In short, no. I discussed this a bit in the first post of the Clash of the Dinosaurs saga, but it deserves a more thorough unpacking, so we can put this dumb idea to bed once and for all. As Marco brought up in the comments on the previous post, glycogen bodies are probably to blame for the idea that some dinosaurs had a second brain to run their back ends.

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My wife Fiona is a musician and composer, and she’s giving a talk at this year’s TetZooCon on “Music for Wildlife Documentaries – A Composer’s Perspective”. (By the way, it looks like some tickets are still available: if you live near or in striking distance of London, you should definitely go! Get your tickets here.) With less than four weeks to go, she’s starting to get nervous — to feel that she doesn’t know enough about wildlife to talk to

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If you’ve been here for very long you know I have a bit of a neural canal fixation.

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The longest cell in Andy Farke is one of the primary afferent (sensory) neurons responsible for sensing vibration or fine touch, which runs from the tip of his big toe to his brainstem.

I’m scrambling to get everything done before I leave for England and SVPCA this weekend, so no time for a substantive post. Instead, some goodies from old papers I’ve been reading. Explanations will have to come in the comments, if at all. Streeter (1904: fig. 3). Compare to the next image down, and note that in birds and other reptiles the spinal cord runs the whole length of the vertebral column, in contrast to the situation in mammals.

My friend, colleague, and sometime coauthor Dave Hone sent the above cartoon, knowing about my more-than-passing interest in sauropod neurology. It was drawn by Ed McLachlan in the early 1980s for Punch! magazine in the UK (you can buy prints starting at £18.99 here). I know that this isn’t the only image in the “oblivious sauropods getting eaten” genre.