|
|
|
|
pleco
SFN Addict
USA
2998 Posts |
 Posted - 11/16/2007 : 14:57:16
|
Here it is.
Nigersaurus has some extremely unusual anatomical features unlike any seen before in a plant-eating dinosaur.
* Its jaws are wider than the rest of the skull
* The extremely lightweight skull fed an elephant-sized body
* The teeth are packed into batteries along the front of the jaws.
Despite weighing as much as an elephant and growing to be a length of 30 feet, the backbone of Nigersaurus is composed of shells of bone.
Large oval openings on each side of the vertebrae (backbone) provide an entry to long air-filled sacs connected to the lung. When the animal was alive, air sacs filled the hollow vertebrae. Other air sacs would have pressed against the neural arches (the upper part of the vertebra) leaving thin plates of bone in between.
The air-filled vertebrae of Nigersaurus are unusual because they are so extreme. That such fragile vertebrae were able to support such a massive body is remarkable.
|
So the important questions to ask are - is this irreducibly complex? And could it have survived on the Ark?
|
by Filthy
The neo-con methane machine will soon be running at full fart. |
|
|
|
HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 11/16/2007 : 20:01:01 [Permalink]
|
Been reading about that thing. Man, was it ever a specialized feeder! The light skeleton is the wierdest part, though, as it can't yet be explained how it would suffice to work for this heavy beast.
My suspicion is that the paleontologists are missing something, something that does not fossilize. I have one wild guess: Maybe the air sacs within the bones had tough membranes, and were under pressure. If so, they could have worked to actually strengthen the skeletal structure. Hard, tough balloons with bone lattice around them. Might work.
|
“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
 |
|
|
pleco
SFN Addict
USA
2998 Posts |
Posted - 11/17/2007 : 02:11:25 [Permalink]
|
| Perhaps it fed in water, and the air provided buoyancy? We could guess all the live long day, and it will be interesting to see what the final verdict is. |
by Filthy
The neo-con methane machine will soon be running at full fart. |
|
|
|
|
HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
 Posted - 11/17/2007 : 02:55:32 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by pleco
Perhaps it fed in water, and the air provided buoyancy? We could guess all the live long day, and it will be interesting to see what the final verdict is.
|
That's a neat idea!
|
“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
|
|
|
Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 11/17/2007 : 03:05:55 [Permalink]
|
Definitely a strange beast.
|
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Where vacuum cleaners evolved from
