Sinking Sauropods?
Diplodocus skeletons, such as this one from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, grace Natural History Museums throughout the globe. When staring up at them, one can only wonder at their colossal size and bizarre long neck. But have you ever thought about the most important question concerning these giants of the Mesozoic world: would they float? A computational model, which makes assumptions on the muscle and bone densities of sauropods, has shown that, because sauropods have a pneumatised skeleton (it is hollow, much like a bird skeleton) rather than wading through deep lakes and rivers with only their necks exposed, they would have indeed begun to float.
But, before I let your imaginations run wild with thoughts of Camerasaurus freely floating downstream without a care in the world, I must warn you that the same research also showed that far from being care-free sailors, sauropods would have been unstable. They would most probably have ended up floating helplessly on their sides: a consequence of their centre of buoyancy being below their centre of mass.
So: could they float? Yes. Could they float well? Maybe not.
Sedg
Image credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CM_Diplodocus.jpg
Original paper: Henderson, 2004: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/271/Suppl_4/S180.full.pdf+html
