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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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Welcome to the third and climactic episode in my HMN SII:D8 trilogy. If the unique spinoparapophyseal lamina and total lack of infradiapophyseal laminae featured in the first two episodes were not enough to creep you out, then this ought to do it: the ACPLs of this vertebra have great big holes in them! Unfortunately, my photos of this are terrible.

Published

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the Humboldt bone-room … hot on the heels of Part 1: Spinoparapophyseal Laminae!, comes another dose of terror thanks to everyone’s favourite mid-to-posterior brachiosaurid dorsal vertebra, HMN SII:D8. First, here is a pretty picture of the whole vertebra in right lateral view: {.aligncenter .size-full .wp-image-241 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“241”

Published

Of all the sauropod vertebrae in the world, perhaps the single most intriguing is a dorsal vertebra of the Brachiosaurus brancai type specimen HMN SII. It was designated the 20th presacral (i.e. 7th dorsal) by Janensch (1950), but that was on the assumption that the dorsal column consisted of 11 vertebrae.

Published
Author Matt Wedel

First, some horn-tooting. A few years ago I realized that I good lateral-view photos of lots of big stuff–a blue whale skeleton, a Brachiosaurus skeleton, a big bull elephant, myself–and I put together a composite picture that showed everything together and correctly scaled. Various iterations of the project, which I undertook solely for my own amusement, are here, here, and here.

Published

[Sorry about the late posting today: I had to leave the house at 7:15 to fly to Copenhagen for Christmas lunch — long story — and I am completing today’s post from my hotel room.] There’s no getting away from it: everyone wants to know how big dinosaurs are. Xenoposeidon is based on a single partial vertebra, so there is no way to be at all sure about the size and shape of the whole animal;