Today saw the publication of the most startlingly dull paper I’ve ever been involved in (Upchurch et al. 2009) — and remember, I write this as co-author of a paper on the phylogenetic taxonomy of Diplodocoidea.  Not only that, but one time when I was practising a conference talk with my wife Fiona as audience, she fell asleep actually while I was speaking.  Actually asleep.

As Matt frequently reminds me, it’s now nearly five years since I started to work on “The Archbishop”, more formally known as BMNH R5973, the Natural History Museum’s long-neglected Tendaguru brachiosaur.  This is, or at least once was, one of the most complete brachiosaurid specimens ever discovered — although quite a bit of the material has gone missing or remains unprepared.

Isn’t this a beauty? What is it, you ask?   We will never know.

{.aligncenter .size-full .wp-image-1060 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“1060” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2009/03/19/off-topic-get-down-get-fuzzy-tianyulong/tianyulong/” orig-file=“https://svpow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/tianyulong.jpg” orig-size=“480,213” comments-opened=“1”

I made this, just for the heck of it. {.aligncenter .size-full .wp-image-923 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“923” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2009/03/16/brachiosaurus-both-bigger-and-smaller-than-you-think-incomplete/big-brachiosaurids-and-pathetic-mammals-480/” orig-file=“https://svpow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/big-brachiosaurids-and-pathetic-mammals-480.jpg” orig-size=“480,342” comments-opened=“1”

We have sometimes neglected tails on SV-POW!, in favour of the more obviously charismatic charms of presacral vertebrae, but every now and then you come across a caudal vertebra so bizarre that it just cries out to be blogged.

{.aligncenter .size-full .wp-image-980 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“980” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2009/03/02/the-land-of-the-free-papers-redux/sauropod-enlightenment-480/” orig-file=“https://svpow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/sauropod-enlightenment-480.jpg” orig-size=“480,412” comments-opened=“1”

New hotness out today: Miragaia , a new long-necked stegosaur from the Late Jurassic of Portugal (Mateus et al. 2009). What is “long-necked” for a stegosaur? In this case, well over a meter! That may not sound too impressive for those of you who have gotten complacent about 10-meter-plus sauropod necks, but it’s a big deal.

UPDATE: Oops, I’m a moron. I wrote this post at work (on my lunch hour!) and didn’t realize that I had free access to the Wiley stuff because I was at work. I can’t get them from home either.

{.aligncenter .size-full .wp-image-957 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“957” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2009/02/19/a-fused-atlas-and-axis-in-apatosaurus/apatosaurus-cm-3018-fused-atlas-and-axis-480/” orig-file=“https://svpow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/apatosaurus-cm-3018-fused-atlas-and-axis-480.jpg” orig-size=“480,273” comments-opened=“1”

It’s been a while since we looked at everybody’s favourite partial dorsal vertebra, and there may be those who feel we’ve said all that can be said about it, but there is one feature of Xenoposeidon that we’ve never really highlighted here and which is well worth a look.