The biggest star of the exhibit is a detailed model of a 60-foot-long Mamenchisaurus (pronounced mah-MUN-key-sore-us). “It’s a very long-necked animal from China,” said Mark Norell of the museum’s paleontology department. Its neck was 30 feet long!
Another important element of the discovery is the environment where Kryptodrakon lived. This was a river-dominated ecosystem far from the ocean in a region teeming with life, including a fearsome dinosaur predator called Sinraptor and a gigantic plant-eating dinosaur named Mamenchisaurus that boasted one of the longest necks of any creature yet to walk the planet.
2023 March 15, Jack Tamisiea, “It’s Not a Stretch: This Dinosaur Had a 50-Foot Neck”, in The New York Times[5], →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 15 March 2023, Science[6]:
To determine how Mamenchisaurus managed a neck as long as a semi-truck trailer, Dr. Moore and colleagues used a CT scanner to analyze the animal’s vertebrae. Instead of being stuffed with heavy marrow and tissue while the dinosaur was living, the interior of the sauropod’s vertebrae were filled with large air pockets similar to those found in modern birds like storks and swans. These empty pockets accounted for up to 77 percent of each bone’s volume, vastly decreasing the weight of Mamenchisaurus’s spine.
2023 March 17, Will Sullivan, “This Dinosaur Had a 50-Foot-Long Neck, Scientists Say”, in Smithsonian Magazine[7], archived from the original on 20 March 2023[8]:
The dinosaurs evolved a few ways to manage their unwieldy necks. Researchers used CT scans to find that most of the vertebrae’s volume—about 69 to 77 percent—was air, similar to the vertebrae of some birds. Such air-filled bones would be lighter, making it easier for the Mamenchisaurus to hold up its giant neck, per the statement.
