Long-Necked Dinosaurs Unable to Lift Heads High, Study Says

The books and movies are wrong. The long-necked dinosaurs, which were the largest animals ever to walk the Earth, did not go around cropping treetops, but, in fact, could lift their heads only several feet above the ground, a new study says.

Michael Parrish, a researcher at Northern Illinois University, said he and a colleague used a computer model of the neck fossil bones of two types of dinosaurs, diplodocus and apatosaurus, to discover how well the huge animals were able to move. Apatosaurus was once called brontosaurus and is one of the best known dinosaurs.

What they found, said Parrish, was that even though dinosaurs had necks that could be 40 feet or more long, the animals could not raise their heads much above 9 to 12 feet. For the most part, he said, they held their heads straight out or down--not up.

The study was published today in the journal Science.

“The maximum amount they were able to raise their heads was just a little bit above the height of their back,” said Parrish. “If you raise the neck any higher, the vertebrae run into each other and the back locks up.”

This contradicts the popular view that the long-necked dinosaurs routinely cropped leaves from the top of trees and were able to stand on their hind legs and reach the highest limbs.

“It was a surprising result,” said Parrish. “We didn’t think there would be any problem with them raising their heads, but it turns out there is a real, physical limit.”

Parrish added: “I don’t think our study answers whether they could rise up on their hind legs, but if they did there would be a blood pressure problem. I don’t think they would use that as a predominant way of feeding, as some people have suggested.”