2. Do not assume specialist knowledge.This is difficult because we work in a specialist field and some amount of specialist terminology is inevitable. But we should still do our best to reduce the amount of background knowledge a reader needs to make sense of our abstracts — again, because ...
So we don’t need to add any space for cartilage to the summed minimum (without condyle) lengths–there certainly was cartilage between the surfaces of the condyles and cotyles, because that’s how intervertebral joints work, but there was not enough to push the condyles back outside the ...
(without condyle) lengths–there certainly was cartilage between the surfaces of the condyles and cotyles, because that’s how intervertebral joints work, but there was not enough to push the condyles back outside the cotyles, unless we want to engage in some special pleading that C3-C5 ...
A few caveats. Just on this trip I’ve seen and heard some things that make me question the usefulness of postcranial fusions — of the neurocentral joints, sacrum, scapulocoracoid, and cervical ribs — for assessing sauropod ontogeny. I don’t think fusions are completely useless, just hig...
The problem is, “a while” quickly became multiple months. And by then, the material was no longer fresh in my mind, so that doing the work I should have done half a year earlier would now have been a much bigger job. I would have had to load lots of stuff back into mental RAM...
Back inthe first postaboutour recent paper on bifurcated cervical ribs in apatosaurines, I noted: I’m fond of this one because it’s pleasingly low-tech and traditional. We looked at some fossils, noticed some interesting features, thought about what they mean, wrote it up, illustrated it...
facet, which is often located more anteriorly than you might guess, you can’t tell when the epipophysis projects further posteriorly, as in the last of these vertebrae. In this case youcanmake it out, but only because the interpretive drawing shows the facet much more clearly than the ...
What is the centrum articulation like here? Sadly, it’s obscured in the photo. My guess would be positive cylinder on the front of the dorsal, and a small contact point on the back of the cervical — but it really is just a guess. ...
Oct 2014: Two things about this one. First, I wish we’d been able to include the taxon name in the title, as we were allowed to do back in the day forSauroposeidon. Second, I know some people whinge about us using the CMF in the title and in the paper instead of the Burro Can...
Note that the jaw is articulated, by the way. Unlike most animals, the skull of the badger locks the jaw in place with unusual joints in which the mandibular fossa of the cranium wraps around the cylindrical articular condyles of the jaw. I’ll try to include photos next time. ...