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re: thoughts on sauropod necks
darren.naish@port.ac.uk said:
>Sauropod vertebrae and sauropod necks would have been incredibly
>light when not fossilised. It is reasonable to think that one could
>actually pick up a very big _Brachiosaurus_ cervical vert with one
>hand. I was thinking two hands, but Per Christiansen (an expert in
>mathematical models of scaling in tetrapods) reckoned otherwise when
>I recently spoke to him at a conference.
I'll agree with this. Have you ever seen smaller whale vertebrae? They are
pretty big, and are easily hefted with a hand or two. I'm not saying that
sauropod cervicals are anything like whale verts- but size can be deceiving!
The bone on the cervical I'm working on is only about 1/8" thick in places. I
could lift it with one hand if it was fresh. The weight of the neck would come
from the impressive muscles, not the bone.
This is a thread I'm enjoying quite a bit, even if I lurk most of the time...
-Sherry Michael
ANSP