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Post by spinodontosaurus on Dec 22, 2013 9:37:00 GMT 5
Ok so I like to visualise things, so I've done a bit of poking around and found (and botched together) some stuff to (hopefully) help us visualise this giant and enigmatic dromaeosaurid (because very little is known of it). I'm not putting forward attempts at rigorous restorations or anything, it's just rough work, keep that in mind, size junkies! And also keep in mind that new Utahraptor material is on the way, so a lot of this will be rendered obsolete soon (hopefully!), supposedly indicating a stockier animal with weirdly arranged dentition.
First off, this is a skull reconstruction of Dromaeosaurus albertensis from Currie, 1995. Total length ~ 23 cm. 
Although Utahraptor is a lot larger than Dromaeosaurus (over 3 times the linear dimensions), that should be a decent representation for now of what it's skull could have been like, given their status as dromaeosaurines. When you scale it up to Utahraptor size (Scott Hartman's skeletal implies a maximum skull length of ~75cm for specimen BYU 15465, although the latter is only a 60 cm long femur so this is very much just an estimate) the thing's rostrum is almost as wide as in Spinosaurus specimen MSNM V4047 (~16cm versus ~19cm). Pretty robustly constructed skull all in all, gives you an idea of how big the bite of a near 7 meter dromaeosaurid would have been. It looks impressive even next to Allosaurus skulls from individuals 4 times its size (such as DINO 2560), which is quite surprising actually.
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I would like some feedback on this next one. I wanted to try and visualise large dromaeosaurids in more ways than just lateral view, so I put together a rather rough top-down view of a large dromaeosaurid, based on Greg Paul's Deinonychus but de-shrink-wrapped and modified to match the proportions of Scott Hartman's Utahraptor. The Dromaeosaurus skull posted previously is also used in a slightly modified form. I won't pretend to be an expert on creating multi-view skeletals or even silhouettes, so this is prone to be wildly inaccurate, but that's what feedback is for, right?
I also modified Hartman's lateral view skeletal in a couple of ways. Firstly it is now in his contemporary pose (at least in terms of the legs). I also added more flesh to the neck and base of the tail, as well as increased the calf muscles and keratin sheath of the sickle claws, all based on Deinonychus.
This is not intended to be a rigorous model, nor should it really be used for extrapolating mass via Graphic Double Integration (although seeing is it is pretty much just an up-scaled Deinonychus, it really wouldn't hurt to do so for curiosities sake). It is meant only as a guide for visualising a Utahraptor when using it in hypothetical fight scenarios and such.
Good? Bad? It certainly isn't hugely robust or anything - maximum width is around 50 cm.
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Post by theropod on Dec 22, 2013 18:47:10 GMT 5
Looks good to me. Damn, dromaeosaurs really have hugely oversized weaponery for their size!
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Post by creature386 on Dec 22, 2013 21:15:20 GMT 5
Same here. By the way, it looked like I underestimated the skull. I knew that Dromaeosaurids skulls were not fragile at all, but I still have the impression I underestimated them a bit.
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Post by Runic on Dec 22, 2013 21:19:43 GMT 5
DANG IT! Sorry I missed the last part of the OP. Ignore my previous comment. Phone troubles!
Edit - Lol nvm deleted it. Everything is cool.
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Dakotaraptor
Junior Member
Used to be Metriacanthosaurus
Posts: 193 
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Post by Dakotaraptor on Dec 23, 2013 1:42:15 GMT 5
Same here. By the way, it looked like I underestimated the skull. I knew that Dromaeosaurids skulls were not fragile at all, but I still have the impression I underestimated them a bit. However dromaeosaurinae's skulls were probably more robust compared to other dromaeosaurids for example Velociraptor. So you couldn't say about all dromaeosauridae.  |
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Post by Runic on Dec 23, 2013 1:59:38 GMT 5
Same here. By the way, it looked like I underestimated the skull. I knew that Dromaeosaurids skulls were not fragile at all, but I still have the impression I underestimated them a bit. However dromaeosaurinae's skulls were probably more robust compared to other dromaeosaurids for example Velociraptor. So you couldn't say about all dromaeosauridae. They put em in different subfamily. Velociraptor is a velociraptorine while the more robust dromaeosaurs are dromaeosaurines. |
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Post by creature386 on Dec 23, 2013 2:25:27 GMT 5
Dakotaraptor, Sorry, I should've written velociraptorines. I'm aware of the differences.
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Post by Runic on Dec 23, 2013 22:37:29 GMT 5
One thing that I could never understand though. If dromaeosaurs like deinonychus and velociraptor only used their jaws after their prey was basically dead through rpr method........ why did they even evolve teeth in the first place? Why not just a hooked beak from the start?
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Post by coherentsheaf on Dec 23, 2013 22:45:34 GMT 5
One thing that I could never understand though. If dromaeosaurs like deinonychus and velociraptor only used their jaws after their prey was basically dead through rpr method........ why did they even evolve teeth in the first place? Why not just a hooked beak from the start? They inherited them from their ancestors who used teeth. |
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Post by Runic on Dec 23, 2013 23:38:34 GMT 5
One thing that I could never understand though. If dromaeosaurs like deinonychus and velociraptor only used their jaws after their prey was basically dead through rpr method........ why did they even evolve teeth in the first place? Why not just a hooked beak from the start? They inherited them from their ancestors who used teeth. So they were basically at the stage of evolution where they were in the process of losing useless toothed jaws? |
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Post by creature386 on Dec 23, 2013 23:59:38 GMT 5
We don't know how useless they were. The slashing bite hypothesis has not been falsified yet. It could be that they had multiple attacking strategies. Also, non-avian dromaeosaurids existed for almost 100 million years, this should have been plenty of time to re-evolve teeth.
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Post by coherentsheaf on Dec 24, 2013 0:11:08 GMT 5
We don't know how useless they were. The slashing bite hypothesis has not been falsified yet. It could be that they had multiple attacking strategies. Also, non-avian dromaeosaurids existed for almost 100 million years, this should have been plenty of time to re-evolve teeth. The slashing hypothesis is unlikely on two counts: The tooth morphology is inconsistent with other theropods, varanids and sharks that use such bites. The mandibular robusticity to lateral activities are lower than from animals with contact with large live prey. |
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Post by Runic on Dec 24, 2013 1:18:00 GMT 5
We don't know how useless they were. The slashing bite hypothesis has not been falsified yet. It could be that they had multiple attacking strategies. Also, non-avian dromaeosaurids existed for almost 100 million years, this should have been plenty of time to re-evolve teeth. The slashing hypothesis is unlikely on two counts: The tooth morphology is inconsistent with other theropods, varanids and sharks that use such bites. The mandibular robusticity to lateral activities are lower than from animals with contact with large live prey. What about strong forceful quick bites like some snakes do? They bit then immediately let go and repeated. Seems a good way to avoid stress. |
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Post by coherentsheaf on Dec 24, 2013 6:56:26 GMT 5
The slashing hypothesis is unlikely on two counts: The tooth morphology is inconsistent with other theropods, varanids and sharks that use such bites. The mandibular robusticity to lateral activities are lower than from animals with contact with large live prey. What about strong forceful quick bites like some snakes do? They bit then immediately let go and repeated. Seems a good way to avoid stress. Nope, i think this is unlikely. The kinetic properties of the snake skull probably help them absorb impacts where other skulls would break since they are less flexible. Further making quick nipping bites seems very ineffective compared to cutting through large quantities of tissue, unless you inject poison. I think it is unlikely that they lost the plesiomorphic dentition in favor of such a method. |
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Post by Runic on Dec 24, 2013 7:18:53 GMT 5
What about strong forceful quick bites like some snakes do? They bit then immediately let go and repeated. Seems a good way to avoid stress. Nope, i think this is unlikely. The kinetic properties of the snake skull probably help them absorb impacts where other skulls would break since they are less flexible. Further making quick nipping bites seems very ineffective compared to cutting through large quantities of tissue, unless you inject poison. I think it is unlikely that they lost the plesiomorphic dentition in favor of such a method. I see, well I doubt they really just had those menacing jaws just for show. Must have employed some type of biting when predating or fighting. Even today's toothless and beaked birds employ bites when fighting. |
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