e621.net · 5967494
h2. CONTEXT for Olorotitan
[b]A few days ago a new publication came out describing a fascinating pattern observed in hadrosaurs. The team found many specimens with damaged tail vertebrates, healed fractures over a specific portion of the tail. They showed what forces would be needed for these injuries to occur and ran through the different scenarios on how these pathologies could appear.[/b]
[b]The most likely explanation they finally arrived at was that these are mating injuries, caused by a male resting on top of the females tail. A position not to dissimilar to modern day birds. As we don't find a 50/50 distribution these were probably accidents and not normal consequence or reproduction[/b]
This story unfortunately wasn't picked up by many news outlets, especially noticeable was the lack of the press release artwork that came with it that is actually quite a bit tamer than what I did here. I wanted to give it my own spin though as I think this is a fascinating case. If you want to have a look yourself here a link to the paper: https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(25)02000-0
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