How much power did a dinosaur's tail swallow? revealing study

KOMPAS.com – From time to time, scientists conduct research to test some strange hypothesis. One of them in this new study, namely how hard the tail wags dinosaur.

A team of paleontologists and aerospace engineers simulated how the moment dinosaur tail sauropod to shift.

This was done to see if the movement of the long-necked sauropod’s tail was faster than the speed of sound and fast enough to produce tiny cracks.

Previous studies have found that their tails have a structure similar to that of a bull’s longer tail.

If they are real dinosaurs herbivore it can use its tail to defend itself from predators. But paleontologists aren’t so sure.

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Quoted from scientific alarm, Many theories have been debated so far on Wednesday (12/28/2022) as to why diplodocid dinosaurs, a group of sauropods that includes Brontosaurus, had long, thin tails.

In addition to being a defensive weapon, diplodocids may have used their tails to make sounds, to compensate for their long necks, to push against the ground around them, or to stabilize their bodies as third legs like kangaroos.

Unfortunately, no complete diplodocid tails have been found so far, so the researchers behind this latest study conducted a study of five diplodocid fossils.

The study led by paleontologist Simone Conti of NOVA University, Lisbon, Portugal, then made the model by adding the material properties of soft tissues such as skin, tendons and ligaments.

While the morphology of the internal soft tissue of the sauropod tail is still unknown, since only traces of skin and bones are preserved in the fossil record of this dinosaur.