Micro-computed tomography of the vertebrae of the basalmost sauropodomorph Buriolestes (CAPPA/UFSM 0035). (A) silhouette shows the position of the axial elements. Artist: Felipe Elias. (B), three-dimensional reconstruction of the articulated cervical vertebral series and the correspondent high-contrast density slices in (D–I). Diagenetic processes partially compromised the internal structures in these cervicals.

Some quick backstory: lots of sauropods have long, overlapping cervical ribs, like the ones shown here in Sauroposeidon (diagram from this old post): These long cervical ribs are ossified tendons of ventral neck muscles, presumably longus colli ventralis.

I was googling around some photos, confirming to myself that turtles don’t have cervical ribs, when I stumbled across this monstrosity (and when I use that word I mean it as a compliment): The specimen is from the collection amassed by Caroline Ponds, formerly a reader in Zoology at Oxford, who picked up most of […]

Just to wash our mouths out after all the theropod-related unpleasantness yesterday: What we’re seeing here, in glorious 3D, is the 7th cervical vertebrae of BYU 1252-18531.

Over on Mastodon (sign up, it’s great!), Jim Kirkland posted a baby Utahraptor caudal vertebrae for #FossilFriday.

While I was thinking about Diplodocus atlas ribs, I was reminded of the ribs on the atlas of a diplodocine skull-and-three-cervicals exhibit that Matt and I saw at MOAL(*) back in the heady days of the Sauropocalypse.

Last time, I showed you a photo of the head and neck of the London Diplodocus and asked what was wrong. Quite a few of you got it right (including Matt when we were chatting, but I asked him not to give it away by posting a comment). The 100 SV-POW!

Last Saturday I was at a wedding at Holy Trinity Brompton, a London church that is conveniently located a ten-minute stroll from the Natural History Museum.

Alert readers probably noticed that I titled the first post in this series “Matt’s first megalodon tooth“, implying that there would be other megalodon teeth to follow. Here’s my second one. At first glance, this is a pretty jacked-up megalodon tooth.

In a paper that I’m just finishing up now, we want to include this 1903 photo of Carnegie Museum personnel: A few weeks ago I asked for help on Twitter in identifying the people shown here, and I got a lot of useful contributions.

Couple of fun things here. First, if you’d like to play with — or print — 3D models of megalodon teeth, there are a bunch of them on Sketchfab, helpfully curated by Thomas Flynn, the Cultural Heritage Lead there.