Why Do Dinosaur Skeletons Look So Weird? (a carcass in a watery grave)

Science Daily ^ | 02/16/2012

[SeekAndFind]

ScienceDaily (Feb. 16, 2012) — Many fossilized dinosaurs have been found in a twisted posture. Scientists have long interpreted this as a sign of death spasms. Two researchers from Basel and Mainz now come to the conclusion that this bizarre deformations occurred only during the decomposition of dead dinosaurs.

A syndrome like that as a petrified expression of death throes was discussed for the first time about 100 years ago for some vertebrate fossils, but the acceptance of this interpretation declined during the following decades. In 2007, this "opisthotonus hypothesis" was newly posted by a veterinarian and a palaeontologist. This study, generously planned, received much attention in the public and the scientific community.

Now, five years later, two scientists from Switzerland and Germany have re-evaluated the revitalized "opisthotonus hypothesis" and examined one of its icons, the famous bipedal dinosaur Compsognathus longipes from the "Solnhofen Archipelago" (Germany). It is widely acknowledged that this 150-millions-years-old land-living dinosaur was embedded in a watery grave of a tropical lagoon.

"In our opinion, the most critical point in the newly discussed scenario of the preservation of an opisthotonic posture in a fossil is the requirement that terrestrial vertebrates must have been embedded immediately after death without substantial transport. But consigning a carcass from land to sea and the following need of sinking through the water column for only a few decimetres or meters is nothing else" says sedimentologist Achim Reisdorf from University of Basel's Institute of Geology and Paleontology.

More or less complete and articulated skeletons of dinosaurs with a long neck and tail often exhibit a body posture in which the head and neck are recurved over the back of the animal.

[SunkenCiv]

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The First Fossil Hunters by Adrienne Mayor foreword by Peter Dodson

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[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks Robert A. Cook, PE. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Robert A. Cook, PE.

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[MrB]

The percentage of found fossilized animals is really low compared to, say, clams.

The reason for this would be the fact that dead animals would tend to float and be consumed by water creatures within the year that the earth was covered.

Only those that were rapidly buried would be preserved.

[null and void]

Yes. Flowing water and debris will always twist the neck up, never to the side and never down. In biblical physics.

[Scythian]

There is no theory of Evolution, just a list of creatures Sarah Palin allows to live ...

[MrB]

And “billions of years physics” accounts for this “always twisting up” somehow?

Is it because they lay there for “boooooolllions” of years that the fossil twists up that way?

[null and void]

Nope. If you’d bothered to read the article, you’d know that the strong ligaments on the tops of the necks and tails arch the skeletons up when the countervailing muscles and gravity aren’t holding them down.

What kind of “actual” scientist are you again?

You could also infer that once the animal is “cast in concrete” (buried) any posture would be pretty much locked in.

As an exercise, estimate for me the time between death and burial. Reconcile your answer with a global flood.