We don’t post on pterosaurs very often, but I’m making an exception for Caelestiventus. Mostly because I had the unusual experience of holding a life-size 3D print of its skull a few days before it was published.

Tired of Haplo caudals yet? No? Good – me neither. Not by a long shot. Above is McIntosh and Williams (1988: fig. 10) showing the rearticulated and partially reconstructed tail of CMNH 10380, the holotype and only known specimen of Haplocanthosaurus delfsi, in right anterolateral oblique view.

Preserved bits of the Snowmass Haplocanthosaurus , MWC 8028, with me for scale. Modified from Wedel (2009: fig. 10), but not much – MWC 8028 was about the same size as CM 879.

CM 879 caudal 1 in anterior view Here’s caudal 1 in Haplocanthosaurus priscus , CM 879. Hatcher (1903) only illustrated this vert in right lateral view, in a drawing by Sydney Prentice (see this post). I showed the vert in left lateral, right lateral, and dorsal views in my 2009 air sac paper (figs. 7 and 9, here). As far as I know, no-one has ever illustrated this vert in anterior or posterior view before.

I was back in Utah the week before last, looking for monsters with Brian Engh and Jessie Atterholt. It was a successful hunt – more about that another time. We made a run to Fruita, Colorado, to visit Dinosaur Journey.

This is SUSA 515, a partial skeleton of Camarasaurus on display in the Museum of Moab. (SUSA stands for Southeastern Utah Society of Arts & Sciences.) It was described by John Foster in 2005. I like this thing.

Caudal vertebrae of Haplocanthosaurus priscus (formerly H. utterbacki ) CM 879 in right lateral view, from Hatcher (1903: plate 2). You know how you’ll be doing an image search for some vertebrate fossil and you’ll get a page full of SV-POW!

Lots of museums have some version of this, but this is the nicest one I’ve seen myself. Just back from the field. Will post photos soon. Putting this up to meet the weekly posting requirement.

Left: Xenoposeidon proneneukos holotype NHMUK PV R2095 in dorsal view (anterior to top), from Taylor (2018: figure 1A). Right: FIFA World Cup 2018 logo. You can’t tell me that’s a coincidence. References Taylor, Michael P. 2018. Xenoposeidon is the earliest known rebbachisaurid sauropod dinosaur. PeerJ 6 :e5212.

I’m delighted to announce the publication today of my new paper “Xenoposeidon is the earliest known rebbachisaurid sauropod dinosaur”. This is the peer-reviewed version, in my favourite journal PeerJ, of the manuscript that became available as a preprint eight months ago — which was in turn a formalisation of a blog-post from 2015.

The most complete caudal vertebra of the Snowmass Haplocanthosaurus (Foster and Wedel 2014) in right lateral view: specimen photo, CT scout, 3D model, 3D print at 50% scale.