This Dinosaur Had a 50-Foot-Long Neck, Scientists Say

www.smithsonianmag.com...

Way cool find if correct. Just a little more mystery into olden times.

A dinosaur that roamed East Asia 162 million years ago had an impressive, 50-foot-long neck, according to a new paper published Wednesday in the Journal of Systematic Paleontology.

The creature, called Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum, belonged to a group called sauropods. These large, plant-eating dinosaurs are known for their lengthy necks and tails—but, according to the scientists’ estimate, Mamenchisaurus had the longest neck of them all.

Researchers uncovered the dinosaur’s fossilized remains in China in 1987, but they didn’t have much of the creature to study—only a few bones, including some vertebrae and a rib, writes New Scientist’s Chris Stokel-Walker.

Still, the scientists estimated the length of the dinosaur’s neck by comparing the limited evidence to more complete skeletons of its relatives. They looked at the 44-foot-long neck of a sauropod called Xinjiangtitan, which was discovered in 2013 and is the longest complete neck ever found, according to the New York Times’ Jack Tamisiea.

“Our analyses make us fairly confident that Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum had 18 vertebrae in its neck, because close cousins known from more complete skeletons all have 18 cervical vertebrae,” Andrew Moore, a co-author of the study and a paleontologist at Stony Brook University, told Live Science’s Laura Geggel in an email. “So, focusing just on these close relatives with similar necks, we scaled up.”

The researchers determined that the Mamenchisaurus’ neck was approximately 49.5 feet long, per a statement. Such a length would have come in handy for foraging—the creatures could efficiently graze large amounts of vegetation, Moore tells Live Science.

The dinosaurs evolved a few ways to manage their unwieldy necks. Researchers used CT scans to find that most of the vertebrae’s volume—about 69 to 77 percent—was air, similar to the vertebrae of some birds. Such air-filled bones would be lighter, making it easier for the Mamenchisaurus to hold up its giant neck, per the statement.

“Having such a long neck is a large weight that you have to position away from your body,” Cary Woodruff, a paleontologist at the Frost Science Museum who studies sauropods and did not contribute to the paper, tells the New York Times. “If you have to hold a hammer with your arm stretched out, your arm’s going to get tired pretty quick.”

For added support, the dinosaur had 13-foot-long ribs that would have made its neck more stable and less prone to injury, according to the statement. It also held its neck at a relatively shallow angle of 20 to 30 degrees.

a reply to: TheSpanishArcher

Very cool article! Anything about dinosaurs brings me back to 6 year old me. I found the idea of their vertebrae being mostly air filled interesting. Necks that long would need some sort of specialized adaption to be functional.

Apologies for my funny, but I can imagine how "metal nights" ended for dinosaurs.

"So, you coming in for coffee"?

"Hello, our necks look like a pretzel, no let's just freeze out here while your tail puts on the kettle".

I wonder how long other parts were.

a reply to: v1rtu0s0

That's actually a cool thought. If they were that big, well, who knows? How do you reproduce when you are that large?

a reply to: TheSpanishArcher

No way that pic is scale. Talk about top heavy. How did they keep their balance?

a reply to: TheSpanishArcher

Maybe they were so full of methane they floated and needed long necks to graze while slowly drifting above the landscape.

Or maybe they just practiced for a very long time at licking their own b***s and evolution did the rest.

Sorry for the humour, but I did avoid giraffe jokes.

Very cool OP! I saw an article on this not too long ago. It so neat all these new finds they're digging up lately.



I added a pic for a little visual reference.
I wonder if that giant creature had an issue falling forward onto it's own head with that obscenely long neck. 😅 Nature is cool.


s&f

originally posted by: KKLOCO
a reply to: TheSpanishArcher

No way that pic is scale. Talk about top heavy. How did they keep their balance?

Galileo Galilei emphasized in the 17 th century how scale effects impose an upper limit on the size of life. It is now understood that scale effects are a limiting factor for the size of life. A study of scale effects reveals that the relative scale of life would vary in different gravities with the result that the relative scale of land life is inversely proportional to the strength of gravity. This implies that a reduced gravity would explain the increased scale of ancient life such as the largest dinosaurs. In this paper, various methods such as dynamic similarity, leg bone strength, ligament strength and blood pressure are used to estimate values of ancient gravity assuming a Reduced Gravity Earth. These results indicate that gravity was less on the ancient Earth and has slowly increased up to its present-day value. The estimates of the Earth's ancient reduced gravity indicated by ancient life are also compared with estimates of gravity for Constant Mass and Increasing Mass Expanding Earth models based on geological data. These comparisons show that the Reduced Gravity Earth model agrees more closely with an Increasing Mass Expanding Earth model.

SOURCE

The long-necked dinosaur discussed on this thread was described under the name Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum in a paper published in 1993, and although the holotype includes only complete left mandible, a right dentary, a vomer, a right pterygoid, a possible ectopterygoid, a right quadrate, portions of the second through fourth cervical vertebrae, and an intact left cervical rib, the cervical rib indicates that M. sinocanadorum had a very elongated neck.

Russell, D.A., and Zheng, Z., 1993. A large mamenchisaurid from the Junggar Basin, Xinjiang, People Republic of China. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences 30: 2082-2095.

originally posted by: BodhisattvaStyle
I wonder if that giant creature had an issue falling forward onto it's own head with that obscenely long neck.

May have been annoying with birds perching on it's head. lol