MCF2004 {MASSTIMATE}

Body Mass Estimates Using Mazzetta et al. (2004)

Description

This function is meant for quadrupedal mass estimates (in particularly sauropod dinosaurs) and offers some of the body mass prediction equations published by Mazzetta et al. (2004) derived from volumetric reconstructions of sauropod dinosaurs

Usage

MCF2004(X, eqn, data = NULL)

Arguments

X

a value or vector representing the variable in the equation (in mm)

eqn

a character specifying the desired prediction equation (see Details)

data

an optional object of class = "data.frame" or class = "matrix"

Details

Possible equations (eqn =) include: femur length ("FL"), modified femur length ("FL*"), femur circumference ("FC"), tibia length ("TL"), and tibia circumference ("TC"). See Mazzetta et al. (2004) for specific details and Campione & Evans (2020) for evaluations of the models. If a data object is specified, the mass estiamtes will be added as a column to the data.frame or matrix within that object.

Value

MCF2004

A numeric value or vector representing the mass estimate(s) in grams

Author(s)

Nicolas E. Campione

References

Mazzetta, G. V., Christiansen, P. and Farina, R. A. (2004) Giants and bizzares: body size of some southern South American Cretaceous dinosaurs. Historical Biology, 16, 71-83.

Campione, N. E. and Evans, D. C. (2020) The accuracy and precisions of body mass estimation in non-avian dinosaurs. Biological Reviews.

See Also

QE quadrupeds MR AHR1985

Examples

##Quadrupedal dinosaurs
data(dinos)
MCF2004(dinos$FC, eqn = "FC", data = dinos)