In this article I’d like look at something that I’ve just spoken about at a conference: the ‘Dinosaurs – A Historical Perspective’ meeting held in London on May 6th and 7th (my thoughts on the conference can be found here and here). Mike attended too (and, like me, gave a talk), but Matt couldn’t make it. Anyway…

In a comment on the previous post, Amanda wrote: This might be a stupid question (I don’t really believe that there are no such things as stupid quetions) but do you find that sauropod vertebrae are more highly pneumatic in larger sauropods? This is not only not a dumb question, it is one of most important questions about pneumaticity in sauropods. The answer is complex, but here at SV-POW! we embrace the complexity.

It’s a lonely night here at the Fortress of Sauropoditude. Darren is off at one of his numerous conferences, and Mike is in hiding, trying to avoid the reality that 4% of a millennium has passed since he was loosed upon the world. I gave the serfs the night off, which means it’s just me here in this lonely tower, surrounded by arcane devices, mouldering tomes and piles of ancient bones.

After eight consecutive posts on Xenoposeidon , I have to admit that even I am getting just a tiny bit bored of it, so I can only imagine how the rest of you feel.

Welcome to our continuing coverage of the wackiness that is Xenoposeidon . I drew the ‘pneumaticity’ straw, not surprisingly, so I get to introduce the anterior and posterior views of the vertebra, which reveal some of the internal structure. But they also reveal another bit of weirdness, which is the neural canal, so let’s start there.

It’s come up here a few times already–it’s hard to talk about sauropod vertebrae without bringing it up–but now it’s time to get it out in the open. In almost all sauropods, and certainly in all the ones you learned about as a kid, at least some of the vertebrae were pneumatic (air-filled). Now, this is a very strange thing.

Welcome to the third SV-POW! post. Given that this is my (me = Darren Naish) first post, I cannot resist using it as another excuse to post a picture of, and talk briefly about, the wonder that is MIWG.7306, the immense* brachiosaur cervical vertebra that I and colleagues described in 2004. A series of blog articles (on Tetrapod Zoology ver 1) were previously posted on this specimen and its history, starting here.