--- title: The long-necked giants: Diplodocus, Brachiosaurus, Argentinosaurus and Brontosaurus — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «The long-necked giants: Diplodocus, Brachiosaurus, Argentinosaurus and Brontosaurus», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: The sauropods were the long-necked plant-eaters, the biggest animals that ever walked --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/266-the-long-necked-giants-sauropods/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / The long-necked giants: Diplodocus, Br… # The long-necked giants: Diplodocus, Brachiosaurus, Argentinosaurus and Brontosaurus Lesson 266 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 17 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/biology/266-the-long-necked-giants-sauropods/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/266-the-long-necked-giants-sauropods/0/) — The sauropods were the long-necked plant-eaters, the biggest animals that ever walked on land; Diplodocus was about 25 metres long, mostly neck and tail, longer than a tennis court. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/266-the-long-necked-giants-sauropods/1/) — The heaviest, like Argentinosaurus, may have weighed 70 tonnes or more, as much as ten elephants, and one of its backbones is taller than a child. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/266-the-long-necked-giants-sauropods/2/) — They did not crush themselves because their bones were full of air pockets, like a bird's, which made the skeleton lighter and helped them breathe. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/266-the-long-necked-giants-sauropods/3/) — They did not chew at all: they stripped leaves and swallowed them, and their huge gut worked like a compost tank, so lunch for a sauropod lasted most of the day. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/266-the-long-necked-giants-sauropods/4/) — Old pictures put Brontosaurus in a lake to hold up its weight, but footprints and leg bones show sauropods walked on dry land, often in groups with the young in the middle. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/266-the-long-necked-giants-sauropods/5/) — Sauropods were long-necked plant-eating dinosaurs and the biggest animals ever to walk on land; Diplodocus was about 25 metres long, mostly neck and tail. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/266-the-long-necked-giants-sauropods/6/) — Argentinosaurus may have weighed 70 tonnes or more and been about 35 metres long; these sizes are estimates from a few huge bones. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/266-the-long-necked-giants-sauropods/7/) — Sauropod bones had air pockets inside, as birds' bones do, which made the skeleton lighter and helped breathing. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/266-the-long-necked-giants-sauropods/8/) — Brachiosaurus had long front legs and could reach treetops about 12 metres up; some other sauropods probably held their necks more level, sweeping low plants. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/266-the-long-necked-giants-sauropods/9/) — Sauropods did not chew; they stripped leaves, swallowed them whole and let their huge gut break the plants down slowly. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/266-the-long-necked-giants-sauropods/10/) — Even the giants hatched from eggs about the size of a football, because a much bigger egg would need a shell too thick for the baby to breathe through; a hatchling of a few kilograms grew thousands of times heavier before it was adult. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/266-the-long-necked-giants-sauropods/11/) — Scientists once thought sauropods had to live in lakes to hold up their weight, but footprints and leg bones show they walked on dry land. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/266-the-long-necked-giants-sauropods/12/) — In 1903 Brontosaurus was judged to be the same as Apatosaurus, but a 2015 study said it was different enough to be its own kind again. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/266-the-long-necked-giants-sauropods/13/) — Trackways show some sauropods walked in groups, with young ones in the middle; footprints are trace fossils that show behaviour. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/266-the-long-necked-giants-sauropods/14/) — A sauropod holding its head high needed a big, powerful heart to pump blood all the way up to its head, like a giraffe today; this is one reason some scientists think many held their necks low. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/266-the-long-necked-giants-sauropods/15/) — A giraffe has 7 neck bones and a sauropod had 12 to 19; unrelated animals finding the same answer to reaching high food is called convergence. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/266-the-long-necked-giants-sauropods/16/) — Only the blue whale, which is held up by water, is heavier than the biggest sauropods. - ← previous: [Tyrannosaurus rex: what we really know, from teeth and dung to tiny arms](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/265-tyrannosaurus-rex-teeth-dung-and-tiny-arms/) - next →: [Horns, frills, plates and clubs: Triceratops, Stegosaurus, Ankylosaurus and the duck-bills](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/267-horns-frills-plates-and-clubs/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)