On the excellent and convivial social network Mastodon, someone going by the handle “gay ornithopod” asked what turned out to be a fascinating question: My first response was that we can only say it’s not unusual for extant animals to change colour through ontogeny, so the null hypothesis would have to be that at least some sauropods (and other dinosaurs) did the same. But I don’t think we have any information on the specific coloration.

{.size-large .wp-image-18657 .aligncenter loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“18657” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2021/03/08/burpee-paleofest-2020-my-last-conference/burpee-museum-exterior/” orig-file=“https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2021/03/burpee-museum-exterior.jpg” orig-size=“2800,2100” comments-opened=“1”

Someone on Facebook asked whether sauropods had subcutaneous fat, and by the time my answer hit five paragraphs I thought, “The merciful thing to do here is blog this and link to it.” So here are some things to keep in mind regarding the integumentary systems of sauropods.