Re: Sauropods as seen by Dale Russell in "Dinosaur Attack"

["Leonidus A.K. Giganotosaurus" <alex@voyager.net>]

Toby White wrote:

> Wait a sec...  Is there a biomechanic in the house?  If a biped starts to
> run *without* hopping, isn't it going to fall down?  Here's the problem:
> somehow it has to get into the air for that first suspended phase.  That
> isn't going to happen by walking fast.  That's a different motion with no
> suspended phase, no?  So a biped would be forced to hop at least once if it
> is going to run at all.
>
>   --Toby White

I'm not officially trained or anything, but I study the subject. Do you hop to
go from a walk to a run? It should work the same for any standard biped.
There's no real change in gait, it's still left-right-left-right, just at a
longer stride and increased rate.

I think you're thinking of running from a dead stop, yes, there would have to
be an extended step to get the enertia going, but aside from that, no hopping.
In this, they're refering in changes of gait, like from walking or trotting to
galloping, where the correlation of leg-motion changes, in a quadruped.

Unless we've been wrong for years, and those quadrupedal megalosaurs are back
in style, I'd say there's no bipedal hopping. ;)

--
Leonidus
alex@voyager.net
Shyrrokar: http://www.geocities.com/Shyrrokar/