Various Internet rumours have suggested that the Archbishop is a super-giant sauropod one third larger than the mounted Giraffatitan specimen MB.R.2181 (formerly HMN SII). This is incorrect.

Everyone knows that the very first thing you should do to improve your specimen photography is to use a tripod: it eliminates hand-shake and gives you much crisper photos. In most respects, my photographs have got much, much better since I’ve been habitually using a tripod.

Well, one reason is the utterly rancid “block editor” that WordPress has started imposing with increasing insistence on its poor users. If there is one thing that world really doesn’t need, it’s a completely new way of writing text. Seriously, WordPress, that was a solved problem in 1984.

I know, I know — you never believed this day would come. And who could blame you? Nearly thirteen years after my 2005 SVPCA talk Sweet Seventy-Five and Never Been Kissed , I am finally kicking the Archbishop descriptive work into gear. And I’m doing it in the open!

Here I am at SVPCA in 2015. I am haunted by the fact that ten years ago at SVPCA 2005, I gave a talk about the NHM’s Tendaguru brachiosaurid, NHMUK R5937. And the description is still not done and submitted a full decade later.

That link in the first slide will take you here, and the rest of the series is here.

Generally when we present specimen photos in papers, we cut out the backgrounds so that only the bone is visible — as in this photo of dorsal vertebrae A and B of NHM R5937 “The Archbishop”, an as-yet indeterminate Tendaguru brachiosaur, in right lateral view: But for some bones that can be rather misleading: they may be mounted in such a way that part of the bone is obscured by structure.

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.

A few months ago, prosauropod supremo Adam Yates blogged about the Aardonyx cake that the BPI honours class baked in his honour.

By a curious coincidence, today’s Bob The Angry Flower cartoon is all about the Archbishop description. Enjoy. But, hey, at least I got my confession in early — I was officially the first participant to fail the 2010 Paleo Project Challenge. THIS year, for sure!