I am not usually one for field photographs — I am not a geologist, and one bit of rock looks the same as any other to me. I suffer from a debilitating condition that renders me unable to see fossils in the ground, and am reliant on other people to dig ’em out, clean ’em up and reposit them before I’m able to make ’em into science.
Introduction Back when the Xenoposeidon paper came out, we suggested that Xeno could be the first repesentative of a new sauropod “family”, and then discussed at some length: what is a “family” anyway?
Today sees the publication of the new Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology , and with it my paper on the two best-known brachiosaurs and why they’re not congeneric (Taylor 2009). This of course is why I have been coyly referring to “Brachiosaurus” brancai in the last few months … I couldn’t bear to make the leap straight to saying Giraffatitan , a name that is going to take me a while to get used to. But before we
Matt and I, working with Andy Farke (the Open Source Paleontologist) are delighted to announce a new project that we’re all very excited about. Normally we wouldn’t talk about work that’s only just starting — we prefer to wait until a paper is out, or at least in review, before talking about it — but this one is different, because we want YOU to help write it. How can this be? Get yourself over to The Open Dinosaur Project and find out!
I know it’s a bit soon to follow up my own post, but I’ve been in correspondence with You Hai-Lu, lead author of the Proc. B paper describing the new putative brachiosaurid Qiaowanlong . He’s been very gracious in response to my questioning the new taxon, and I wanted to pass on the fruits of that exchange.
These are the days of miracle and wonder, especially for all you right-minded people out there who are lovers of fine brachiosaurs.
UPDATE (from Matt): I also bring good news … and bad news. The good news is that the entire dinosaur issue of Anatomical Record is open access after all. So this post is mainly of historical interest now, and you should get on over to the page for this issue and download all the free dinosaurian goodness.
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Well, not really really. What we have here is of course the bones of all four feet of a lizard (plus the limb bones): “sauropod” means “lizard foot”, so lizard-foot skeletons are sauropod skeletons — right? (Note that the hind limbs are arranged in a weird posture here, with the knees bent forward.
Was this just a half-lame attempt to fulfill our titular mandate whilst plugging my new astronomy blog? Of course it was (and I just did it again!). Doesn’t mean you lot are off the hook for figuring out what it is. So here’s another image with more views. You have a week. Don’t let me down. Oh, and to sweeten the pot, 351 SV-POW!bucks to the person who first figures it out. UPDATE: Too late, suckers!
We really should have covered this ages ago … Here we are, blithering on about brachiosaurids and diplodocoids and all, and we’ve never really spelled out what these terms mean. Sorry! The family tree of a group of animals (or plants, or fungi, or what have you) is called its phylogeny. The science of figuring out a phylogeny is called systematics.