Experimental alteration of limb posture in the chicken (Gallus gallus) and its bearing on the use of birds as analogs for dinosaur locomotion

Extant birds represent the only diverse living bipeds, and can be informative for investigations into the life‐history parameters of their extinct dinosaurian relatives. However, morphological changes that occurred during early avian evolution, including the unique adoption of a nearly horizontal fe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of morphology (1931) 1999-06, Vol.240 (3), p.237-249
Main Authors: Carrano, Matthew T., Biewener, Andrew A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Aves
Biological Evolution
Biomechanical Phenomena
biomechanics
bone strain
Chickens - physiology
Extremities - physiology
Femur - physiology
Gait - physiology
kinematics
Locomotion - physiology
Paleontology
Posture - physiology
torsion
Torsion Abnormality
Weight-Bearing - physiology
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Summary:Extant birds represent the only diverse living bipeds, and can be informative for investigations into the life‐history parameters of their extinct dinosaurian relatives. However, morphological changes that occurred during early avian evolution, including the unique adoption of a nearly horizontal femoral orientation associated with a shift in center of mass (CM), suggest that caution is warranted in the use of birds as analogs for nonavian dinosaur locomotion. In this study, we fitted a group of white leghorn chickens (Gallus gallus) with a weight suspended posterior to the hip in order to examine the effects on loading and morphology. This caused a CM shift that necessitated a change in femoral posture (by 35° towards the horizontal, P 
ISSN:0362-2525
1097-4687
DOI:10.1002/(SICI)1097-4687(199906)240:3<237::AID-JMOR3>3.0.CO;2-N