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rancisco Gascó under the direction of Mike Taylor and Matt Wedel
Plant-eating dinosaurs called sauropods had the longest necks in the animal kingdom. Here an adult Brontomerus mother.
How did the largest of all dinosaurs evolve necks longer than any other creature that has ever lived? One secret: mostly hollow neck bones, researchers say.
The largest creatures to ever walk the Earth were the long-necked, long-tailed dinosaurs known as the sauropods. These vegetarians had by far the longest necks of any known animal. The dinosaurs' necks reached up to 50 feet (15 meters) in length, six times longer than that of the current world-record holder, the giraffe, and at least five times longer than those of any other animal that has lived on land.
"They were really stupidly, absurdly oversized," said researcher Michael Taylor, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Bristol in England. "In our feeble, modern world, we're used to thinking of elephants as big, but sauropods reached 10 times the size elephants do. They were the size of walking whales."
Amazing necks
To find out how sauropod necks could get so long, scientists analyzed other long-necked creatures and compared sauropod anatomy with that of the dinosaurs' nearest living relatives, the birds and crocodilians.
"Extinct animals — and living animals, too, for that matter — are much more amazing than we realize," Taylor told LiveScience. "Time and again, people have proposed limits to possible animal sizes, like the five-meter (16-foot) wingspan that was supposed to be the limit for flying animals. And time and again, they've been blown away. We now know of flying pterosaurs with 10-meter (33-foot) wingspans. And these extremes are achieved by a startling array of anatomical innovations." [ Image Gallery: 25 Amazing Ancient Beasts ]
Among living animals, adult bull giraffes have the longest necks, capable of reaching about 8 feet (2.4 m) long. No other living creature exceeds half this length. For instance, ostriches typically have necks only about 3 feet (1 m) long.
When it comes to extinct animals, the largest land-living mammal of all time was the rhino-like creature Paraceratherium, which had a neck maybe 8.2 feet (2.5 m) long. The flying reptiles known as pterosaurs could also have surprisingly long necks, such as Arambourgiania, whose neck may have exceeded 10 feet (3 m).
The necks of the Loch Ness Monster-like marine reptiles known as plesiosaurs could reach an impressive 23 feet (7 m), probably because the water they lived in could support their weight. But these necks were still less than half the lengths of the longest-necked sauropods.
Sauropod secrets
In their study, Taylor and his colleagues found that the neck bones of sauropods possessed a number of traits that supported such long necks. For instance, air often made up 60 percent of these animals' necks, with some as light as birds' bones, making it easier to support long chains of the bones. The muscles, tendons and ligaments were also positioned around these vertebrae in a way that helped maximize leverage, making neck movements more efficient.
In addition, the dinosaurs' giant torsos and four-legged stances helped provide a stable platform for their necks. In contrast, giraffes have relatively small torsos, while ostriches have two-legged stances. [ Image Gallery: Animals' Amazing Headgear ]
Sauropods also had plenty of neck vertebrae, up to 19. In contrast, nearly all mammals have no more than seven, from mice to whales to giraffes, limiting how long their necks can get. (The only exceptions among mammals are sloths and aquatic mammals known as sirenians, such as manatees.)
Moreover, while pterosaur Arambourgiania had a relatively giant head with long, spear-like jaws that it likely used to help capture prey, sauropods had small, light heads that were easy to support. These dinosaurs did not chew their meals, lacking even cheeks to store food in their mouths; they merely swallowed it, letting their guts break it down.
"Sauropod heads are essentially all mouth. The jaw joint is at the very back of the skull, and they didn't have cheeks, so they came pretty close to having Pac Man-Cookie Monster flip-top heads," researcher Mathew Wedel at the Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, Calif., told LiveScience.
"It's natural to wonder if the lack of chewing didn't, well, come back to bite them, in terms of digestive efficiency. But some recent work on digestion in large animals has shown that after about 3 days, animals have gotten all the nutrition they can from their food, regardless of particle size.
"And sauropods were so big that the food would have spent that long going through them anyway," Wedel said. "They could stop chewing entirely, with no loss of digestive efficiency."
What's a long neck good for?
Furthermore, sauropods and other dinosaurs probably could breathe like birds, drawing fresh air through their lungs continuously, instead of having to breathe out before breathing in to fill their lungs with fresh air like mammals do. This may have helped sauropods get vital oxygen down their long necks to their lungs.
"The problem of breathing through a long tube is something that's very hard for mammals to do. Just try it with a length of garden hose," Taylor said.
As to why sauropods evolved such long necks, there are currently three theories. Some of the dinosaurs may have used their long necks to feed on high leaves, like giraffes do. Others may have used their necks to graze on large swaths of vegetation by sweeping the ground side to side like geese do. This helped them make the most out of every step, which would be a big deal for such heavy creatures.
Scientists have also suggested that long necks may have been sexually attractive, therefore driving the evolution of ever-longer necks; however, Taylor and his colleagues have found no evidence this was the case.
