Talk:Trogontherium

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Reconstitution

Hi! Looking at this file, is it possible to get pictures of the reconstitution (and possibly other pictures of fossils) of this rodent? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.142.49.232 (talk) 16:59, 19 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Some good info on the Trogotherium, including a link to a drawing

I found some good information on the Trogotherium, but I'm a little unsure about how to add it in:

Per Lewis Henry Morgan, in 'The American Beaver and his Works' (1869) "The Trogontherium was about one-fifth larger than the European beaver, the skull measuring seven inches"

Believe it or not, that is the only reference I have found so far on his size, besides some info in a highly technical article by 'Fostowicz-Frelik, Ł. 2008. 'First record of Trogontherium cuvieri (Mammalia, Rodentia) from the middle Pleistocene of Poland and review of the species. Geodiversitas 30 (4): 765-778.' which states ' Large beaver but smaller than Castoroides and Youngofiber, maximal skull length 210 mm'. Using my trusty conversion tool, 210 mm is about 8.26 inches, so Morgan wasn't far off from the modern consensus.

Here [http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DWixLr17Q2k/T1cC-vyo5tI/AAAAAAAAEyo/PZcBm0qoz5c/s1600/Trogontherium%2Bcuvieri.jpg ] is a drawing of a hypothesized reconstruction of the Trogontherium, (note the date, 1809) from the 'Beaver Fever' article in the 'Catalog of Organisms' blog http://coo.fieldofscience.com/search?q=trogontherium, extracted from the Fostowicz-Frelick (2008) article above.

The 'Beaver Fever' article extracted another interesting tidbit from the Fostowicz-Frelik (2008) article, which 'argued that leg proportions and other features indicate that Trogontherium was a more terrestrial, cursorial animal than other beavers (in particular, its narrowed rather than flattened toe bones suggest that it lacked the webbed feet of modern beavers).'

Cursorial means 'adapted to running', kind of hard to believe, considering the trogontherium's build. But, 'The most accepted definitions include that a cursorial organism could be considered adapted to long-distance running at high speeds or has the ability to accelerate quickly over short distances.' Perhaps Fostowicz-Frelik meant 'more adapted to long-distance running than modern day Beavers'.

DlronW (talk) 20:31, 15 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid the 1809 date refers to when the animal was described. As for info, the best is to use the scientific publication itself as basis, and then summarise some of the info there. Google scholar gives a lot of results, some of which are free pdfs:[1] FunkMonk (talk) 20:40, 15 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]