By one of those happy coincidences that you sometimes get, today saw the publication of not one but two dinosaur ontogeny papers: this morning I was sent a copy of Woodruff and Fowler (2012) on ontogenetic changes in the bifid spines of diplodocoids, and tonight I was alerted to Werning (2012) on Tenontosaurus growth trajectories based on osteohistology. It’s interesting to compare them.

Lots of love from the SV-POW!sketeers, and best wishes for 2012!

This is how Vanessa’s SO, Lane Medina, wraps a Christmas present. The young man shows promise!

Wedel lab group photo, December 12, 2011. Vanessa Graff and Mathew Wedel, with Diplodocus carnegii , Giraffatitan brancai , Dicraeosaurus hansemanni and assorted stinkin’ theropods and ornithischians for scale.

I’m just back from a three-day conference in Bonn, Germany, which I unhesitatingly nominate as the best I’ve ever been to.  To begin with, the subject was a guaranteed winner: sauropod gigantism.  I can hardly overstate how awesome it was to hear 43 talks about or relevant to sauropod gigantism (sixteen on the first day, fifteen on the second and twelve on the third).

Taken by me–or rather, my camera in automatic mode–earlier today, because the ole sauropod blog has been a bit light on sauropods lately. I spend a lot of time thinking about Sauroposeidon , Supersaurus , and the like. It’s good to be reminded that even an ‘average’ sauropod like Diplodocus is still pretty awesome. And weird. I don’t know if we can be reminded often enough.

In our recent paper on how the long necks of sauropods did not evolve primarily due to sexual selection (Taylor et al. 2011), one of the ideas we discussed is that sexual dimorphism between the necks of male and female sauropods would be an indicator of sexual selection.  And, rather despairingly, we wrote (page 4): But I wonder if we realise just how true this is, and how blind we are flying?

For reasons that will soon become apparent (yes, that’s a teaser), Matt and I wanted to figure out how heavy Camarasaurus was.  This is the story of how I almost completely badgered up part of that problem.  I am publishing it as a cautionary tale because I am very secure and don’t mind everyone knowing that I’m an idiot.

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.

Well, this is frustrating.  Over on the VRTPALEO mailing list, all the talk at the moment is of the new paper by Henry Galiano and Raimund Albersdörfer (2010), describing their rather comically named new species Amphicoelias brontodiplodocus .  And to be fair, the material they’re describing is sensational, and the photographs in the paper are pretty good.