Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Zhao, Qi
• Benton, Michael J
• Sullivan, Corwin
• Martin Sander, P
• Xu, Xing

Titel

Histology and postural change during the growth of the ceratopsian dinosaur Psittacosaurus lujiatunensis

Ist Teil von

• Nature communications, 2013-06, Vol.4 (1), p.2079-2079, Article 2079

Ort / Verlag

England: Nature Publishing Group

Erscheinungsjahr

2013

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

EZB-FREE-00999 freely available EZB journals

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• A few dinosaurs are inferred to have undergone an ontogenetic shift from quadrupedal-to-bipedal posture, or vice versa, based on skeletal allometry. The basal ceratopsian Psittacosaurus lujiatunensis is considered to have been mainly bipedal as an adult. Here we infer a postural shift in this species based on a novel combination of limb measurements and histological data. The forelimb is strongly negatively allometric relative to the hindlimb, and patterns of vascular canal orientation provide evidence that growth of the hindlimb was particularly rapid during the middle part of ontogeny. Histology also makes it possible to determine the ontogenetic ages of individual specimens, showing that the forelimb-to-hindlimb ratio changed rapidly during the first or second year of life and thereafter decreased gradually. Occurrence of an ontogenetic shift from quadrupedality to bipedality was evidently widespread in dinosaurs, and may even represent the ancestral condition for the entire group.