From: Mike Taylor <mike@tecc.co.uk>
To: kinman@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: Giant sauropod skulls
Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2001 10:49:06 +0100
> Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2001 02:59:57
> From: "Ken Kinman" <kinman@hotmail.com>
>
> Good question. I'd like to know myself what the range of skull
> length would be. It would depend somewhat on which family of
> sauropod, but about 4 feet might be a good approximation (perhaps
> one of the sauropod experts could give a range of skull lengths for
> the bigger forms).
Wow. That's big. That's _really_ big. The _Diplodocus_ at the NHM
here in London has a skull not much more than a foot long. Even given
that you can't scale isometrically and brachiosaurid heads are
proportionally larger than diplodocid heads, a factor of three or four
seems to be stretching it.
> Giraffatitan probably got up to 100 feet long, and there are
> some skulls of it known. But even if one doesn't have a skull, one
> could roughly estimate skull size from other bones.
For what its worth, Matt "Sauroposeidon" Wedel and I think others have
no truck with the _Giraffatitan_ stuff, placing _brancai_ firmly in
_Brachiosaurus_.
_/|_ _______________________________________________________________
/o ) \/ Mike Taylor | <mike@miketaylor.org.uk> | www.miketaylor.org.uk
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