Re: rearing sauropods

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

Just commenting on the "Brachiosaurs as vertical-necked sauropods" thingy.
While I have not seen the paper yet, I can almost certainly say that based
on several posterior cervicals, brachiosaurids could not have had vertical
necks based only on a line of evidence like structural compression zones
in the centra. There are too many variables not looked at. Such
compression can occur from torsion [twisting] of the cervical verts,
though in a different style. I am looking at another possibility. It is
unlikely, without assuming that dynamically unstable and supportable
pressure in the neck of such a vertical necked animal is improbable
without drawing lines of data for which no support can be possibly found
without finding a lagerstätten-lain brachiosaur neck that preserved
portions of the soft-tissue à la Santana Fm. preservation of
*Santanaraptor.* This means, venal valves, multiple hearts, etc., are
beyond science's present ability to test. Pure and idle speculation.
Though I thinks it's healthy to speculate such, not so to use this data to
support scientific hypotheses. The tests have not been done on brachiosaur
necks to determine morphology and form of the cervical series related to
one another.

  _my_ two cents,


=====
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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