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What is the likelihood of Acrocanthosaurus having dorsal spines like this?
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I drew it because I thought it looked cool, but I'm not sure how realistic is is. I know Ceratosaurs had spikes like that but I don't know about carnosaurs.
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The neural spines show evidence of muscle attachment, so they wouldn't be uncovered like this. If you mean them to be spines like those of an iguana, which are actually large scales, well I don't think that's likely. Those are used for defense from larger predators and they wouldn't have had much purpose on an Acro. I suppose it's possible they had a similar feature that was used in display for attracting a mate. Highly speculative, but not impossible.
Iguana spines mostly aren’t used for defense, it’s more for display. Male iguanas have much taller spines than female ones (and I think it gets even longer during mating season). If it’s for defense, female iguanas would have as tall spines as well.
The neural spines are covered. I should have clarified that I meant iguana-like spines.
Ok, first, this is cool as hell. Good work. Unfortunately, though, there really isn’t evidence for it. The neural spines of Acrocanthosaurus are the type that have strong muscle attachment points which would have supported a strong hump of muscle.
I meant a row of spikes like iguanas have. This version does have a hump, just with spikes on top.
It probably supported a hump like a bison.
I should have clarified that I meant spines as in what an iguana has. The actual vertabrae are covered in this illustration.
This is what acro would look like in the JP/JW universe.
I was partly inspired by the JW giga, but I definitely remember spiny acros from books when I was a kid.
This is what JWE2 Acro needs to look like it would be so cool.
Not very but it looks badass
Very much possible as a display structure or defensive structure (against conspecifics), but only possible. Can’t be determined if they’d be “likely”, or not.
Note, however, they’d probably be fairly small (proportionately) on an animal that big: a spinal row of large keratinous structures like that could be very (metabolically) costly for an animal as big as Acrocanthosaurus to develop and maintain throughout life.
Very unlikey. If it did, we would have found evidence of them existing by now.
I don't think there is a whole lot of fossil material for this species
People in 1923 would've thought the same thing about their pictures of dinosaurs 😔
looks pretty damn cool! though carnosaurians wouldn’t likely have these kind of spines/plates but maybe a mane like a horse could be possible
Too reptilian to be accurate, but that doesn’t mean you can interpret it as you desire.
What purpose would they have?
looking awesome
Probably unlikely to that degree although some spikes may be possible
Ceratosaurs had spikes? How did I not know!
Nah man, hell nah. You'd get your ass kicked for saying something like that.
Something like what???
Check username.
(Office Space quote)