I’m going to exploit this site to post a (very rare) off-topic book recommendation. So here it is: The Variety of Life — a survey and a celebration of all the creatures that have ever lived , by Colin Tudge. I’ve just finished reading this hefty book — 684 pages in the paperback edition — and I’ve found it fantastically invigorating.

It’s a lonely night here at the Fortress of Sauropoditude. Darren is off at one of his numerous conferences, and Mike is in hiding, trying to avoid the reality that 4% of a millennium has passed since he was loosed upon the world. I gave the serfs the night off, which means it’s just me here in this lonely tower, surrounded by arcane devices, mouldering tomes and piles of ancient bones.

Every once in a while it’s good to remember that no matter how big you end up, everybody starts out small. Jack McIntosh came through the OMNH a few years ago and identified all of our sauropod material. There are babies of both Camarasaurus and Apatosaurus from this quarry.

Following on from Your neck is pathetic, I offer you the fifth presacral vertebra of the Brachiosaurus altithorax holotype specimen FMNH P25105, in right lateral view, with a complete human dorsal column for scale.

These are stressful times as SV-POW! towers, with all three of in various ways involved in the aetosaur ethics business that is — finally — getting the coverage that it deserves. So I don’t want to talk about that here, not only because it’s nothing to do with sauropod vertebrae but also because it’s getting a lot of coverage elsewhere.

I was going to write about mystery cervicals of the Cloverly Formation, but that requires knowing something about juvenile vertebrae and Pleurocoelus , so I decided to write about Pleurocoelus , but that still requires knowing something about juvenile vertebrae. So I’m writing this tutorial to lay the groundwork for more goodness to come.

A hat-tip to Paul Barrett, who’s reminded us that technically we’re not supposed to be using photographs of Natural History Museum specimens — at least, not without acknowledgement.

Things are pretty quiet at SV-POW!

Now that the Xenoposeidon frenzy is over, we seem to be settling down to about one SV-POW! post per week … which on the face of it is not too unreasonable for a blog with “of the week” in its title.

My favorite room in the world is the big bone room at BYU’s Earth Science Museum.