Since the rather surprising apppointment of Mike Eisen as the new Editor-in-Chief of eLife, I’ve found myself thinking about this journal again.

You know the drill. For ground-level Diplodocus, go here, for Apatosaurus, go here.

To my shock, I find that we seem never to have posted Bob Nicholls’ beautiful sketch Hello, ladies!

In case you haven’t gotten to do this, or need a refresher, or just want a little more Apatosaurus in your life. And honestly, who doesn’t? As with the previous Diplodocus walk-around, there’s no narration, just whatever ambient sound reached the mic. Go have fun.

In a word, amazingly. After 6 days (counting public galleries last Sunday), 4300 photos, 55 videos, dozens of pages of notes, and hundreds of measurements, we’re tired, happy, and buzzing with new observations and ideas. We caught up with some old friends.

This is what it’s like. The lack of narration is deliberate. We have other videos, which we’ll post at other times, with lots of yap. This one is just for reference, in case later on we need to know what the ischia look like in posterior view, or how the scapulocoracoid is curved, or whatever.

You’ll remember that we’ve been playing with CM 555, a subadult apatosaurine of indeterminate species, though John McIntosh assigned it to Brontosaurus (then Apatosaurus) excelsus.

Having spent much of the last few days playing with the cervical vertebrae of a subadult apatosaur, and trying to make sense of those of the mounted adult, neck ontogeny is much on our minds. Here’s an example from the less charismatic half of Saurischia.

Mike’s and Matt’s excellent adventure in Pittsburgh continues! Today was Day 4, and just as yesterday offered us a unique opportunity to see the mounted Dipodocus and Apatosaurus skeletons up close on a lift, so today we got to look the two mounts from directly above!

Left to right: Allosaurus fragilis , Apatosaurus louisae , Homo sapiens , Diplodocus carnegii .

Separated at birth. Left: Apatosaurus lousiae holotype CM 2018, cast skull associated with specimen. Right: Matt Wedel. Scientists have long wondered how such a bloated beast could etc. etc.