Another diplodocine tail
September 30, 2008
We’ve done diplodocine caudal vertebrae before but, what the hell, you can never have too many of them. Here’s the tail base of the Diplodocus mount (DMNH 1494) at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Note that the neural spines on the caudals are quite short and posteriorly inclined (this is also something we’ve covered before). But, whatever, it’s pretty isn’t it? Matt took the photo.
Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week 
September 30, 2008 at 1:50 am
Is that specimen rusting?
September 30, 2008 at 3:17 am
Tragically, that’s what happens if you don’t keep your diplodocines greased up. Nobody knew that until the widespread use of petroleum products in the very end of the nineteenth century. By then it was too late for Amphicoelias fragillimus.
September 30, 2008 at 4:59 am
Is there something funny about the shape of the first hemal arch?
September 30, 2008 at 9:27 am
Yes, that first chevron looks like tiny misplaced theropod pubis. More convergence, as with the chasmosaurine Camarasaurus dorsals?
September 30, 2008 at 8:55 pm
Oh, man, if that’s what it is, given the location, I very much don’t want to know how it happened.
October 1, 2008 at 3:23 am
Hmmmm…This looks familiar… hooray for diplodocids! Alas! Alas! Alas! Another
Diplodocus… butt! it’s always nice to ogle. Too bad there
is a metal support (understandably) covering the ventral sulchus (or is that ventral
longitudinal hollow?).
October 4, 2008 at 2:02 am
One of my favorite dinosaurs!
It really *does* look rusty. Wow…
How big is this specimen? What species of Diplodocus is it (if it’s known).
October 4, 2008 at 6:28 pm
I wonder what sort of pterosaur budded off of those neural spines. Sadly, we may never know.
October 4, 2008 at 10:01 pm
Boneless aquatic ones, right?
(Where did that originate anyway?)
October 6, 2008 at 8:07 pm
A good question.
The origins of the boneless aquatic pterosaurs are (like all traces of physical evidence that they ever existed) lost in the mists of time. Known only from sailors’ reports of the Kraken, they were said to dine habitually on whales, sometimes mistaken for giant cephalopods. The devastation of whale populations in recent centuries must have left them without sustenance, and none have been reported in more than a century. Having abandoned osteogenesis sometime early in their history, they left no fossil record, and little definitive can be said about them.
How a creature whose ancestors reproduced by budding from the neural spines of sauropods (and possibly more basal forms) could have made the transition to free-living aquatic gigantism can only be the topic of spectacularly ill-founded speculation — just how spectacularly has yet to be seen.
October 7, 2008 at 11:02 pm
Um… Thanks for the information, but I meant where did the idea come from? Are there specimens, or is this based on speculation?
Also — is the sea serpent a boneless pterosaur? Do you have any opinion on this boot-lace worm as a further reduced (i.e. wingless) pterosaur?
October 7, 2008 at 11:04 pm
That link is wrong, I meant to point to the article on Lineus longissimus – sorry.
October 8, 2008 at 9:55 am
…is this based on speculation?
Not just any old speculation, but spectacularly ill-founded speculation.
Do you have any opinion on this boot-lace worm as a further reduced (i.e. wingless) pterosaur?
Hmm, extreme posterior caudal, I’ll wager.
October 8, 2008 at 11:11 pm
These revolutionary discoveries need a paper!
October 9, 2008 at 9:41 pm
In answer to the original question, I think I may first have exposited the topic of boneless aquatic pterosaurs on long-suffering Dave Hone’s original pterosaur blog. The earliest reference Google locates is at
http://dinobase.gly.bris.ac.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=1059#p1059
October 22, 2008 at 4:27 am
Aha, an earlier manifestation:
http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2007/12/pterosaurs_alive.php#comment-696101