Post by Infinity Blade on Nov 22, 2015 8:03:10 GMT 5
So we all know that Doedicurus' tail club was adorned with spikes like a mace, right?
Well, from the images I've seen on the Internet, I've only seen the actual tail clubs preserved, never the spikes or whatever else may have filled in those craterous spaces on the club. I wondered if the structures were made of keratin rather than bone, ergo they would not have preserved and that would explain why I only see the tail club itself. With this in mind I asked myself, "How then, do they know if the structures were spikes and not something like keratinous knobs?". So I decided to delve deeper into the matter and ended up with this:
"Those spikes at the end of Doedicurus' tail are largely conjectural. While the spiky tail design had more appeal for early and mid 20th century artists, more recent scientific restorations show the tail extremity in modified form. Did Doedicurus even sport a spiky tail? If so, is there fossil evidence for a mace or spikes? While at least two specimens show the mace region, there are no "spikes" preserved as fossils. The reason is that while the caudal tube is bony, the spikes would have been composed not of bone but of dermal tissue such as tightly woven hair follicles, rather like rhino horn which doesn't readily fossilize. So what justification is there for endowing my Doedicurus model with a spiky mace?
Well, there are "spike scars" on the fossilized bony tail extremity. According to British Museum paleo-mammalogist Andy Currant, "You would not be flying the face of scientific opinion if you put spikes on their tails, but you could just as easily put lumpy knobs on them-they would have been just as effective. They probably started off as conical structures and got rounded off with the passage of time. I would imagine there was as much individual variation as there is from one set of rhino horns to another." (28)
Indeed, the "knobby" (instead of "prickly") look has been in vogue lately, as in a 1996 restoration by Mauricio Anton(29). Another recent restoration, by an identified artist, that is published on the Internet shows a tail with protuberances of intermediate design, that are "bulbous-prickly"(30). South American leading glyptodont researcher, Sergio Vizcaino claims the scars, "...suggest the presence of big stings." His colleague, Farina, who modeled his own miniature Doedicurus, lacking a spiky mace, now claims that if he were to redo the model, he would furnish it with spikes(31). Another artist, Carlos Vildoso Morales, now the Director of Lima's Natural History Museum, in Peru, chose not to include the spikes on the tail in his 1998 restorations of the Panochthus and Doedicurus,(32) but instead embedded the preserved "scars" with thickly rounded studs, a design reminiscent of John Ryder's 19th century restoration, appearing in the June 1878 issue of Popular Science Monthly.(33)"
Source
Emphasis mine.
So then, it seems my suspicions were indeed merited. What are your thoughts?
Well, from the images I've seen on the Internet, I've only seen the actual tail clubs preserved, never the spikes or whatever else may have filled in those craterous spaces on the club. I wondered if the structures were made of keratin rather than bone, ergo they would not have preserved and that would explain why I only see the tail club itself. With this in mind I asked myself, "How then, do they know if the structures were spikes and not something like keratinous knobs?". So I decided to delve deeper into the matter and ended up with this:
"Those spikes at the end of Doedicurus' tail are largely conjectural. While the spiky tail design had more appeal for early and mid 20th century artists, more recent scientific restorations show the tail extremity in modified form. Did Doedicurus even sport a spiky tail? If so, is there fossil evidence for a mace or spikes? While at least two specimens show the mace region, there are no "spikes" preserved as fossils. The reason is that while the caudal tube is bony, the spikes would have been composed not of bone but of dermal tissue such as tightly woven hair follicles, rather like rhino horn which doesn't readily fossilize. So what justification is there for endowing my Doedicurus model with a spiky mace?
Well, there are "spike scars" on the fossilized bony tail extremity. According to British Museum paleo-mammalogist Andy Currant, "You would not be flying the face of scientific opinion if you put spikes on their tails, but you could just as easily put lumpy knobs on them-they would have been just as effective. They probably started off as conical structures and got rounded off with the passage of time. I would imagine there was as much individual variation as there is from one set of rhino horns to another." (28)
Indeed, the "knobby" (instead of "prickly") look has been in vogue lately, as in a 1996 restoration by Mauricio Anton(29). Another recent restoration, by an identified artist, that is published on the Internet shows a tail with protuberances of intermediate design, that are "bulbous-prickly"(30). South American leading glyptodont researcher, Sergio Vizcaino claims the scars, "...suggest the presence of big stings." His colleague, Farina, who modeled his own miniature Doedicurus, lacking a spiky mace, now claims that if he were to redo the model, he would furnish it with spikes(31). Another artist, Carlos Vildoso Morales, now the Director of Lima's Natural History Museum, in Peru, chose not to include the spikes on the tail in his 1998 restorations of the Panochthus and Doedicurus,(32) but instead embedded the preserved "scars" with thickly rounded studs, a design reminiscent of John Ryder's 19th century restoration, appearing in the June 1878 issue of Popular Science Monthly.(33)"
Source
Emphasis mine.
So then, it seems my suspicions were indeed merited. What are your thoughts?
