Dinosaur Posture Still Wrong, Says Study

An anonymous reader sends along a piece in Cosmos about new dissension to the current prevailing wisdom on dinosaur posture. The researchers admit that blood pressure presents an unresolved obstacle to their model of dinosaur heads held high. "The current depiction of the way giant sauropod dinosaurs held their necks is probably wrong, says a new study. 'For the last decade the reigning paradigm in palaeontology has been that the big sauropod dinosaurs held their necks out straight and their heads down low,' said co-author Matt Wedel, who researches biomechanics at the Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, California. But 'our research [now] suggests that this view of sauropods is simply incorrect, based on everything we know about living animals,' he said." The researchers worried that some other team might beat them to publication, so obvious did they consider their methodology of looking at living animals to gain insight into the biomechanics of extinct ones.

Comments

Two Things

[eldavojohn]

Why are we arguing over which position was the default when it's entirely possible that they utilized both positions. Down low for traveling to avoid blood pressure problems and up high for brief states of alert or reaching high food sources? With the flexibility of the vertebrae, I would assume the animal would use it however it most suited them for the time being.

The other thing is how much do we know about the tissues and proteins that made up muscles and blood in Sauropods? Is it possible that they were much stronger or their blood had different properties making it capable of overcoming the blood pressure problem?

I've seen exhibits that portray them both ways. You just might have to accept that you're never going to know for sure ...

... until you CLONE THEM!

*starts humming the Jurrasic Park theme song with a creepy grin on his face*

Re:TFA Is slashdotted

[Captain Hook]

But having a 15 ft long neck which is held horizontal means you can browse a 30ft wide path without moving (or perhaps while moving slowly in one direction), the energy saving for being able to browse a large swath of ground without moving must be large when you weight a few tonnes.