By contrast to the very delicate pelican humerus and ulna in the previous post, here is the left femur of Aepyornis OUMNH 4950 — an “elephant bird” from Antolanbiby, Madagascar.

Here are the humerus and ulna of a pelican, bisected: {.alignnone .size-full .wp-image-14798 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“14798” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2018/03/17/bisected-pelican-arm-bones-of-the-oxford-museum-of-natural-history/img_0904/” orig-file=“https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/img_0904.jpg” orig-size=“4000,3000” comments-opened=“1”

We all remember Upchurch and Martin’s (2002) description of the Rutland Cetiosaurus , which remains by some distance the best British sauropod specimen in the literature; and the same authors’ (2003) survey of the genus Cetiosaurus . They concluded that nearly all of its many named species are either nomen dubia or misassigned, and that only C . oxoniensis is a valid, diagnosable species.

We jumped the gun a bit in asking How fat was Camarasaurus ? a couple of years ago, or indeed How fat was Brontosaurus ? last year. As always, we should have started with extant taxa, to get a sense of how to relate bones to live animals — as we did with neck posture.