sort of.
I'll watch this tonight, but the animal on the image before starting the video shows something like Dilophosaurus or Megapnosaurus/Syntarsus. It has paired crests on its snout.
Here's something many people don't realize - those crests were not much thicker than a decent paper plate.
My research is on the evolutionary history of crocodiles and alligators, but I worked on a theropod dinosaur after finishing my PhD. (A specific theropod at a museum in the Midwest said to be the largest and most complete of its species. They won't tell you at the museum, but it screams if you throw holy water on it.)
So, yeah - I experimented with theropods as a post doc. Who didn't?
While completing that project, I looked at theropod dinosaur fossils from across North America and Eurasia, including the original material of Dilophosaurus wetherili at the University of California Museum of Paleontology in Berkeley. (The fossils were found in Arizona.) And two things struck me immediately -
First, those crests weren't much more than 2 or 3 mm thick. They were very, very delicate.
Second, there were oblong and irregular depressions on the lateral side of each crest. These are associated with air sacs on other bones in theropod dinosaurs. So whatever the crests were used for, there was something air-filled and possibly inflatable on either side of the snout.
Very cool structures.
(And by the way - the big frill depicted in Jurassic Park was "borrowed" from the frilled lizard in Australia, and although the author who originally described D. wetherilli did think they might have spat venom, no one else accepted that, and there is no evidence for it.)
= new reply since forum marked as read
