Bipedal sauropods?

[tlford@ix.netcom.com (Tracy Ford )]

These darn bipedal sauropods have me to ryell'd up to sleep.

This beggers the question, why are there so many pes prints of 
sauropods with out manus prints? Because they were walking bipedally. A 
far fected notion but I think Emily Giffin is right. 

I may have given/helped her with this thought. Last year at the SVP in 
Pittsburg we were at the big socal at the Museum. We were standing 
close to the Apatosaur skeleton. Some how the topic of tripodal 
sauropods came up and I gave her my thoughts on why they couldn't have 
stood tripodal and ate from the tops of the trees. 

Lets say the Apatosaur has a 20 ft neck, and a 10 ft body that's 30 
feet from the hind legs to the tree trunk. Now, if they used their 
front feet to hold onto the tree, they would have had to stand tripodal 
and 'walk' to the tree trunk to hold on. She said she hadn't thought 
about that. Then the conversation went onto other things.

I like the bipedal 'diplodocids' and stegosaurs. If you think about it, 
balance wise, I don't think it was a problem. Do I think they stood 
tripodal and ate from the top of trees? Yes.

Oh, this is why I love paleontology, new theroies, some good, some bad, 
but always gets you thinking.

Now, I'll try and get some sleep.

Tracy