The opening remarks by the hosts of conferences are usually highly forgettable, a courtesy platform offered to a high-ranking academic who has nothing to say about the conference’s subject. NOT THIS TIME! This is the opening address of APE 2018, the Academic Publishing in Europe conference.

On Thursday an animatronic T. rex at the Royal Gorge Dinosaur Experience in Colorado caught fire and burned down to a stark metal endoskeleton. The story is all over the place – here’s the version from the Washington Post, with a couple of videos. Naturally people started making memes out of this arresting image.

Someone on Facebook asked whether sauropods had subcutaneous fat, and by the time my answer hit five paragraphs I thought, “The merciful thing to do here is blog this and link to it.” So here are some things to keep in mind regarding the integumentary systems of sauropods.

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By contrast to the very delicate pelican humerus and ulna in the previous post, here is the left femur of Aepyornis OUMNH 4950 — an “elephant bird” from Antolanbiby, Madagascar.

Here are the humerus and ulna of a pelican, bisected: {.alignnone .size-full .wp-image-14798 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“14798” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2018/03/17/bisected-pelican-arm-bones-of-the-oxford-museum-of-natural-history/img_0904/” orig-file=“https://svpow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/img_0904.jpg” orig-size=“4000,3000” comments-opened=“1”

{.size-large .wp-image-14789 .aligncenter loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“14789” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2018/03/14/the-mounted-mamenchisaurus-at-wollaton-hall/m-hoch-from-below-at-wollaton-hall-2017/” orig-file=“https://svpow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/m-hoch-from-below-at-wollaton-hall-2017.jpg” orig-size=“1500,2000” comments-opened=“1” image-meta=“{"aperture":"1.8","credit":"","camera":"iPhone

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{.size-large .wp-image-14753 .aligncenter loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“14753” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2018/02/20/distinguishing-cervicals-of-apatosaurines-and-camarasaurus/distinguishing-cervicals-of-apatosaurines-and-camarasaurus/” orig-file=“https://svpow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/distinguishing-cervicals-of-apatosaurines-and-camarasaurus.jpg” orig-size=“1200,1200” comments-opened=“1”