Re: How did dinosaurs, particularily sauropods work?

     Although it is certainly true that many dinosaur groups were not 
brainy by the standards of modern mammals, the idea that dinosaurs were 
pea-brained creatins is based largely on sloppy work and out of date mass 
estimates.  In truth, even the "dumbest" dinosaurs had brains that are in 
the size range predicted for reptiles of their size range.  Older 
estimates that suggested that Brachiosaurus had a brain only slightly 
above mushroom level resulted because the researcher used a juvenile 
cranium specimen (whose owner probably massed around 15 tonnes in life) 
and assigned a mass of 80 tonnes, which is probably twice as large as an 
average adult brachiosaur.
     By the end of the Cretaceous, most dinosaur groups (e.g. ornithopods, 
ceratopsians, and most large theropods) has brains larger than predicted 
for reptiles of their size range.  Some small theropods and tyrannsaurs 
were even more encephalized (big brained), and in fact the smartest animal 
alive at the end of the Mesozoic was likely a dinosaur, although reliable 
brain estimates for mammals from that period do not exist.
     One interesting question relates to the whether the reptile-sized 
brains of stegosaurs, sauropods, and many primative dinosaur groups meant 
that they had phsiologies like modern lizards and snakes.  Although many 
argued in the 70's and 80's that this was true, it now seems unlikely that 
small brain size is inextricably linked to a cold-blooded metabolism.  One 
reason, commonly overlooked in popular books on the subject, is that early 
mammals didn't have brains much larger either.  And those mammal ancestors 
the Therapsids, at least some of which likely warm-blooded, had normal, 
reptile sized brains.  It is only our modern perspective, after 50 million 
years of a mammalian brain "arms-race" that it looks like big brains are 
normal for warm blooded-animals.

Here are some related links:

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/dinosaurs/anatomy/Brain.shtml

http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dinosaurs/iq.html

...and here are some books you might want to check out:
The Scientific American Book of Dinosaurs, Gregory s Paul(Editor),St Martins 
Press,2000.

Dinosaurs: The Encyclopedia, Donald F.Glut and Michael K. Bret-Surman, McFarland 
and Company, 1997