Re: T.rex and elephants

["John R. Hutchinson" <jrhutch@socrates.berkeley.edu>]

Sean Connell writes:

>And elephants can't run due to the construction of their ankles.

Do you have a reference for this? I'm working on elephant locomotory
biomechanics and have never come across a ref that corroborates that.

>We might
>not be able to say with certainty HOW FAST theropods were or HOW STRONG
>their legs were, but can anybody look at an elephant's legs and hips in
>comparison to those of _Tyrannosaurus_ and say that the theropod wasn't
>the faster of the the two?

Well, I can't. For one, elephants amble (not run; different gait and
different mechanics) on four legs, not two. I don't have the ref to support
this, but I think it's farily safe to say that most of their weight is
supported on their forelimbs, too. I don't find it easy to compare
theropods and elephants in terms of anatomy, although the overall hindlimb
mechanics of large theropods and elephants might be similar, who knows?

                        John R. Hutchinson
                 Department of Integrative Biology
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