>I wonder if we can distinguish between gait and posture?
>So if all Ostrom did was to show that the pectoral girdle was consistent
>with a sprawled posture (say), then one could speculate that such a
>posture was used - but NOT while the animals were busy laying down
>trackways.
does to me.....
However, as shown with sumos (;]), the heavier an animal is, the
resting posture is closer to the posture of it's regular gait (or,
conversely, the regular gait is not that different from it's resting
posture), since this tends to save energy when starting and stopping
motion. So a ceratopian dinosaur would probably not do lots of weight
shifting in order to go from it's standing posture to it's walking
posture, as that tends to be more energy expensive. Unlkess it was
truly motivated, of course. Could if it wanted to.
If you had a multi-ton, 4 legged chicken (think of the drumsticks),
it would probably be lazy as all get-out about this sort of thing.
They stand, they walk, but they probably wouldn't do a splay-to-stand
on a regular basis. The leverage needed to make a splay become a
tucked-under looks pretty awkward, but maybe they got special channels
on the humerous and femur which could slide from one position to the
other easier, I don't know.
-Betty
PS (Stan, your website and e-mail don't even show up on my Netscape
stuff at all. They ignore your elsegundoca. address)