On Thu, 10 Feb 2011, Habib, Michael wrote:
On Feb 10, 2011, at 2:16 PM, Don Ohmes wrote:
On 2/10/2011 12:34 PM, Raptorial Talon wrote:
[...]
There's the rub, though - I was just looking at some large theropod
specimens today, along with an adult Apatosaurus louisae (the
holotype, actually). Even if the teeth are imbedded all the way to
their base, it's not altogether clear if they'd get deep enough to
hit the primary vessels. The vertebral aa. are encased in bone, and
the carotids were probably located in a ventral location and encased
in a carotid groove (as in birds) surrounded by muscle. Veins might
be in the line of fire, but the pressure in the veins would not be
that excessive; the blood is basically just dripping back via
gravitational acceleration at that point, minus the resistance of the
vessel walls. The idea of a bite to the neck may seem intuitively
catastrophic, but a number of thick-necked vertebrates use them as
weapons (giraffes and pinnipeds for example). That's anecdotal, but I
think we need to be careful not to assume that a
What about the windpipe and suffocation?
[...]