Published today in Biological Reviews: "New perspectives on body size and shape evolution in dinosaurs" - the biggest paper from my PhD (my favourite chapter, too). doi.org/10.1111/brv.... Here's a thread outlining some of our key findings. (1/10) - ThreadSky

sketchy-raptor.bsky.social • 22 days ago

Published today in Biological Reviews:

"New perspectives on body size and shape evolution in dinosaurs" - the biggest paper from my PhD (my favourite chapter, too).

https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.70026

Here's a thread outlining some of our key findings. (1/10)

Comments

tomkimmerer.bsky.social•22 days ago

Really good stuff. I will read the papers this weekend. This is outside of my field - I study trees, the other giant organisms, but your work is very interesting.

junedz.bsky.social•22 days ago

Woo, awesome stuff, congratulations Matt!!

centeredchaos.bsky.social•22 days ago

Very cool

rexjiang.bsky.social•22 days ago

Congrats! This looks cool!

bento-bongos.bsky.social•22 days ago

With how small the T-Rex's wings are, and how dinosaurs hatch from eggs, I always imagined if these dinsoaurs were in fact, very large birds akin to ostritches and road runners, known for their top speed on foot.

williambabey.bsky.social•22 days ago

As soon as I saw the paper's title on a certain paleo-server I knew you had a hand in it! ;)

antallan.bsky.social•22 days ago

Fascinating! 📌

mmarcosaurus.bsky.social•22 days ago

This paper is paleostunning! Congratulations to you and your team, Matt! The data in it are very helpful!
🦕🦖😊👏

sketchy-raptor.bsky.social•19 days ago

@camphilsoc.bsky.social

sketchy-raptor.bsky.social•22 days ago

A recent study from my lab group (Macaulay et al. 2023) looked at relationships between the dimensions of extant sauropsid skeletons & the soft tissues enveloping them, quantifying how much we need to expand skeleton-hugging volumes to match measured soft tissue volumes. (2/10)

sketchy-raptor.bsky.social•22 days ago

If we assume that dinosaur soft tissues scaled in a comparable way to the extant animals phylogenetically bracketing them, these relationships provide a new way of estimating body segment mass properties in dinosaurs that is quantitatively grounded in empirical data. (3/10)

sketchy-raptor.bsky.social•22 days ago

In the original study, these convex hull factors were applied to a selection of theropods to study proportional changes on the bird line.

In our new paper, we took things further by estimating body dimensions in 52 dinosaurs, representing most major clades & body plans. (4/10)

sketchy-raptor.bsky.social•22 days ago

Rather than only applying an "all bird" or "all reptile" approach to dinosaurs, we also explored "preferred" models that variably combined segments estimated from both. While this produces subjectively more realistic volumes, overall patterns between taxa are retained. (5/10)

sketchy-raptor.bsky.social•22 days ago

We found that most of our mass estimates were greater than models in which soft tissue outlines adhered tightly to skeletons.

I hope this will be a vindicating result for palaeoartists, as it adds quantitative support to the drive away from "shrink-wrapped" illustrations. (6/10)

sketchy-raptor.bsky.social•22 days ago

Encouragingly, our mass ranges are mostly agreeable with those extrapolated from limb bone shafts, but there are points of variation. Many theropods appear to have slender limbs for their mass, whereas many ornithischians have seemingly robust limbs for their mass. (7/10)

fbertpaleo.bsky.social•22 days ago

This is incredibly useful and an amazing job Matt! Well done!

markopalaeo.bsky.social•16 days ago

Congratulations - great to have a favourite thesis chapter!

dsrovinsky.bsky.social•21 days ago

This is excellent stuff - so great to see critical examinations of body mass out there!

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply