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Geology Commons

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Master's Theses

Theses/Dissertations

2017

2D Morphometrics

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Full-Text Articles in Geology

Morphometric Changes In Semicircular Canal Shape Within Theropoda (Dinosauria: Saurischia) And Their Dietary Implications, James Logan King Jul 2017

Morphometric Changes In Semicircular Canal Shape Within Theropoda (Dinosauria: Saurischia) And Their Dietary Implications, James Logan King

Master's Theses

Theropods were a suborder of dinosaurs that displayed a large variety of dietary preferences throughout the Mesozoic and into the Cenozoic as modern birds. Being ancestrally carnivorous, many of the large-bodied early theropods were hypercarnivorous; however, members of Theropoda diversified their diets into omnivory and herbivory. Modern vertebrates with different dietary preferences have different spatial sensitivities to changes in head and body movement. In order to test if theropod diet plays a major role in the rostral (RSC), caudal (CSC), and lateral (LSC) semicircular canal shape, therizinosaurs, tyrannosaurids, ratites, an allosaurid, an ornithomimid, and a phorusrhacid were analyzed via 2D …