Derived Anatomy and Diet
At first glance, fossils tell you what and animal ate and how tall it was at the shoulder, but to the trained eye and to a mind able to put the pieces of a puzzle together, they can reveal much more. Fossils are the remnants of a living animal and are usually bones which are the bones are the template for a vertebrate in large part. By using the bones and understanding how the living animal's life affects the development, shape, and damages to bones within the creature, a great deal can be learned, much more than just how big it was.
Read more about this topic: Machairodontinae
Famous quotes containing the words derived, anatomy and/or diet:
“In the case of our main stock of well-worn predicates, I submit that the judgment of projectibility has derived from the habitual projection, rather than the habitual projection from the judgment of projectibility. The reason why only the right predicates happen so luckily to have become well entrenched is just that the well entrenched predicates have thereby become the right ones.”
—Nelson Goodman (b. 1906)
“Man is a shrewd inventor, and is ever taking the hint of a new machine from his own structure, adapting some secret of his own anatomy in iron, wood, and leather, to some required function in the work of the world.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I learned from my two years’ experience that it would cost incredibly little trouble to obtain one’s necessary food, even in this latitude; that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals, and yet retain health and strength.... Yet men have come to such a pass that they frequently starve, not for want of necessaries, but for want of luxuries.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)