> Dreadnought's head was probably about the size of a horse's head.
That seems pretty strange. You'd think they'd need huge mouths to eat enough food to survive.
That seems pretty strange. You'd think they'd need huge mouths to eat enough food to survive.
Maybe this was some other sort of generally less unwieldy dinosaur, except this particular specimen had some sort of gigantism disorder. Might explain why it appears the bones were continuing to grow even at that massive size, and why it became stuck.
Maybe this species continuously grows, and that conditions were just right for this one specimen to keep going past the mean age.
Sounds a little like Bean, from the Ender's Shadow series. A mutation caused him to grow indefinitely. The researchers may have missed a nominative opportunity here.
I know that feeling.
Edit: it also says on wikipedia that they slow down in adulthood, so maybe it is somewhat different http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indeterminate_growth
EDIT: Well blow me over. They most certainly were. My five year old self is hanging his head in shame.
- http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/science/12dinosaurs.html?p...
"The sauropod's neck became what the hook-and-ladder is to a firefighter: a means of extended reach that could be critical. It gave these animals an ability to graze a much wider radius of ground vegetation without moving a step."
Also, I never knew that sauropods didn't have molars. They quickly bite and swallow as much as possible, and let their immense gut break it down over many days.
How does that work? I've seen suggestions that the bones of the neck lock together to form a rigid structure, so that the whole thing is cantilevered off the shoulders and chest without muscles needing to do work to support it. But if that's the case it doesn't seem like it would be flexible, which means the animal could only graze along the circumference of a circle without moving, not the whole area in front of itself.
Were their necks flexible and muscular so that they could graze a large area without moving, or rigid and self-supporting so that they didn't need to do as much work, but had to move more to graze?
It makes me wonder if the illustration has anything to do with best scientific guess of what the thing looked like, or was just some guy who was told "hey, draw some really big dinosaur for us, okay?"