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How sauropods increased the size of ventral neck muscles
Last time I promised you exciting news about sauropod neck-muscle mass. Let none say that I do not fulfil covenents. And, as usual, when talking about sauropod neck muscle mass, I’m going to start by...
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Neck-muscle size differentials in diplodocids
Let’s look again at Figure 7 of our recent paper on bifurcated cervical ribs in apatosaurines: Figure 7. Schematic reconstructions of ventral neck musculature in two diplodocid sauropods. A,...
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A bite-marked Apatosaurus pubis, in bone and in bronze
MWC 861 in bone (left) and in bronze (right). Here’s a cool comparo. I was on the road recently, and since I was passing through Fruita, Colorado, I got some photos of my old friends MWC 861 and MWC...
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Four paths to studying pneumaticity inexpensively, and why you should
Why study pneumatic vertebrae? Becuz I wubs dem. UwU This is one of those things that has been sitting in my brain, gradually heating up and getting denser, until it achieved criticality, melted down...
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New paper: pneumatic dorsal ribs in Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus
Pneumatic dorsal ribs in a selection of ornithodiran taxa. Clades that lack pneumatic ribs have been omitted, including non-dinosaurian dinosauromorphs, ornithischians, all early diverging...
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Variation, a cool glass, and my Tate talk
1. VARIATION You know what’s variable? Apatosaur cervicals. Top: NSMT-PV 20375, cervical 7 in anterior and left lateral views (Upchurch et al. 2005). Middle: YPM 1861, cervical ?13, in posterior and...
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Tate 2024 road update
With my boy Colin Boisvert at BYU. He successfully defended his MS thesis, now he’s bound for OSU-Tulsa for doctoral work. You’ll hear more about his exploits reeeeaaaal soon. Fossil vending machine...
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Five questions from Tom Redd
Three years ago, Tom Redd made a very generous commitment to the SV-POW! Patreon, and he remains our most generous donor in total. When I wrote to thank him his reply included “I have thousands of...
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What’s up with your perforated parapophyseal ramus, Apatosaurinae indet. BYU...
I happened to be reading back over Tutorial 34: How to document a specimen, when something caught my eye in the example photo we used of how to capture the label and appropriately positioned scalebar...
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5th Palaeontological Virtual Congress: a bony lesion in an apatosaur femur
Here’s a short post on another 5PVC presentation: Raber et al. (2025) on a musculoskeletal lesion in an apatosaur femur. At the Utah Field House in Vernal, there’s a partial skeleton of an apatosaur...
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