[This is part 4 in an ongoing series on our recent PLOS ONE paper on sauropod neck cartilage.

{.aligncenter .size-full .wp-image-2361 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“2361” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2009/12/07/another-mystery-embossed-laminae-and-unfossae/haplocanthosaurus-ct1-2/” orig-file=“https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/haplocanthosaurus-ct1.jpg” orig-size=“500,456” comments-opened=“1”

Last week, for the first time ever, I spent the entire working week on palaeo.  I took a week away from my job, and spent it staying in London, working on the Archbishop at the Natural History Museum.

Earlier this month Daniela Schwarz-Wings and colleagues published the first finite element analysis (FEA) of sauropod vertebrae (Schwarz-Wings et al. 2009). Above is one of the figures showing some of their results. Following standard convention, stresses are shown on a gradient with cooler colors indicating lower stresses and hotter colors indicating higher stresses.

This is corn on the cob: This is a shish kebab: Most tetrapods are like shish kebabs: a whole lot of meat stuck on a proportionally tiny skeleton.

{.aligncenter .size-full .wp-image-685 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“685” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2008/12/08/airheads/human-sinuses/” orig-file=“https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/human-sinuses.jpg” orig-size=“480,539” 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=“human-sinuses”

I just got word from the History Channel that their documentary “Evolve: Size” will air Saturday, Nov. 8. Kent Sanders, Brooks Britt, and I filmed a long segment for this back in May, covering pneumaticity in sauropods. Hopefully it didn’t all go to the cutting room floor!

{.aligncenter .size-full .wp-image-302 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“302” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2008/09/03/theres-almost-nothing-but-nothing-there-brachiosaurus-edition/figure-12-brachiosaurus-ct-500/” orig-file=“https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/figure-12-brachiosaurus-ct-500.png” orig-size=“500,313” comments-opened=“1”