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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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Author Matt Wedel

This is a lovely cosmic alignment: right after the 15th anniversary of this blog, Mike and I have our 11th coauthored publication (not counting abstracts and preprints) out today. Taylor, Michael P., and Wedel, Mathew J. 2022. What do we mean by the directions “cranial” and “caudal” on a vertebra?

Published

Back in June, I saw a series of tweets by sculptor and digital artist Ruadhrí Brennan, showing off the work he’d been doing on sculpting brachiosaurid skulls: Giraffatitan , Brachiosaurus (based on the Felch Quarry skull USNM 5730) and Europasaurus . Impressed, I asked if he would send a Giraffatitan skull, and here it is! You can immediately see two things: one, it’s good.

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It is said that, some time around 1590 AD, Galileo Galilei dropped two spheres of different masses from the Leaning Tower of Pisa[1], thereby demonstrating that they fell at the same rate. This was a big deal because it contradicted Aristotle’s theory of gravity, in which objects are supposed to fall at a speed proportional to their mass.

Published
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.

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{.alignnone .size-full .wp-image-17907 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“17907” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2020/08/22/you-shall-not-pass/mb_r_3822-posterior/” orig-file=“https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2020/08/mb_r_3822-posterior.jpeg” orig-size=“1383,1383” comments-opened=“1”

Published
Author Matt Wedel

{.size-large .wp-image-17296 .aligncenter loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“17296” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2020/02/18/the-sv-pow-patreon-adds-a-tier/giraffatitan-sii-cervicodorsal-transition-janensch-1950-figs-49-and-50-2/” orig-file=“https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2020/02/giraffatitan-sii-cervicodorsal-transition-janensch-1950-figs-49-and-50.jpg” orig-size=“1400,2800” comments-opened=“1”

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I’ll see your face-of-the-blessed-virgin-in-a-waffle and raise you the fourth dorsal vertebra of the Giraffatitan brancai paralectotype BM.R.2181 (formerly HMN S II) in a dandelion leaf: {.alignnone .size-full .wp-image-16141 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“16141” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2019/06/30/its-a-miracle/img_20190629_131844/” orig-file=“https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/img_20190629_131844.jpg” orig-size=“1600,1200”