Re: Gallery and Commentary for Copenhagen Mamenchisaurus

[Mike Taylor <mike@indexdata.com>]

> Date: Mon, 21 Jun 2004 20:20:48 -0400
> From: "Dr. Darrin T. Milne B.Sc., D.C." <dr.milne@sympatico.ca>
> 
> Thanks for the pics of this incredible creature.

My pleasure.

> I am not in the field, in fact, I am a chiropractor. I am curious as
> to the positioning of this dinosaur's neck in these photos. Did it
> really extend horizontally so, or was this simply an easier way of
> assembling and displaying the Mamenchisaurus? I cannot fathom the
> forces required to hold the neck in this position for long periods
> of time.

Astonishing, isn't it?  This to me is the central question of
... well, all science :-)  But we know that this critter _could_ hold
its neck horizontally, because even if it typically held its head
higher, it would have had to move through the horizontal posture to
get into drinking position and back.  Somehow, then, it did it, but
exactly how is a very open research question -- especially for the
specific sauropod in question, which combines an absurdly long neck
with very short neural spines, so that the dorsal tension members
would have had little leverage to work with.

If you're interested in sauropod neck posture (and who isn't? :-)
you'll probably enjoy Stevens and Parrish's 1999 _Science_ paper,
freely available at
        http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/284/5415/798.pdf
which modeled the range of neck movement in _Diplodocus_ and
_Apatosaurus_ assuming that the zygapophysed could disarticulate by
about 50%, and reached the conclusion that both genera probably spent
most of the lives with their necks more or less horizontal.

 _/|_    _______________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor  <mike@indexdata.com>  http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  I'll figure out the details later ...

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