In the future, the researchers plan to delve even deeper into the mysteries of sauropod necks. For instance, Apatosaurus , formerly known as Brontosaurus, had "really sensationally strange neck vertebrae," Taylor said. The scientists suspect the necks of Apatosaurus were used for "combat between males — fighting over women, of course."
Taylor and Wedel detailed their findings online Feb. 12 in the journal PeerJ.
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Leave a Comment:
Now come on.. a real scientist would know that dinos were extinct before women evolved !
im curious, whenever i read something about the evolution of something or another, i always see discussion along the lines of, "the reason why it happened" or "evolution to allow them to" instead of "it enabled them to" or "they made use of" doesnt the idea of evolution doing something to allow something else to happen denote intelligence? i.e. these mammalians need to be able to see over the high grasses to see predators and possible food sources, so ill evolve the ability to walk upright. if that denotes intelligence, doesnt that denote intelligent design, if not a "god" but something intelligent?
I used to think something along the same line, maybe i still do a little. But for scientists. It is all random. Some dinosaurs were born with short necks, and some of their mutant children had long necks. And then if something happened to all the food on the ground leaving only food high in the trees, well then everything else dies leaving just the long necks.
ya i know, i mean I've always assumed from my readings that evolution was a random mutation, that species learned to use over time, and some mutations benefited and allowed for survival while others led to death and the end of that mutation. but im seeing so many evolutionary discussions, among the scientific community no less, along the line of, "well the food lower down was being eaten so the animals developed longer necks to reach higher food" that indicates one of 2 things, either A.) evolution is a conscious organism that responds to outside stimuli, i.e. higher food, need higher heads to reach it. or B.) there is an outside force manipulating that evolutionary process to allow heads to be higher to reach the food.
Not really Drezz, re-read the theory, the random mutation that is beneficial to the species will cary on...so while a species gets the benefit of the long-neck mutation, in this case the ability to obtain food that other species could not, there were likely several (hundred) other random mutations that had no effect, killed the mutanted individual, or just did not give any adviantage to be carried on.
The scientists, in no way or shape, describe any "intelligent design" in the article (nor does any scientist in any respect claim something that has no factual support or evidence). As anyone with a basic understanding of evolution would say- evolution is chaotic, and the traits gained are very inefficient, that the idea of any type of design behind them is simply ignorant of the fact of evolution.
So i reread the article, and one thing kept gnawing at me. where they say why did they develop such long necks and gave 3 possible theories as to why. now in my understanding there is no why, as evolution is completely random and not owing to any intelligence. It simply happened, they made use of it and it was passed on as it was a beneficial mutation. is this not correct?
They wouldn't put that in here if it wasn't
truewould they?Oh, this reporter is on their first STORY!
What I find amazing is how they lost their legs and became snakes with even longer necks.
In Africa and Asia women have 8" necks....
that so called 8 inch "neck" is from compressing the shoulders, not lengthening the neck.
I've got something with a long "neck" right after the head....ask your mom about it sometime....
rofl
How much do these "researchers" make? Better still, which idiots pay them for this sort of useless research?
Do you know how many diseases we as a species are fighting?
You don't understand science, do you, Ad'm?
You probably get irritated when a child asks, "Why?".
Please, take a seat and be quiet. Others, more observant, caring and capable, can address the question.
Why is there always someone like this who values traditional hubris above emerging knowledge? Anyone?
wrong place
Crudely - Unless you can even begin to hypothesize what possible useful relevance this study can provide to humans, I'd say Ad'M has a great point. Why spend money on this crap when other, more useful discoveries, lie waiting to be made that will actually benefit mankind.
That makes Ad'M a smart commentator and you...well, you are an a$$tard....
Tim, take a minute to reflect on the fact that each and every advance in human technology, the benefits of which you are enjoying right now even if you're not aware of it, have their genesis in simple curiosity.
Why do you think you enjoy warmth in the winter? Because someone, a long time ago, fooled around and discovered how to make fire. That's why. And they did that in spite of the fearful admonishments of people like you and Ad'M
Should you need to respond to a family emergency and you are a few thousand miles away, you can be on scene in just a few hours. Something that is only recently possible. Why? Because someone, in fact, several someones, spent a lot of time thinking about how birds and insects could fly. And they did that while no one else cared. People like you and Ad'M
You can publish your thoughts here, on this news site. Why? Because electrical engineers and students of electricity thought long and hard about how electrons behave and how that behavior is affected by the materials they are moving through. It goes without saying that people like you and Ad'M simply couldn't see any value in that.
Perhaps you own a car that gets thirty or more miles per gallon of gas? Chalk that up to people who tinkered around with internal combustion engines. Need I mention again that most everybody back in the day had a horse and thought it sufficient?
Got a doctor who can look inside your body without using a knife to slice you open? Credit that to people who dwelled on how subatomic particles resonate in a magnetic field. You and Ad'M need not go to a hospital if you have a medical emergency. What good could they possibly provide? You are already so much better informed.
