Eighteen months ago, I noted that the Carnegie Museum’s Diplodocus mount has no atlantal ribs (i.e. ribs of the first cervical vertebra, the atlas). But that the Paris cast has long atlantal ribs — so long the extend past the posterior end of the axis. There were two especially provocative comments to that post. First, Konstantin linked to a photo of the Russian cast (first mounted in St. Petersburg but currently residing in Moscow).

New paper out today with Logan King, Julia McHugh, and Brian Curtice, on pneumatic ribs in Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus (King et al. 2024). This one had an unusual gestation. In the summer of 2002 2022 I did a road trip to Utah and western Colorado with my friend and frequent collaborator Jessie Atterholt.

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 my spinal cord, and rocketed out my fingers and through the keyboard. Stand by for caffeine-fueled testifyin’ mode.

Let’s look again at Figure 7 of our recent paper on bifurcated cervical ribs in apatosaurines: {.size-full .wp-image-21519 aria-describedby=“caption-attachment-21519” loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“21519” permalink=“http://svpow.com/papers-by-sv-powsketeers/wedel-and-taylor-2023-on-bifurcated-cervical-ribs/figure-7-diplo-apato-muscle-comparison-2/” orig-file=“https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/figure-7-diplo-apato-muscle-comparison.jpeg”

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 talking about bird legs.

I don’t remember now when I first noticed bifurcated cervical ribs in apatosaurines. I imagine 2016 at the latest, because on our Sauropocalypse that year Mike and I saw examples at both BYU and Dinosaur Journey.

Here are some cervical ribs of sauropods that show a spectrum of morphologies, from a low dorsal process that makes an obtuse angle with the shaft of the rib in Dicraeosaurus (upper right), to one that makes a right angle in Brontosaurus (center), to a prominent spike of bone in Apatosaurus (bottom left), to a […]

A few sauropods have bifurcated cervical ribs. The most dramatic example that I know of is the turiasaur Moabosaurus (Britt et al. 2017). Mike and I got to see that material on the Sauropocalypse back in 2016, which is how we got the photo above.

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Brian Curtice and Colin Boisvert are presenting our talk on this project at 2:00 pm MDT this afternoon, at the 14th Symposium on Mesozoic Terrestrial Ecosystems and Biota (MTE14) in Salt Lake City, and the related paper is in the MTE14 volume in The Anatomical Record.