Update This is an actual page from the late, lamented Weekly World News, from December 14, 1999. I always thought it was pretty darned funny that they had the alien remains discovered in the “belly” of an animal known only from neck vertebrae.

The hot news on the block right now is the description of the new sauropod Abydosaurus mcintoshi , which, amazingly, is known from four more or less complete skulls (Chure et al. 2010).  This is unheard of — absolutely unprecedented.  There are few enough sauropods for which a skull is known at all; but four of them, all in decent nick, is breathtaking.

Hat tip to Open Dinosaur Project contributor Rob Taylor, who drew my attention to this photo of a huge and sauropodoriffic snow sculpture at [what I thought when I wrote this was] the Fairbanks Ice Festival: Sauropod snow-sculpture. No attribution given -- please mention in the comments if you know where it's from. (Copied from this page on phombo.com) Is it real?  I really hope so, but I have my doubts.

Since I started taking photographs of sauropod vertebrae back in 2004, I’ve got much, much better at it, and for the last few months I’ve been meaning to write an article about what I’ve learned along the way.

Here’s one of those text-light photo posts that we always aspire to but almost never achieve. In the spring of 2008 I flew to Utah to do some filming for the History Channel series “Evolve”, in particular the episode on size, which aired later that year. I always intended to post some pix from that trip once the show was done and out, and I’m just now getting around to it…a bit belatedly.

I hope you have a pair of 3D glasses.  If you do, then check this baby out: Brachiosauridae incertae sedis NHM R5937, "The Archbishop", damaged cervical vertebra S in right posterolateral view; red-cyan 3D anaglyph. This image and others of the same specimen copyright the NHM since it's their specimen.

[Hello to any redditors who have followed a link here.  Please scroll down to find the more interesting articles; sorry that your introduction to SV-POW! is a backlink article.] Excuse the self-promotion, but some SV-POW! readers might be interested to know that I have an Ask Me Anything going over at the social news aggregator site reddit com.

In my not-long-quite-so-recent-any-more paper on Brachiosaurus and Giraffatitan , I gave as one of the autapomorphies of Brachiosaurus proper that the glenoid articular surface of its coracoid is laterally deflected.  Although we’ve discussed this a little in comments on SV-POW!, it’s not yet made it into one of our actual articles.

Yes, you too can have your very own brachiosaurid cervical!  Specifically, “Cervical P” of the as-yet unnamed brachiosaur NHM R5937, informally known as “The Archbishop”.  Here is is! The Archbishop, Cervical P, paper model in left posterodorsolateral view. (All images of the vertebra are copyright the NHM.) All you need is scissors, glue, and this handy cut-out-and-keep schematic.

Ever since we started working on Sauroposeidon , Rich Cifelli and I dreamed of seeing the reconstructed neck on display. That vision has come to fruition. The Oklahoma Museum of Natural History opened a totally new building in 2000. Coincidentally, the opening ceremony for the new digs was held the same week that the paper naming Sauroposeidon came out in JVP.