DEAR Editor,-
Sauropods diplodocus and brachiosaurus, the biggest animals to ever walk the earth, are wrongly classified as herbivores.
High or low browsers, they are often pictured standing on their hind legs to reach the highest trees.
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Evolution did not give them teeth to strip leaves from trees – or to chew them, but gave them a gizzard and stones for digestion.
To supply blood to the brain, which might have been 30 metres or more above the ground, it is thought that they may have had three hearts along the neck.
Brachiosaurus had nostrils positioned above the eyes, which is explained as a brain cooler.
All of this makes sense if these two creatures are pictured as having aquatic lifestyles – huge bodies supported by water submerged up to the back and a tiny head for hunting squid, jellyfish and fish.
Unlike diplodocus, brachiosaurus stood with long front legs high in the water, necks held up with eyes below the surface to avoid the glare of the sun, but they could still breathe though their nostrils.
The lifestyle description of both these two dinosaurs are wrong – evolution does not make mistakes and neither diplodocus or brachiosaurus were leaf eaters or low or high browers.
JOHAN ECKHARDT
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