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621 How Dinosaurs Grew †R. E. H. Reid (1924–2007) 31 621 Robin Reid: An Influential Figure in the Development of Modern Osteohistological Analyses for the Study of Dinosaurian Biology Gregory M. Erickson More has been learned about dinosaur biology in the last fifteen years than was gleaned during the entire previous century and a half. This renaissance has been fueled by the application of methodologies borrowed from other disciplines to the study of dinosaur paleontology. Of these, osteohistological techniques have provided more insights than any others. Advances in our understanding of growth rates, longevity, lifespan, physiology, development , giantism, dwarfism, locomotion, display, fighting structures, diet, bite forces, parental care, tooth replacement rates, injuries, sex, timing of sexual and somatic maturity, systematics, tissue preservation, and population biology –just to name a few–have been made possible through studies of skeletal microstructure. With such prodigious advancement, the discipline is growing at a breakneck speed as young researchers flock to the field to participate in what can best be described as a scientific gold rush. Those of us in the field are indebted to the handful of researchers who some thirty years ago helped establish the foundation for today’s cuttingedge investigations. Among the most notable, and perhaps least known to newcomers, was the late Robert Edward Hay Reid (better known as Robin Reid to friends and colleagues), senior lecturer from Queen’s University in Belfast, Ireland. Reid had the foresight to recognize the untapped paleobiological potential of dinosaur osteohistology and made some of the key findings on which nearly all contemporary histological research depends. Furthermore, he inspired and shared his insights with the next generation of paleohistologists including myself, Anusuya Chinsamy (University of Cape Town), and David Varricchio (Montana State University). So who was Robin Reid? Reid was an accomplished invertebrate paleontologist who studied the classification and taxonomy of Mesozoic glass sponges and the stratigraphy of Northeastern Ireland for the majority of his professional career. However, late in his tenure, he became intrigued by the debates surrounding dinosaurian physiology. He deduced that bone histology held the clues to this long-standing mystery. This led him to undertake an unorthodox–yet remarkably successful–interdisciplinary shift in focus to dinosaur paleobiology. To ready himself for his second career, Reid mastered the comparative neontological literature on bone development and microstructure. He also studied what little was known about dinosaur bone histology. Such investigations date back to the mid-nineteenth century but R. E. H. Reid 622 R. E. H. Reid 622 were for the most part descriptive in nature, and their biological import had largely gone unrealized. He then began amassing his own study specimens and put his already seasoned skills in petrographic slide preparation and microscopy to use. Between 1984 and 2007 he wrote nearly a dozen scientific works on his dinosaur findings. These include the present peer-reviewed chapters–his final professional publications. Having had the pleasure of reading Reid’s papers at the time they were published, and seeing his career in dinosaurian paleontology unfold, I can attest to his significant influence on the field that helped shape our current views on dinosaurian biology. Reid’s more notable accomplishments include the following:· He was the first to discover that growth lines are pervasive in dinosaur bones. This led to broad-scale reanalysis of how dinosaurs grew and unequivocally showed that most dinosaurs had disruptive growth, more like living reptiles. Prior to this discovery, the dogma was that dinosaurs grew rapidly and continually, just like most living birds and mammals. Hence they were likely endothermic. Current views of dinosaur growth and physiology have been retooled to account for Reid’s important revelation.· Reid was among the first scientists to deduce that dinosaurian growth lines could be used to determine the age of these animals. This provided some of the first quantifications of just how fast dinosaurs actually grew. Current analyses of dinosaur growth patterns, which have revolutionized studies of dinosaur life history and developmental evolution, can all be traced to his pioneering work.· He broadly surveyed the bones of dinosaurian taxa to reveal a much more remarkable histological diversity among taxa and within individuals than was previously realized. This led to the recognition that generalizations about dinosaurian histology were overly simplified. As a result, rigorous multi-individual analyses are common today in which individual, developmental, interelemental, scaling, and phylogenetic influences are all controlled for prior to making developmental , physiological, or systematic inferences.· Reid was the first to link histology with the minority intermediate...

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