Annoying teaser ahoy! The tree-climbing dinosaurs are coming...
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In this post: the large versions of the Life Science and Physical Science channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week.
Life Science. From Flickr, by jurvetson
Physical Science. Bubbles falling from a canopy of leaves. From Flickr, by jurvetson
Reader comments of the…
The idea that non-avian dinosaurs might have been able to climb trees is (I assume) not all that familiar to people outside the field of dinosaur research, but within the field of dinosaur research it has become an increasingly familiar idea within recent decades. Thanks to the discovery of such…
A very famous image, and you probably know what it is. But - really.. look at it very closely, what is it really? No, this is not a trick question: I'm just proposing that people really look in detail at all of its features. More terror birds soon, also tree-climbing dinosaurs, the last anurans,…
I suppose it's not every day you get to appear in a TV series called MonsterQuest. I appear in two places in one episode (first screened last week): once for a little while in the section embedded here, and again much later on. The bit with me starts 2 minutes, 20 seconds in (let's not worry about…
Therozinosaurus! My favourite!
Darn you! I saw the headline and got ready for an interesting read, scrolled down and...BAM a tease! Don't keep us waiting.
Sorry, Coturnix, but that's not a Therizinosaurus. That's Deinocheirus, the infamous "giant ornithomimid" from late Cretaceous Asia.
That must be a really big tree...
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! ^
tree climbing Deinocheirus!?!?!? Laelaps is spot on...
Tree-climbing dinosaurs? That's un-possible! Everyone knows that the only tree-climber was Hypsilophodon, and it climbed trees out of pure boredom.
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.
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...)
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)!!!
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
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...