In zoology, a tail club is a bony mass at the end of the tail of some dinosaurs and of some mammals, most notably the ankylosaurids and the glyptodonts, as well as meiolaniid turtles. It is thought that this was a form of defensive armour or weapon that was used to defend against predators, much in the same way as a thagomizer, possessed by stegosaurids, though at least in glyptodonts it is hypothesized it was used in fighting for mating rights.[citation needed] Among dinosaurs, the club was present mainly in ankylosaurids, although sauropods like Shunosaurus also possessed a tail club. Victoria Arbour has established that ankylosaurid tails could generate enough force to break bone during impacts.[1] In a separate study, Arbour suggested tail clubs as well as large armoured herbivores as a whole evolve when animals are too large to hide and too small to avoid predation by size alone.[2]
Morphology
editIn dinosaurs the tail club consists of enlarged and fused Osteoderms, with this (called the knob) in Ankylosaurids being supported by a "handle" of the far distal vertebrae being stiff and using the prezygapophyses to inlock, ensuring rigidity.[3]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ Arbour, V. M. (2009). "Estimating impact forces of tail club strikes by ankylosaurid dinosaurs". PLOS ONE. 4 (8): e6738. Bibcode:2009PLoSO...4.6738A. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0006738. PMC 2726940. PMID 19707581.
- ^ Arbour, Zanno, Victoria M. and Lindsey E. (January 17, 2018). "The evolution of tail weaponization in amniotes". Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 285 2017229920172299 (1871). doi:10.1098/rspb.2017.2299. PMC 5805935. PMID 29343599.
- ^ Arbour, Victoria M.; Currie, Philip J. (2015) "Ankylosaurid dinosaur tail clubs evolved through stepwise acquisition of key features" Journal of Anatomy. 227 (4): 514–523.
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