From G. J. Badley
Researchers are pondering why dinosaur fossils appear in a characteristic posture (22/29 December 2007, p 62). Scavengers scatter exposed bones, and a skeleton has a far better chance of being fossilised whole if its owner died by being buried alive.
Imagine a long-necked dinosaur running across deep estuary mud, then floundering. While the animal can still move, it will keep its head forward; but when it’s stuck and sinking it will need to raise it.
Unfortunately, a head is heavy and, in lifting it, the dinosaur will force its body down. To counteract this, it will raise its head further – and so on, until its neck is as perpendicular as it can make it (in practice an S-shape) and its body is tilted by as much as 180 degrees relative to the head.
So, for some fossils at least, I think the classic “dead dinosaur” position is that of a creature trapped, in danger of suffocation and manoeuvring to stay alive for as long as it can.
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Did no one consider a study of the human skeletal remains from Pompeii or Herculaneum?
Pickering, North Yorkshire, UK
Hedge End, Hampshire, UK
