“The sum of evolutionary evidence is thoroughly damning. In nearly every modification of the evolutionary process made in the duckbills as they developed from their dryosaur ancestors, the duckbills suffered a diminution of their swimming potential. Their fore- and hind paws became shorter and more compact, not longer and more widely spread. Their tails got weaker and stiffer. Far from being the best, the duckbills must have been the clumsiest and slowest swimmers in all the Dinosauria. If pressed, they probably could paddle slowly from one riverbanck to another. The central theme of their bodily evolution was indeed specialized - orthodox theory was right on that point - but the direction of specialization was landward. These dinosaurs were specialized for a totally terrestrial existence.”

— Robert T. Bakker , book The Dinosaur Heresies

The Dinosaur Heresies: A Revolutionary View of Dinosaurs (1986), Longman Scientific & Technical, p. 154-155
The Dinosaur Heresies (1986)

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Robert T. Bakker 30

American paleontologist 1945

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“Duckbills were supposedly croc-style swimmers, moving by strong, easy, side-to-side flexures of their tail. Therefore, the optimal design would feature vertical tail spines. But duckbill spines all slanted strongly backward, exactly as in land-living lizards, not in swimmers.
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Robert T. Bakker book The Dinosaur Heresies

The Dinosaur Heresies: A Revolutionary View of Dinosaurs (1986), Longman Scientific & Technical, p. 160-161
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