00:04Dinosaurs are extinct, so we'll likely never know all there is to know about them.
00:08But that isn't stopping scientists from getting into the weeds about their physiology anyways.
00:12And now researchers are looking into whether or not sauropods,
00:15or giant dinos classified by their long necks and long tails,
00:18might actually be able to whip their back ends fast enough to break the speed of sound and produce a
00:22sonic boom.
00:23But first, scientists had to create a computer model that replicated the tail of one of these behemoths.
00:29Painstakingly reconstructing one using multiple incomplete specimens.
00:32In total, around 80 vertebrae were modeled, along with a structure of soft tissue physics,
00:37including skin, tendons, and ligaments around it.
00:39Creating this, while it might not look like much,
00:42the researchers say this tail would have weighed a whopping 3,187 pounds,
00:47and stretched 40 feet in length.
00:48And this is what it looks like in motion, with the tip of the tail moving around 100 feet per
00:53second.
00:53They say the results revealed it was quite a bit stiffer than expected,
00:56causing the tail to move slower as well.
00:58And if you've done the math, you'll know that 100 feet per second is around 10 times slower than the
01:03speed of sound,
01:04meaning no sonic boom.
01:05And that's exactly what it looks like to go home.
01:10For more information, if you issue all your patterns,
