page_title: Neural spine sail
section_title: Food storage
hierarchical_section_title: Neural spine sail / Function / Food storage
caption_attribution_description: English: European bison (wisent) in captivity, Avesta Visentpark, Dalarna, Sweden.
context_page_description: A neural spine sail is a large, flattish protrusion from the back of an animal colinear with the spine. Many extinct species of amphibians and amniotes have extended neural spines growing from their back vertebrae. These are thought to have supported a sail. Paleontologists have proposed a number of ways in which the sail could have functioned in life.
context_section_description: The structure may also have been more hump-like than sail-like, as noted by Stromer in 1915 ("one might rather think of the existence of a large hump of fat [German: Fettbuckel], to which the [neural spines] gave internal support") and by Jack Bowman Bailey in 1997. In support of his "buffalo-back" hypothesis, Bailey argued that in Spinosaurus, Ouranosaurus, and other dinosaurs with long neural spines, the spines were relatively shorter and thicker than the spines of pelycosaurs (which were known to have sails); instead, the dinosaurs' neural spines were similar to the neural spines of extinct hump-backed mammals such as Megacerops and Bison latifrons.
caption: The tall neural spines of a bison form a hump rather than a sail.
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