The musculo-skeletal system of animals provides
the basis for sustained, co-ordinated and
quantifiable movement. In the processes of travelling
from place to place and obtaining and consuming
food resources, integrated and repeatable
actions take place that result in what we recognize
as locomotion and feeding, respectively. In
those animals with a rigid and jointed skeleton
such movements are the result, either directly or
indirectly, of lever-based mechanics. Muscles attach
to skeletal elements, and in many instances
leave scars, or other marks of their presence that
can be interpreted in relation to the form of the
associated soft tissues and the magnitude and
direction of the activities carried out. As a result
of this formfunction relationship, much of the
inferred biology of extinct animals that had hard
and jointed skeletons relates to conclusions drawn
about the ways that they moved and fed. The
study of the biomechanics of locomotion and
feeding, therefore, has a central role to play in
the understanding of major aspects of the functional
biology of extant animals and, by extrapolation
and the application of systematically-based
hypotheses, the inference of major aspects of the
functional biology of extinct animals Bryant and Ž
Russell, 1992; Witmer, 1995 ..
The last decade has witnessed major advances
in our attempts to understand the phenomena
and rules governing locomotor and feeding
biomechanics, facilitated by the harnessing and
availability of computing power and the advent of
new techniques and equipment that have allowed
the investigation of increasingly integrated and
intricate questions. The application of computer
modeling, robotics and feedback studies between
sensory and motor systems, and an increasing