I don’t intend to write a comprehensive treatise on the morphology and phylogeny of Suuwassea . Jerry Harris has already done that, several times over (Harris 2006a, b, c, 2007, Whitlock and Harris 2010). Rather, I want to address the contention of Woodruff and Fowler (2012) that Suuwassea is a juvenile of a known diplodocid, building on the information presented in the first three posts in this series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).

This is the third post in a series on neural spine bifurcation in sauropods, inspired by Woodruff and Fowler (2012). In the first post, I looked at neural spine bifurcation in Morrison sauropod genera based on the classic monographic descriptions. In the second post, I showed that size is an unreliable criterion for assessing age and that serial variation can mimic ontogenetic change in sauropod cervicals.

In the previous post in this series I looked at the some of the easily available raw data on neural spine bifurcation in Morrison sauropods. In this post I’ll explain how serial variation–that is, variation along the vertebral column in one individual–is relevant to the inferences made in the new paper by Woodruff and Fowler (2012). But first, a digression, the relevance of which will quickly become clear.

The discussion over the new paper by Woodruff and Fowler (2012)–see this post and the unusually energetic comment thread that follows–made me want to go back to the literature and see what was known or could be inferred about neural spine bifurcation in the Morrison sauropods before the recent paper was published.

By one of those happy coincidences that you sometimes get, today saw the publication of not one but two dinosaur ontogeny papers: this morning I was sent a copy of Woodruff and Fowler (2012) on ontogenetic changes in the bifid spines of diplodocoids, and tonight I was alerted to Werning (2012) on Tenontosaurus growth trajectories based on osteohistology. It’s interesting to compare them.

We’re starting the new year with a new feature, in which we answer questions that have come our way. We never had a policy about not answering questions, it’s just that previous ones have tended to arrive in the comments section and have been dealt with there. But suddenly in the last few days I’ve gotten two questions from extrabloggular sources, and rather than hide the replies I thought I’d make them available to all.

{.aligncenter .size-full .wp-image-5016 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“5016” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2012/01/01/happy-new-year/dippy-kiss-2/” orig-file=“https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/dippy-kiss.jpg” orig-size=“720,960” comments-opened=“1” image-meta=“{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":""}” image-title=“dippy-kiss”

{.aligncenter .size-full .wp-image-4997 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“4997” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2011/12/25/what-everyone-wants-to-find-under-the-tree/christmas-sauropod/” orig-file=“https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/christmas-sauropod.jpg” orig-size=“960,717” comments-opened=“1”

Hot on the heels of PLoS ONE -like open-access megajournals such as BMJ Open , Nature’s Scientific Reports , the Royal Society’s Open Biology and SAGE’s SAGE Open , now the king of evil predatory price-gouging publishers-whose-business-model-is-to-prevent-papers-being-read Elsevier are — you won’t believe this — launching their own PLoS ONE clone, FEBS Open Bio . So please join me in giving a

{.aligncenter .size-full .wp-image-4931 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“4931” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2011/12/13/best-exhibit-ever/wedel-lab-humboldt-3-everyone/” orig-file=“https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/wedel-lab-humboldt-3-everyone.jpg” orig-size=“2272,1704” comments-opened=“1”