Fiona made me a cake for tomorrow. She asked me if the flowers were OK. I said there were flowering plants at the end of the Cretaceous, so this is acceptable so long as we interpret the sauropod as a titanosaur.
Taylor 2015: Figure 8. Cervical vertebrae 4 (left) and 6 (right) of Giraffatitan brancai lectotype MB.R.2180 (previously HMN SI), in posterior view. Note the dramatically different aspect ratios of their cotyles, indicating that extensive and unpredictable crushing has taken place. Photographs by author. Here are cervicals 4 and 8 from MB.R.2180, the big mounted Giraffatitan in Berlin.
Bonaparte’s (1999) description of the Early Cretaceous sauropod Agustinia ligabuie was notable for its identification of nine bony fragments as representing dermal armour, which he classified into Types 1–4. Here are some examples: Consequently, Augustinia was for many years restored as uniquely spiky, a sort of “stegosaur sauropod”: But Bellardini and Cerda (2017) showed that […]
Picture is unrelated. Seriously. I’m just allergic to posts with no visuals. Stand by for more random brachiosaurs. Here’s something I’ve been meaning to post for a while, about my changing ideas about scholarly publishing. On one hand, it’s hard to believe now that the Academic Spring was almost a decade ago.
Gilmore (1936:243) says of the mounted skeleton of Apatosaurus louisae CM 3018 in the Carnegie Museum that “with the skull in position the specimen has a total length between perpendiculars of about 71 feet and six inches.
If you’ve been around SV-POW! for long, you’ve seen me in this shirt: I found it on Amazon.
Oh, hey, so you know how the most tedious thing you can ever hear is someone recounting one of their dreams? I want to tell you about a dream I had last night.
Xinjiangtitan when originally described, from Wu et al. (2013) We’re way late to this party, but better late than never I guess. Wu et al. (2013) described Xinjiangtitan shanshanesis as a new mamenchisaurid from the Middle Jurassic of China. At the time of the initial description, all of the dorsal and sacral vertebrae had been uncovered, as well as a handful of the most posterior cervicals and most anterior caudals.
Early in my 2015 preprint on the incompleteness of sauropod necks, I wrote “Unambiguously complete necks are known from published account of only six species of sauropod, two of which are species of the same genus”, and listed them. Haha, stupid me! I had hugely under-counted.
Can I really be the first one to have done this? Seems unlikely. Sing out in the comments if you’ve seen others. Anyway, folks, here’s your new all-purpose scale silhouette. Useful fact: the standard metal folding chairs found from sea to shining sea are 29.25 inches tall, or 0.75 meters.
We’ve noted many times over the years how inconsistent pneumatic features are in sauropod vertebra. Fossae and formamina vary between individuals of the same species, and along the spinal column, and even between the sides of individual vertebrae.