As iconic as Brachiosaurus altithorax is, it’s known from surprisingly little material.

I was cleaning out my Downloads directory — which, even after my initial forays, still accounts for 11 Gb that I really need to reclaim from my perptually almost-full SSD. And I found this beautiful image under the filename csgeo4028.jpeg. The thing is, I have no idea where this image came from.

Eighteen months ago, I noted that the Carnegie Museum’s Diplodocus mount has no atlantal ribs (i.e. ribs of the first cervical vertebra, the atlas). But that the Paris cast has long atlantal ribs — so long the extend past the posterior end of the axis. There were two especially provocative comments to that post.

Pneumatic dorsal ribs in a selection of ornithodiran taxa. Clades that lack pneumatic ribs have been omitted, including non-dinosaurian dinosauromorphs, ornithischians, all early diverging sauropodomorphs, and numerous sauropods. The only included clade for which dorsal rib pneumaticity might be synapomorphic is Titanosauriformes.

Why study pneumatic vertebrae? Becuz I wubs dem. UwU This is one of those things that has been sitting in my brain, gradually heating up and getting denser, until it achieved criticality, melted down my spinal cord, and rocketed out my fingers and through the keyboard. Stand by for caffeine-fueled testifyin’ mode. Part 1: Why Study Pneumaticity Last item first: why you should study pneumaticity.

I was struck by a Mastodon post where classic game developer Ron Gilbert quoted film critic Roger Ebert as follows: The Muse visits during the act of creation, not before. Don’t wait for her. And Gilbert commented: I am constantly forgetting this as I procrastinate writing only to discover her again once I start.

I said last time that Jisc’s feeble transition-to-open-access report was the first of two disapointing scholarly-communication announcements that week. The second was of course the announcement that PeerJ has been acquired by Taylor and Francis.

In the first of two disapointing scholarly-communication announcements last week, Jisc announced its report on progress towards open access in the UK. The key finding is: Despite improvements – rapid growth in transitional agreements, sector savings and high levels of funder compliance – a full transition to open access will not happen soon.

My friend Toby Lowther wrote to me back in December to ask this question: As far as I understand it, the general rule for extant species is that it’s much easier to get much bigger underwater than on land, due to the role that water plays in supporting large bodies.

Long-time readers may remember that back in 2013, Matt and I played a game where we each designed a cover, in half an hour, for a book whose name was randomly generated.

The best thing about collaborations is that I get to work with amazing colleagues from around the world.