Nonplantigrade Foot Posture: A Constraint on Dinosaur Body Size

PloS One
Tai Kubo, Mugino O Kubo

Abstract

Dinosaurs had functionally digitigrade or sub-unguligrade foot postures. With their immediate ancestors, dinosaurs were the only terrestrial nonplantigrades during the Mesozoic. Extant terrestrial mammals have different optimal body sizes according to their foot posture (plantigrade, digitigrade, and unguligrade), yet the relationship of nonplantigrade foot posture with dinosaur body size has never been investigated, even though the body size of dinosaurs has been studied intensively. According to a large dataset presented in this study, the body sizes of all nonplantigrades (including nonvolant dinosaurs, nonvolant terrestrial birds, extant mammals, and extinct Nearctic mammals) are above 500 g, except for macroscelid mammals (i.e., elephant shrew), a few alvarezsauroid dinosaurs, and nondinosaur ornithodirans (i.e., the immediate ancestors of dinosaurs). When nonplantigrade tetrapods evolved from plantigrade ancestors, lineages with nonplantigrade foot posture exhibited a steady increase in body size following Cope's rule. In contrast, contemporaneous plantigrade lineages exhibited no trend in body size evolution and were largely constrained to small body sizes. This evolutionary pattern of body size specific to foot posture ...Continue Reading

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Citations

Nov 24, 2018·Science·Tomasz Sulej, Grzegorz Niedźwiedzki
Sep 2, 2020·Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society·Nicolás E Campione, David C Evans
Jan 30, 2019·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Tai KuboChris Venditti
Nov 30, 2021·Journal of Anatomy·Romain PintoreJohn R Hutchinson

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