Really, Tim. You should know better. Imagine what your feet would look like without those who learned how to skin animals, tan their hides, sew them together, cut them to fit in complex curves and then finally find a way to furnish you with shoes. In endless styles, I might add.
Go sit with Ad'M.
Lots of science does not have any immediate benefit to mankind. Take for example lasers. The guy working on those was repeatedly told by people not to waste his time, becaue there was nothing of value that could be developed from it. Other examples abound - that's just one outrageous example. Science is meant to learn new knowledge about how things work. No telling where that will lead us in the long haul.
My main question for people who only want "added-value" science is: who gets to decide which studies are worth studying, and for what reasons? I'd really like to know just who are these geniuses that can magically peer into their crystal ball and predict what kinds benefit can possibly be developed by studying something. And what kinds of breakthroughs are you willing to pass on, simply because these so-called geniuses didn't have the foresight to look outside the box?
Life would be pretty dull if you could only study what some select groupl of people allow you to study. Luckily, the grant/funding process is diverse enough so that there are enough people out there to allow most researchers to pursue their interests
Now, there's something you don't hear everyday!
@ put a fork in it who wrote:
Wrong place for what? People talking about and exchanging ideas about real things that happen in the real world? Propelled by human intelligence? Fueled by the evidence that is teased out of historical clues by the application of the mind?
Go sit with Ad'M and keep your ears open. You might just learn something. Does that potentiality scare you? It sure as hell scares Ad'M.
Perhaps you could suggest a proper place?
Crudely - Unless you can even begin to hypothesize what possible useful relevance this study can provide to humans, I'd say Ad'M has a great point. Why spend money on this crap when other, more useful discoveries, lie waiting to be made that will actually benefit mankind.
That makes Ad'M a smart commentator and you...well, you are an a$$tard....
And it makes you look like someone who can't imagine what an new insight, a simple discovery of an underlying process, of a novel way of doing something has any value to society. In other words, traditionally hubristic. Colorless. Unimaginative. A true consumer, producing little but the burning of calories.
Lemme ask you these questions. Would you be alive today if Pasture had not studied molds? Would you have two sturdy legs beneath you if Salk had not isolated an obscure micro organism? Would you be able to talk to your loved ones if Bell hadn't tried to jigger magnets and coils to transmit sounds? Could you accomplish the tasks related to your job if know one had ever wondered how to do all the sub tasks that constitute your work? Could you so much as hammer a nail had not someone first thought to tie a rock on the end of a stick?
You need to stop and think. All, and I mean ALL of the routine tasks that you and I perform daily are predicated on and facilitated by the idle curiosity and by the ingenuity of people mostly long dead. At the time they were so occupied almost no one saw any value in their efforts. Today you and I toss off the benefits of their fixations as if they were nothing.
Think again. And know that right now others are thinking, and thinking obsessively, about more things that you and Ad'M can see no sense in. The results will be not only beyond your imagining but to the benefit of our children and their children.
That's how it works, pal. That you have missed the point concerns me. Please, pay attention and buy some books on the history of science and technology. Therein you will find the most human of tales. Really
You obviously have no idea how many studies, just like this, are done every year...do you. You haven't the fainstest glimmer of a hope of understanding the vast sums of money spent on topics like this that END when the report is published. No discovery, no breakthrough, no nothing. I bet you don't even know how many of these studies don't even bother to publish anything at all because they discovered NOTHING worth reporting in the first damn place.
No, you are one of those simpletons who sees a published study and assumes that it carries some kind of importance for the future of mankind. Let me educate you on something, if you are willing to learn. I've done research, specifically in the engineering sector. The vast majority of studies are complete wastes of time. Salk researched a topic that was currently affecting humans. Dino necks? Not a pressing issue.
The only thing spending this money did was offer a possible answer to the question about dino necks. Meanwhile people die of cancer. Apparently you are one of the people who have misguided priorities, like the authors of this joke of a study...
Yawn.... I read most of this in a Dinosaur book when I was 7. Seriously, Dinosaurs having hollow bones is not a new theory.
Maybe, could have, best guess... i must be a scientist, i can guess and assume and state all kinds of theories. Just like the science of weather, BEST GUESS !!!.. Ha ha,, one day science will catchup to what it says in the Bible. Seriously.. If you truely read it then you would know how the black plaque was controlled.. not science from doctors but from the words in the bible.. good luck and keep guessing..
So the plague was controlled with the power of prayer, burning jews and witches, slaughtering cats, and engaging in self-flagellation? Good to know.
Faith - you are an idiot. Not a run of the mill idiot, but a full blown asstard of a git that has no clue about the truth behind the plague. Read a real history book about the plague, not a made up one from the Middle East ...
Now, maybe they can figure out how they had sex with women, after the long neck battles were over.
well their necks werent the only long thing.....
"Loch Ness Monster - Like" Why not just relate them to DRAGONS and go all-the-way with mythical animals?
It was not many years back that Nessie was theorized to be Pleisosaur-like. Now Pleisosaurs are Loch Ness Monster-like.