Giants Of Earth's History Still Pose A Wealth Of Riddles
Replica of the reconstructed skeleton of Argentinosaurus huinculensis, on display as part of a special exhibition at the Senckenberg Natural History Museum, Frankfurt am Main. The fossil remains of this titanosaur that lived in the Early Cretaceous period were discovered in Neuquén province, Argentina. Argentinosaurus huinculensis is currently the largest known sauropod with a total length of 38 meters and an estimated total body weight of 75 tons.
Griebeler’s work is part of a collection that brings together the results of recent research into sauropod gigantism. The gigantism of these vertebrates, unique in the history of the Earth, raises many questions, such as why no other land creatures have ever achieved this size and what their bauplan, physiology, and life cycle would have been like. The collection put together by the leading open access journal PLOS ONEconsists of 14 contributions from the fields of ecology, morphology, animal nutrition, and paleontology that all address the fundamental question of how the sauropods managed to become so extraordinarily massive.
Egg containing a titanosaur embryo, on display as part of a special exhibition at the Senckenberg Natural History Museum, Frankfurt am Main. This fossilized egg was discovered in Neuquén province, Argentina, and has an approximate diameter of 15 centimeters.
In one article, Jan Werner and his colleague Koen Stein of the University of Bonn describe a new method of determining the density of bone tissue and juxtapose sauropod data and results extrapolated for comparable endothermic mammals. Although the bone structure and the density of certain tissues of sauropods were similar to those of today’s mammals, the results do not conclusively demonstrate that sauropods were also endothermic animals. Other functional aspects, such as similar weight-bearing stresses, could have resulted in the development of convergent forms of bone tissue.
Another article looks at the reproductive biology of sauropods. Here Werner and Griebeler discuss the hypothesis that a high rate of reproduction contributed to the gigantism of the large dinosaurs. They discovered that the reproductive pattern of most dinosaurs was similar to that of modern reptiles and birds. The reproductive pattern of theropods, i.e., ancestors of the modern birds, turned out to be comparable with that of birds, prosauropods, and sauropods rather than reptiles.
Contacts and sources:
Dr. Eva Maria Griebeler
Johannes Gutenberg Universitaet Mainz
Source: http://www.ineffableisland.com/2014/01/giants-of-earths-history-still-pose.html
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