pneumaticity

Skeletal pneumaticity is the presence of air spaces within bones.

Pneumaticity is limited to the neck and foremost back vertebrae, however.

It is known only from a series of small vertebrae, with prominent hollow chambers (pneumaticity).

Postcranial pneumaticity is usually found only among certain archosaurs-dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and birds.

Skeletal pneumaticity exists only in synapsids and archosaurs.

The genus name Pneumatoraptor refers to the pneumaticity of the bone, the hollow spaces that would have been filled with air sacs in life.

These characters can be interpreted as possibly homologous with features that represent unambiguously skeletal pneumaticity in theropods.

Unlike known carcharodontosaurids, this animal lacks pneumaticity extending into the sacral and caudal centra.

Other features which are typically thought to be associated with skeletal pneumaticity, are also present in Guchengosuchus, Erythrosuchus, and in several archosaurs.

The hyoid of Alouatta is pneumatized, one of the few cases of postcranial pneumaticity outside Saurischia.

From about 1870 onwards scientists have generally agreed that the post-cranial skeletons of many dinosaurs contained many air-filled cavities (postcranial skeletal pneumaticity, especially in the vertebrae.

However, there are unusual instances of postcranial pneumaticity outside Archosauria; the hyoid in the howler monkey Alouatta is pneumatized, and the osteoglossiform fish Pantodon pneumatizes some vertebrae from its swim bladder.

The postcranial skeletal pneumaticity in the skeletons of five taxa of early sauropodomorph dinosaurs is described by Adam M. Yates, Mathew J. Wedel and Matthew F. Bonnan (2012).

A study of the postcranial skeletal pneumaticity in the skeletons of Saltasaurus, Neuquensaurus and Rocasaurus is published by Ignacio A. Cerda, Leonardo Salgado and Jaime E. Powell (2012).

This is a typical value for birds, but not for mammals, and indicates that Plateosaurus probably had an avian-style flow-through lung, although indicators for postcranial pneumaticity (air sacs of the lung invading the bones to reduce weight) can be found on the bones of only few individuals, and were only recognized in 2010.