This section is made up of 12 vertebrae (abbr. T1 to T12) and are the chest back bones of the spinal column. The normal curvature is ‘outwards’ (kyphosis). Lumbar Vertebrae These are the ‘fattest’ of the vertebrae due to the big body of each bone and this section is made up of...
short version is that OMNH 1123, the holotype specimen of the giant allosauridSaurophaganax maximus, does not definitely belong to a theropod and may actually belong to a sauropod, and the same goes for some of the referred material, namely the atlas and chevrons. Since neither...
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 ...
Some of these bones are labeled in the vintage human skull drawings below. The skull is not only made up of bones but cartilage and ligaments. There is only one moveable bone in the skull, which is the jaw bone (mandible). Male skulls are heavier, larger, and thicker than the female ...
(1999: fig. 3) figured and labeled the epipophysis in one of the cervical vertebrae. The vertebra image in that figure is tiny (nice work, glam-magz!), so here are some sketches ofJobariamid-cervicals (from two different individuals) that I made back in the day when I was doing ...
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+...
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+...
A simplified diagram of the sauropod respiratory system. What I’ve labeled “air tubes” here are the pneumatic diverticula. Air holes in the vertebrae are also known as pneumatic foramina. The shapes of the lungs and air sacs are speculative, but the minimum extent of the pneumatic diverticul...
Here’s a big apatosaur cervical, in antero-ventral view, with a dorsal rib draped over its left side. The cervical ribs are not fused in this specimen, so it was probably still growing. Here’s a labeled version: The short centrum and nearly-vertical transverse processes indicate that th...
And the same thing labeled: And now flipped around so we can see it in medial view: And now that image labeled: And, hey, there are three of our alternative hypotheses on display: the long (many vertebral segments) lumbosacral expansion of the spinal cord, which is reflected in a gradual...