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To: Swordmaker
Bad as the calculations involving muscle capabilities appear to be for dinosaurs, the question of torque on their necks looks worse. A giraffe barely gets blood to his head with a neck just under 20' long. A big sauropod's neck could easily have gone to 50' or 60' and scientists are agreed they could not have held them upwards since the heart needed to get blood to their brains wouldn't even fit inside their bodies. Nonetheless if they held them outwards as is being suggested, they would face (in our present world at least) an unbelievable problem with torque. A big sauropod's neck could easily have weighed 30K - 40K lbs and if the center of gravity of that neck was 20' out from the shoulders, you'd be looking at most of a million foot pounds of torque and a requirement to hold that 24/7 with with muscle and sinew.

Nothing in normal experience is ballpark for that sort of a torque figure; that would be roughly ballpark for the combined maximum torque of all of the engines of a large WW-II battleship or one of our largest modern carriers, i.e. the torque needed to drive a 55,000 ton ship through the water at 30 - 35 knots.

35 posted on 03/21/2008 6:30:58 AM PDT by jeddavis
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To: jeddavis

There has been some suggestion that these giant plant eaters were aquatic. In that case, the water would have supported much of the weight.


240 posted on 04/02/2008 1:33:28 PM PDT by MediaMole
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