On Feb 10, 2011, at 2:16 PM, Don Ohmes wrote:
On 2/10/2011 12:34 PM, Raptorial Talon wrote:
[...]
There's the rub, though - I was just looking at some large theropod
specimens today, along with an adult Apatosaurus louisae (the holotype,
actually). Even if the teeth are imbedded all the way to their base,
it's not altogether clear if they'd get deep enough to hit the primary
vessels. The vertebral aa. are encased in bone, and the carotids were
probably located in a ventral location and encased in a carotid groove
(as in birds) surrounded by muscle. Veins might be in the line of fire,
but the pressure in the veins would not be that excessive; the blood is
basically just dripping back via gravitational acceleration at that
point, minus the resistance of the vessel walls. The idea of a bite to
the neck may seem intuitively catastrophic, but a number of thick-necked
vertebrates use them as weapons (giraffes and pinnipeds for example).
That's anecdotal, but I think we need to be careful not to assume that a