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Qilong β Eaters of the Ammonites (though Alive)
by-nc-nd
Published: 2012-11-06 18:54:40 +0000 UTC; Views: 2226; Favourites: 76; Downloads: 0
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Description
The durophagous, ball-toothed, deep-jawed and thoroughly awesome globidensin mosasaurid mosasaur, Globidens dakotensis -- based on a nearly complete skull and partial jaw, and compared to similar species like Globidens phosphaticus.Check out [link] for more info.
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Comments: 5
This is so cool!!!!! I absolutely love it!!!!
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On a purely compositional note - is that the tightest the jaws would shut? Theres a good gap between upper and lower jaw by the snout.
(When mammals shut their jaws, molar contact cause a very abrupt stop, leaving no doubt to what makes a tightly shut jaw, - is there any similar way to find out with molar-less creatures? Such as dinosaurs? Ornithischians have the batteries that firmly meet, but the others do not. With most illustrations conveniently showing wide open jaws, it's often difficult to guess how a shut jaw would appear, how far a lower jaw could "sink" up into the upper, how much room there is, etc. I do appreciate your skull restorations, where you have included a shut-jaw one)
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It's possible the jaws could close more tightly. The model here was based on the "lateral" aspect of the mandible as preserved, and a presumption that the upper and lower jaws occluded, rather than slipped one inside the other as in varanids. The mandible was also likely flexed a bit more than shown at the intramandibular joint, so that the dentary/splenial was rotated more dorsally at the posterior dental occlusion. This would easily close the gap. I think I simply didn't close the gap with moving the mandible pieces around for the jaw-closed model.
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