Fossils preserving a prehistoric casualty divulge that small - brained , industrial plant - eating stegosaur were pestilent fighters up to of obliterate carnivores in ear - to - tooth combat . Even predatoryallosaurswith their enormous jaws filled with long , serrated , back - curving teeth can fall victim to the stegosaurian martial arts .
Researchers working in late Jurassic sediments in the Brushy Basin Member of the Morrison Formation in Albany County , Wyoming , unearthed the pubic bone off-white of an allosaurus that showed evidence of a fatal stab wound shaped just like the conical tail spike of Stegosaur stenops that have previously been dig up in this same layer .
The stego tail spike passed all the way through the allosaur ’s os , causing an abscess . “ A massive contagion ate away a baseball - sized sphere of the bone,”Robert Bakker from the Houston Museum of Natural Sciencesays in anews release . The contagion in all likelihood disperse upwards into the attached soft tissue paper , the thigh muscular tissue , and maybe even the intestines and reproductive organs nearby .
Because their tail spikes point outward and feebleminded , for a stegosaur to strike a vertical blow that would inflict a combat injury like this , it would have had to sweep its buns under the allosaurus and then curve it up through the broken pelvis .
injury like these have been seen in rodeo cowboy and sawhorse when they ’re gore by longhorn kine . Herbivores like rhinos and buffalo also defend themselves against predator with horns on their read/write head . Stegos were similarly well - fortify , except they wielded their spiky weapons on their nates . Since the team did n’t regain any signs of healing , they think the allosaurus fall victim to herbivore denial .
According to old workplace , stego tails are more deft that most other dino tails , which get rigid towards the end . Stegosaurs , on the other hired man , had massive muscles at the base of the tail , and they boasted tractability and fine muscle contain all the path to the tip . They also had no locking joints , and their useable accessory marijuana cigarette ( called zygapophyses ) continued all the way down the tooshie as well . “ The joints of a stegosaur tail looking like a monkey ’s tail,”Bakker say . All these tail specialisation ply power and precision in the steering of the spike flight . “ They were build for three - dimensional fighting , ” he adds .
The squad present theirfindingsat the coming together of theGeological Society of Americain Vancouver this week .
Images : Robert Bakker
