thinking it could plausibly belong to a sauropod, after Andy countered every point I raised in my “Saurophaganaxis a theropod after all” push with photos of the same characters in the vertebrae of juvenile sauropods, which led to me agreeing with Andy and the other authors that designatingS...
Images of vertebra from Gilmore (1936:plate XXIV). At the bottom, the vertebrae are composed in a horizontal posture. Superimposed, the same vertebrae are shown inclined by the additional extension angles indicated in Table 1. If the slightly sub-horizontal osteological neutral pose of Stevens ...
Two partial cervical vertebrae, with part of a little one in between them, and a sectioned rib up on the shelf. I didn’t try to measure these through the glass either, but I’d estimate that each of the cervical centra is a meter and change in length, and both were a few cm lon...
1. We could go ahead and include photos, drawings and descriptions of these vertebrae in the paper — but that would violate community norms by building an argument on observations that cannot be in general be replicated by other researchers. (For all we know, these vertebrae are now decoratin...
Working from very little evidence by modern standards, Longman (1933) had correctly figured out that pneumatic sauropod vertebrae come in two flavors, those with a few large chambers and those with many small chambers. He called them “phanerocamerate” and “cryptocamerillan”, corresponding to...
In a world where the largest vertebra of Argentinosaurus is only 1cm bigger in diameter than the largest vertebra of Patagotitan, differences like I got with Dystylosaurus would be enough to scramble the order of giant vertebrae. So if you’re ever stuck measuring something from a cast, be ...
And because I picked that photo: you know what institution has a ton of super-interesting, well-preserved, well-prepped, not-yet-published-on sauropod vertebrae and ribs in a really nicely appointed collections room in an awesome museum run by a small team of excellent human beings? The Tate...
air sacs? If any dinosaurian clade was going to push the capabilities of the “avian” lung/air sac system in interesting directions and to fascinating extremes, sauropods seem like a good bet. Rib articulation angles in the dorsal vertebrae of (a) Lufengosaurus, (b) Diplodocus, (c) ...
Migeod’s assessment of the size of the animal was based on the vertebrae: “The [neck] vertebrae found give a 20-foot [6.10 m] length […] The length of the back including the sacral region was about 15 feet [4.57 m]. The eight or nine caudal vertebrae cover about 6 feet [1.83...
of vertebrae, or how and whether pneumatic and neurovascular features relate to each other, there is a ton of work to be done that just requires collections access, a notebook, a camera, and time. And it lends itself to collaboration; two sets of eyes will see a lot more. (If you ...