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.

The hot news on the block right now is the description of the new sauropod Abydosaurus mcintoshi , which, amazingly, is known from four more or less complete skulls (Chure et al. 2010).  This is unheard of — absolutely unprecedented.  There are few enough sauropods for which a skull is known at all; but four of them, all in decent nick, is breathtaking.

Ever since we started working on Sauroposeidon , Rich Cifelli and I dreamed of seeing the reconstructed neck on display. That vision has come to fruition. The Oklahoma Museum of Natural History opened a totally new building in 2000. Coincidentally, the opening ceremony for the new digs was held the same week that the paper naming Sauroposeidon came out in JVP.

This is part 3 of an emerging and occasional SV-POW! series: part 1 was the pig skull, and part 2 was the lizard feet (though not advertised as such because I couldn’t resist the sauropod pun). Bennett's wallaby, right lateral view Today, we’re going to be taking a wallaby apart.

UPDATE December 3, 2009 I screwed up, seriously. Tony Thulborn writes in a comment below to correct several gross errors I made in the original post. He’s right on every count. I have no defense, and I am terribly sorry, both to Tony and to everyone who ever has or ever will read this post.

Today sees the publication of the new Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology , and with it my paper on the two best-known brachiosaurs and why they’re not congeneric (Taylor 2009).  This of course is why I have been coyly referring to “Brachiosaurus” brancai in the last few months … I couldn’t bear to make the leap straight to saying Giraffatitan , a name that is going to take me a while to get used to. But before we