There’s recently been a rash of requests for PDFs on the VRTPALEO mailing list.  Or maybe “plague” would be a better word.

In an interesting comment on Matt’s “Amphiocoelias brontodiplodocus” post, an anonymous commenter wrote (among much else): I started to write a reply to this, then realised it was important enough to merit its own post — so here it is. The amateur and commercial palaeontologists alluded to in the comment are wrong, plainly and simply.

I wasn’t going to write about this, partly because it’s so darn depressing, but mostly because in the wake of this comment it seemed like the “Amphicoelias brontodiplodocus” paper was being withdrawn, and to quote something Mike said off-list, I was happier about the retraction than I was sad about the implied revisionism.

In view of all the awesome that is the Humboldt Museum’s gigantic brachiosaur mount, it’s too easy to overlook another nearly-complete Tendaguru sauropod, mounted in the very same hall, that is also worthy of respect and, yes, awe.  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Dicraeosaurus hansemanni !   Dicraeosaurus hansemanni mounted skeleton, Humboldt Museum, Berlin. Anterolateral view. Matt Wedel for scale.

If you’re new to this thread, here’s a minimal reading list, in chronological order. I say ‘minimal’ because all of the relevant papers are freely available, and therefore all of the factual claims are easy to check.

In the last post I introduced Aerosteon , which has been touted as providing the first solid evidence for bird-like air sacs in non-avian dinosaurs, and I explained a little about how we know what we think we know about dinosaur air sacs.

Up till now, I’ve tried to remain completely dispassionate about Aetogate, restricting my public comments to statements of fact and reports of what others have said.