Re: Mesozoic Meanderings #2 third printing

["Nicholas R. Longrich" <longrich@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>]

        An engineer handed me an article from an architecture course on 
analyzing skeletons of animals with architectural and structural 
engineering principles in mind. I didn't get very far, but it explained 
about I-beams, and then it occurred to me that the centra on apatosaurus 
vertebrae look sort of like I-beams if you look at them in cross section 
facing towards the head or tail, with those big pleurocoels coming in 
from the left and right. The piece was taken from D'Arcy Thompson, who 
explained the structure of the I-beam along the lines that most of the 
stress endured in a beam is at the top, under compression, and at the 
bottom, under tension, and that the middle portion doesn't really do as 
much for strength. Very interesting, I'm hoping I'll actually get 'round 
to reading the whole thing. 

        -nick L.