Here’s Mike checking out the cervicals of the mounted Cetiosaurus at the Leicester City Museum back in 2004. I like this photo because I was a ways back from Mike, and Cetiosaurus was not a particularly large or long-necked sauropod (actually in scientific terms I would describe it as being on the puny side of average), but the cervical series still goes right across the frame. Nothing but neck, as the youngsters say.

A 3D reconstruction of the paranasal sinuses in a human (from Koppe et al. 1999). You also have paratympanic sinuses that pneumatize the mastoid process of the temporal bone (feel for an inferiorly-directed, thumb-size protuberance right behind each ear). An x-ray of a pig skull, from here. Can you see the outline of the brain-shaped endocranial cavity? How about in this x-ray of a rhino skull? Image courtesy of Kent Sanders.

Brachiosaurus: uglier than you think (we’re sorry, but it’s true). UPDATE: Fig. 1 from Witmer (2001) showing hypothesized position of the fleshy nostrils in Brachiosaurus. How awesome was our trip to Germany?

I’m worried that you might be getting spoiled, only getting to see perfect beautiful vertebrae, so I’m gonna show you some uglies now and then just to keep the universe in balance. As uglies go, this one ain’t bad. It’s clearly a cervical, probably from Camarasaurus , given how far the prezyg overhangs the front of the centrum.

I just got word from the History Channel that their documentary “Evolve: Size” will air Saturday, Nov. 8. Kent Sanders, Brooks Britt, and I filmed a long segment for this back in May, covering pneumaticity in sauropods. Hopefully it didn’t all go to the cutting room floor! With any luck, you’ll see the results of this: Check local listings for showtimes. UPDATE: IMMEDIATE REACTION Hey, not bad.

If you’re new to this thread, here’s a minimal reading list, in chronological order. I say ‘minimal’ because all of the relevant papers are freely available, and therefore all of the factual claims are easy to check.

Just got back from SVP, the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. SVP is always a blast; beyond the inherent coolness of four solid days of intense paleo-everything, I get a chance to catch up with my “SVP friends”–the pool of friends, some of them close, that I only see for a few days each year.

Pneumatic dorsal vertebrae of Aerosteon (Sereno et al. 2008:fig 7) Big news this week: Sereno et al. (2008) described a new theropod, aptly named Aerosteon (literally, “air bone”), with pneumaticity out the wazoo: all through the vertebral column, even into the distal tail; in the cervical and dorsal ribs; in the gastralia; in the furcula; and in the ilium. This is huge news, and it’s free to the world at PLoS ONE.

Internal structure of a cervical vertebra of Sauroposeidon, OMNH 53062. A, parts of two vertebrae from the middle of the neck. The field crew that dug up the bones cut though one of them to divide the specimen into manageable pieces.

You know, we have not done what we intended with this blog. We intended to post pretty pictures of sauropod vertebrae, sketch a few lines of text a la our inspiration, and call it good. But not one of us is capable of shutting up –me least of all–so we sit down to write 6 lines and end up writing 60 or 600. Well, not this time.