Did Sauropods Walk or Waddle?
Sauropod dinosaurs were the largest land animals ever to have lived – but how did they live?
Four feet long and made of plaster, a lifelike model of Diplodocus carnegii lurks atop one of the cabinets in the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences in Cambridge. But the countless millions who have seen ‘Dippy’ the dinosaur – whether the original fossils at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, the cast formerly on display at London’s Natural History Museum, or one of many other casts worldwide – will notice that something is off. Diplodocus usually stands to attention with straight, elephantine legs, but the limbs on this model bend out to the sides, almost in the manner of a crocodile.
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