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Updated: Jul 18, 2026

Assessing Species-specific Contributions To Craniofacial Development Using Quail-duck Chimeras
Published on: May 31, 2014
Developmental plasticity in the life history of a prosauropod dinosaur
P Martin Sander1, Nicole Klein
1Institut für Paläontologie, Universität Bonn, Nussallee 8, D-53115 Bonn, Germany. martin.sander@uni-bonn.de
Abstract:
Long-bone histology indicates that the most common early dinosaur, the prosauropod Plateosaurus engelhardti from the Upper Triassic of Central Europe, had variable life histories. Although Plateosaurus grew at the fast rates typical for dinosaurs, as indicated by fibrolamellar bone, qualitative (growth stop) and quantitative (growth-mark counts) features of its histology are poorly correlated with body size. Individual life histories of P. engelhardti were influenced by environmental factors, as in modern ectothermic reptiles, but not in mammals, birds, or other dinosaurs.
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