Annoying teaser ahoy! The tree-climbing dinosaurs are coming...
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With six years of phd work on theropod dinosaurs behind him, Darren Naish mostly spends long hours in the library, hunched over his laptop. But he gets out sometimes, and picks up litter and pursues exotic lizards across the British countryside, aiming all the while to publish his technical work on obscure Cretaceous dinosaurs. He also messes around with pterosaurs, swimming giraffes, British big cats and stuff like that. He has given up on the stupid idea of being a dedicated academic and ekes out a living as a technical consultant, editor and author. He can be contacted intermittently at eotyrannus (at) gmail dot com. For more biographical info go here.
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« It's such a load of bull | Main | A quick history of tree-climbing dinosaurs »
The tree-climbing dinosaurs are coming
Category: Mesozoic dinosaurs • preemptive
Posted on: July 20, 2008 4:34 PM, by Darren Naish
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Comments
Therozinosaurus! My favourite!
Posted by: Coturnix | July 20, 2008 4:41 PM
Darn you! I saw the headline and got ready for an interesting read, scrolled down and...BAM a tease! Don't keep us waiting.
Posted by: Turdus | July 20, 2008 5:03 PM
Sorry, Coturnix, but that's not a Therizinosaurus. That's Deinocheirus, the infamous "giant ornithomimid" from late Cretaceous Asia.
Posted by: Gray Stanback | July 20, 2008 5:35 PM
That must be a really big tree...
Posted by: Laelaps | July 20, 2008 5:50 PM
just thought id say nice blog! im hoping mine will eventually be quite biology based - although at the moment its rather random. only made it yesterday though!
i did a whole essay on this! ^
Posted by: Christina | July 20, 2008 6:56 PM
tree climbing Deinocheirus!?!?!? Laelaps is spot on...
Posted by: Neil | July 20, 2008 7:55 PM
Tree-climbing dinosaurs? That's un-possible! Everyone knows that the only tree-climber was Hypsilophodon, and it climbed trees out of pure boredom.
Posted by: Zach Miller | July 21, 2008 3:26 AM
I guessed for years that many known dinosaurs were tree climbers.
Its simple. Forest treetops are rich ecological niche for plant-eaters and predators. Treetops in mesosoic forests were one, too. Life evolves to occupy every empty niche. So, either big community of mesosoic tree-dwelling animals magically hid itself from fossil records. Or mesosoic tree-dwellers are before our eyes but paleontologists overlook it.
For example, I interpret famous enlarged foot claw of dromaeosaurids and similar as tree-climbing aid for bipeds, all aggressive functions being secondary.
Posted by: Jerzy | July 21, 2008 4:25 AM
Thats great, Darren, when are you going to get it out of the tree when it gets stuck?
(I once saw my father rescue a stuck cat...its not easy or particularly safe...and the blighters are never grateful to be rescued...)
Posted by: Tengu | July 21, 2008 5:11 AM
Deinocherius is a gian basal ornithomimosaur, it isn't?So why is climbing in that picture???And, if it is one of the greatest theropod that ever lived (9-13 m long), it's too big for live on trees!!There are a lots of tree-living dinosaur, but they are very small, like Microraptor, Scansoriopteryx, Epidendrosaurus, Archaeopteryx (i know, it's a bird, but birds are only flying dinosaurus)!!!
Posted by: Smnt2000 | July 21, 2008 5:12 AM
is the bone structure thats supposed to indicate they climbed trees? i can see how the wing claws of archaeopteryx would have enabled it to sort of climb/push itself up rocks/trees to get to a nest or something
Posted by: christina | July 21, 2008 4:02 PM
Darren, since you're covering tree-climbing dinosaurs, I hope you may find time to comment also on the liana-dangling theropod pair who met their demise in a gorge at the hands of Peter Jackson's King Kong...
Posted by: Graham King | July 21, 2008 5:58 PM