Hollow dinosaur bones, fact or fiction?

[amargasaurus cazaui]

Have recently been dealing with a facebook group regarding dinosaur bones. It has always been my understanding that animals like Tyrannosaurus and various theropods would have had empty or hollow cavities within the bones for the purpose of air intake and for lightening of the bone weight as well. In addition as I understood them, many large sauropods were known to have large empty cavities within their neck verts for weight efficiency as well perhaps as being for air use as well. The group I am dealing with seem of a mind this is impossible and all bones of an animal would be filled with soft tissue......any facts, information and especially papers on this topic would be quite useful. I am sure there has to be something firm to state that for instance barosarus did possess such neck adaptations....thoughts? Were there other forms of hollow bone, cavities etc known in dinosaurs? This group has the spin all empty spaces in dinosaur bone are a result of dead tissue or rotting and I disagree adamantly

[Newt]

Have you visited svpow.com? It's a blog by paleontologists Matt Wedel and Mike Taylor, who cover this issue (among many others) extensively.

The upshot is, yes, many or most saurischians had pneumatized bones- especially the skull and vertebrae, but also parts of the appendicular skeleton. Big sauropod vertebrae are sort of a bony froth that in life would have been filled with air sacs. The long bones of the limbs generally had marrow spaces, as ours do.

EDIT: here's an introductory article on the subject by Wedel: http://cosmosmagazine.com/features/we-are-all-air-heads/

[Newt]

By the way, a number of taxa have been named for this characteristic.

Aerosteon - "air bone"
Bothriospondylus - "excavated vertebra"
Camarasaurus - "chamber lizard"
Coelophysis - "hollow form"
Coelurosauria - "hollow tail lizards"
Coelurus - "hollow tail"
Pleurocoelus - after the pleurocoels, or pneumatic depressions in the sides of the vertebrae

No doubt there are many others. The "coel" in Opisthocoelicaudia, on the other hand, refers to the concave ends of the caudal centra, not to pneumatic features.

Pterosaurs are also highly pneumatic. Ornithischians have more limited pneumaticity; ceratopsians have some air chambers in the brow horns, I believe. The recent paper interpreting Spinosaurus as aquatic emphasized the lack of air spaces in its bones (as seen in diving birds).

As far as I can tell, the interpretation of the hollows in these bones being filled by pneumatic sacs in life is not controversial among paleontologists. The structure of marrow-filled spaces is distinctly different from that of pneumatic spaces.

[Dinoguy2]

In addition, many of these hollow cavities could not have been filled with marrow or other tissue because they are actually opened or lined via holes to the outside of the bone.

[DinoLord]

You can try asking them if animals like sauropods had solid bones, how would they grow to the sizes they did and still be able to hold themselves up?

[amargasaurus cazaui]

Wow thats alll great to see...restores my faith in what I was trying to put across....not sure if it wll win over the ham heads, but worth a try. Alot of helpful information for sure......and prety much settles the debate we are having

[HD-man]

Wow thats alll great to see...restores my faith in what I was trying to put across....not sure if it wll win over the ham heads, but worth a try.

Why just show them pics of bird & sauropod vertebrae?

[amargasaurus cazaui]

Wow thats alll great to see...restores my faith in what I was trying to put across....not sure if it wll win over the ham heads, but worth a try.

Why just show them pics of bird & sauropod vertebrae?

The verts I do have from sauropods have all filled in either through fossilization or growth...I dont own any pictures of saurpod verts that demonstrate the hollows well or I surely would

[alexeratops]

I really don't see a solid boned Archeopteryx gliding around...

[amargasaurus cazaui]

I posted most of the comments from this thread to the debate, and then for fun invited Patrx, Dan Larosso, Forest Rogers, Julius Cstonyi, and Aaron Doyle all along to listen and discuss

[Gryphoceratops]

I own a coelophysis bone I found in New Mexico two years ago that was broken along its length.  It's definitely hollow. 

http://jerseyboyshuntdinosaurs.blogspot.com/2013/10/national-fossil-day-2013.html

I would ask them to compare dinosaur bones with fossilized bones of other kinds of animals which had solid bones.  The two are definitely different.

[amargasaurus cazaui]

I own a coelophysis bone I found in New Mexico two years ago that was broken along its length.  It's definitely hollow. 

http://jerseyboyshuntdinosaurs.blogspot.com/2013/10/national-fossil-day-2013.html

I would ask them to compare dinosaur bones with fossilized bones of other kinds of animals which had solid bones.  The two are definitely different.

I can either post your link or tag you into the discussion if you like, you have maintained Nim as friend on facebook for a long time !!!