TTL's Sauropods

[piltdown]

Apr 15, 2009 2:58:30 GMT bokisaurus said:

I think I got most of them except for the camara Neat little guys.

I almost forgot about the camara repaint with the red head I'll have to hunt it down now, so I can have the whole Kaiyodo Chocolasaurus sauropodomorph set

[bokisaurus]

Apr 16, 2009 22:52:38 GMT piltdown said:

Apr 15, 2009 2:59:52 GMT bokisaurus said:

So how do you join this society? ;D I want to join Hey, anything to get my hands on some of those cool Japanese figures ;D

*Prepares to submit CV to bokisaurus with a proposal to be his dinosaur purchaser-in-chief* ;D

Should I be scared? Or should I be happy ;D? I will take the sacred vow to join the society ;D

[piltdown]

Apr 16, 2009 23:40:29 GMT bokisaurus said:

Apr 16, 2009 22:52:38 GMT piltdown said:

*Prepares to submit CV to bokisaurus with a proposal to be his dinosaur purchaser-in-chief* ;D

Should I be scared? Or should I be happy ;D ?

Depends on how dire my credit card balance is at the end of the month ;D [j/k]

[piltdown]

My latest pride and joy, the Dioramasaurus Jobaria:

[bokisaurus]

Apr 22, 2009 21:54:30 GMT piltdown said:

My latest pride and joy, the Dioramasaurus Jobaria:

I hate you! ;D Wow, how big is this guy? He looks very cool! Awesome acquisition!

[piltdown]

The Jobaria is almost 3 inches tall, and his 'diorama' base' is 4 inches in length I also have the seismosaurus in the series, but I decided to keep in its box for a while

[bokisaurus]

Apr 22, 2009 23:43:23 GMT piltdown said:

The Jobaria is almost 3 inches tall, and his 'diorama' base' is 4 inches in length I also have the seismosaurus in the series, but I decided to keep in its box for a while

OOhhhhhhh, picture of the seismo please Very nice, were they expensive?

[piltdown]

Seismosaurus:




Alas, I did pay more for them than I should have , and I would not have paid that much for the set had I not been overcome by the prospect of having a Jobaria ;D

[tomhet]

The Jobaria is beautiful!

[tetonbabydoll]

Teton, too is becoming extremely jealous of the growing sauropod herd.

[Libraraptor]

Looks great! You definitely need the old big Schleich Apatosaurus and the new 50 cm Schleich one that will be released in September!
Sometimes I think it´s better to specialise on one species or kind of prehistoric animal, too. As for me, I think I will buy more Dimetrodon.

[piltdown]

Here are a few updated pics of the Kaiyodo altar:




It's missing a few pieces--the tan Kabaya seismosaurus, the Kaiyodo Wonder Festival seismosaurus repaint, the variations of the Yujin brontosaurus, and the Dioramasaurus I left in its box--but I'm almost done

[sid]

Just two questions:

1) why there's a Therizinosaurus among your sauropods?

2) Your Kinto Bronto and Brachio are glued on their bases or not? I ask you this 'cause i had to glue my sitting Dilopho on his base,or else he'd keep on falling

[piltdown]

May 2, 2009 12:48:01 GMT sid said:

Just two questions:

1) why there's a Therizinosaurus among your sauropods?

2) Your Kinto Bronto and Brachio are glued on their bases or not? I ask you this 'cause i had to glue my sitting Dilopho on his base,or else he'd keep on falling

1) I'm strictly retro and still follow the old, pre-Beipiaosaurus classification of segnosaurs as derived sauropodomorphs Regardless of what therizinosaurus actually is, I consider him an honorary sauropod ;D

2) *Remembers the mishap of sid's dilophosaurus * After your post I actually took down the brachiosaurus from his base There's nothing attaching the base to the dinosaur, so one jolt would indeed cause the sauropod to crash

[sid]

May 3, 2009 1:25:03 GMT piltdown said:

May 2, 2009 12:48:01 GMT sid said:

Just two questions:

1) why there's a Therizinosaurus among your sauropods?

