Where Did Animals With Tail Weapons Go? Here's a Back Story.

Kunzang Namgyal

Mr.Ippolito

AP Biology- EF Even

17 January 2018

St, Nicholas. “Where Did Animals With Tail Weapons Go? Here's a Back Story.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 16 Jan. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/01/16/science/tails-weapons-dinosaurs.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront.

This week I decided to read the article, “Where Did Animals With Tail Weapons Go? Here's a Back Story,” by New York Times writer, Nicholas St. Fleur. This article focused on animals with fearsome tail weapons and the lack of these animals today. In previous eras, there were large animals that could wreak havoc with their huge, spiky tails. There were dinosaurs such as the ankylosaurus which sported a clubbed tail, the stegosaurus which had tails covered in spear-like spikes, and the sauropods which could fling fused clumps of bones from their tails at their predators. Since those older eras, the earth has not been inhabited by many animals with formidable tails. Today there is only one species that has a bony tail, the lizard known as Smaug has a smaller bony, spiky tail. Other animals that share this bony defense are the porcupine with its quills and the pangolin with its scales. However, we do not see many animals with the same traits as the dinosaurs listed earlier. Scientists questioned where these animals went and discovered three major commonalities between all mammals, reptiles, and nonavian dinosaurs that had tail weapons. All animals with a formidable tail had been large, herbivorous, and were protected by an armored body. Victoria Arbour, a paleontologist at the University of Toronto and the Royal Ontario Museum explains that “That’s a really rare combination no matter what time period you’re looking at.” This helps the reader understand why these animals are so uncommon today.

This article is relevant to us in a few ways. First, it gives us a more in depth look into the Earth’s past and evolution, for some reason only animals that fit those particular three categories evolved to have tail weapons. This article could also provide evidence that some of the current animals on the Earth will eventually evolve to have tail weapons, as “the authors [of the study] hypothesized that developing bony clubs like the ankylosaurus and the glyptodon was a gradual, evolutionary process.”

I chose to read this article because I was interested with learning how huge animals with tail weapons evolved into the animals we see today. The article did not go into depth on the evolution of these animals after the species had developed tail weapons, therefore I believe the title of the article was quite misleading, as it did not answer the question posed in the title, “Where Did Animals With Tail Weapons Go? Here's a Back Story.” I also wish that the author had explained the advantage or disadvantages of tail weapons, as it would have given the readers more background information. I do believe that Fleur did an adequate job of helping the readers visualize the animals he was referring to by describing their size, appearance, and diet, as well as giving examples of some dinosaurs. I found it very interesting that all animals with tail weapons were herbivores. I wonder if in later eras, animals will again develop tail weapons.