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When we were planning to start this blog, Matt wrote to Darren and me saying “I am thinking that we should keep the text short and sweet” — an aspiration that we have consistently failed to live up to. Not today! Here is Omeisaurus tianfuensis . Even by sauropod standards, that neck is just plain crazy.

It’s very rare that all three of us SV-POW!ers get together: in fact, until Tuesday this week, it had only ever happened once, at SVPCA 2005. But as Matt was spending nearly a fortnight with me (Mike) in England, far from his native land — an unholy blend of Oklahoma and California — it would have been stupid not to have all got together.

Since my last post was rather heavier on the sushi than on the sauropod vertebrae, I offer this special bonus post. One of the frustrating things about the otherwise marvelous Sauroposeidon monograph (Wedel et al. 2000b) is that the figures are so small. Sadly this is also true of all the other publications that illustrate its remains, and so the published literature has no nice, detailed images. No longer!

Matt is staying here at Taylor Towers for a couple of weeks while his wife spends some quality time with some leprous human remains in Bradford (yes, really). Since both Matt and I are big fans of sushi, I took a stab at making some at home on Sunday night: {.size-full .wp-image-355 aria-describedby=“caption-attachment-355” loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“355”

Considering how much time I’ve spent playing around mounted sauropod skeletons, I cannot believe it never occurred to me to do this: This is the mounted Brachiosaurus skeleton in the United terminal at Chicago O’Hare.

One of the newest sauropods (if not the newest, in terms of publication date) is the Brazilian titanosaur Uberabatitan ribeiroi Salgado & Carvalho, 2008 from the Maastrichtian Marília Formation.

This figure is stolen from Wedel et al. (2000:fig. 5). A shows the first 11 cervical vertebrae* of Sauroposeidon in articulation. B shows how the holotype specimen, OMNH 53062, must have disarticulated, and C shows it as it was found. Shaded vertebrae and bits of vertebrae were not found. The thickness of the cervical ribs is greatly exaggerated for clarity.

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Up till now, I’ve tried to remain completely dispassionate about Aetogate, restricting my public comments to statements of fact and reports of what others have said.

If I say Amargasaurus cazaui , you say ‘long spines on cervical vertebrae’. Yes yes, it’s true that Amargasaurus had weird neck spines (and spines that, judging from their shape, really were spines rather than parts of continuous sail-like structures), but have you ever looked at its dorsals? That’s what we’re doing here: this is a posterior dorsal (from Salgado &