Last time, I noted that photographs of the exact same object, even under the same lighting conditions, can come out different colours. That is one of the two reasons why I am not persuaded that the very different colours of my photos of the two Supersaurus scapulae is strong evidence that they are from different individuals.
Several drinks later, they all die and somehow become skeletonised, and that’s how they all land up on a table in my office: {.aligncenter .size-large .wp-image-13338 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“13338” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2016/04/14/a-fox-a-badger-a-pheasant-and-a-monitor-lizard-walk-into-a-bar/2016-04-14-11-12-52/” orig-file=“https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/2016-04-14-11-12-52.jpg” orig-size=“2560,1920”
One thing that I’ve never understood is why some people are skeptical about sauropods using their tails defensively, when lizards do this all the time.
Gotta say, I did not see that coming. Today sees the publication of a new paper by Emma Schachner and colleagues in Nature, documenting for the first time that unidirectional, flow-through breathing–previously only known in birds and crocodilians–happens in freakin’ monitor lizards.
In a comment on the initial Shunosaurus tail-club post, Jaime Headden pointed out the passage in the Spinophorosaurus paper (Remes et al. 2009) that discusses the club of Shunosaurus (as justification for positioning the Spinophorosaurus osteoderms on the end of its tail): And this gives the reference that I needed for the Shunosaurus tail-spikes (as opposed to the club) — reference 26 is Zhang
Well, not really really. What we have here is of course the bones of all four feet of a lizard (plus the limb bones): “sauropod” means “lizard foot”, so lizard-foot skeletons are sauropod skeletons — right? (Note that the hind limbs are arranged in a weird posture here, with the knees bent forward.
I have a much less realised view of the digital future than Matt does, so I won’t be making a lot of predictions here. But I do have some questions to ask, and — predictably — some whining to do. What counts, what doesn’t, and why?
