Well Darn!!!

A few months ago I wrote a quick piece about a potentially venomous dinosaur. I said I would read the paper but didn't get access to it till I was too busy to get around to it. Anyway I wanted it to be true but a new paper (Gianechini et al., 2010) seems to show that Sinornithosaurus probably was not in fact venomous. The authors did have a chance to respond (Gong et al., 2010) but it is questionable on if they have met their burden of proof. Now I haven't read the papers and the way things are going with the papers I need to read I won't reach that want to pile until much later. Anyway Brian Switek over at Dinosaur Tracking has a pretty good write up on both papers and I am sure he has read them so go read his review.

Gianechini, F., Agnolín, F., & Ezcurra, M. (2010). A reassessment of the purported venom delivery system of the bird-like raptor Sinornithosaurus Paläontologische Zeitschrift DOI: 10.1007/s12542-010-0074-9

Gong, E., Martin, L., Burnham, D., & Falk, A. (2010). Evidence for a venomous Sinornithosaurus Paläontologische Zeitschrift DOI: 10.1007/s12542-010-0076-7

Venomous Dinosaur?

Apparently at least according to the authors of a paper that is about to come out. Based upon this blog post (here) it is hard to tell exactly they have some evidence but nothing certain. I obviously haven't read the paper yet so I can't really say for sure till I do that.

It could always be worse: