|
Hello.
Quadrupedal mammals have most of their mass
supported by their forelimbs. Thanks to this, their center of mass is fell
forward of the hips, and when the animal runs, the force resulting from the
interaction between the hindlimbs and ground that goes through the center of
mass has a relatively long horizontal component, which is good from the point of
running.
However, dinosaurs have most of their mass
supported by their hindlegs. It is pretty obvious that this has to be so in the
bipedal forms, but this is also true of the quadrupedal ones. I wonder why.
Wouldn't it have been better for the four-limbed herbivores to have their center
of mass farther forward?
It has been proposed that the peculiar distribution
of mass in herbivorous dinosaurs was due to their descent from bipedal forms.
However, it doesn't seem very plausible to me that this would have kept them
from evolving into more efficient forms. So, probably they were already just as
efficient as quadrupedal mammals. But how could this be?
Henri Rönkkö
|