Sauropods: Feats of Engineering
On October 11, 2014 the NC Museum of Natural Sciences will open its special exhibition doors for our new traveling exhibit, The World’s Largest Dinosaurs. The exhibition explores how scientists study fossils and living animals to understand sauropod biology, and what we can learn from these extinct animals about what it means to be big; like, really BIG. For those like me who are not a dinosaur expert by any means, I did some background research on what exactly a sauropod is. When we hear the term dinosaur it might evoke mental images of voracious beasts like Tyrannosaurus rex or a Velociraptor. However, the sauropods, while viewed as gentle giants, and sometimes even regarded as stupid creatures, have a very complex story that is intriguing and impressive.
Described as ‘feats of engineering,’ the largest sauropod dinosaurs weighed close to 100 tonnes — almost ten times the record weight of a modern…
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