Where Did Animals With Tail Weapons Go? Here's a Back Story

[Judi Lynn]

Where Did Animals With Tail Weapons Go? Here’s a Back Story



A Tyrannosaurus rex hunting a pair of ankylosaurs, which were equipped with bony, club-like tails. Researchers puzzle as to why more modern animals don’t have tail weaponry.Credit...Mark Stevenson/Stocktrek Images, via Science Source
By Nicholas St. Fleur
Jan. 16, 2018

With a nearly impenetrable hide covered in spikes, the ankylosaurus was like a dinosaur version of an armored tank. And like any battlefield behemoth, it boasted a fearsome weapon: a bone-crushing clubbed tail.

The ankylosaurus was not the only prehistoric beast to have an intimidating backside. Stegosaurus sported spear-like spikes on its tail. Some sauropods flailed fused clumps of bones from their posteriors toward predators.

But in living animals today, formidable tail weaponry is nearly absent. Though porcupines have quills and some lizards lash their tails when threatened, neither animal has the bony armaments seen millions of years ago. To help figure out why, a pair of paleontologists has pieced together a series of traits shared among extinct species that had weaponized their fifth extremity. Their study may help explain why tail weaponry has gone missing since dinosaurs and some ice age animals went extinct.

In a paper published Wednesday in the journal Proceeding of the Royal Society B, the team has identified three characteristics in land-dwelling mammals, reptiles and nonavian dinosaurs that may be linked with evolving bony tail weapons. They include being large — about the size of a mountain goat or bigger — eating plants and already having an armored body.



The glyptodon was large, armored and herbivorous — three characteristics researchers identified shared by animals that evolved bony tail weapons.Credit...Corey Ford/Stocktrek Images/Science Source

More:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/16/science/tails-weapons-dinosaurs.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article

[Hoyt]

1. I guess alligators/crocs are one of a few remaining examples. Interesting.

[SCantiGOP]

7. That was my first thought

Alligators use their tail to kill.
I lived on an island off the SC coast once, and a neighbor saw a gator in a lagoon take a small dog. Gator was lying on the bank, could have been dead, as the little dog was barking and getting closer and closer. He said he was amazed at how quick the gator’s tail whipped around and tossed the dog about 20 feet into the lagoon. The dog wasn’t moving as the gator slowly swam out and took the dog under the water.

[Glorfindel]

2. Thank you, Judi Lynn. Your Science posts are some of the most

interesting and informative things I come across on a daily basis...the fact that you are nice enough to post them on DU is definitely icing on the cake. Please, don't ever stop.

[Judi Lynn]

8. I'd feel horrible if I saw them and didn't pass them on to someone. I really love finding them.

Thank you for your kind comment, Glorfindel.

[Ponietz]

3. I guess they didn't study Sally and her friends at the mosh pit

Deadly

[littlemissmartypants]

4. Thanks for sharing this, Judi Lynn. ❤ nt

[Judi Lynn]

9. Thank you, LMSP! ❤ n/t

[lastlib]

5. I'm guessing they high-tailed it out of town.....

...before the mammals out-smarted 'em.

Just a wild guess...........

De-tails, de-tails...........

[Warpy]

6. I imagine it was more useful as a threat than an actual weapon

because actually connecting with a predator's equally bony skull would likely produce multiple fractures in tail and spine.

Tail weapons do still exist, but only in small creatures without vertebrae like bees, wasps and scorpions.

[Igel]

10. So don't hit skull.

Hit ankles and shins.


That way you don't have to keep the club so high and you get the nice, rewarding crunching sound of splintering bone, following by the rewarding crashing and thudding sound of large predator skull hitting the dirt.


Now, as for the frolicking ankylosaur in the picture. I suppose they must have moved fast like that--all the ways dinosaurs were thought to locomote in the books I read as a kid were shredded when they got animators and paleontologists together for "Walking with Dinosaurs" and tried to actually get the bones to work the way that they were alleged to have worked. "Hey, what do you know, if it does what we said then this process has to be shorn off, and there's nothing keeping this joint from rotating a good 280 degrees." Still, something that big and graceless frolicking ... Rather like imaging a turtle dance en point.

And for a final ludicrous mental image (thanks be to aphantasia!) try to imagine glyptodons mating.

[Warpy]

11. Same deal

Connecting with anything solid would have been disastrous.

We know they weren't green monsters and likely had plumage of some sort. I imagine in danger plumage would erect and make the blobs seem really huge, either scaring the predator or distracting it into thinking the tail was the main meal. Or perhaps it was to counterbalance the head so it would faceplant while eating less often as it grazed on ferns.

Paleontology has long been dominated by men and men think in terms of weapons. These would be poor ones, so perhaps their horizons need to expand a bit.