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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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This one hardly needs making. I found it by accident when we roasted a chicken this Sunday. As we were tearing the carcass apart like a pack of hyaenas, I noticed that one of the wings had a nice, distinct thumb claw. Here it is in a big plastic bowl in the kitchen — shown this way to emphasize its mundanity.

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Author Matt Wedel

This is the second in a series of posts on our new paper about the expanded neural canals in the tail vertebrae of the Snowmass Haplocanthosaurus. I’m not going to talk much about Haplo in this post, though.

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Author Matt Wedel

New paper out today: Wedel, Mathew; Atterholt, Jessie; Dooley, Jr., Alton C.; Farooq, Saad; Macalino, Jeff; Nalley, Thierra K.; Wisser, Gary; and Yasmer, John. 2021. Expanded neural canals in the caudal vertebrae of a specimen of Haplocanthosaurus. Academia Letters, Article 911, 10pp. DOI: 10.20935/AL911 (link) The paper is new, but the findings aren’t, particularly.

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Author Matt Wedel

{.size-large .wp-image-17320 .aligncenter loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“17320” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2020/02/09/make-a-scale-model-brachiosaurus-humerus-from-chicken-bones/jurassic-world-legacy-collection-brachiosaurus-with-diy-humerus/” orig-file=“https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2020/02/jurassic-world-legacy-collection-brachiosaurus-with-diy-humerus.jpg” orig-size=“2000,2000” comments-opened=“1”

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Author Matt Wedel

In short, no. I discussed this a bit in the first post of the Clash of the Dinosaurs saga, but it deserves a more thorough unpacking, so we can put this dumb idea to bed once and for all. As Marco brought up in the comments on the previous post, glycogen bodies are probably to blame for the idea that some dinosaurs had a second brain to run their back ends.

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Author Matt Wedel

{.aligncenter .wp-image-14979 .size-large loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“14979” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2019/01/17/bird-neural-canals-are-weird-part-3-the-glycogen-body/avian-lumbosacral-spinal-cord-specializations-slide-2/” orig-file=“https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2018/05/avian-lumbosacral-spinal-cord-specializations-slide-2.png” orig-size=“1024,768” comments-opened=“1”

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Author Matt Wedel

{.aligncenter .size-full .wp-image-9994 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“9994” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2014/03/24/photography-and-illustration-talk-part-12-stereo-and-3d/illustration-talk-slide-51/” orig-file=“https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/illustration-talk-slide-51.jpg” orig-size=“1280,960” comments-opened=“1”

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Author Matt Wedel

{.aligncenter .size-full .wp-image-4834 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“4834” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2011/11/30/sideshow-collectibles-apatosaurus-maquette-part-5-posture/apatosaurus-maquette-left-anterolateral-2/” orig-file=“https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/apatosaurus-maquette-left-anterolateral1.jpg” orig-size=“2272,1532” comments-opened=“1”

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Author Matt Wedel

In a recent post I showed photos of the trachea in a rhea, running not along the ventral surface of the neck but along the right side. I promised to show that this is not uncommon, that the trachea and esophagus of birds are usually free to slide around under the skin and are not constrained to like along the ventral midline of the neck, as they usually are in mammals. Here goes.