“This is a nice, concise answer to a question that has been asked for a long time by dinosaur paleontologists.”
often sports a fleet of big, sharp teeth that are almost always on display. But the dinosaurs and their kin may have kept their pearly whites mostly tucked behind lizardlike lips.that would have functioned as lips, an analysis of fossilized and modern reptile skulls and teeth finds. The research, described in the March 31, challenges common, traditional reconstructions of how these top predators appeared in life.
Soft tissue is not often included in analyses of the biomechanics of feeding dinosaurs, she says. Acknowledging the potential presence of lips in these tests could change how we think some dinosaurs ate.T. rex But almost all land vertebrates today have liplike coverings for their teeth, Cullen says. Why shouldCullen and his colleagues analyzed fossilized theropod skulls and teeth alongside comparisons of living reptiles. The team examined the pattern of foramina, small passageways through bones, in the upper jaws of theropods and some modern and other extinct reptiles.
But paleontologist Thomas Carr, who has studied tyrannosaurs, is not persuaded by the results. The new study “can be summed up in two words: completely unconvincing,” says Carr, of Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisc., and that crocodilians have this same bone texture underlying the lipless, scaly margins of their jaws .
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