A NEW view of the familiar dinosaur Stegosaurus raised many eyebrows at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in Norman, Oklahoma, last month. A paper posted by T. R. Karbek of the Steveville Academy of Paleontological Studies in Patricia, Alberta, offered “The case for Stegosaurus as an agile, cursorial, biped”.
Cursorial means “adapted for running”, and the usual view is that with its armour plating, massive body and triangular plates along its back, the Stegosaurus was about as cursorial as a fridge-freezer.
Karbek’s poster hardly convinced otherwise. It merely showed a couple of photocopied drawings, tilted to show a stegosaur on two legs.…
