Re: "Heel to Toe"

["Mickey Mortimer" <mickey_mortimer@email.msn.com>]

Ray Stanford wrote-

>    Actually, that is only true of BIPEDAL dinosaurs, and even these
>sometimes progressed (walked slowly) with the metatarsals touching the
>ground (plantigrade progression).
>
>    In quadrapedal dinosaurs, I recall no trackway evidence of the back
feet
>ever progressing in digitigrade fashion.  It might happen with some such
>dinosaurs moving at exceptionally high speeds, but I doubt it.  Of course
>the front feet in quadrapedal dinosaurs normally had the metacarpals
>elevated above the ground, except, perhaps when lying down.


Quadrupedal dinosaurs also had a digitigrade stance.  In the case of
sauropods and stegosaurs, for instance, the foot appears plantigrade because
there is a large fleshy pad underneath the metatarsus.  Actually, the
metatarsus is lifted off the ground and the dinosaur is thus digitigrade.
Other quadrupedal dinosaurs with more "normal" feet (prosauropods,
Scelidosaurus, ankylosaurs, iguanodonts, hadrosaurs, neoceratopsians) had
digitigrade feet just like their bipedal counterparts.  Also, I don't think
"heel-walking" was very common among bipedal dinosaurs, it is simply known
from a few tracks.

Mickey Mortimer