This year, I missed The Paleo Paper Challenge over on Archosaur Musings — it was one of hundreds of blog posts I missed while I was in Cancun with my day-job and then in Bonn for the 2nd International Workshop on Sauropod Biology and Gigantism .  That means I missed out on my annual tradition of promising to get the looong-overdue Archbishop description done by the end of the year.

This is the third in a series of posts on the Apatosaurus maquette produced by Sideshow Collectibles. The rest of the series: Part 1: introduction Part 2: the head Part 4: body, tail, limbs, base, and skull Part 5: posture Part 6: texture and color Part 7: verdict It is probably no surprise, given my proclivities, that I have more to say about the neck than about anything else.

A package!  A package has arrived! What can it be? All right !  Let’s get down to business? Now, where did I leave that monitor-lizard neck skeleton?  Ah yes … That’s what I’m talkin’ about. … Stay tuned for exciting news about turkey zygapophyses.

Wedel’s Theorem: freezer full of interesting dead animals + great anatomy student who actually wants to get up on Saturday morning and dissect = happiness The rhea has been the gift that keeps on giving.

Matt just wrote this, in an email exchange.  It struck a chord in me, and I thought it deserved a wider audience: Rats. Cervical vertebra V (from an unknown position in the anterior part of the neck) of the STILL undescribed Tendaguru brachiosaurid NHM R5937, "The Archbishop", in right lateral view. The posterior portion is missing in action.

I’m pleased to announce that Darren has a new paper out (Naish and Sweetman 2011) in which he and fellow Portsmouth researcher Steve Sweetman describe a maniraptoran theropod from the Wealden Supergroup of southern England.  It’s represented only by a single cervical vertebra: Indeterminate maniraptoran theropod BEXHM 2008.14.1, posterior cervical vertebra, in right lateral view. Sauroposeidon cervical vertebra 8 for scale.

In a comment on the previous post, Dean asked: “What was the difference in length between the neck with its cartilage and the bones flush together?” I’m glad you asked me that.  You’ll recall from last time that the fully fleshed neck — intact apart from the removal of the skin and maybe some superficial muscle — was 51 cm in length from the front of the atlas to the back of the centrum of the seventh cervical vertebra.

Back in early Februrary, Darren and I got an email out of the blue from biomechanics wizard and all all-round good guy John Hutchinson, saying that he’d obtained the neck of a baby giraffe — two weeks old at the time of death — and that if we wanted it, it was ours.

UPDATE much later: most of the links in this post are dead, but happily rights to my Cosmos article reverted to me a long time ago, and it’s now freely available here: Click to access wedel-2011-we-are-all-airheads.pdf – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Busy days. I just published a popular article on skeletal pneumaticity as a web feature at the Australian science magazine Cosmos.

When you last saw this rhea neck, I was squeezing a thin, unpleasant fluid out of its esophagus. Previous rhea dissection posts are here and here; you may also be interested in my ratite clearing house post. We did that dissection back in 2006. Since then I finished my dissertation, got a tenure-track job, and moved twice. The rhea neck followed me, living in a succession of freezers until last spring.