Artist's impression of a sauropod herd with the correct (neck aloft) posture.
In 2009, a paper published online in the journal Acta Paleontologica Polonica suggests that sauropods necks were held aloft.
Dr Mike Taylor and Dr Darren Naish, of the University of Portsmouth, and Dr Matt Wedel, of Western University of Health Sciences in California have suggested in their paper that sauropods could hold their necks low, but that it was not their "habitual posture".
The team of paleontologists studied X-rays of members of 10 different vertebrate groups and found that while the neck is only gently inclined in salamanders, turtles, lizards and crocodilians, it is vertical in mammals and birds—the only modern groups that share the upright leg posture of dinosaurs.
The neck vertebrae of sauropods fit together mainly by way of ball and socket joints. In addition, the top part of each vertebra has a pair of facets, two at the front and two at the back, which glide past each other when the neck bends.
Low necked poses for sauropods have been popularized in BBC’s Walking with Dinosaurs, and to new museum exhibits such as one at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
References[]
- University of Portsmouth (2009, May 27). Giant Dinosaur Posture Is All Wrong: Sauropods Held Their Heads High, Research Finds. ScienceDaily. Retrieved May 27, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2009/05/090526213918.htm
- Michael P. Taylor, Mathew J. Wedel, and Darren Naish. Head and neck posture in sauropod dinosaurs inferred from extant animals. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, 54 (2), 2009: 213-220