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Dinosaurs Doing The Backfloat

Posted by timothy on from the see-you-in-bermuda dept.

Meshach writes "The Globe and Mail has an interesting article about how the scientific community is becoming convinced that dinosaurs were able to float. This helps to explain how creatures of such huge mass were able to spread around the world."

2 of 32 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Correct me if I'm wrong... by eggstasy · · Score: 3, Informative

    Pangaea broke up around 200 million years ago, and dinosaurs appeared around 210 million years ago, so only the very earliest of dinosaurs were around to see it happen, considering that they were around for another 135 million years after that.
    I'd hate like hell for anyone to be misinformed ;)

  2. Re:They could walk all right by Mirk · · Score: 2, Informative
    Dinosaur locomotion has been one of the big research areas in vertebrate palaeontology for decades, and it's not going to go away any time soon! I don't think you'd find any informed scientist today claiming that any dinosaur was obliged to live in water (as used to be a claimed of the sauropods twenty or thirty years ago), but exactly how athletic they were on land is still controversial.

    One camp, vocally led by Bob Bakker and Greg Paul, claims that most dinosaurs (including Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops) were capable of fast motion, of the order of 40mph (72khm), and it is of course this group that's influenced the dinosaurs in the Jurassic Park movies.

    Another, probably larger, group argues instead that the locomotory performance of most dinosaurs was more like that of elephants than rhinos, with T. rex for example capable of a fast walk but not a true run.

    The evidence is equivocal. rex knees seem to be built in such a way that they were permanently flexed in life, which is a running adaptation, but John Hutchison's study last year appeared to show that the animal would need 70% of its entire body-weight in leg muscles in order to run.

    It's a fascinating area, and everyone ought to study it! I particularly recommend starting with R. McNeill Alexander's very approachable book, Dynamics of Dinosaurs and other exinct giants Buy at amazon.com Buy at amazon.co.uk

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