Contrary to popular theories among anthropologists

May 27, 2009 14:40 GMT  ·  By
A new study shows that sauropods preferred keeping their heads up high, rather than stretched parallel to the ground
   A new study shows that sauropods preferred keeping their heads up high, rather than stretched parallel to the ground

According to the most recent scientific investigations into the bone structure of sauropod dinosaurs, a class that includes the brontosaur, the prehistoric animals did not bear their heads on an axis parallel to the ground, like depicted in many fossil arrangements or movies. They actually seem to have preferred holding their heads up high, University of Portsmouth expert Mike Taylor, who has spent a lot of time studying the vertebrae of living animals and comparing them with those of species long since extinct, argues. The dinosaurs the new study is referring to lived more than 150 million years ago.

Taylor, who has also led the team of experts that analyzed the bone fragments of several dinosaurs, adds that museums needn't rush to reposition the heads of their fossils anytime soon. There is more than one way of reconstructing a fossil, and, at some point, all research teams must accept the truth that they simply have too little data to draw a final conclusion. The expert shares that the diplodocus could have used any type of position while resting, and that the existing depictions are not necessarily wrong.

“The diplodocus in the main hall vestibule of the Natural History Museum is in a perfectly good posture. It's one within a whole range of movement that would have been entirely possible,” Dr. Taylor tells the BBC News in an interview. For the new research, the scientist and his team analyzed ten different vertebrate groups, studying them with X-rays, so as to get a better view of what their possible array of movement might have been. At the end of the study, the expert assessed the usual stance of sauropods as being very similar to that employed by modern-day giraffes, which keep their head completely vertical.

In the case of the diplodocus, however, holding its head high would have made the animal at least 15 meters (roughly 47 feet) high, as high as a two-story building. “Our approach was embarrassingly straightforward,” Dr. Taylor explains. “We looked at real animals, and at the whole animal,” the expert says of the investigation methods. “It's largely in recent years that this view has changed. But we can be confident that they held their heads upright.”

The main issue with having such a large body, anthropologists argue, is that the animals would have most likely experienced heart problems at one point in their lives, which may have potentially been fatal. Pumping blood up to such an impressive height, with sufficient power to irrigate the brain, was a real challenge for the organ, which was impressively large.