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The bigger they were...

Of sauropods, I queried: 
And what about the danger inherent to them tipping on land - as a
result of high winds?

On Wednesday, October 29, 2003, at 08:48 AM, David Marjanovic wrote:
IMHO they were much too heavy to worry about that. :-)

I'm thinking extremes here - cyclonic-force winds. Even if they didn't 'blow over' as a direct result, they could have been put off balance and then fallen to a crashing death.


stumbling

Why should they have been in more danger of stumbling than elephants?

Because they were often exceedingly tall and narrow, whereas elephants are rather square (not to imply they don't dig the scene...). A center-of-gravity issue. And sauros had a heckuva lot further to fall with presumably far more dire consequences.


or attack?

That risk can't have been much greater than that of a mammoth in an area
full of saber-tooth cats.

Aye, but a *heard* of mammoths would have had little to worry about if surrounded by such undesirables.


This is a very serious consideration, given the way sauropods
are currently depicted; they'd go crashing sideways to the ground
if they were so much as a few inches off balance.


I don't see that. Just as I don't see it in an elephant.

Nevertheless, elephants swim well with columnar legs.

But they don't swim for a living.

Nor am I proposing sauropods did. Just that they waded in depths sufficient to provide some buoyancy. To take a load off, as it were.


Are hippo legs too short to be considered columnar?

No, too bent. Hippo legs are "permanently flexed" like those of rhinos and
all smaller mammals except bears and humans (...and extinct dwarf elephants
:-) ).

Good-o :-) But bears and humans like wading! Do columnar legs necessarily preclude deep wading? And have sauropod legs (esp. forelimbs) been *proven* to have been straight?


Again, hippos and elephants (especially the Asian varieties).

Hippos, yes. Elephants are good swimmers, and like to swim, but don't live
in the water.

Indian Rhinos, as well as the Sumatran & Javan (if there are any left).

So far, still... but their legs aren't straight. And I wouldn't consider
them "large" when we're talking about sauropods.

Even a full-grown African elephant is but a toddler to a towering Titanosaurus.

Although I've used a few examples myself - in counterpoint - there's only so far we can reference modern/recent mammals to determine anything about dinosaur behaviour and function.

Peter Markmann
Canberra