Friday 24 April 2015

Sexy stegosaurs?

Plate function in stegosaurs has been much debated, with early suggestions that they were defensive structures superceded by alternative explanations that have included use as convective fins for heat gain and loss and/or as visual signals for display and species recognition. A study just published in PLoS ONE by Evan Saitta of Bristol University adds a new twist to this discussion, suggesting that plate shape in Stegosaurus (= Hesperosaurus) mjosi differed between male and female individuals.

Determining the sex of a dinosaur skeleton has proved almost impossible in the vast majority of cases. Although living reptiles (including birds) do exhibit many obvious differences between males and females, a phenomenon termed sexual dimorphism, most of these differences relate to body size (with one sex markedly larger than the other), behaviour (e.g. different display strategies) and soft tissue anatomy (e.g. reproductive organs, skin patterning, feather types, etc.). By contrast, very few features of the skeleton  differ between male and female reptiles (except in terms of overall proportions) and applying these size and shape differences to fossil skeletons is difficult. For example, although sexual size differences are common, size also changes during growth - so are the size differences seen between fossils the result of growth differences, sexual differences, or even differences between adults of very similar species? Although there are methods for eliminating some of these issues, these problems are often so intractable that there are effectively no features of the skeleton that can be used to sex an extinct reptile reliably. There are only two exceptions to this pessimistic statement: both apply only to females. If intact eggs are found inside a dinosaur, and feeding can be ruled out (e.g. position of the eggs in the body, lack of evidence for digestion), you can be pretty sure it's a girl. In addition, female dinosaurs produce a special type of bone, medullary bone, which forms a reservoir for egg-forming minerals just before egg laying commences. If you slice open a dinosaur limb bone and see this bone type you have a female. However, if eggs or medullary bone are absent it just means that you either have a male or a female that wasn't about to lay eggs. Not very helpful, sadly. To date we know only of a handful of dinosaur skeletons that can be confirmed as female - none of the rest can be sexed at present.

Identification of sexual dimorphism in Stegosaurus plates would, therefore, be interesting and important: a feature that could plausibly identify male and female dinosaur skeletons consistently and easily for the first time. This new study is based on a spectacular new discovery: a group of at least five Stegosaurus individuals whose remains were preserved in a small area. Stegosaurus is usually regarded as a rare and solitary animal, so finding a group of these animals together would be newsworthy in itself. Following his study of these remains, Saitta (2015) concluded that these individuals all belonged to the same species (i.e. none belonged to the other species of Stegosaurus, S. stenops), they might have been a social group that died in the same event, and that the plates preserved with these skeletons fell into two distinct types. One of these plate morphs is taller than it is long, forming a narrow pointed triangle in side view (interpreted as female); the other is longer than it is tall, with a much larger area, forming a low rounded triangle (interpreted as male due to its larger size). This conclusion followed measurements of the preserved plates and comparisons to plates from other skeletons of S. mjosi and S. stenops in museum collections around the world. Alternative explanations, such as differences in growth, were considered but rejected by the author.

Although an interesting hypothesis, I'm thus far unconvinced by the arguments set out in the paper, for a variety of reasons.

1. Little relevant information is provided on the age of the individuals in the group. Although there is some work on the histology of the plates to look for growth rings, growth rings in armour do not record growth records in the same way as the widely used growth rings found in limb bones. As a result, it's unclear if there are differences in age between the different individuals in the quarry. As we know very little about shape change in stegosaur plates through growth, this is an important consideration.

2. Only 11 plates are preserved in the quarry, nine of which were complete enough to include in the study. This is a small proportion of the total number of plates that might have been preserved if the whole plate array was present for each individual (up to around 90 plates could plausibly have been present originally if the total count of plates was similar to that in S. stenops - but almost all of the plates seem to have been lost during the fossilisation process). As all of the remains in the quarry are mixed and jumbled it's not clear if the plates came from one of the five individuals present, or more than one individual. It could be that the two different types of plate belonged to one individual that possessed mixed plate types along the plate row, rather than from different individuals with different plate morphologies, or they might have come from individuals of different ages. The lack of intermediate plate types in the quarry, which was used as evidence to suggest the two types were very distinct and thus dimorphic, is perhaps unsurprising given the very small sample of plates available for study.

3. No previously described specimen of S. mjosi possesses a full compliment of plates – all are incompletely preserved with many parts of the skeletons missing. As a result, we have no roadmap to show what a complete set of S. mjosi plates should look like or how shape could have varied along the row.

4. Although all of the individuals were identified as S. mjosi, anatomical details for each specimen have yet to be published, so the possibility that this might be a mixed group of S. mjosi and S. stenops (or as as yet unknown species) has not yet been ruled out definitively. Although the identification of each individual might be solid, the evidence to support this was not fully set out in the paper so other scientists are unable to confirm this suggestion at present. 

