Sauropods rearing up and withstanding the impact going down

[Chaos Soahc]

Can sauropods stomp down with their forelimbs from a rearing position and survive the kinetic force and impact?

[Heinrich Mallison]

Within the normal safety factors (say, maybe 2 g) most definitely.

Best

Heinrich 

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On Sun, Jun 14, 2026, 20:38 Chaos Soahc <soahcc...@gmail.com> wrote:

Can sauropods stomp down with their forelimbs from a rearing position and survive the kinetic force and impact?

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[Chaos Soahc]

So youre saying even a large sauropod lets say 40 tons rearing up with its forelimbs at decent height off the ground cab fall down at the acceleration of gravity and its forelimbs could handle the force just fine, how? I mean this forces would be over hundreds of thousands of newtons, would its extensive cartilage abd partial shock absorbing abilities of its forelimbs muscles help?

On Sunday, June 14, 2026, Heinrich Mallison <heinrich...@gmail.com> wrote:

Within the normal safety factors (say, maybe 2 g) most definitely.

Best

Heinrich 

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On Sun, Jun 14, 2026, 20:38 Chaos Soahc <soahcc...@gmail.com> wrote:

Can sauropods stomp down with their forelimbs from a rearing position and survive the kinetic force and impact?

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[Heinrich Mallison]

Check out my paper on sauropod reading. (Tell me if you need a PDF, I'll be back home tomorrow and can send)

Coming down was, for most sauropods, smooth and soft.

But yes, if you consider what forces would act on their forelimbs during locomotion, including an occasional mis-step into a hole or so - something all animals should normally survive without damage - sauropod forelimbs should.have easily withstood even a hefty "whoomp"

Consider, also: the force would be nearly purely compressive. Unlike mammals, sauropods had thick cartilage caps in their wrists, elbows and shoulder joints. The entire shoulder girdle was soft-suspended from the ribcage (typical terrestrial tetrapod), further cushioning the impact.

Where is the problem? Forget Hollywood - in movies you can hear elephant footsteps. In reality they.can walk very fast with no noise, because biomechanics isn't Hollywood. Same here: sauropods walked softly and had well-cushioned joints. Ideal for NOT crashing into the ground with force.

Best

Heinrich 

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On Sun, Jun 14, 2026, 21:36 Chaos Soahc <soahcc...@gmail.com> wrote:

So youre saying even a large sauropod lets say 40 tons rearing up with its forelimbs at decent height off the ground cab fall down at the acceleration of gravity and its forelimbs could handle the force just fine, how? I mean this forces would be over hundreds of thousands of newtons, would its extensive cartilage abd partial shock absorbing abilities of its forelimbs muscles help?

On Sunday, June 14, 2026, Heinrich Mallison <heinrich...@gmail.com> wrote:

Within the normal safety factors (say, maybe 2 g) most definitely.

Best

Heinrich 

_______________________________________________________
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On Sun, Jun 14, 2026, 20:38 Chaos Soahc <soahcc...@gmail.com> wrote:

Can sauropods stomp down with their forelimbs from a rearing position and survive the kinetic force and impact?

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[Mike Habib]

As an addition to the already astute responses, bone is more than 5x stronger than concrete in axial compression.

Cheers,

—Mike

Michael B. Habib, MS PhD
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On Jun 14, 2026, at 12:56 PM, Heinrich Mallison <heinrich...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Chaos Soahc]

Ok so a sauropod is more than capable of taking the immense forces of rearing up and stomping down with force, even if its not what its meant to do, could such a powerful stomp leave an impact mark on the ground? And I would like to read the pdf and would be super grateful if you can send it to me when you have the time of course

—Mike



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[Chaos Soahc]

Would i be correct that a sauropod stomp in the way I am envisioning be one of the most powerful movements from a biological organism considering the forces, could thos be used against other animals like large theropods or each other?

—Mike



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[Chaos Soahc]

And just so I am not being mistaken forces of hundreds of thousands of newtons would be safely handled, if correct thats amazing thats so much force, could even 500000 newtons of force be handled?

—Mike



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[Jura]

I'll stick a much needed nay voice in here. It was very doubtful that the forelimbs of a 40 tonne sauropod could handle the impact of an "uncontrolled" return to all fours (i.e., stomping). The torque required to have a controlled touch down was likely too much as well. Diplodocids seem best built for handling this kind of motion and offer the most likely chance of rearing, but the much larger titanosaurs seem to be far less capable of doing so. It's interesting that Heinrich suggests otherwise given that his paper (Mallison 2011) also argues against rearing in titanosaurs.

If a titanosaur were to stomp the ground they could just lift up one foot at a time and slam it down for the same (and safer) effect.

Reference

Mallison, H., 2011. Rearing giants: kinetic-dynamic modeling of sauropod bipedal and tripodal poses. Biology of the sauropod dinosaurs: Understanding the life of giants

[Heinrich Mallison]

Let's say we take a 40 t sauropod with half the weight on the forelimbs, that's 20 t.

For reading the animal would move the hind limbs to bring the COM further back, and most of the weight of the anterior half of the body will be behind (i.e. closer to the center of rotation) than the forelimbs' contact point with the ground and, comparatively, little elevated. This thus won't be 20t crashing vertically down! More like, maybe, 5t. That's 50.000 N, accelerated over maybe 1.5 times the shoulder height minus leg length, divided between two forelimbs.

Not that impressive!

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—Mike



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[Heinrich Mallison]

Jura, I'll send you my paper again. It says no to PROLONGED rearing, and says the pose is risky.

