Sauropods walk, skeletons talk Part 1

in #life7 years ago

The following is an article I have written on what the skeletal record can tell us about dinosaur behaviors. It will be written here in several parts with citations at the bottom of each.

Examination of giant long-necked dinosaurs (sauropods) challenges many perspectives. An animal that dragged its tail on the ground should routinely leave a tail drag within fossilized trackways, but tail drag impressions are rare. Skeletons provide additional information. Select areas of the tail in some sauropod specimens have vertebrae fused to one another, as noted in this National Museum of Natural History diplodocus exhibit speciman shown below. (Rothschild and Berman 1991). The fusion occurs at a specific location in the proximal caudal vertebrae, approximately two-sevenths of the distance down the tail from the hip (sacrum). sauropod fused spine.jpg This specific location is noteworthy, as mechanically it would strengthen that area of the tail as a buttress. Civil engineers tell us that cantilevered structures require buttressing approximately two-sevenths of the distance from their main attachment (analagous to the sacrum in sauropods). This buttressing through fused caudal vertebrae is present in half of Diplodocus and Apatosaurus skeletons examined, and they could not have dragged their tails. Sauropods are now illustrated with tails extending aloft horizontally in line with the sacrum.

Rothschild, B. M. and Berman, D. S. 1991 Fusion of caudal vertebrae in Late Jurassic sauropods. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 11:29-36.

Coming in Part 2: Translating the skeleton

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The @OriginalWorks bot has determined this post by @dinodoc to be original material and upvoted it!

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What is this OriginalWorks?

I'm sending this as a comment instead of a post because I want to make sure you get this individually because I know everyone doesn't read all my posts. (and I forgive you ;)

I'm sure I missed many friends, but I listed the ones that I found on several of my links that I feel that I have a connection to. This IS a personal message to each of you individually, (but that is a lot of typing and I didn't want to be insincere and copy and paste to each of you either). lol... I hope you read it because I wanted to bring it to your attention personally. As always if you have any questions, just ask me I'm here to help!

Hey @dinodoc you might want to try to use @bumper to learn how it works. Its really easy to do and I've done it 63 times now over 4 days and I've been thrilled. It is an upvote service that is designed to help us smaller guys/gals leverage our money in our wallets to gain power and also to multiply our money.

What happens is you send @bumper in from 0.10 SBD to 0.50 SBD (SBD is "steem dollars" in your wallet) and then the a recent post URL of an article that you want them to upvote (3 days old or newer). Hint: you just open your post that you want upvoted and go to the url bar and copy the whole link and paste it into the comment section when you send @bumper the SBD. To do this go to the wallet in your account and click on the steem dollar section (see below) and click "transfer"

Next just enter in the "to" section bumper
Enter in the amount: just put in an even number (0.10, 0.20, 0.30, 0.40, 0.50)
Copy and paste the URL of the post you would like upvoted

Then they will upvote your post 3x what you sent in. So if you sent them 0.10 SBD, then you will get a vote on your post you send them that will "bump" it up by at least 0.33. Its a good way to grow and make money, so I suggest you start doing it so you can learn how it works. You will be sending in hundreds of these as soon as you learn it.

@bumper will be setting rules in the coming weeks to put limits on how many submissions each person can do, so the sooner you see how it works, the more you can benefit as they set these rules. I will be writing about the economics of how STEEM and SBD work in a upcoming blog post, and you will understand the impact even more at that time. So this is just a headsup to my friends to start your learning process on something I have found.

If you find any others that are "real" and "genuine", and like us smaller, then you can pass this info along. I want to help the smaller "good ones" out here to grow together and at the same time to learn how to share with each other. (like in this post to my friends)

Note: I am sure I missed some really good connections I've made, but my feed is going so slow that I can't stand it any longer. I'm sorry if I missed you :) and just let me know I did so it doesn't happen again. ;)

I forgot to re-iterate ONLY SUBMIT POSTS THAT ARE 3 DAYS OLD OR NEWER

They are a group that gives upvotes on posts for the newer members here. Its a way to help the new people earn some money and stay encouraged over time. Because they click on your link and upvote you, you earned a little more on your post (same thing with @resteemable.

They get donations from the bigger members that want to encourage the new members like yourself. I like them because they really do help boost the moral... A 1 penny bump in payment means a lot in terms of psychology as positive reinforcement. Especially to some of the poorer parts of the world (just now getting connected to everyone else), and it adds up and encourages them to keep improving.

So any time you post something original, should go to your own post and do what I did and type in @orignalworks and they will see your post and validate it. You can keep doing this as long as you are small and still learning, but once you get bigger you will want to let them use their funds for the other new people. The great thing about this platform is that new people are coming in every day and as the network gets bigger, it gets to be an even better place to be. So everyone wants to continue to teach and train the new people because it is in all of our interests to have a great strong and growing community.

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Hi @dinodoc! Great to see your first post! I gave you a happy "upvote" and I look forward to reading Part II. When you have time, I'd love to see something on Bambiraptor. Thanks!

Yes, I can have something up soon. Anything in particular you are interest in?

Yes! I like Banbiraptor raptor because it seems like a link between prehistoric dinosaurs and modern birds. Plus, I saw an AMAZING specimen in a privately-funded collection museum in Colorado a few years back. Best collection I have ever seen. I'd like to know more about them, and why they went extinct.

Cool article! I followed you. FYI you misspelled "dinosaurs" in the tag list.

Ooops! I see that. Thanks.

Hello again :)

You can also try the tag steemstem (for all science, tech, engineering math content) as they curate science content. Take a look at @steemSTEM

That is perfect... You're blog is underway! ... I am still pretty new myself so just building my following, but I "resteemed" it... Which means I sent it to all my followers... There are several ways people will see your posts:

1.. Through the tags (which puts it in the feeds on the left) ie if someone clicks on science they will get all the posts on science... Here is the short cut https://steemit.com/created/science

  1. You're followers will see it (which is only 8 people right now because you are new)

  2. People will browse your blog (which is like a record in time of everything you post)... You can check out anyone's blog by clicking on their name and going to their page... Once there you can scroll on the blog through time and that article will always be there.

Good job and way to get started :)

Let me know if you run into any other issues or need any help!

ps... I will send it to 2 other sources that will help to get the word out for you.. You will see them in a little bit.

Thanks so much for your great advice and assistance. This might be fun.

You're welcome... That's one of the goals too!

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