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Applications Goodwin believes that this speculation is not well supported by the evidence. Not only is the shape of the head wrong for head-to-head contact, but analysis of the bone itself is not consistent with that interpretation. It seems likely that the dome was related to some sort of display, used in competition or mate selection, and that any physical contact was more likely to have been lateral rather than head-on. |
Coneheaded pachycephalosaurs? Goodwin says, "We do know that there was something covering the domes, because we can see collagen fibers where a structure would have been attached. But what did it look like? We just don't know." (Slide courtesy of J.R. Horner, Museum of the Rockies) |
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What advice would you give to scientists who
use biochemical techniques to draw conclusions from fossilized bone
material?
Another way to approach this problem is to look at bones from different burial environments in the fossil record of animals, say dinosaurs, that lived in similar environments during life. I'm asking, will their chemical composition be significantly different? Im also interested in increasing the resolution of bone sampling techniques. I still think we might be able to identify areas of the bone that are unaffected by diagenesis, and I now have some techniques for investigating these questions. |
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