Re: dinosaur humps

["Jaime A. Headden" <qilongia@yahoo.com>]

Meor Hakif wrote:

<hadrosaurs have tall neural spines, and it seems that
their bodies were also a bit flattend from side to
side to wild boar...maybe the flat body is an
adaptation to living in a forested area, making moving
around a lot easier?>

  This would not be a likely possibility, for while
the neural spines, and the body form, is narrow
relatively height, this neural spines are covering
laterally in a lattice of stiffening braces of the
vertebrae, ossified tendons, or just plain
rostrocaudal (fore/aft) expansion of the neural spines
so that any lateral movement was reduced to almost
nil. The most movement apparent in the ornithopodan
vertebral column, and Mike Brett-Surman, Jon Wagner,
or Pete Buchholz may correct me on this, was in the
distal tail (and this is decidedly little, I'm sure)
or neck.

  Some taxa have reduced the apparent stiffening
braces, while others are extensively stiffened, so
different functions can be hypothesized for them.
Something that is being looked in on, by the way, but
certainly not be me. (I get to play with beaks.)


=====
Jaime "James" A. Headden

"Come the path that leads us to our fortune."

Qilong---is temporarily out of service.
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