How is the long neck of the pterosaur supported?
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There are many long-necked animals such as giraffes, camels and alpaca. Is the most neck long groups of animals dinosaurs that have been discovered to date, sauropoda of Brachiosaurus , such as has been the length of the neck reaches up to 11 meters. Flying dinosaurs and pterosaurs are no exception, and it is said that the neck length of Quetzalcoatlus etc. was longer than that of Kirin, but what the structure is like, Mr. Caliad Williams of the University of Illinois explained. I have.
Helically arranged cross struts in azhdarchid pterosaur cervical vertebrae and their biomechanical implications: iScience
https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042 (21) 00306-0
Largest ever flying creatures had longer necks than giraffes – we found out how these pterosaurs kept their heads up
About 237 million years ago, some reptiles are thought to have evolved into pterosaurs, but initially they were small creatures that rarely exceeded a wingspan of more than 2 meters. However, the skeleton changed from 145 million years ago to 66 million years ago, and in some cases even species with huge wingspans of over 9 meters appear.
Long-necked animals such as giraffes have a longer cervical spine than other animals and have a strong and complex structure to support a heavy head. Pterosaurs are no exception and require strong bones to withstand the wind pressure and the weight of their beaked prey while flying. However, unlike land animals, if you just make the bones thicker and bigger, you will not be able to fly the body that has become too heavy.
To avoid such problems, Pterosaurs choose the evolution of 'lightening the bones'. Pterosaurs of the Azhdarchidae family , including Quetzalcoatlus, withstood external pressure by hollowing out the inside of the bone and stretching the elongated bone through which nerves pass. In addition, a CT scan performed by Williams and colleagues reveals that the internal bones are radially arranged and tilted anteriorly or posteriorly. Williams and colleagues estimate that the presence of 50 of these small bones increases the maximum load that the bones can withstand by as much as 90%. Even if there were 400 bones, the maximum load would increase by only 10%, so Williams et al. Analyzed that '50 is the optimal number.'
'This mysterious structure has never been seen in nature, and the way we think about pterosaurs has changed,' Williams and colleagues said.
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