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Prehistoric Animals Swung Tails Like Baseball Bats

Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News

Terror birds stood nearly 10 feet tall and weighed over 650 pounds. Blanco said they "had kicks powerful enough to break bones."

Glyptodonts might have therefore evolved their body armor, not to mention their spiked tails, to withstand this bird's potentially deadly kicks.

Large crocodilians and bear-like marsupials with long, sharp teeth also preyed on glyptodonts.

In addition to defense against predators, Blanco and his colleagues believe glyptodonts used their tails in fights against each other over territory, food, mates and more.

Programs like the Discovery Channel's "Walking with Dinosaurs" show glyptodonts battling each other side to side, looking in opposite directions, but Blanco now believes the animals "probably fought head to head, trying to push down the body of the opponent with the front limbs."

Like limber wrestlers, the glyptodonts "could make a 180 degree turn of the body around the hind limbs, hitting with the tail close to the shoulders or mid-point of the trunk of the rival."

John Hutchinson, a Royal Veterinary College expert on the biomechanics of dinosaurs and other animals, told Discovery News that the new paper "is an interesting study and quite clever."

Hutchinson said he was surprised by "how the positions of spikes and nubbins on the tail clubs in a variety of species seem to line up pretty well with the mechanically most reasonable positions."

He concluded, "That's what evolution should produce, of course, but it's always satisfying finding different kinds of evidence for sufficiently good biological design."

Related Links:

Jennifer Viegas' Blog: Born Animal

Discovery Dinosaur Central

Rossella Lorenzi's Blog: Archaeorama