Re: Gallery and Commentary for Copenhagen Mamenchisaurus

[Graydon <oak@uniserve.com>]

On Wed, Jun 23, 2004 at 09:38:13PM +0100, Mike Taylor scripsit:
> The other thing about keystoned cervicals, of course, is that if they
> do exist then they make it hard to _lower_ the neck, which is clearly
> necessary for drinking.

But drinking is not clearly necessary; many animals with adaptations for
coping with aridity manage to get all their water from their food.

> So keystoning would ease the adoption of
> elevated postures at the expense of making other postures more
> difficult to adopt.  This is an adaptation that would only seem to
> make sense in animals that kept their necks elevated for the great
> majority of the time.

If your primary sensory mechanism is visual -- and that seems likely with
sauropods -- and you're a high browser, you may not have any reason to
lower your neck.

-- 
"But how powerful, how stimulating to the very faculty which produced
it, was the invention of the adjective: no spell or incantation in
Faerie is more potent." -- "On Fairy-Stories", J.R.R. Tolkien