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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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On the excellent and convivial social network Mastodon, someone going by the handle “gay ornithopod” asked what turned out to be a fascinating question: My first response was that we can only say it’s not unusual for extant animals to change colour through ontogeny, so the null hypothesis would have to be that at least some sauropods (and other dinosaurs) did the same. But I don’t think we have any information on the specific coloration.

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Author Matt Wedel

Here are cervicals 4 and 8 from MB.R.2180, the big mounted Giraffatitan in Berlin. Even though this is one of the better sauropod necks in the world, the vertebrae have enough taphonomic distortion that trying to determine what neutral, uncrushed shape they started from is not easy.