Somewhat lamely, this is the only slide I had in about lighting. I left it up while I talked about the most important points, which are: Don’t use a flash unless you absolutely have to. If you can swing it, the common convention is to have specimens illuminated from the upper left.* If you have the time, it’s not a bad idea to bracket your Goldilocks shot with brighter and darker photos, by fiddling with your camera settings.

In a comment on the previous post, Steve P. asked whether “ Apatosaurus ” minimus might not be a Apatosaurus specimen after all — particularly, an Apatosaurus ajax individual resembling NSMT-PV 20375, the one in the National Science Museum, Tokyo, that Upchurch et al. (2005) so lavishly monographed.

Thanks to the wonder of Osborn and Mook (1921), we have already seen multiview illustrations of the pubis and ischium of Camarasaurus . Now we bring you their Camarasaurus sacrum. This is the sacrum of Camarasaurus supremus AMNH 5761. Top row: dorsal view, with anterior to left. Middle row, from left to right: anterior, left lateral and posterior views. Bottom row: ventral view, with anterior to left.

More of my thoughts on the Finch Report; you may wish to read part 1 first. As before I will be quoting from the executive summary (11 pages) rather than the full report (140 pages). Changing culture Section 4 ( What needs to be done , on page 7) begins as follows: This is a crucial point.

Here is another illustration that I prepared for the forthcoming “ Apatosaurus ” minimus redescription. Compare this with the sacrum and fused ilia from the previous post. Left ischium of AMNH 675, “ Apatosaurus ” minimus . Left column: proximal. Middle column, top to bottom: medial (inverted), dorsal, lateral, ventral (all with proximal to left). Right column, distal.

I mentioned a few posts ago that Matt and I are working on a redescription of AMNH 675, a sauropod specimen referred by Mook (1917) to “ Apatosaurus ” minimus , but which everyone knows is not Apatosaurus . We plan to share the illustrations from this in-progress paper as we prepare them, so here is perhaps the key one: Sacrum and fused ilia of AMNH 675, “Apatosaurus” minimus. Top row: left lateral and right lateral;

From the collections of the American Museum of Natural History, I give you the sacrum and fused ilia of “ Apatosaurus ” minimus AMNH 675, as correctly identified by Steve P in a comment to the previous post: As Steve P rightly pointed out, AMNH 675 was designated as Brontosaurus sp. by Osborn (1904), and made the type of Apatosaurus minimus by Mook (1917). It’s been known for some time that whatever this is,

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!