Talk:Dryosaurus

storing food

would who ever added the statement that "some scientists suggested that it stored food in its cheeks" please provide the reference for this? Who are these "scientists"? Anky-man 20:06, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

I had a look at it. My guess is someone was trying to describe the idea of keeping food in, but the sentence ended up reading as if the animal stored food in the way rodents do. J. Spencer (talk) 02:54, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Dysalotosaurus

Given the fact that the Morrison and Tendaguru have much less in common than for a long time pretended, it is really questionable to stick with Dryosaurus lettowvorbecki. On the other hand, off the top of my head I don#t know any recent publications looking at the issue - all I have is unofficial opinions. HMallison (talk) 21:34, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Meaning of the name

In the article, it says: "the name is from the vague oak shape of its cheek teeth".

However, here http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dryosaurus#Entdeckungsgeschichte.2C_Funde_und_Namensgebung it says: "The name Dryosaurus ... refers to the herbivorous diet as much as to the possibility that this dinosaur lived in forests. Marsh interpreted the layers of the Morrison Fromation - the habitat of Dryosaurus - as a lush forest with freshwater lakes." (perhaps I didn't translate everything perfectly, neither German nor English are my mother tongues)

Now, I didn't do any research on this, but to me, the latter statement is more convincing than the first one. Can someone tell me which statement is true? Or did I perhaps interpret the first statement in a wrong way? --77.77.252.85 (talk) 21:34, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

The German article says "probably" (vermutlich) and references a dead (and most likely unreliable) general dinosaur etymology site. Modern sources often mistranslate δρυς (drys) as simply "tree", but the correct meaning of the word is "oak tree" (it's probably a conflation with dryad, whose meaning shifted from specific nymphs of oak trees to simply tree nymphs in general). If Marsh meant simply tree or forest, he would have used δένδρον (dendron). Furthermore, as far as we know, there were no oak trees in the Late Jurassic (~150 mya). They first appeared in the Late Cretaceous or Lower Tertiary (40 to 60 mya), around a hundred million years after Dryosaurus went extinct.

The current lead wording, however, is ambiguous, I have clarified it to "oak-leaf". You can confirm that their teeth were indeed leaf shaped from the Scientific American and the National Parks Services -- Obsidi♠n Soul 22:44, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply, I guess I misunderstood that part of the text. --77.77.252.85 (talk) 23:52, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

On second thought, I found a lengthier explanation here. It seems like Marsh may have indeed used δρυς to mean "tree". However, his paper describing Dryosaurus:

• Marsh, Othniel Charles (1984). "The typical Ornithopoda of the American Jurassic". American Journal of Science. 48: 85–90.

...is inaccessible online, so we can't check it. :( -- Obsidi♠n Soul 00:15, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

(Falculative) Quadrupedality

Essentially all reconstructions (Including the ones on this site.) depict members of Dryosauridae as bipeds, however: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0054177 . I know neither is mentioned (And they should be.), I thought that this may b important anyway.142.176.114.76 (talk) 01:04, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Difficult questions: who made those tracks? Is it already facultative quadrupedality if the animal does it under very unusual circumstances? What were the described circumstances?

In the end, you're correct that it is entirely possible that Dryosaurus was facultatively quadrupedal. However, the current data does not support either of the two options with much force. Thus, how would you add this to the article? HMallison (talk) 13:25, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

I mean to point out that it has been suggested, not that it is the most probable interpretation.142.176.114.76 (talk) 13:11, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

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