Artist’s impression of a sauropod herd with the correct (neck aloft) posture.
Credit: Mark Witton
Their method was so simple that the team was worried someone else would publish the findings before they could. "We did get a bit paranoid… it just seemed so obvious that if you want to know what extinct animals did, you should look at what living animals actually do," Wedel told Cosmos Online.
John Hutchinson, a biomechanics researcher at the University of London's Royal Veterinary College, in Britain, said that the study's methods had the advantage of being firmly grounded in actual observations of animal anatomy and behaviour, but there is still work to be done to confirm the findings.
"A conundrum that remains unresolved is how sauropods would have pumped blood to their heads if held so high," he said. "The blood pressures, and hence heart sizes, required are quite large."
What about birds?
I'm no biologist, but following the authors' clue about looking at nowaday's living animals, and keeping in mind that birds are the dinosaurs' most direct descendants, wouldn't it make sense to assume that the ancient beasts held a similar posture than present-day birds?
Long neck, high neck
They could have found it difficult to walk, all that weight on jusr four areaa must have made then sink in to the ground...
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