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.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/img_0904.jpg” orig-size=“4000,3000” comments-opened=“1”

{.size-large .wp-image-14783 .aligncenter loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“14783” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2018/03/09/bibe-45854-the-giant-alamosaurus-cervical-series-from-big-bend-texas/alamosaurus-bibe-45854-right-anterolateral-with-wedel-for-scale/” orig-file=“https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/alamosaurus-bibe-45854-right-anterolateral-with-wedel-for-scale.jpg” orig-size=“2272,1704” comments-opened=“1”

{.size-large .wp-image-14770 .aligncenter loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“14770” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2018/03/02/the-pneumatic-tail-of-the-field-museum-apatosaurine-fmnh-p25112/dscn7510/” orig-file=“https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2018/02/dscn7510.jpg” orig-size=“2272,1704” comments-opened=“1”

Here is a fascinating sequence of five consecutive posterior dorsal vertebra — AMNH FARB 291 from the“Big Bone Room“ at the AMNH: {.wp-image-14329 .size-full aria-describedby=“caption-attachment-14329” loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“14329” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2017/08/15/biconcavoposeidon/figure-d-lateral-view-dscn6126/” orig-file=“https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/figure-d-lateral-view-dscn6126.jpeg” orig-size=“2203,754”

{.size-large .wp-image-13839 .aligncenter loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“13839” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2016/12/21/a-quick-stop-at-the-oklahoma-museum-of-natural-history/aquilops-display-omnh-dec-2016-1/” orig-file=“https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/aquilops-display-omnh-dec-2016-1.jpg” orig-size=“2448,3264” comments-opened=“1”

Prologue Back when I started writing about issues in scholarly publishing, I would sometimes write about the distinction between for-profit (bad) and non-profit (good) publishers. While I still recognise this as an issue, thinking it through over the last few years has made it clear that this distinction is largely orthogonal to the one that really matters — which is between open and non-open publishers.

Suppose that I and Matt were right in our SVPCA talk this year, and the “ Supersaurus ” cervical BYU 9024 really is the C9 of a gigantic Barosaurus . As we noted in our abstract, its total length of 1370 mm is exactly twice that of the C9 in AMNH 6341, which suggests its neck was twice as long over all — not 8.5 m but 17 m. How horrifying is that?

Here is a vertebra that Matt and I saw on our recent travels through Utah: {.alignnone .size-full .wp-image-13531 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“13531” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2016/05/25/an-sv-pow-challenge-what-is-this-vertebra/img_2530/” orig-file=“https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/img_2530.jpg” orig-size=“4000,3000” comments-opened=“1” image-meta=“{"aperture":"3.5","credit":"","camera":"Canon PowerShot

As regular readers will know, Matt and I have recently spent ten glorious days travelling the dinosaur museums of Utah, in a once-in-a-lifetime event that we have been calling the Sauropocalypse. In that time, we visited seven different museums and — this is the truth — had an absolutely fantastic time in all of them. One of the big reasons is of course the quality of their collections and galleries.