Talk:Dracorex

Status of Tylosteus

Tylosteus ornatus Leidy, 1872 was shown by Sullivan (2006) to be very similar to Dracorex hogwartsia, rejecting the assertion that Tylosteus is a specimen of Pachycephalosaurus. Therefore, Tylosteus cannot be a synonym of Pachycephalosaurus wyomingensis, and a petition will be made for the International Commission on Zooological Nomenclature to resurrect the name Tylosteus.

Sullivan, R.M., 2006. A taxonomic review of the Pachycephalosauridae (Dinosauria: Ornithischia). New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin 35: 347-365. 72.194.116.63 16:53, 15 April 2007 (UTC) Vahe Demirjian 09.52 15 April 2007

Why is a petition needed? Was the type specimen of Pacycephalosaurus transferred to it or something? Dinoguy2 01:39, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

If Dracorex looks like a dragon, why is not a Dragon?

Dracorex looks like a dragon, and the skeleton is probably a juvenile, so it was big. So why is it called a dinosuar that looks like a dragon, and not a dragon? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.35.93.17 (talk • contribs)

You do realize that there is no such thing as dragons, right? Dragons are fictional, magical, mythical animals of a wide variety of shapes and abilities (probably based in some cases on things in nature, like snakes and so forth, but not necessarily based on anything in reality), that according to stories coexisted with humans. Dracorex is a dinosaur with a skull that looks like some conceptions of dragons, but is not a dragon, and when it grew up, in all likelihood it grew up to be Pachycephalosaurus, only about 5 meters (16 feet long). —Preceding unsigned comment added by J. Spencer (talk • contribs)

Yup. Same reason Sauroposeidon is not the Ancient Greek god of earthquakes. It's discoverers just thought the name sounded cool and appropriately 'poetic.' Dinoguy2 (talk) 00:06, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually, there are some(myself included) who would say that there are such things as dragons. It would not be appropriate here to go into all my reasoning, but if anyone is interested, they can post on my talk page. In my belief, it is a dragon. I don't know why scientists are dead set on not believing in them. I also don't see how a semi-complete skull and a few vertebrae can tell scientists everything they claim to "know" about this animal.

A firm believer in dragons, Lordofthemarsh (talk) 04:16, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

You're entitled to your opinion, but as it's contrary to accepted science, it really doesn't have a place here. Qwo (talk) 01:29, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. I also believe dragons exist, or once did, but this is classified as a pachycephalosaur and therefore will be stated as such. Brandonrc2 (talk) 04:33, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

While it is true that the holotype is a juvenile, it was definitely nearing adulthood. And while adults may have been slightly bigger, they were definitely not even close to the size of the 50-foot-long European dragon seen in medieval paintings. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.36.148.242 (talk) 21:51, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Misleading Article

Could someone P*L*E*A*S*E take the time to read the comments and referred articles on the Dracorex-Stigymoloch-Pachycephalosaurus situation featured here: http://paleoking.blogspot.com/2010/01/farewell-to-2009-yeares-best-and-worst.html

The article's tone seems to take Horner's proposal of Dracorex being a juvenile of another pachy species for granted way too much; the matter is still very much open to debate, and that is not reflected here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.230.91.121 (talk) 13:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Jack Horner's Theory

The paleontologist Jack Horner has come up with a hypothesis that Dracorex may just be the juvenile of another pachycephalosaur genus. Should this theory be taken seriously? This hypothesis has been stated many times before. For example, some believe that the dinosaur Nanotyrannus is a juvenile T. rex. I'm not sure if Horner is right or not. I wonder if it's true? What do you think? Troodon58 14:47, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

All the evidence is already laid out in the article, and the linked paper is open source, so we should leave it at that until more study is done and some kind of consensus begins to emerge. As far as that goes, based on DML posts almost everyone seems to agree that Dracorex is a juvenile Stygimoloch, though not everyone agrees Stygi is a juvenile Pachy. IIRC people were skeptical about the validity of Dracorex from day one. MMartyniuk (talk) 23:30, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

New photos

As a result of the Children's Museum Backstage Pass event there are now some great new images of Dracorex in Commons. HstryQT (talk) 20:44, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Cool! I replaced the taxobox image with one of them. FunkMonk (talk) 15:10, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

More new photos

Hello again. As of this past spring, The Children's Museum of Indianapolis has donated a number of their own images to Commons, including two images of Dracorex (one is another, off-display view of the skeletal reconstruction and the other is the actual skull.) I'd be happy for you all to add these to the article. We may be adding a QRpedia code to this exhibit, as well as a Wikipedia Widget (directing visitors to this article) on our museum webpage. In doing so, it'd be nice to have our contributions added :). There are also many other images of fossils and natural world specimens that may be of interest for other articles. Thanks so much! LoriLee (talk) 15:27, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Temporary protection

It seems a page on Facebook linked to this article recently and this has brought in a spurt of vandalism. Does this warrant temporary partial protection? TornadoLGS (talk) 02:19, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for reverting the latest vandalism, Tornado. I've semi-protected the page for 24 hours. Firsfron of Ronchester 03:27, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. TornadoLGS (talk) 03:38, 7 November 2012 (UTC)