Imagine yourself walking quietly searching for prey on a field of ferns in the middle of a Jurassic tropical forest. You have good colour vision to spot any unusual coloration in the sea of greens. You discover some structures raising above the greenery and approach carefully… but you should have realised (just by the colour) that the row of structures were also warning signs… and the greenery is hiding the spiked end of it. Suddenly you are up in the air with the Stegosaurus stenops spikes lethally puncturing your crotch from underneath!
This fossil was unearthed in Wyoming in 1999. By the look of the abscess Allosaurus must have died of septicemia. For years, and after some discussions with Dr. Bob Bakker (whose reconstruction of the “accident” is well known), I have been trying to figure out and alternate vision of what on earth could have caused the actual a thin Allosaurus pubis punctured with such precision, not from the side (as I would have expected from an attack of Stegosaurus) but from under, right in the crotch like a modern bullfighter.. The keratinous covering of the spikes of Stegosaurus should have made them extremely sharp to penetrate with such accuracy. I have come with this little story that seems to me more credible than other explanations. Here’s the genesis of the composition, from pencil study to finalised drama… as Peter Norton commented: it must have hurt!
An addition to Dinosaur rEvolution in the future. This might become part of another oncoming, massive, very ambitious project that could become very important and original… I’m still awaiting instructions to disclose more details!
