The 1st Palaeontological Virtual Congress is underway now, and will run through December 15. Mike and I have two presentations up: {.aligncenter .wp-image-15560 .size-large loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“15560” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2018/12/05/our-presentations-are-up-at-the-1st-palaeo-virtual-congress/taylor-and-wedel-2018-1pvc-cover-slide/” orig-file=“https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2018/12/taylor-and-wedel-2018-1pvc-cover-slide.jpg”

In a comment on the last post, Mike wrote, “perhaps the pneumaticity was intially a size-related feature that merely failed to get unevolved when rebbachisaurs became smaller”. {.wp-image-6447 .size-large aria-describedby=“caption-attachment-6447” loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“6447” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2012/06/28/hot-sauropod-news-part-1-rampant-pneumaticity-in-saltasaurines/caudal-pneumaticity-in-saltasaurines-cerda-et-al-2012-fig-1/”

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WOW! I knew I was dragging a bit on getting around to this vertebral orientation problem, but I didn’t realize a whole month had passed. Yikes. Thanks to everyone who has commented so far, and thanks to Mike for getting the ball rolling on this. Previous posts in this series are here and here. First up, this may seem like a pointlessly picky thing to even worry about.

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Have we ever posted decent photos of the Brachiosaurus altithorax caudals? Has anyone? I can’t remember either thing ever happening.

I was lucky enough to have Phil Mannion as one of the peer-reviewers for my recent paper (Taylor 2018) showing that Xenoposeidon is a rebbachisaurid. During that process, we got into a collegial disagreement about one of the autapomorphies that I proposed in the revised diagnosis: “Neural arch slopes anteriorly 30°–35° relative to the vertical”. (This same character was also in the original Xenoposeidon

{.size-large .wp-image-15242 .aligncenter loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“15242” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2018/08/21/diplodocus-goes-digital/diplo-mwc-slice-and-volume-2/” orig-file=“https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/diplo-mwc-slice-and-volume-2.jpg” orig-size=“1918,1053” comments-opened=“1”

{.size-large .wp-image-15233 .aligncenter loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“15233” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2018/08/16/ct-scanning-a-caudal-vertebra-of-diplodocus/diplodocus-caudal-ct-1-getting-ready-to-scan/” orig-file=“https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/diplodocus-caudal-ct-1-getting-ready-to-scan.jpg” orig-size=“2000,1500” comments-opened=“1” image-meta=“{"aperture":"1.8","credit":"","camera":"iPhone

{.size-large .wp-image-15215 .aligncenter loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“15215” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2018/08/12/caudal-vertebrae-of-haplocanthosaurus-delfsi/haplo-delfsi-mounted-caudals-mcintosh-and-williams-1988-fig-10/” orig-file=“https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/haplo-delfsi-mounted-caudals-mcintosh-and-williams-1988-fig-10.jpg” orig-size=“1313,1495” comments-opened=“1”