RE: Blood pressure in Sauropoda

["Tracy L. Ford" <dino.hunter@home.com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-dinosaur@usc.edu [mailto:owner-dinosaur@usc.edu]On Behalf Of
Graydon
Sent: Monday, December 31, 2001 4:21 PM
To: Dinonet
Subject: Re: Blood pressure in Sauropoda

On Mon, Dec 31, 2001 at 12:14:07PM -0800, Tracy L. Ford scripsit:
[sauropod necks]
> I wanted to check and see if they were right. I used Gilmore?s Apatosaurus
> monograph and drew each individual cervical and lined it up with the next,
> and guess what, the front of the neck turns DOWN!!! So they are right.
Just
> because WE perceive something as being wrong, doesn?t mean it was. We see
a
> long neck and automatically think the animal HAD to be eating from a high
> tree, not so.

If you're a sauropod who rears up and braces your forefeet on the
metasequoia to get at the high leaves, what do you want your neck to
curve like?


Simple, you DON"T rear up! Rearing sauropods IMHO is a myth. Too much
strain. I was talking to someone earlier this year and he was telling me
about an engineer/ amateur paleontologist (who doesn't get much respect in
the paleo world because he doesn't have a Phd, kind of like me :) ), any
who, he was working on this problem and said that sauropods would break
their femur if they did. A local zoo had an elephant break its femur when it
reared up, and he told them exactly where it happened on the femur! Another
problem is the neck; it's in the way if it leaned on the trunk. Take a toy
sauropod and place the nose to the tree, rear it up then look at the
distance between the two. The sauropod would have to WALK bipedally (which
they just may have, like a theropod, not reared up) to lean up against the
tree. Why have a long neck and short legs, why not have a shorter neck and
longer legs?
It's the conception that it has a long neck so it has to eat from treetops!
No other explanation! Right...
I think this is getting close to my limit for today.

Tracy L. Ford
P. O. Box 1171
Poway Ca  92074