| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
An Apatosaurus worthy of All Yesterdays
A few months ago, Matt and Darren saw a picture someone had done of an Apatosaurus with huge neck-flaps. Since they, they’ve tried to find it again but without success. Then, happily, I stumbled across it in this All Yesterdays review, so here it is:
Unfortunately, I can’t tell you much about it. I know it’s the work of Emiliano Troco, but I’ve not been able to find his web-site, nor a description of the piece, nor a version in a decent resolution. So all we have to go on at the moment is this thumbnail. If you know more, please leave a comment!
Is it credible? Who’s to say? The one thing we know for certain about Apatosaurus is that it had truly crazy cervical vertebrae, unlike those of any other animal. In our recent arXiv paper, we wrote:
It is difficult to see the benefit in Apatosaurus excelsus of cervical ribs held so far below the centrum – an arrangement that seems to make little sense from any mechanical perspective, and may have to be written off as an inexplicable consequence of sexual selection or species recognition.
It certainly seems to have been doing something weird with its neck. It’s no obvious why big flaps like these would require honking great cervicals ribs to hang down from, but maybe it was swinging them around or something?
[We've featured bizarrely ornamented sauropods here before, notably Brian Engh's pouch-throated Sauroposeidon.]
2012-12-11 17:03:20
Source: http://svpow.com/2012/12/11/an-apatosaurus-worthy-of-all-yesterdays/
Source:
