supersaurus tail thingy

["Scott Hartman" <scott_hartman@hotmail.com>]

All,
    It's only been a few hours and I've had two questions about the "plume" 
at the end of the tail on the _supersaurus_.  The anatomy in question is a 
"popper."  As many of you know, Nathan Myhrvold and Phil Currie did a 
simulation that suggested that diplodocids could crack their tails, breaking 
the sound barrier at the tip.  In that same paper they suggested that some 
sort of "popper" would greatly increase the amount of kinetic energy 
released.  The idea of sound as a weapon intrigued me, and since I was 
speculating that a row of Czerkas-Diplodicus like keratin spines were 
running down the midline, I simply exaggerated the last one into a 
functional popper.
    This is of course speculative, so I'll give full permission for 
dissenters to bring the file into Photoshop and remove the offending popper 
if they like ;)

Scott

P.S.  If this spawns a thread on the subject, can we title it "Popper and 
the post-modernists..."
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com