Darn!
January 13, 2009
Just got back my supervisor’s comments on my draft dissertation front-matter. Looks like I’m not going to be able to go with my chosen title.
Update
Here is another of my supervisor’s corrections to my draft dissertation, this in the part of the acknowledgements that mentions Darren:
(For anyone who doesn’t get the reference, see this post at Tetrapod Zoology.)
Update 2
Matt won’t let me get away with a post that doesn’t include a sauropod vertebra, so here is BMNH R173b, a Mystery Sauropod Cervical of the Wealden, in right lateral view:
![[Image copyright the Natural History Museum]](https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/bmnh-r173b-cervical-right-lateral.jpeg "bmnh-r173b-cervical-right-lateral-480px")
Image copyright the Natural History Museum
The thing to look out for here is the absolutely honking huge cervical rib. In, well, every other sauropod cervical in existence, the cervical ribs quickly taper as they extend backwards from the diapophysis and parapophysis, but this does no such thing: it seems to have a big, fat club on the end of it. The next time I’m down in the NHM collections I need to have a careful look at this and check that someone hasn’t attached a chunk of tibia or something — but if this is legit, then what we have here is the one sauropod element I’ve ever seen for which Martin et al.’s (1998) ventral bracing hypothesis might just work. (Although actually it wouldn’t, for other reasons which I won’t discuss now.)
Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week 
January 13, 2009 at 1:51 pm
I like short titles like that!
January 13, 2009 at 2:45 pm
You are obliged to have at least one of the following in the title:
“New”, “Newly”, or “Novel”
“Unusual” or “Unique”
“Implications”
and a colon.
January 13, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Short is good – but I think I can see your supervisor’s point in this case. Your preferred title implies a somewhat wider remit than I assume your research actually covered.
Or is this actually the last word on all Sauropods, everywhere? In which case, I must have aimed low in my PhD…
January 13, 2009 at 3:01 pm
I was aiming for elegant minimalism.
January 13, 2009 at 5:13 pm
It should have been…
Sauropods: A Thesis.
Sheesh, that’s easily fixed!
January 13, 2009 at 5:30 pm
Hmm, I don’t know, I think that undersells it. I was thinking of “Sauropods: an AWESOME thesis”.
January 13, 2009 at 7:46 pm
The Biggest Goddamn Terrestrial Animals to Walk the Earth: A Brief Overview
January 13, 2009 at 7:53 pm
Why not go with title with a successful track record: “Live Nude Girls”? If that seems too misleading, how about “Sauropods: Shedloads of Awesome!” or “SV-POW! : The Dissertation”.
January 13, 2009 at 11:05 pm
What about Bob the Angry Flower’s advice? It’s a surefire guarantee of Phd-dom, and you know it.
January 13, 2009 at 11:24 pm
Mike, you can’t leave this hanging: “Only Darren’s complete inability to handle …”
January 13, 2009 at 11:45 pm
Did he circle “Hampshire” because it should have said “Hants” instead?
My proposed title is “Long Necks, Short Shrift: Restoring the Under-appreciated Sauropod to Its Rightful Place at the Peak of Paleontology“. Alternatively, “Long Necks, Short Rations: Keeping Hypertrophied Vertebrates Fed“. Or, “Long Necks, Short-Sightedness: Post-Jurassic Decline in the Sauropodomorphs“. I could continue.
January 13, 2009 at 11:46 pm
For those who are not familar with Bob the Angry Flower’s superb and widely applicable advice, it can be found at http://angryflower.com/attemp.gif
At the moment, I am using the rather mundane title “Aspects of the history, anatomy, taxonomy and palaeobiology of sauropod dinosaurs”. It’s hard to get excited about, and I admit I am tempted to see whether I can get “Shedloads of Awesome” past Dave.
MfO, Darren also wanted to know how the “inability to handle” sentence finishes up on the next page. Kinda inconvenient where that page-break fell, huh?
January 14, 2009 at 12:25 am
How about:
“On Sauropoda”
or
“Contributions to the Knowledge of Sauropoda”
January 14, 2009 at 4:40 am
“Consider the Sauropod…”
January 14, 2009 at 6:52 am
Mike, not only does the rib look pathologic, the near postzygapophyses appears swollen and also pathologic. This could be a useful short note on pathology (cervical damage suggests attack or even agonistic behavior!) … make that a paper.
