These long cervical ribs are ossified tendons of ventral neck muscles, presumably longus colli ventralis. We know they’re ossified tendons because of their bone histology (Klein et al. 2012), and we suspect that they’re longus colli ventralis because those tendons look the same in birds, jus...
Birds make it easier to move their legs by lightening them: shifting the muscles proximally and operating the legs via tendons. (I assume that if we could see the behind the feathers of the flamingo, we’d see a similar, though smaller, “drumstick” at the top of the tibiotarsus.) Li...
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It is by now well-understood that the long cervical ribs of sauropods and other dinosaurs are ossified tendons of the long hypaxial neck muscles, specifically the longus colli ventralis and flexor colli lateralis. We argued this back in 200o on comparative anatomical grounds (Wedel et al. 2000...