Friday, March 17, 2023

Long Neck

Clocking in at around 50 feet long, this sauropod may hold the title of longest neck ever discovered.
Dinosaurs came in all shapes and sizes, but we know they could get pretty darn big. For sauropods, a clade of dinos that roamed the planet from the Early Jurassic all the way to the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, their size was largely reflected in their long necks. But according to new findings, the Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum uncovered in modern-day China may have been the longest-necked of them all.
In a study published today in The Journal of Systematic Paleontology, an international team of scientists determined that this particular specimen of sauropod had a 49-foot-long neck—that’s six times as long as a giraffe neck. 
“It would require a lot of muscles to hold up a neck that size, and then there's the question of how it gets air down to the lungs and back up again,” Paul Barrett, a professor at the Natural History Museum in London, said in a press release. “This could support the theory that these necks were a sexually selected feature where only the strongest and fittest dinosaurs that were able to hold up these giant necks in impressive displays were able to mate.” 
This dinosaur's record-breaking neck defies the laws of nature

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