Here’s something I’m going to be yapping about in my keynote talk, “The sauropod heresies: evolutionary ratchets, the taphonomic event horizon, and all the evidence we cannot see”, at the 2024 Tate Geological Museum’s Annual Summer Conference (link): how the fossil record of sauropods is probably wildly at variance with standing populations in life, at […]

I know this is hardly news any more, but here is a particularly spectacular example of a Large Language model (“artificial intelligence”) making mistake after mistake. My question: Who described Xenoposeidon, when and where? The LLM’s answer: Xenoposeidon was described by paleontologists Paul M. Barrett, David B. Norman, and Paul Upchurch in 2008.

I have a new paper out: Bas, A., Kay, K., Labovitz, J., and Wedel, M.J. 2024. New double and multiple variants of fibularis tertius. Extremitas 11: 111-118. This is a straight human anatomy paper, with a dual origin. But first let me tell you a little about the fibularis tertius muscle.

1. VARIATION You know what’s variable? Apatosaur cervicals. Top: NSMT-PV 20375, cervical 7 in anterior and left lateral views (Upchurch et al. 2005). Middle: YPM 1861, cervical ?13, in posterior and left lateral views (Ostrom & McIntosh 1966). Bottom: YPM 1980, cervical 8 in anterior and left lateral views (Ostrom &

Here at SV-POW!, we love bifurcated cervical ribs.

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.