January 14, 2009 at 8:35 am
Surely, surely, it has to be “Some comments on the awesomeness of Sauropods”.
January 15, 2009 at 1:50 am
OK, then, “Consider the Awesome Sauropod“.
Or, “Long Necks, Short Tempers“. OK, I’m leaving.
January 15, 2009 at 2:47 am
“On the Backs of Sauropods” – Mike specializes in dorsals, right?
January 15, 2009 at 3:44 am
‘Your Body Is Bitsy: the Awesome Bigitude of Sauropods’
January 15, 2009 at 9:55 am
“Sauropds: Size Does Matter”
January 15, 2009 at 9:56 am
Dammit, stupid typo!
January 15, 2009 at 3:37 pm
“Sauropods: Better than mammals anyway”
“What I did on my holidays: A novel contribution to the study of sauropod dorsal vertebrae”
January 15, 2009 at 8:57 pm
Maybe it should be “SAUROPODS!!!”.
January 16, 2009 at 12:20 am
It never hurts to link yourself to a famous sauropod researcher, but you don’t want to look like a name-dropper, so I suggest “sauROods: My Theory”, to ever so subtly evoke the aura of Anne Elk.
January 16, 2009 at 1:13 am
Damn! That’s “sauROPods”. Blast!
January 16, 2009 at 5:53 pm
Maybe you could just go with the all inclusive “Dinosaurs”. Why limit yourself?
January 17, 2009 at 5:20 pm
We should have a competition do guess what it is that Darren can’t handle…
January 19, 2009 at 9:55 pm
Jim Lehane said:
I say, Heck! Why stop there? Just call it “Life” – after all, doesn’t that begin and end with SAUROPODS?
Or, in Nathan Myers vein, “Long Necks, Short Oo Impress”?
Or, “From Biblical Behemoth to Star Wars Ronto: How Sauropods Rule All of Time and Space!”?
January 20, 2009 at 3:26 am
Your professor is probably right to expect more specificity. “Implications of Certain Details of Sauropod Fossil Specimens Examined” ought to hit just the right note.
January 22, 2009 at 11:34 pm
That’s the kind of specificity we’re looking for in the bureaucracy: looks specific, doesn’t actually say anything. When can you start? :-)
January 27, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Darren’s total inability to handle?!? Inquiring minds want to know!
Bah. Call it “42”.
Le booooon roi Daaaaagobeeeeert
vouuuuulait conquérir l’univeeeeers…
Interesting to see it’s still “philosophy” in the UK (and not just the US). In Austria, it’s “natural sciences”, so I’ll get Dr. rer. nat. (Latin rerum naturalium “of natural affairs”).
And in France, you don’t even become doctor of a science anymore, you become doctor of an institution. If I get the bureaucracy done before next glacial maximum, I’ll become “Docteur de l’Université Pierre et Marie Curie”. No idea whose bright idea that was.
January 29, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Obviously it was the bright idea of marketing folk who are big on “branding”. They want to create the impression that the school matters more than the subject matter. They also want you to be an advertisement for their school as you go through life.
January 30, 2009 at 7:52 am
‘PODS ~ the thesis
February 22, 2009 at 8:16 pm
This looks like a titanosaur…. Actually I’m immediately reminded of Puertasaurus.
July 21, 2009 at 10:28 am
[…] We doctoral graduands got special treatment: not only did we shake hands with the pro vice chancellor — as though this were not thrill enough — but we also had the titles of our dissertations read out. As mine sounds rather vague (”Aspects of the history, anatomy, taxonomy and palaeobiology of sauropod dinosaurs”) I was left wishing that I’d stuck with my original title. […]
June 16, 2016 at 9:43 am
Do you have any idea how large this cervical is (preferably in cm if possible)? Have you gotten a chance to look at this specimen since this post?
June 16, 2016 at 9:46 am
IIRC, it’s not particularly big — about 30 or 40 cm long.
I’ve not seen it — or at least, not looked at it — since I wrote this post.
June 17, 2016 at 12:18 am
Okay, well thank you anyway!
March 4, 2019 at 5:39 pm
[…] canal. Similarly, I don’t know whether the huge club on the end of the right cervical rib of NHMUK PV R173b (formerly BMNH R173b) is pathological bone or a mineral concretion, because all I have to go from is my lame photos. I […]