Dinosaur that roamed China 162 million years ago had the longest neck of any animal

Can you understand the idea of ​​an animal with a neck as long as a car two folds?

Well, that’s just what a dinosaur that roamed China 162 million years ago had.

In fact, paleontologists say that the late Jurassic sauropod known as Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum had potentially the longest neck of any animal that ever lived, measuring a whopping 49 feet long (15 m).

That made it more than six times longer than a giraffe’s neck and 1.5 times the length of a double-decker bus.

The revelation comes as part of research into the evolutionary history of the Mamenchisauridae, a family of particularly long-necked sauropod dinosaurs that roamed East Asia and possibly other parts of the world from around 174 to 114 million years ago.

Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum was one of these dinosaurs.

Fossilized remains belonging to the creature were discovered in 162-million-year-old rocks in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in 1987.

For sauropods like Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum, the long neck was one of the key factors in making them as huge as they were.

To power such a large body, dinosaurs had to be efficient at gathering food, hence the long neck which meant they were able to stand in one spot and graze on the surrounding vegetation.

This allowed them to conserve energy while consuming tons of food.

Such a lifestyle proved extremely successful in allowing those types of dinosaurs to thrive.

In fact, the lineage of sauropods dates back to the earliest days of the dinosaurs and continued until the last days of the Mesozoic, when an asteroid wiped out most Jurassic creatures except for relatives of modern birds.

The paleontologists said that having a long neck likely also allowed sauropods like Mamenchisaurus to shed excess body heat by increasing their surface area, much like elephants’ ears.

However, they have long struggled to answer the question of which sauropod had the longest neck because the largest types of the species tend to be the most mysterious.

This is because it is extremely difficult for an animal of its size to become buried in sediment, which is the initial stage required for fossilization to occur.

Therefore, the poor preservation of dinosaurs makes estimates of their neck length speculative.

Although Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum is known from only a handful of neck and skull bones, the researchers were able to compare it to the unusually complete skeletons of its closest relatives.

This allowed them to conclude that Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum had a neck approximately 49 feet long (15.1 m), the longest of any known sauropod.

Lead author Dr Andrew Moore of Stony Brook University said: “All sauropods were big, but amazingly long necks didn’t just evolve once.”

Mamenchisaurids are important because they exceeded the limits of neck length and were the first lineage of sauropods to do so.

“With a 15-meter-long neck, it looks like Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum might hold a record, at least until something longer is discovered.”

However, the question of how sauropods managed to develop such long necks and large bodies without collapsing under their own weight has baffled scientists since their discovery.

By studying Mamenchisaurus, the researchers were able to use a computed tomography (CT) scan to reveal that its vertebrae were lightweight and hollow, with air spaces making up 69 to 77 percent of their volume, similar to bird skeletons. of light construction. .

However, such featherweight skeletons would also be more prone to injury, so to combat this Mamenchisaurus had 13-foot-long (4 m) bar-like neck ribs to keep the creature’s neck in place. its place and increase its stability.

These bony extensions of the vertebrae created overlapping bundles of rods on each side of the neck to stiffen it.

That answered the question of how they were able to avoid tipping over, but the remaining mystery of Mamenchisaurus and many other long-necked sauropods is understanding how they drew air down these long necks into their lungs.

Professor Paul Barrett, from the Natural History Museum, London, said: “Like all other sauropod dinosaurs, Mamenchisaurus had a complex respiratory system that included not only lungs, but also numerous balloon-shaped air sacs.”

These were connected to the lungs and trachea, but extended throughout the inside of the animal’s neck, chest, and abdomen.

“Taken together, these air sacs had a much larger volume than the lungs, and even penetrated the bones, hollowing them out.

“This extra space would have helped these gigantic sauropods move the large volume of air in the long trachea that would have occupied their extraordinary necks.”

While Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum is now believed to have the longest neck of any dinosaur, however, it was still not the largest overall.

That honor belongs to titanosaurs, which were one of the last surviving groups of sauropods before the Chicxulub asteroid impact.

The new study has been published in the Journal of Systematic Paleontology.