- Project title
- Internal and external structure in dinosaur limb bones and their cousins in regard to their locomotor modes and body size.
- Description of the project
- Archosaurs are a large group of vertebrate animals that contains pseudosuchians and ornithodirans. Pseudosuchians largely diversified during the Triassic period, with mostly quadrupedal species that varied from more sprawling to more erect limb posture. Dinosaurs and other ornithodirans also diversified during the Triassic, becoming bipedal at least once in their early evolution, and the “locomotor superiority hypothesis” suggests this erect, bipedal posture as a key element of the dinosaurs’ success over pseudosuchians during the rest of the Mesozoïc era. After the Triassic-Jurassic transition, one might think that dinosaurs would have retained bipedality but many dinosaur groups became quadrupeds again. In most cases, secondary quadrupedality evolved in some tandem with an increase in weight. However, many examples of massive bipedal dinosaurs indicate that secondary quadrupedality is need not always involve giant size. In addition, because of the wide morphological diversity (armour, spikes, plates, horns, large skull, large claws, elongated snout, elongated neck and tail, gigantism, etc.), the bones of dinosaurs’ appendicular skeleton should have adapted differently. Thus, this project will study the impact of postural changes on the appendicular skeleton with an emphasis on morphological disparity and increase in weight, in order to understand the variety of locomotion modes among archosaurs.
Works done by the platform AST-RX
