Just sayin’: vs. (From here.) Update The rest of the Umbaran Starfighter Saga: Was the Umbaran Starfighter from Clone Wars inspired by an Apatosaurus vertebra? (Dec. 13, 2012) Heck, yes, the Umbaran Starfighter from Clone Wars was inspired by an Apatosaurus vertebra (Dec. 15, 2012) Umbaran Starfighter update (Jan.

Yesterday, Matt showed you this starship from the Star Wars universe: And asked whether it’s based on a cervical vertebra of Apatosaurus . Absolutely it is. It can’t be just a coincidence.

Update, January 21, 2013: YES, it was! Scroll down for links to the entire saga. Because it’s doing a hell of an impression of one, if not. It’s got the huge cervical rib loops (wings), bifurcated neural spine (top fins), and even a condyle on the front of the centrum (cockpit pod). About all it’s missing are the zygapophyses and the cervical ribs themselves.

One of our anatomy students this year, Tess MacFife, was inspired by the other Dr. Wedel’s skull lecture and produced this excellent anatomy-inspired jack-o-lantern: Random passers-by probably thought this was some kind of bat/demon/Lovecraftian horror, but those in the know would recognize it as the human sphenoid bone in anterior view.

Here’s a blast from the past: This alleged Compsognathus is a card from the “Flesh” card-game that was printed across several progs (issues) of the comic 2000 AD in 1977.

Friday evening I was in a pub with Mike, Darren, John Conway, and Emma Lawlor. We were killing time waiting for the Pink Giraffe Chinese restaurant down the street to open. I was chatting with John about “All Todays”, his speculative presentation with Cevdet Kosemen (a.k.a. Nemo Ramjet) on how future sentients might reconstruct Holocene animals if they were known only from fossils.

My awesome employers Index Data flew us all out to Boston a few weeks ago, for six days of food, drink, work (yes, work!) and goofy tyrannosaurs. There is really no excuse for this, is there? SPECIAL BONUS: I am wearing my Xenoposeidon T-shirt.

A couple of posts back, when Matt was talking about turtle laminae, he included a photo of me in front of the skeleton of the giant turtle Archelon . Also in that photo is the tripod I was using — if you want to call it that — a tripod of altogether startling inadequacy. Here it is again, this time in the collections of the AMNH: (Bonus SV-POW!

I’m in Chicago, visiting the Field Museum, which means two things: Brachiosaurus (see below), and Mold-A-Rama. Downstairs from the great hall, on the ground floor, they have Mold-A-Rama machines, and I cannot resist their siren song. The Mold-A-Rama is the king of novelty souvenirs. You can keep your stamped pennies, little pewter spoons, hand-painted bells, and refrigerator magnets.

…with sauropod bones! Lots of basements have them. Some basements have had them for decades, and other basements have been newly constructed to house them. So you can take advantage of that retro chic while taking your basement into the 21st century! What the heck am I talking about?