Re: Cursorial adaptations (was T.rex and elephants)

[MBell16766@aol.com]

Dear Toby, You wrote: "Dunno about a bipedal charge". I only said bipedal for
a couple of steps at the END of a charge. Crocs can move pretty quickly with
a semi-erect gait (with humerus about 45 degrees below horizontal).
 Then you ask:"is the ceratopsian neck strong enough to handle this kind of
stress?'
 Remember that over half of the ceratopsian neck vertebrae are fused. The
ceratopsian neck-skull assembly was incredibly strong.
 Here, just for fun, is a nice little sentence from William King Gregory from
1924 that appeared in _Mounted Skeleton of Triceratops elatus_by H.F.Osborn
in American Museum Novitates, No.654, 1933:"All the nearest resemblances in
the pelvis and hind limbs are with birds, not with ungulates." It's getting
close to the time when modern mythologies dealing with how dinosaurs were
originally described and interpreted should be examined.
Dan Varner.