[Mr. Jeeves]

It is now believed that sauropods didn’t and couldn’t raise their heads way up like the illustration shows - they kept their necks more parallel to the ground.

[NCC-1701]

We had a FReeper named sauropod. You think this article would interest him/her?

[chaosagent]

"It is now believed that sauropods didn’t and couldn’t raise their heads way up like the illustration shows - they kept their necks more parallel to the ground." ___________________________________________________________________

Can we assume then that you didn't read the entire article where this was covered?

The only way to keep the required blood pressure "reasonable," Dodson goes on to add, is "if sauropods fed with the neck extended just a little above heart level, say from ground level up to fifteen feet..." One problem with this solution is that the good leaves were, in all likelihood, above the 20-foot mark; an ultrasaur that could not raise its head above 20 feet would probably starve. Dodson, it should also be noted, entirely neglects the dilemma of the brachiosaur. And there is another problem, which is worse. Try holding your arm out horizontally for even a few minutes, and then imagine your arm being 40 feet long.

Given a scale model and a weight figure for the entire dinosaur, it is possible to use volume-based techniques to estimate weight for a sauropod's neck. An ultrasaur is generally thought to be a near cousin -- if not simply a very large specimen -- of the brachiosaur. The technique, then, is to measure the volume of water which the sauropod's neck (severed at the shoulders and filled with bondo or autobody putty) displaces, versus the volume which the entire brachiosaur displaces, and simply extrapolate to the 360,000-pound figure for the ultrasaur. I did this using a Larami Corporation model of a brachiosaur, which is to scale. To make a long story short, the neck weighs 28,656 pounds, and the center of gravity of that neck is 15 feet from the shoulders, the neck itself being 38 feet long. This equates to 429,850 foot-pounds of torque.

If we assume the sauropod could lift its head at least as easily as a human with an 18-inch neck can move his head against a neck- exercise machine set to 130 pounds, then the sauropod would require the muscular strength of a neck 17.4 feet in diameter. With a more reasonable assumption of effort, equivalent to the human using a 50-pound setting, the sauropod would require a neck of over 20 feet in 10 diameter. But the sauropod's neck, at its widest, apparently measured about ten feet by seven feet where it joined the shoulders, then narrowed rapidly to about six or seven feet in diameter over the remainder of its length. McGowan and others claim that the head and neck were supported by a dorsal ligament and not muscles, but we know of no living creature using ligaments to support a body structure which its available musculature cannot sustain. In all likelihood, sauropods, in our gravity at least, could neither hold their heads up nor out.

[Swordmaker]

It is now believed that sauropods didn’t and couldn’t raise their heads way up like the illustration shows - they kept their necks more parallel to the ground.

You still have the problem of how a 180 ton (360,000 lbs) animal can even stand up... much less walk, eat, make little sauropods... that would be something to see.

Then, what is the evolutionary advantage to having a 40 foot, horizontal neck? How does our beasty swallow his forage? Conveyer belt throat? Peristalsis can only do so much... A shorter neck would make more sense unless it was evolved to reach high food.

[editor-surveyor]

"It is now believed that sauropods didn’t and couldn’t raise their heads way up like the illustration shows - they kept their necks more parallel to the ground."

Resolve the forces; that would exacerbate their problem greatly.