The Dinosaur Football Roster April 3, 2013

Ornithomimus/Dromiceiomimus (depending on your nomenclatural school of thought) would make an ideal wide receiver within the world of dinos, according to a paleontologist. Photo and drawing by author.

Holy cow is this awesome!  Spencer Hall of Every Day Should Be Saturday interviewed a vertebrate paleontologist who gave him the break-down on what dinosaur species would be the best football players at different positions.  In yet another cool instance of where science meets sports, it doesn’t get much better than this!

The only flaw I could discern in the blog article is with one of the photo montages.  The scientist explicitly said that T-rex would make the best middle linebacker (and I concur!), but they superimposed a Raptor head from Jurassic Park on Ray Lewis instead of that of a Tyrannosaurus head like they should have.  True, both were carnivorous Theropods, but T-rex was much larger, robust species, whereas the Raptors, like the other Dromaeosaurids, were smaller and more nimble, thought arguably pound-for-pound, even more ferocious than the King Tyrant Lizard (whose head they stuck on Brett Favre instead!).  Spoiler alert:  in the article, Dromaeosaurids are, not surprisingly, given a place on the roster, too!