But they definitely did read up - otherwise no titanosaur babies 🤷

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[Jura]

You state in your paper that Diplodocus was well built for rearing but Brachiosaurus rearing would have been a rare event, especially for the largest individuals. 

Relevant quotes from your paper:

"When the 'reasonable' rearing model is used, the muscle cross section required for rearing becomes much larger, making it unlikely that Brachiosaurus reared for any length of time, if at all."

"In contrast, Brachiosaurus would have expended considerably more energy, could not have attained a stable upright pose, and would have risked serious injury to its forefeet when descending too rapidly."

" Rearing only works well for defense if the sauropod can rear up and get back down quickly, which in the case of Brachiosaurus probably resulted in prohibitive compressive forces on the front limbs."

As for sexual intercourse, I don't think a lack of rearing would be an issue as dinosaurs were not mammals. The female could more easily have crouched down and let the male crawl up, or even perform a more side-to-side alignment since the tails would be in the way of direct contact regardless.

[Heinrich Mallison]

Well, show me the side-to-side arrangement, or the "crawling up", in 3D, without a dirigible ultra-long penis. Sauropod bodies were surprisingly stiff (as they had to be), in marked contrast to lizards. 

As you quote, brachiosaurus are an extreme. Even more front heavy and with a much higher shoulder than the average titanosaur, which we discussed here. And yes: they certainly got into the area where rearing and really quick return got dangerous. 

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[Richard W. Travsky]

 

An interesting question, got curious as to how they might have reared up. The next best thing, elephants. Youtube has some, sort of illuminating, but did notice a couple things. To initiate the rearing, a raise with one leg almost like a pump and then a push off with the other. Coming down, it was one leg making ground contact first and then the other. Which basically means that first leg takes all the weight and impact, for a moment anyway.

 

No idea, of course, if this is applicable to sauropods.

[Heinrich Mallison]

Actually, the first leg down doesn't take "all" the impact, it takes part and slows down the motion, then the rest is taken up by the other leg. 

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On Mon, Jun 15, 2026, 06:15 'Richard W. Travsky' via Dinosaur Mailing Group <DinosaurMa...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

 

An interesting question, got curious as to how they might have reared up. The next best thing, elephants. Youtube has some, sort of illuminating, but did notice a couple things. To initiate the rearing, a raise with one leg almost like a pump and then a push off with the other. Coming down, it was one leg making ground contact first and then the other. Which basically means that first leg takes all the weight and impact, for a moment anyway.

 

No idea, of course, if this is applicable to sauropods.

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[Chaos Soahc]

Then if I may ask, would would be the most powerful movement a sauropod could perform and would that mean that sauropod stomping wouldn’t be that effective since it’s much less weight actually being moved, could sauropods have accelerated the forelimbs downward faster to increase the amount of force created?

[Heinrich Mallison]

Tail whack. A full swing tail whack.

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[Chaos Soahc]

I thought so, but could sauropod still have accelerated their forelimbs downward in a stomp fast enough to impart significant kinetic energy?

[Andreas Johansson]

Elephant tails are tiny, while elephant heads and necks are not, so presumably an elephant's CoG is much further forward than a sauropod's, and therefore sauropods (excepting perhaps brachiosaurids) should be much better suited to rearing?

On Mon, Jun 15, 2026 at 6:15 AM 'Richard W. Travsky' via Dinosaur Mailing Group <DinosaurMa...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

 

An interesting question, got curious as to how they might have reared up. The next best thing, elephants. Youtube has some, sort of illuminating, but did notice a couple things. To initiate the rearing, a raise with one leg almost like a pump and then a push off with the other. Coming down, it was one leg making ground contact first and then the other. Which basically means that first leg takes all the weight and impact, for a moment anyway.

 

No idea, of course, if this is applicable to sauropods.

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Why can't you be a non-conformist just like everybody else?

[Jura]

What's the goal here? What counts as a significant stomp? Is this sauropod trying to intimidate a rival, hurt a predator, or crack a rock? The mere act of lifting a forelimb and letting gravity return it to the ground will impart a large chunk of kinetic energy, but without context it's hard to answer whether that would be important. 

[Heinrich Mallison]

here's the PDF

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[Chaos Soahc]

Well I just wanted to find a range of the maximum amount of force that could be exerted in any context but more importantly any metric or estimate for this.

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[Chaos Soahc]

But for simplicity lets imagine it has reared up and is stomping down on a large theropod 

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[Jaime Headden]

Heinrich Mallison wrote:

"But they definitely did read up - otherwise no titanosaur babies 🤷"

Barring the exception such as extended, prehensile genitalia... We should note that almost all plated and spike-bearing quadrupeds were a great deal smaller than sauropods, but some of them (e.g., Stegosaurus stenops) might have grown considerably large, and the male copulatory position would be less than ideal, leading to the butt-to-butt hypothesis (cloacal kissing) or some form of prehensile extension of the male penis, which would be within the EPB, and in fact, it favors it over the elimination of it. So, sauropods would not have preferred an unconventional posture unless it was technically impossible. Why evolve an unusual copulation strategy if one could do it the normal way? The idea then would be to find "normal." Anyhow, a post-coital slide-off her back would also be more likely, but still involve a degree of high compressive force to the forelimb (first one, then the other in sequence) exceeding the force of the step.

Cheers,

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[Ronald ORENSTEIN]

Sorry if this is an ignorant question, but could female sauropods have crouched low enough to be straddled by males without rearing?

Ronald Orenstein 1825 Shady Creek Court Mississauga, ON L5L 3W2 Canada ronorenstein.blogspot.com

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[Heinrich Mallison]

read my paper which I just shared here ;)

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