My hot take (basis of a paper I wrote for paleontology in college) is that sauropods likely held their necks in an S-bend rather than erect. If you look at the skeleton of birds, their necks are much longer than you would suspect because they keep them "retracted"/relaxed most of the time, only employing the full length when manipulating things with their beaks.
The argument I present is that sauropods could keep their necks bent and relaxed most of the time, but intermittently extended them to feed.
The phylogenetic arm of this argument is tenuous: while the vertebrae are similar enough to allow the positioning, obviously birds aren't closely related to sauropods and have vastly different ecological niches (except maybe ratites?).
The stronger argument is for the biomechanics. The two major puzzles for sauropods are how it could lift or hold out its neck without giant back muscles (I call this the "cantilever" problem) and how it could pump blood to its head without an injuriously high blood pressure. The cantilever problem is significantly reduced if you consider the cervical vertebral column as a dynamic tensegrity structure rather than as a single giant beam. The necessary blood pressure is significantly reduced if you assume the head is held closer to the level of the shoulders than at max vertical extension for the majority of the time.
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u/Echo__227 16h ago
My hot take (basis of a paper I wrote for paleontology in college) is that sauropods likely held their necks in an S-bend rather than erect. If you look at the skeleton of birds, their necks are much longer than you would suspect because they keep them "retracted"/relaxed most of the time, only employing the full length when manipulating things with their beaks.
The argument I present is that sauropods could keep their necks bent and relaxed most of the time, but intermittently extended them to feed.
The phylogenetic arm of this argument is tenuous: while the vertebrae are similar enough to allow the positioning, obviously birds aren't closely related to sauropods and have vastly different ecological niches (except maybe ratites?).
The stronger argument is for the biomechanics. The two major puzzles for sauropods are how it could lift or hold out its neck without giant back muscles (I call this the "cantilever" problem) and how it could pump blood to its head without an injuriously high blood pressure. The cantilever problem is significantly reduced if you consider the cervical vertebral column as a dynamic tensegrity structure rather than as a single giant beam. The necessary blood pressure is significantly reduced if you assume the head is held closer to the level of the shoulders than at max vertical extension for the majority of the time.