Re: *Brachiosaurus* labyrinth paper...

[mike@miketaylor.org.uk (Mike Taylor)]

> Date: Fri, 01 Jul 2005 16:12:24 +0200
> From: David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>
> 
>> However, his method (actually Preuschoft's)
> 
> Yep -- Preuschoft, no later than 1976. <rant>In German, in a
> ?journal called (translated) "Essays and speeches of the
> Nature-Researching Society of Senckenberg", so it was probably
> published irregulary. In other words, hardly anyone can ever have
> read it.</rant>

Yes; as a lover of sauropods I always find it distressing that
Janensch (a German-speaker) had the best sauropod of all time, and
Salgado and his buddies (Spanish-speaking Argentines) have the best
selection of new specimens.  That said, Salgado, Coria and friends
seem to be publishing more and more in English now, for which I will
be eternally grateful.  (I will buy them all beers if I ever meet them
:-)

> > depends on what seems like a very questionable assumption, namely
> > that the habitual posture of an animal's neck is the one that most
> > nearly equalises the stress exerted on the intervertebral discs.
> > I can't for the life of me see why this should be true.  If a
> > useful posture entails more stress on intervertebral joint A than
> > on B, the animal is hardly likely for that reason to favour a
> > posture in which the stress on B is _increased_ to match that on
> > A.
> 
> Surely the assumption is that the habitual posture should be the one
> with minimal stress everywhere? At least that's how I read Christian
> & Heinrich 1998.

Nope -- if you try to minimise stress all the way along the neck, you
just end up with a vertical neck, as the stress of longitudinal
compression is much less than that of bending.

 _/|_    ___________________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor  <mike@miketaylor.org.uk>  http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  "I have challenged the entire quality assurance team to a
         Bat-Leth contest.  They will not concern us again." -- Klingon
         Programming Mantra

--
Listen to free demos of soundtrack music for film, TV and radio
        http://www.pipedreaming.org.uk/soundtrack/