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RE: could Cetiosaurus and Brachiosaurus swing their necks fast?




From: Mike Taylor <mike@indexdata.com>
Reply-To: mike@indexdata.com
To: keenir@hotmail.com
CC: dinosaur@usc.edu
Subject: could Cetiosaurus and Brachiosaurus swing their necks fast?
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2007 01:00:59 +0100

Anthony Docimo writes:
 > ie, if something grabbed them by the neck*, could the sauropods
 > move their necks side-to-side/up-and-down fast enough to
 > dislodge/hurl away the grabbing thing?
 >
 > * = no, not a large therapod....say a person, or a small maniraptor.

Possibly.  It's very hard to say.  In general, sauropods would have
been pretty careful with their necks, as they were engineered close to
their strength limits.

so, giraffe-style swinging (neck against neck) is out....what of just swinging through the air?


*has a sudden mental image of brightly colored male sauropod necks swinging through the air, each flaunting his physical fitness to the watching female sauropods*


The exception is Apatosaurus, which appears to
have had a ridiculously over-muscled neck, and is perhaps the most
likely candidate to have used its neck in intraspecific combat.

_/|_ ___________________________________________________________________
/o ) \/ Mike Taylor <mike@indexdata.com> http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\ Since Oscar Wilde's quote "There is no sin except stupidity"
is clearly stupid, we should probably consider it sinful in
deference to him.



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