Matt’s harsh-but-fair “Derp dah durr” / “Ah hurr hurr hurr” captions on his Giraffatitan skull photos reminded me that there is a sauropod with a much, much stupider head than that of Giraffatitan . Step forward YPM 1910, a mounted skeleton that is the holotype of Camarasaurus (= “ Morosaurus “) lentus , in the dinosaur hall of the Yale Peabody Museum. Full details on this specimen next time!

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.

Today sees the publication of my big paper with Mike on neural spine bifurcation, which has been in the works since last April. It’s a free download here, and as usual we put the hi-res figures and other supporting info on a sidebar page.

If you’re just joining us, this post is a follow-up to this one, in which I considered the possible size and identity of the Recapture Creek femur fragment, which “Dinosaur Jim” Jensen (1987: page 604) said was “the largest bone I have ever seen”. True to his word, Brooks Britt at BYU got back to me with measurements of the Recapture Creek femur fragment in practically no time at all: Now, taking plaster off a bone is not going to make it any

From Jensen (1987, page 604): “In 1985 I found the proximal third of an extremely large sauropod femur (Figs. 8A, 12A) in a uranium miner’s front yard in southern Utah.  The head of this femur is 1.67 m (5’6″) in circumference and was collected from the Recapture Creek Member of the the Morrison Formation in Utah near the Arizona border.

Hi folks, It’s been a while since I posted here. I haven’t gone off SV-POW! or anything, just going through one of my periodic doldrums (read: super-busy with Other Stuff). I’m writing now to draw your attention to two books that I’m pretty darned excited about.

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 goodness from Osborn and Mook’s (1921) gargantuan Camarasaurus monograph, again prepared largely for comparison with “ Apatosaurus ” minimus . Last time, I showed you one of O&M’s pubis illustrations. Now an ischium: This shows the left ischium AMNH 576o’/Is.4. Left column: proximal aspect. Middle column, from top to bottom: medial, lateral, posterior (no dorsal view was provided). Right column: distal.

(First of all, for anyone who’s not familiar with the plural of “pubis”, it’s spelled “pubes” but pronounced “pyoo-bees”. Stop sniggering at the back.) As Matt and I struggle to figure out the partial pubis that is one of the elements of the “ Apatosaurus ” minimus specimen AMNH 675, one of the most helpful references is Osborn and Mook’s (1921) epic monograph on Camarasaurus . It’s not that 675 particularly resembles

Last time, we saw why Haplocanthosaurus couldn’t be a juvenile of Apatosaurus or Diplodocus , based on osteology alone.  But there’s more: Ontogenetic status of Haplocanthosaurus Here is where is gets really surreal.  Woodruff and Fowler (2012) blithely assume that Haplocanthosaurus is a juvenile of something, but the type specimen of the type species — H .