In a comment on the previous post, Amanda wrote: This might be a stupid question (I don’t really believe that there are no such things as stupid quetions) but do you find that sauropod vertebrae are more highly pneumatic in larger sauropods? This is not only not a dumb question, it is one of most important questions about pneumaticity in sauropods. The answer is complex, but here at SV-POW! we embrace the complexity.

It’s a lonely night here at the Fortress of Sauropoditude. Darren is off at one of his numerous conferences, and Mike is in hiding, trying to avoid the reality that 4% of a millennium has passed since he was loosed upon the world. I gave the serfs the night off, which means it’s just me here in this lonely tower, surrounded by arcane devices, mouldering tomes and piles of ancient bones.

Every once in a while it’s good to remember that no matter how big you end up, everybody starts out small. Jack McIntosh came through the OMNH a few years ago and identified all of our sauropod material. There are babies of both Camarasaurus and Apatosaurus from this quarry.

Here’s a photo that – for several reasons – I find interesting (and I hope you agree). It depicts the neck base and pectoral skeleton of the Camarasaurus mounted in London’s Natural History Museum (and is thus © NHM). I should say to begin with that the specimen is a notorious composite, combining the bits of several different-sized animals (and with some parts duplicated from the same individual). This explains why the more anterior of

Following on from Your neck is pathetic, I offer you the fifth presacral vertebra of the Brachiosaurus altithorax holotype specimen FMNH P25105, in right lateral view, with a complete human dorsal column for scale.

Ventral, to be precise. Here are the first few cervicals of Cetiosaurus oxoniensis , from the mounted skeleton in the Leicester City Museum. A more typical lateral view is shown below. Forget about the skull, it’s plastersaurus. We tend to think of vertebrae as cylinders with weird bits hanging off, and in most mammals that’s true. (Incidentally, the next time you eat a t-bone steak, have a look at the bone.

Compared to what you’re used to, this photo is undeniably crappy. But it’s the only one I have to hand of something really quite interesting: the distal ‘whiplash’ part of the diplodocid tail.

These are stressful times as SV-POW! towers, with all three of in various ways involved in the aetosaur ethics business that is — finally — getting the coverage that it deserves. So I don’t want to talk about that here, not only because it’s nothing to do with sauropod vertebrae but also because it’s getting a lot of coverage elsewhere.

I was going to write about mystery cervicals of the Cloverly Formation, but that requires knowing something about juvenile vertebrae and Pleurocoelus , so I decided to write about Pleurocoelus , but that still requires knowing something about juvenile vertebrae. So I’m writing this tutorial to lay the groundwork for more goodness to come.

Seeing the photograph in the last post of the Mamenchisaurus hochuanensis cast at the Field Museum in Chicago reminded me of a picture I’ve been meaning to post for a while. M.hoch, as I like to call it (we’re on familiar terms) is known primarily from its type specimen CCG V 20401, which was nicely described and figured by Young and Zhao in 1972.

In the last post, an astute commenter asked about Hudiesaurus : “A first dorsal 550 mm–isn’t that in Argentinosaurus territory?” Well, let’s find out. Hudiesaurus sinojapanorum was described by Dong (1997) based on a partial skeleton from the Kalazha Formation in China. The holotype, IVPP V 11120, is an anterior dorsal vertebra.