One of these things ought to be familiar, but the other one may not be (they are shown to scale here). The first commenter to correctly identify them both wins 100 SV-POW!bucks (TM), which aren’t worth diddly in the real world* but can be exchanged for worship, admiration, and bragging rights on teh intert00bz. The contest will run until someone gets the right answer or the week is out. All will be revealed next week.

Quick story: in 1993, Jacobs et al. described the basal titanosaur Malawisaurus based on reasonably complete material from, you guessed it, Malawi. This was kind of a big deal, in that Malawisaurus was at the time the most complete sauropod from the Cretaceous of Africa, and also provided important information on titanosaur skulls.

Isn’t this a beauty? What is it, you ask?   We will never know.

We have sometimes neglected tails on SV-POW!, in favour of the more obviously charismatic charms of presacral vertebrae, but every now and then you come across a caudal vertebra so bizarre that it just cries out to be blogged.

Today, we bring you the long-overdue third installment in everyone’s  favourite Mystery Sauropod Dorsals serial, our trawl through the NHM’s collection of mostly isolated elements from the Wealden Supergroup. Many of these elements are too bashed up to be diagnostic (with the Xenoposeidon holotype R2095 being an honourable exception).