Sauropod Biomechanics
Part of the Dinosaurs: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries exhibition.
What are these unusual body parts good for? What purpose, we wonder, could they serve?
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Heads Up?
The ears of an elephant, the hump of a camel, the long necks and even longer tails of the huge, plant-eating dinosaurs called sauropods...
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Thoroughly Modern Apatosaurus
No, your eyes aren't playing tricks. This Apatosaurus louisae is steel and fiberglass, not 150-million-year-old bone.
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The Sauropod Puzzle
In 1905 the American Museum of Natural History displayed the first Apatosaurus skeleton ever assembled. Even then scientists knew...
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Cows of the Jurassic
If sauropods couldn't lift their necks high--as computer models reveal--how did they get enough to eat?
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Morphing Dinos
Computer scientist Kent Stevens gave a name to his simulation program before he'd written a line of code. "I just thought DinoMorph™...
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Who Needs Necks?
Necks are good for a lot of things: One of them is getting your head into places your whole body can't go. Sauropods had longer necks...
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The Death Pose
When found, many dinosaur fossils display a strange pose: Their necks are bent dramatically backward. Seeing this position, early...
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A Strange Tale
The hind end of a sauropod dinosaur was an amazing structure. Imagine a tail as long as a school bus. Now imagine that it weighs...
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Supersonic Sauropods
Some sauropod tails look like whips-and the resemblance may not be coincidence. Both are long, relatively broad at the base and narrow...