Many of the extant figures in stone are votive statues, as indicated by the phrases used in the inscriptions that they often bear: "It offers prayers" or "Statue, say to my king (god)…." Male statues stand or sit with hands clasped in an attitude of prayer.
Moreover, extant lungfishes (Figure 2) display a number of features that are reminiscent of those of the earliest tetrapods from the Devonian.
This would, however, require an anterior migration of this organ compared to its position in extant monitors (Figure 9A).
In LACM 128319, the relatively shortest centra are situated at the level of the tailbend below the fan-shaped structure formed by the elongate neural spines; a condition that compares well with that of extant sharks (Figure 7B).
Surprisingly, the estimated locomotor metabolic rates for many dinosauriforms, especially larger taxa in our sample, consistently exceeded the 95% confidence interval for maximum aerobic power, VO2 max, seen in extant ectotherms (Figure 2).
We consider such "GapC1-to-GapC1" replacements are not unlikely, since a similar event has been already introduced to explain the origin of GapC1 genes in extant dinoflagellates (Figure 2).
Even during walking (Fr 0.25), the required metabolic output for the five largest species (a juvenile Gorgosaurus, Dilophosaurus, Plateosaurus, Allosaurus, and Tyrannosaurus) exceeded the range of aerobic capacity seen in extant ectotherms (Figure 2).
We concur with this anatomical identification, especially given that there are no differences in axial torsion as compared to modern humans or extant apes (Figure 2), in which the apical tuft is slightly twisted, so that it faces the rest of the fingers.
This interpretation is corroborated by the presence of loosely packed, aligned bodies, about 2 µm long, with a morphology that is comparable to that of retinal melanosomes (i.e., lysosome-related organelles of pigment cells) in the eyes of extant tetrapods (Figure 2D) [12], [12].
Although the loss of the court as a result of the Union of Crowns in 1603 removed another major source of patronage, the seventeenth century saw the emergence of the first significant native artists for whom names are extant, with figures like George Jamesone and John Michael Wright.
