I first encountered Larry Niven’s story/essay “Down in Flames” in the collection N-Space in high school.
No time for a proper post, so here’s a screenshot from Amira of Diplodocus caudal MWC 8239 (the one you saw being CT scanned last post) about to be digitally hemisected. Trust me, you’ll want to click through for the big version. Many thanks to Thierra Nalley for the Amira help.
John Yasmer, DO (right) and me getting ready to scan MWC 8239, a caudal vertebra of Diplodocus on loan from Dinosaur Journey, at Hemet Valley Imaging yesterday.
Robin N. Kok asked an interesting question on Twitter: Well, Elsevier is part of the RELX group, which has a total market capitalisation of £33.5 billion. We can’t know directly how much of that value is in Elsevier, since it’s not traded independently.
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!