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Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week

SV-POW! ... All sauropod vertebrae, except when we're talking about Open Access. ISSN 3033-3695
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Author Matt Wedel

Normally I crop, rotate, and color balance every photo within an inch of its life, but right now I have a talk to polish, hence the as-shot quality here. See you in the future — the real near future if you’re attending the 2024 Tate summer conference, “The Jurassic: Death, Diversity, and Dinosaurs”.

Published

Eighteen months ago, I noted that the Carnegie Museum’s Diplodocus mount has no atlantal ribs (i.e. ribs of the first cervical vertebra, the atlas). But that the Paris cast has long atlantal ribs — so long the extend past the posterior end of the axis. There were two especially provocative comments to that post. First, Konstantin linked to a photo of the Russian cast (first mounted in St. Petersburg but currently residing in Moscow).

Published

Let’s look again at Figure 7 of our recent paper on bifurcated cervical ribs in apatosaurines: {.size-full .wp-image-21519 aria-describedby=“caption-attachment-21519” loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“21519” permalink=“http://svpow.com/papers-by-sv-powsketeers/wedel-and-taylor-2023-on-bifurcated-cervical-ribs/figure-7-diplo-apato-muscle-comparison-2/” orig-file=“https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/figure-7-diplo-apato-muscle-comparison.jpeg”

Published
Author Matt Wedel

Here are some cervical ribs of sauropods that show a spectrum of morphologies, from a low dorsal process that makes an obtuse angle with the shaft of the rib in Dicraeosaurus (upper right), to one that makes a right angle in Brontosaurus (center), to a prominent spike of bone in Apatosaurus (bottom left), to a […]

Published

Everybody(*) knows that the turiasaurian sauropod Moabosaurus has bifurcated cervical ribs: it was all anyone was talking about back when that animal was described (Britt et al. 2017). We’ve featured the best rib here before, and here it is again: {.alignnone .size-full .wp-image-21111 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“21111”

Published
Author Matt Wedel

{.aligncenter .wp-image-20834 .size-large loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“20834” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2023/03/03/an-arresting-image-of-an-apatosaur-vertebra/amnh-apato-c6-alexander-1994-plate-28/” orig-file=“https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/03/amnh-apato-c6-alexander-1994-plate-28.jpg” orig-size=“1694,2312” comments-opened=“1”

Published
Author Matt Wedel

Some quick backstory: lots of sauropods have long, overlapping cervical ribs, like the ones shown here in Sauroposeidon (diagram from this old post): {.size-large .wp-image-10817 .aligncenter loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“10817” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2014/09/22/wheelbarrow-handles-for-vertebrae-the-cervical-rib-bundles-of-sauroposeidon-and-other-sauropods/sauroposeidon-cervical-rib-cross-sections-v3/”