I'm getting at the fact that the head and neck are nearer to horizontal, not vertical. If you have your arm extended, and are then holding a broom out (or any weight really, or even no weight at all) you cannot hold it in that position for hours. (To me, it sounds like a stress position, a form of torture!)
But that was these dinosaurs' design, purportedly.
Re spears, the shape has no bearing if you are holding it at its balancing point.
Alternatively, imagine building this sort of shape with something like Lego.. its unfeasible to have a 6m horizontal length, then a heavy head, and expect the Lego to not break.
If you look at the skeleton you can see the neck starts out extremely massive with super thick bones and becomes very thin at the end. The skull is much smaller than the root of the neck.
This works like a human neck, the edge of that dinosaur neck looks similar like a human neck. Then you just scale up that human neck to support the last neck, and then again to support the last neck etc, iterate and you get this dinosaur. Human necks doesn't weigh that much, so you can reach quite far with that style, this dinosaur shows you can get 6 meters with it.
Also note that it has those long bones underneath along the neck, that neck wasn't very flexible, rather it shows it was extremely stiff to make that weight easier to support so it maintains that position while being relaxed, that isn't exactly a flexible snake.
I'm pretty sure that the plaster cast skeleton in the image will be supported by thin cables or wires from the ceiling. Which would be supportive of my point.
In the same picture you posted, you see a bit of an elephant and its trunk. I know the trunk is pure muscle (no bones) but you can still see the engineering elements - it is tapered (thinner at the end), and when it is at rest it hangs low - only engaged at height occasionally.
There was no rest for the dinosaurs though - head the size of a small car, at the end of a very long projection... Unfeasible, I say!
> I'm pretty sure that the plaster cast skeleton in the image will be supported by thin cables or wires from the ceiling. Which would be supportive of my point.
so would a human skeleton? it has no connective tissue, it needs external support. when you add muscles, ligaments, cartilage, all that fleshy stuff, suddenly you have an arm that holds together and can move around without falling apart yknow?
It’s impossible for me to dunk a basketball on an NBA hoop, therefore it must be impossible for any human to do. How could a human possibly jump high enough and reach while holding the basketball? I’ve tried it, I couldn’t even get close. It’s impossible.
You keep saying “design” like this dinosaur would have been architected a certain way by some form of intelligence, rather than evolved over millions of years through dumb luck.
Your earlier comment about the pain of muscular stress implies that the dinosaurs joints, muscular and nervous system would be identical to that of human limbs. Which is unlikely if such a neck were to evolve.
Also your comparison to Lego is weird. Lego, which is something that was designed, was purposely designed with the goal of being easy to disassemble. So it’s not going to have the same structural integrity as stone, metal, nor bone.
> You keep saying “design” like this dinosaur would have been architected a certain way by some form of intelligence, rather than evolved over millions of years through dumb luck.
Yes, I do. Because we are several million years away from being able to personally verify the ideas we are presented with, when it comes to dinosaurs. We are dealing with a hypothesis based on the deductions from a small handful of bones, not reality.
Eg, when I was younger dinosaurs were never feathered. Pretty much all are now. It's that the ideas evolve, not the dinosaurs.
Nobody is going to claim that these theories are bulletproof but that’s an entirely different discussion to the point I was making about using the term “designed”
The thing you can also say about design, is even if there is no designer, a thing is the way it is for rational reasons. A tree wouldn't function as it does if it weren't for its form. I guess, you could I use the synonym "form" instead of "design".
But that was these dinosaurs' design, purportedly.
Re spears, the shape has no bearing if you are holding it at its balancing point.
Alternatively, imagine building this sort of shape with something like Lego.. its unfeasible to have a 6m horizontal length, then a heavy head, and expect the Lego to not break.