Re: Centripetal Forces on a Horizontally Grazing Sauropoda

[Graydon <oak@uniserve.com>]

On Tue, Apr 13, 2004 at 11:21:48PM +0200, David Marjanovic scripsit:
> > And I would not rule out a primitive lung in the head that would
> > provided CO2/O2 exchange across the bladder membrane with or without
> > a second one in the chest.
> 
> But I would -- due to the rather pathetic size of the head. A neck
> full of air, yes, but a lung in the head, no.

Just like the 'bladder' can be the blood vessels of the neck, you could
do that with gas exchange surfaces in the pneumatic neck vertebrae
toward the head end, or perhaps with a large, complex airflow set of
soft tissue in the nose.  (Which might help explain the diplodocid
nostril migration :)

-- 
"But how powerful, how stimulating to the very faculty which produced
it, was the invention of the adjective: no spell or incantation in
Faerie is more potent." -- "On Fairy-Stories", J.R.R. Tolkien