Moving Around Flashcards
What types of stances are there?
Sprawling and Erect
What dictates a sprawling stance?
Limbs coming out to the sides
What dictates an erect stance?
Limbs under the organism
What are the benefits of an erect stance?
Able to passively hold more body weight and fast locomotion
What are the subgroups of an erect posture?
Cursorial limbs and Graviportal limbs
What kind of postures are there?
Digitigrade (on toes), Unguligrade (on toenails) and Plantigrade (on flat feet)
What are characteristics of cursorial limbs?
Elongated lower leg bones often have a digitigrade or unguligrade posture
What are Obligate Biped?
Animals that can only walk on two limbs
What are Obligate Quadrupeds?
Animals that can only walk on four legs
What types of animals can walk on two or four legs?
Facultative bipeds or quadrupeds
How did the common ancestor of dinosaurs walk?
they were an obligate biped
What dinosaurs were obligate quadrupeds?
Sauropods, stegosaurs and ankylosaurs
What muscle attaches the leg to the tail?
The caudofemoralis
What is the attachment site for the caudofemoralis called?
The trochanter
What is an ichnofossil?
Traces left behind by dinosaurs that have fossilized
What is a group of fossilized tracks called?
A trackwway
How do we know that bipedal dinosaurs walked horizontally to the ground?
Trackways rarely showed any tail marks
How can we determine the speed at which dinosaurs moved?
Trackways and leg length
What is an endotherm?
An animal that can make its own heat
What is an ectotherm?
An animal that relies on the environment for heat
What is the major disadvantage of being an endotherm?
It takes a lot of energy
What type of temperature adaptation do large animals tend to have?
Endothermic
What type of temperature adaptations did dinosaurs have?
Endothermic and possibly gigantothermic
What allows gigantothermic organisms to live like endothermic ones?
The cube-square law that shows that they would lose a relatively low amount of heat to the outside
