Tsintaosaurus - the 'flat nose' dinosaur that wasn't

Hopefully, most of you will already be aware that Tsintaosaurus has a new, far more dignified look, with its unfortunate unicorn horn replaced by a far more elegant affair reminiscent of other lambeosaurine hadrosaurs. This is thanks to Albert Prieto-Márquez and Jonathan Wagner, in a paper published in PLOS ONE (so it's free, free, free! To view). Jaime Headden has already written a blog post on the subject, which is a must-read if you haven't done so already, and he mentions the prevalence of the 'cock-'n'-balls' meme, as popularised by John Sibbick and others.

However, while most reconstructions of Tsintaosaurus over the years have stuck firmly with the phallic look, there was a brief period back in the '90s when an alternative was proposed - namely, that that big pointy bone actually lay flat along the animal's snout in life. Palaeoart featuring this alternative, shall we say, flaccid Tsintaosaurus is rather rarer, which inspired me to once again dig out my copies of Dinosaurs! magazine, where the idea received a richly illustrated airing.