We’ve noted many times over the years how inconsistent pneumatic features are in sauropod vertebra. Fossae and formamina vary between individuals of the same species, and along the spinal column, and even between the sides of individual vertebrae.

Tiny Titan, a temporary exhibit about the Snowmass Haplocanthosaurus project, opened at the Western Science Center in Hemet, California, last night. How? Why? Read on. Things have been quieter this year on the Haplo front than they were in 2018, for many reasons.

After this year’s SVPCA, Vicki and London and I spent a few days with the Taylor family in the lovely village of Ruardean. It wasn’t all faffing about with the Iguanodon pelvis, the above photo notwithstanding.

Regular readers will remember that we followed up our 1VPC talk about what it means for a vertebra to be horizontal by writing it up as a paper, and doing it in the open.

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As usual I came back from SVPCA to a mountain of un-dealt-with day-job work, which is why it’s taken me so long to get this post done and up. I wanted to get it posted as quickly as I could decently arrange, because I had a fantastic time at this year’s meeting and I wanted to document a few reasons why, both to thank this year’s hosts and to perhaps inspire the organizers of future meetings.

I’ll have more to say about both of these in the near future, but for now suffice it to say that this (link): {.aligncenter .wp-image-16586 .size-large loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“16586” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2019/09/25/the-atterholt-wedel-and-plain-old-wedel-talks-from-svpca-2019-are-now-peerj-preprints/atterholt-and-wedel-2019-svpca-neural-canal-ridges-title-slide/”

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In a word, amazingly. After 6 days (counting public galleries last Sunday), 4300 photos, 55 videos, dozens of pages of notes, and hundreds of measurements, we’re tired, happy, and buzzing with new observations and ideas.

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