With how much force did brachiosauruses vomit?

brachiosaurus puke crater

I’ll take “Punk rock band names” for 100, Alex.

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Morgan Freeman Applause GIF by The Academy Awards

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Exhibit A: Henry the Cat, Portland, OR


But only when the knows not lowering his head will create a bigger mess.

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Yep. This doesn’t ring true to me. I know diddley squat about dino chunder, but if it boaked with so much force that it could do it heads up, it would risk blowing its own brains out. If it used some whiplash with its neck to fling it, much like the giraffe did after lunching on some dodgy acacia leaves, then it would not need any weapon-grade puke muscles that it only uses once every few years or so.

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“The gastric pellet is lens-like, 52 mm long, 33 mm wide, and 3.2 mm of maximum thickness”.

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So was the small dinosaur small enough to be accidentally eaten and then regurgitated?

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Puking involves diaphragm muscles, which dinosaurs didn’t have.

The story has evidently grown in the telling. Here’s the artist, Tony Martin, about his depiction. My emphasis:

TM: If there is anything that will get me on The Colbert Report, it’s my diagram of a Brachiosaurus projectile vomiting (see above), including the estimated impact velocity of the stream and the associated crater. I checked with (Emory physicist) Jed Brody to make sure I got the physics right. It’s a fantasy trace fossil – no one has found an undoubted trace fossil of dinosaur vomit yet – but that doesn’t mean they aren’t out there.

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I will not be denied the best band name so far this march.

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Those are three dinosaurs fleeing for their lives.
Kinda like the illustration for the article…

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Well, i guess we havent ever found a dinosaur’s diaphragm muscles

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Modern reptiles and birds don’t have diaphragms, so you wouldn’t expect dinosaurs would either. On the other hand, I’m confused by @smut_clyde saying that means dinosaurs couldn’t regurgitate, since birds certainly can. It’s how they deal with eating poisonous things like monarch butterflies, it’s how most feed their babies, and there’s a picture on this thread. :confused:

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Barf Dragon

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True that - modern feathered dinosaurs can regurgitate (pellets, chick feeding) - but apparently it’s from their proventriculus rather than from their stomachs, so I am going to insist that this is not true scotsmen vomiting.

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I was being a smartass :slight_smile:

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Speaking as a physicist – The math in this graphic for the force is WRONG WRONG WRONG. The average force felt on a target that absorbed all the momentum of the vomit would simply be the momentum of the vomit (mass * velocity of impact) divided by the amount of time it takes to slow ALL of the vomit down to zero speed on the head of the target. The claim is that the force is 68,600 Newtons; but that would mean that 68,600 N = (mass * velocity / splatter time) = (50kg) * (16.6 m/s) / time. This gives a time of around 1/100th of a second. No way 50kg of vomit comes out of a dinosaur and acts likes a solid rock, hitting a target in 0.01 seconds. I suspect the gross physics error here was to assume that average force equals kinetic energy divided by time (which is wrong). Even if this was the error, then there’s an unrealistic assumption that the splatter time is about 1/10th of a second. The simplistic assumptions employed in this graphic assume the liquidy vomit acts like a solid rock. No way a dinosaur upchucks 50kg of stuff in anything less than about 1 second. This bullshit graphic has been around a few years now. Can we all please STOP regurgitating it just to get some clicks.

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Shocked Oh My God GIF by Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

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But, here’s the thing, you clicked.

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I Mean Law And Order GIF by SVU

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I’m just a layman, but isn’t this the concept behind why it’s dangerous to jump into water from great heights? :man_shrugging:

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