5. No details were provided on the completeness or preservation of the plates used in the study and how this might have affected the results. Plates in many of the specimens used for comparison are at least partially restored and reconstructed, altering their sizes and shapes and no data is presented to show that only complete undistorted plates were used for comparison.

Given the above, it's possible that younger individuals of S. mjosi might have had different plate shapes from older ones or that in S. mjosi the plates differed in shape and size depending upon their position within the plate row (or between individuals). Neither of these possibilities was thoroughly tested in the paper: indeed, one of these possibilities can only be tested by finding a new complete skeleton of this species. By comparison, plate shape is known to vary somewhat along the body in Stegosaurus stenops and it's plausible that it varied in a different way in S. mjosi to incorporate two plate types (this would then become an additional way of distinguishing these two species). So, although a sexual difference is plausible, growth differences, individual differences and/or species differences are also equally likely on the basis of current evidence.

Although I remain skeptical, it would be really neat if future work on this assemblage could dismiss some of these concerns: it would be great to finally have a good example of clear sexual dimorphism in a non-avian dinosaur, even though it's likely that such obvious dimorphism would be relatively rare across the group as a whole (given we've not been able to identify in dinosaurs for which we have large sample sizes). The announcement of stegosaur sexual dimorphism seems a bit premature, but I would be very happy to be proved wrong. 

Reference

Saitta, E. T. (2015). Evidence for sexual dimorphism in the plated dinosaur Stegosaurus mjosi (Ornithischia, Stegosauria) from the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic) of Western USA. PLoS ONE 10(4): e0123503.

12 comments:

  1. Interesting and important thoughts, Paul. Have you considered posting them as a comment on the article itself? http://www.plosone.org/article/Comments/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0123503

    ReplyDelete
  2. Interesting thought Mike - have never done that. We have a paper in review on the Sophie postcranial skeleton at the moment: I was considering waiting to have a more technical discussion of the issues in there, but will think about the webposting.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I think this kind of thing -- informed but informal technical comment -- is exactly what the PLOS commenting system was set up for. It's not secret that the level of use has been disappointing, but I'm keen to see that change (and the same at PeerJ and elsewhere of course).

    ReplyDelete
  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hello all,

    I have just become aware of this post and I have to say that I am grateful that a paper from my undergraduate thesis is worthy of a featured discussion by a respected scientist.

    I would be happy to have a discussion on this paper in whatever forum is most appropriate. After reading through your points, I think that most of your concerns are addressed either directly or indirectly in the paper. I do not mean this in a disrespectful manner, but now that you have these questions in mind, I suggest re-reading the paper from front to back (with all of the supplements). I think many of your questions will be answered in the process. Anyway, I look forward to a discussion on a topic that interests me very much.

    I also have to say that I cannot wait to read your work on Sophie. What an exciting time to study Stegosaurus!

    Best,
    Evan Saitta

    ReplyDelete
  6. Dear Evan - I read your paper twice before writing this post and am happy to discuss with you in detail sometime.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Dr. Barrett,

    Good to hear. Feel free to submit questions in the comments section of the paper, or another forum, if you think this should be a public discussion. Otherwise, let me know the next time you are in Bristol and I would be happy to meet you in person to discuss all things stegosaur. I will be staying here for my PhD so there is no rush.

    Best,
    Evan

    ReplyDelete
  8. The spam above should be deleted. Btw regarding discovery of a stegosaur mass accumulation or bonebed, wasn't K. aethiopicus the first? I tend to doubt thyreophorans were gregarious, and prefer K. Carpenter's suggestion on osteoderm function.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Yes, Kentrosaurus known from bonebed material long before any such accumulation in Stegosaurus.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I know this could be disrespectful but i would still share my testimony with you all whom would also need same help, i got married to my wife 3 years ago until i came across DR AZIBA we could not have a child because my Penis was too small to perform and could not erect, this almost cost me my marriage, i wept in close door, no help coming , so i went online for a helpful research and i came across a review written about DR. AZIBA who prepares PENIS ENLARGEMENT PRODUCT and his contact details were also written on how he prepares root and vegetables natural product to help grow penis , so i applied and he send it to my address and instruct me on how to use, within the period of (7days) my penis is already growing from 3:5 to 6:5 and DR made it known to me that i can stop when am satisfied with the result, my dear friends this is worth celebrating and sharing with my fellow men same goes to women who needs this for there man, i will write down his contact details so you all can contact the DR AZIBA as well.
    WhatsApp: +2348100368288
    Email: Priestazibasolutioncenter@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete
  11. Spammer kelly get lost...
    Any thoughts on Mongolostegas?

    ReplyDelete

Please leave your comments below...