Re: Theropod posture-in-motion article

[Dann Pigdon <dannj@alphalink.com.au>]

bh480@scn.org wrote:
> 
> From: Ben Creisler bh480@scn.org
> In case nobody's mentioned this, a new view of theropod
> posture and motion is discussed at:
> 
> http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/DailyNews/dinosu
> it010827.html
> 
> This topic was also discussed in the on-line news section
> of Science magazine last week, but you need a subscription
> to read it.
> http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2001/820/
> 2
> 
> Haven't seen the Journal of Experimental Biology yet,
> though.

To be honest, this research (if it can be called that) seems full of
holes. How can a human body, no matter how many weights and bits of
lumber are strapped to it, ever mimic the stresses felt by a theropod?
You'd have to have major surgery to alter the way the leg muscles attach
to the pelvis, and to restrict the range of motion of the knees and
ankles. A human, who has walked in a certain way most of their life,
straps on some hardware and declares "ooh... this feels weird. They
mustn't have done it this way" after only a few hours or days. It must
be so!

Now, if the subjects had radically different skeletal and muscle
structures, and had lived their entire lives as a one-man-hardware
store, perhaps then...



-- 
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Dann Pigdon                   Australian Dinosaurs:
GIS Archaeologist           http://www.geocities.com/dannsdinosaurs
Melbourne, Australia        http://www.alphalink.com.au/~dannj/
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