights.

[Alouette]

Goth dinosaurs?

[ladtx]

Like most of us old dinosaurs, the spikes are for looks only.

[js1138]

[bkepley]

"Our studies of bone histology are telling us a lot about dinosaur social behavior and lifestyle,"

I bet this will be pretty amusing in 100 years or so.

[QwertyKPH]

Gives new meaning to: "If looks could kill......."

[mlc9852]

How would you tell a female fossil from a male fossil?

[elli1]

My parrots ruffle their feathers as emotional expressions (when they're pissed/ puzzled, etc.)...not unlike when the hair stands up on a dog or cat's back. So it might be that the plates were a communication device?

[Modernman]

The team's analysis of stegosaur plates lends support to a growing consensus among paleontologists that the weird adornments of many dinosaurs - the horns of triceratops, the helmet-like domes of the pachycephalosaurs, and the crests of the duck-billed hadrosaurs - likely served no function other than to differentiate species, akin to birds' colorful feather ornamentation.

Maybe I'm missing it, but why wouldn't some of these things serve as defensive features in addition to recognition mechanisms? A triceratops' horns seem like pretty good weapons, for example.

[Larry Lucido]

Stegosaurs were elephantine plant eaters that populated the world during the Jurassic period, about 210 to 144 million years ago

Nonsense, Adam and Eve had one for a pet 6000 years ago. That's why they are mentioned so many times in Genesis.

< /sarcasm>

[eagle11]

Oh yeah?!? My horn's bigger than yours!

[Jim_Curtis]

The evolutionists change their tune a lot. They'll tell you one day that animals develop traits for a purpose and they will tell you the next day that a mutation randomly occurred that would give some animal an advantage over another.

[Centurion2000]

- the horns of triceratops

Like the rhino, the buffalo and the longhorn .. these horn most assuredly had a function. Disemboweling a T-Rex.

[ZULU]

Baloney.

Developing those plates required a lot of energy and if there is anything biology demonstrates it is that living organisms don't waste energy needlessly - its too expensive from a cost effective perspective.

Even rudimentary spurs at the rear of Booid snakes, the remnants of the pelvic girdle, serve a function - they "stimulate the female during courtship.

These guys should go back to the drawing board. If something exists, it exists for a reason - even if we haven't been able to figure it out definitively.

God doesn't place dice with the Universe" - Albert Einstein.

[Verginius Rufus]

The name for the Stegosaurus tail spikes is "thagomizer" (from a Far Side cartoon).

[hosepipe]

Berkeley - The bizarre plates and spikes that lined the backbones of the long-extinct stegosaurs were probably extreme examples of the often elaborate and colorful displays developed by animals to recognize fellow members of their species, according to an international team of paleontologists.

In Berkeley.. probably.. can assume astronomical credibility as fact.. All of evolution is based in that word.. probably.. This probably happened, that probably happened..

If a bullfrog had wings he probably wouldn't bump his ass.. Bumping ass in the San Fransisco area is a queer phenomenon in the first place.. and not looked down upon unless your the bumper.. And thats probably an accurate assessment..