We all remember Upchurch and Martin’s (2002) description of the Rutland Cetiosaurus , which remains by some distance the best British sauropod specimen in the literature; and the same authors’ (2003) survey of the genus Cetiosaurus . They concluded that nearly all of its many named species are either nomen dubia or misassigned, and that only C . oxoniensis is a valid, diagnosable species.

Preparing a talk is a time-consuming process, and there’s no question that getting the slides ready is where the bulk of that time goes.  But unless you understand exactly what it is that you’re going to talk about, even the best slides won’t rescue your talk from mediocrity, so before you fire up PowerPoint, go and read part 1 of this tutorial, on finding the narrative.  Seriously.

You may remember that when I wrote about Amphicoelias diplobrontobarowassea the other day, I rather ungraciously complained that “I don’t want to talk about that.

For those of you who care about such things, the new issue 66(2) of the Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature contains two comments on our petition to the ICZN to fix Cetiosaurus oxoniensis as the type species of the historically important genus Cetiosaurus (Upchurch et al. 2009) — both of them supporting the proposal

Let’s assume for a moment that you accept our contention (Taylor et al. 2009) that, since extant terrestrial tetrapods habitually hold their necks in maximal extension, sauropods did the same.  That still leaves the question of why we have the neck of our Diplodocus reconstruction at a steep 45-degree angle rather than the very gentle elevation that Stevens and Parrish’s (1999) DinoMorph project permits.

Welcome, one and all, to Taylor, Wedel and Naish (2009), Head and neck posture in sauropod dinosaurs inferred from extant animals .  It’s the first published paper by the SV-POW! team working as a team, published in Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, and freely available for download here.

Today saw the publication of the most startlingly dull paper I’ve ever been involved in (Upchurch et al. 2009) — and remember, I write this as co-author of a paper on the phylogenetic taxonomy of Diplodocoidea.  Not only that, but one time when I was practising a conference talk with my wife Fiona as audience, she fell asleep actually while I was speaking.  Actually asleep.

We have sometimes neglected tails on SV-POW!, in favour of the more obviously charismatic charms of presacral vertebrae, but every now and then you come across a caudal vertebra so bizarre that it just cries out to be blogged.

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.

It’s very rare that all three of us SV-POW!ers get together: in fact, until Tuesday this week, it had only ever happened once, at SVPCA 2005. But as Matt was spending nearly a fortnight with me (Mike) in England, far from his native land — an unholy blend of Oklahoma and California — it would have been stupid not to have all got together.