many times over the years. Not only in blogging, either, but in figure preparation for formal publications. When I make a multiview like the apatosaur cervical that’sFigure 6 of Wedel and Taylor (2023) on bifurcated cervical ribs, the layers aren’t just named things likeanteriorandventral...
When I started my palaeo Masters (as it then was) at Portsmouth, I had a very bad habit of writing unnecessary double negatives of the kind the Sir Humphrey Appleby might use. Instead of saying “Taxon X resembles taxon Y”, I would say “is not dissimilar to”. I did this all the ...
To start, there are the Richard Scarry classics. For many kids, these cutaway views of Busytown are the first cross-section pictures they ever see. The labeled illustrations are perfect for an adult reading with a child, making each moment something to talk about. At the same time, Scarry ...
“Kosher By Design” goes out with a bang with the final ninth volume “Kosher By Design Brings It Home.” Inspired by Susie’s travels to France, Italy, Mexico, Israel, and North America, you’ll find kosher versions of favorites such as Korean short ribs, lasagna bolognaise, and shoyu...
or why sauropods had such dinky cervical rib loops (mechanical what, now?), or why pneumatic diverticula tend to make the biggest holes in the front half of the centrum, adjacent to the cervical ribs. I just think that maybe bird and sauropod pneumaticity are not as different as they app...
Their only option would have been to make those single-segment muscles larger — which could be the origin of the gigantic cervical ribs in apatosaurines. Or perhaps the important movements in apatosaurine neck combat were lateral movements. In this case it might make sense for the neck to ...
At the bottom of the image I labeled segmental muscles and intermuscular septum. You’ve seen these before, although you may not have known it: they make the zig-zag patterns in the meat of fishes, where we call the segmental muscles myomeres (“muscle parts”) and each intermuscular septu...
Anyway, looking at this image in 2024, I’m immediately interested in the ribs, which of courseMatt and I published on at the very end of 2023(Taylor and Wedel 2023, natch). It shows both ribs A and B in their original state, and it’s instructive to compare them with those ribs ...
Assuming the scale bar is supposed to be 1 meter (and not 20 meters or 2.0 meters as it is labeled) yields a summed cervical length of 13.4 meters, a summed dorsal length of 3.39 meters, and a cervical/dorsal ratio of 3.96–all admirably close, off by no more than 4cm across 16+...
Fortunately, there’s a rising-tide-floats-all-boats thing going on, and along with the more ornate varieties there are skulls done up as teaching aids, like these small ones that have the bones labeled. Here’s a close-up. If I had my druthers, I’d prefer “maxilla” and “mandible...