2) Your Kinto Bronto and Brachio are glued on their bases or not? I ask you this 'cause i had to glue my sitting Dilopho on his base,or else he'd keep on falling

1) I'm strictly retro and still follow the old, pre-Beipiaosaurus classification of segnosaurs as derived sauropodomorphs Regardless of what therizinosaurus actually is, I consider him an honorary sauropod ;D

2) *Remembers the mishap of sid's dilophosaurus * After your post I actually took down the brachiosaurus from his base There's nothing attaching the base to the dinosaur, so one jolt would indeed cause the sauropod to crash

Glad you followed my advice regarding Kinto models

[Seijun]

Question from someone who knows zip about sauropods... What's wrong with a diplo rearing up...?

[[][][]cordylus[][][]]

Just about everything

[Seijun]

Can you elaborate? Like I said, I don't know much of anything about sauropods..

[Pangolinmoth]

Here's some info.
From early on there has been speculation by Osborn and others that sauropods could reach up on hind legs, using their tail as the third 'leg' of a tripod (somewhat like kangaroos), and a famous restoration of a Barosaurus rearing up on hind legs in the American Museum of Natural History illustrates this hypothesis well. One study postulated that if sauropods had adopted a bipedal posture at times, there would be evidence of stress fractures in the forelimb 'hands'. However, none were found after examining a large number of sauropod skeletons.

If a sauropod stood in the tripod posture, there would be a heavy weight load on the haemal spines on part of the tail. As the sauropod got heavier as it grew, when it reared, these haemal spines would have to carry more and more load, until some of them would break due to stress fracture, and that would make rearing painful and the sauropod would have to stay on four feet after that. That may have evolved as a safety measure to prevent rearing when it got too heavy for rearing to be safe. There are reports of such haemal spine fractures being found in sauropod tail vertebrae.

[stoneage]

May 4, 2009 2:11:32 GMT Pangolinmoth said:

Here's some info.
From early on there has been speculation by Osborn and others that sauropods could reach up on hind legs, using their tail as the third 'leg' of a tripod (somewhat like kangaroos), and a famous restoration of a Barosaurus rearing up on hind legs in the American Museum of Natural History illustrates this hypothesis well. One study postulated that if sauropods had adopted a bipedal posture at times, there would be evidence of stress fractures in the forelimb 'hands'. However, none were found after examining a large number of sauropod skeletons.

If a sauropod stood in the tripod posture, there would be a heavy weight load on the haemal spines on part of the tail. As the sauropod got heavier as it grew, when it reared, these haemal spines would have to carry more and more load, until some of them would break due to stress fracture, and that would make rearing painful and the sauropod would have to stay on four feet after that. That may have evolved as a safety measure to prevent rearing when it got too heavy for rearing to be safe. There are reports of such haemal spine fractures being found in sauropod tail vertebrae.

Pangolinmoth what you say is true but there's a lot more to it.
Robert Bakker speculated in his "Dinosaur Heresies", that the Herbivores of the Late Jurassic all fed high in the trees, probably because Sauropods had such long necks. However he also proposed that Stegosaurs who had almost no neck did the same. He said they did this by using the Tri-pod position (two rear legs and tail as a third leg). He also claimed these Dinosaurs died out because the high vegetation died out. Furthur he claimed that the herbivore Dinosaurs of the Cretaceous took over because they were low browsers. What he didn't know at that time was that the Sauropods didn't die out all over the world, and many lived in the Late Cretaceous.

One of the problems is that Sauropods are incredible heavy like Elephants, Hippos and Rhinos, even more so. Elephants can stand on their two hind legs in the circus but seldom do in the wild preferring to keep all four legs on the ground. I've never seen a Hippo or Rhino stand on two legs.

Also many Sauropods were mounted in museums early on showing a swan like neck position. In order to obtain this position it was neccessary to break neck vertebrae. Scientist later discovered that the necks of Sauropods were stiff and not very flexible. Most Sauropods couldn't raise their necks much above their shoulders. Which would mean they probably feed closer to the ground. Also this would make it difficult to move around in a forrest because their long necks would keep running into trees as they turned and they couldn't raise it up around trees.

Even Brachiosaurs which are generally shown as having giraffe like necks have been questioned. Kinto (Favorite) Dinosaurs show Brachiosaurus with a rather straight forward neck to illustrate this idea.

We can't even be sure that the haemal spine fractures found in some sauropods were caused from trying to stand on their tails or something else.

In conclusion there still is much speculation and debate on this topic. And seeing how there is many different types of sauropods which probably ate different foods at different heights the debate is likely to continue.