Re: Sauropoda Necks

["Jaime A. Headden" <qilongia@yahoo.com>]

Luc Bailly (aspidel@wanadoo.be) wrote:

<But what's the current thoughts about the position and the flexibility of
the neck among titanosaurs?>

  This would be easily answered if the neck was well known among
titanosaurs. The neck of *Rapetosaurus* is known almosty completely in a
juvenile and partiall in adults, plus other species. The neck varies
between species, though, including the craniocaudally short but very tall
bone sof *Titanosaurus colberti*, to the short but low verts of
saltasaurines. Simple, long, low verts resembling "cetiosaurs" appear in
various sauropods, including the basal titanosaur *Malawisaurus*, and
*Opisthocoelicaudia* has the last cervical (?) which resembles that of
*Camarasaurus*. I will venture, therefore, that titanosaurs have a good
deal of cervical variation. My posture for the neck of *T. colberti* is
available at:

  http://qilong.gq.nu/Titanosaurus_colberti.html

  The neck is only half known, as indicated in the figure 5 of that page,
and insufficiently to show spatial relationship of the bones (several are
distorted, especially so near the base of the neck).


=====
Jaime A. Headden

  Little steps are often the hardest to take.  We are too used to making leaps 
in the face of adversity, that a simple skip is so hard to do.  We should all 
learn to walk soft, walk small, see the world around us rather than zoom by it.

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