‘Angloposeidon’, cover-girl
January 11, 2010
It isn’t everyday that a sauropod vertebra makes it onto the cover of a technical journal. In fact… this might be the first time that it’s ever happened (please let us know if you know otherwise. So far as I can tell, even Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology has never had a sauropod vertebra on the cover [though it has featured sauropod skeletons in their entirety]). Yes world, I give you the cover of issue 1 of Volume 31 of Cretaceous Research, a journal I do editing work for. We’ve had dinosaurs on the cover before (a Triceratops skull), but when the opportunity arose for new submissions I decided to try my luck. I submitted a nice photo of MIWG.7306 (aka ‘Angloposeidon’) – albeit it only the posterior half – and… here we are. This is a major achievement, it’s open-bar night here at SV-POW!
PS – Mike and I tried to get a sauropod vertebra on a journal cover back in 2007. We failed. Can you guess what that particular sauropod vertebra was?
Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week 
January 11, 2010 at 12:34 pm
I’m guessing Xenoposeidon.
January 11, 2010 at 10:20 pm
Given both their fascinating pneumaticity (there has been at least some awareness of this for a long time) and their sheer sculptural beauty, it’s astonishing that Sauropod vertebrae haven’t graced covers more often!
January 12, 2010 at 8:18 am
Yes! ExACTly!
January 16, 2010 at 7:09 am
I was gonna shout “Rapetosaurus made the cover of Nature!” but then I realized that it wasn’t a picture of its vertebrae.