March of the Titans: The Locomotor Capabilities of Sauropod Dinosaurs.
Publicado por Leonardo Filippi en 3:56
William
Irvin Sellers1, Lee Margetts, Rodolfo Aníbal Coria, Phillip Lars Manning
Sauropod dinosaurs are
the largest terrestrial vertebrate to have lived on Earth. This size must have posed
special challenges for the musculoskeletal system. Scaling theory shows that
body mass and hence the loads that must be overcome increases with body size
more rapidly than either the ability of the muscles to generate force, or the
ability of the skeleton to support these loads. Here we demonstrate how one of
the very largest sauropods, Argentinosaurus huinculensis (40 metres long, weighing
83 tonnes), may have moved. A musculoskeletal model was generated using data
captured by laser scanning a mounted skeleton and assigning muscle properties
based on comparative data from living animals. Locomotion is generated using
forward dynamic simulation to calculate the accelerations produced by the muscle
forces, coupled with machine learning techniques to find a control pattern that
minimises metabolic cost. The simulation demonstrates that at such vast body
size, joint range of motion needs to be restricted to allow sufficient force
generation for an achievable muscle mass. However when this is done, a
perfectly plausible gait can be generated relatively easily. Whilst this model
represents the best current simulation of the gait of these giant animals, it
is likely that there are as yet unknown mechanical mechanisms, possibly based
on passive elastic structures that should be incorporated to increase the efficiency
of the animal`s locomotion. It is certainly the case that these would need to
be incorporated into the model to properly assess the full locomotor
capabilities of the animal.
Sellers, W.I., Margetts,
L., Coria, R.A. and Manning, P.L. 2013. March of the Titans:
The Locomotor Capabilities of Sauropod Dinosaurs. PLoS ONE 8(10): e78733. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0078733
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