A rendering of Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum dinosaurs with their 50-foot-long necks.
Júlia d’Oliveira

A dinosaur that roamed East Asia 162 million years in the past had a powerful, 50-foot-long neck, in keeping with a brand new paper printed Wednesday within the Journal of Systematic Paleontology.

The creature, known as Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum, belonged to a gaggle known as sauropods. These giant, plant-eating dinosaurs are identified for his or her prolonged necks and tails—however, in keeping with the scientists’ estimate, Mamenchisaurus had the longest neck of all of them.

Researchers uncovered the dinosaur’s fossilized stays in China in 1987, however they didn’t have a lot of the creature to check—just a few bones, together with some vertebrae and a rib, writes New Scientist’s Chris Stokel-Walker.

Nonetheless, the scientists estimated the size of the dinosaur’s neck by evaluating the restricted proof to extra full skeletons of its family members. They seemed on the 44-foot-long neck of a sauropod known as Xinjiangtitan, which was found in 2013 and is the longest full neck ever discovered, in keeping with the New York Instances’ Jack Tamisiea.

“Our analyses make us pretty assured that Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum had 18 vertebrae in its neck, as a result of shut cousins identified from extra full skeletons all have 18 cervical vertebrae,” Andrew Moore, a co-author of the examine and a paleontologist at Stony Brook College, advised Dwell Science’s Laura Geggel in an electronic mail. “So, focusing simply on these shut family members with comparable necks, we scaled up.”

The researchers decided that the Mamenchisaurus’ neck was roughly 49.5 toes lengthy, per a press release. Such a size would have turn out to be useful for foraging—the creatures may effectively graze giant quantities of vegetation, Moore tells Dwell Science.

“The lengthy necks of those animals are wonderful, even by dinosaur requirements,” David Hone, a paleontologist who research dinosaurs at Queen Mary College of London and was not concerned within the analysis, tells New Scientist. “Understanding their evolution is basically necessary to see how these animals lived.”

The dinosaurs developed a couple of methods to handle their unwieldy necks. Researchers used CT scans to seek out that a lot of the vertebrae’s quantity—about 69 to 77 p.c—was air, much like the vertebrae of some birds. Such air-filled bones could be lighter, making it simpler for the Mamenchisaurus to carry up its large neck, per the assertion.

“Having such a protracted neck is a big weight that it’s a must to place away out of your physique,” Cary Woodruff, a paleontologist on the Frost Science Museum who research sauropods and didn’t contribute to the paper, tells the New York Instances. “If it’s a must to maintain a hammer together with your arm stretched out, your arm’s going to get drained fairly fast.”

For added help, the dinosaur had 13-foot-long ribs that may have made its neck extra steady and fewer liable to damage, in keeping with the assertion. It additionally held its neck at a comparatively shallow angle of 20 to 30 levels.

“The long-necked dinosaurs developed their very own, other ways of dealing with giantism and supporting lengthy necks, and there are quite a few wonderful deposits with long-necked sauropods throughout China,” Natalia Jagielska, a paleontologist on the College of Edinburgh in Scotland who didn’t contribute to the analysis, tells New Scientist.

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