Just for Frills?
Decoding dinosaurs' cryptic anatomical features
By Sid Perkins
It’s often easy to interpret a dinosaur’s distinctive characteristics. Tyrannosaurus rex almost assuredly used its banana-size teeth to crush bones and to rip flesh from a carcass. Immense sauropods such as Paralititan and Brachiosaurus probably used their remarkably long necks to browse on treetop vegetation. Features on other dinosaurs are more enigmatic.
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Consider the plates on Stegosaurus and the domed skulls of pachycephalosaurs. Scientists have proposed various explanations for these and other bizarre body features of dinosaurs.