Hi, i have been wondering for the longest time how dinosaurs had sex?!?! Ive asked just about everybody, but i havent gotten an answer. They seam too large to have sex like humans, and their tails would get in the way for doggy-style…PLEASE ANSWER MY QUESTION!!!!!!! –Lianna

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Still, you can have too much of a good thing. Early in the cited chapter we read, “The gonads…of both birds and reptiles are confined within the body so it is safe to assume the same was true of dinosaurs. With nothing hangin’ in the breeze …” Ken, compadre, I admire the colloquial style. But let’s not get carried away.

Sounds simple in principle, but given mass times acceleration, etc, one suspects that the potential for disaster rivaled Soyuz docking with Mir. For starters, as you point out, there’s the issue of tails. Some have proposed a “lizard model” for dino sex: the male approached from the rear and twisted his tail underneath the female until their cloacae met. Ken reproduces a drawing along these lines by Beverly Halstead showing two mating diplodoci with tails charmingly entwined. But he considers this scenario anatomically unlikely–the typical dinosaur tail was held rigid for balance and could not easily twist.

Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Slug Signorino.