Sauropod Eating Contest!

Rekindling my childhood fascination with dinosaurs, the American Museum of Natural History tomorrow opens an exhibit titled "The World's Largest Dinosaurs," focusing on the long-necked, big-trunked vegetarians that are, yes, very large. In his review of the exhibit, Edward Rothstein marvels at how the museum's scientists move past the dinosaurs' size to explore their biological systems. For example, how did sauropods 60 feet in length (and more) pump blood throughout their bodies? How did their circulatory and digestive systems work?

That latter question sure is a good one, especially when Rothstein presents some of the details about sauropods' diets. Apparently, African elephants must eat for 18 hours each day simply to keep functioning. "A sauropod, which could be 10 times the size of an elephant and might require 100,000 calories a day, would have had to devour more and, we read, 'get as much down their throats as possible, as fast as they could.' " Sauropods ate 1,150 pounds of food per day and didn't chew it because that would waste too much time! (Their digestive system may have fermented the food for slow digestion over two weeks.) And newly hatched sauropods might have doubled their weight in five days and quadrupled it in 12 days so they could reach the 90-ton size of an adult. Their weight might have increased as an adolescent by 3,500 pounds per year. As my fiancee said, talk about your "Freshman Fifteen."

Rothstein relays that sauropods' bodies developed to adapt to their size: Their long necks made more food available for eating and lessened the load on the rest of their bodies. But wouldn't you think that a size this large would be biologically disadvantageous, in the Darwinian sense, because they'd have to eat nearly every waking second simply to remain alive? When would they have time for anything else, namely protecting themselves from predators and sex? How did these guys hang around for 140 million years?! Perhaps it was fun because they could eat all they wanted, whenever they wanted, without the fear of getting fat. But it also sounds relatively boring to me -- so little time to shoot hoops, read a book in the sun or go for a swim in the lagoon.