Pacific Rim, a large-animal anatomist’s dream come true
July 13, 2013
Anyone else see these images and really, REALLY want to go dissect one of these bad boys?
From the moment I saw this in the trailer, I was thinking: “WANT!”
Click to embiggen, and check out the heavy equipment being used to cart off the soft tissue.
Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week 
July 13, 2013 at 6:50 pm
Have you guys heard about the new sauropod from Tunisia, Tataouinea?
Apparently, it’s pretty exciting. They found most of the pelvis, and it’s the one of the most pneumatic pelvises known from any sauropod, with foramina on the ischium and ilium (pubis is not preserved).
July 15, 2013 at 5:29 pm
Yep — I have the paper, and need to force a bit of time to blog about it. I agree it’s pretty awesome!
July 20, 2013 at 10:59 am
I’m having difficulty thinking of the science and biology of these monsters and still imagine the movie as one that runs on awesome. It’s one or the other, especially given the glaring problems with the one this movie has trying to be the other. Case in point: the second brain.
July 21, 2013 at 6:14 pm
I know this is about the anatomy, and that this is a movie that runs on awesome, but can I rant for a second? Thank you.
That picture with the aircraft carrier shows a lot that’s wrong with the movie. Would any sane ship’s captain put that much sloshy, unsecured weight on the top deck? I don’t know if the top deck could hold it without crumpling, but I do know that, in anything but a flat calm, there’s a good chance that the remains will roll off the deck, and if they don’t, they may well capsize the aircraft carrier.
We’ve got ships that might be better for this chore, such as the Maersk Line’s Triple E cargo carrier, but that’s not awesome.
Similarly, we’ve got all sorts of anti-kaiju weapons lying around, from things like the A-10 “Wonder Warthog” up to GRU-57 bunker buster bombs if depleted uranium slugs somehow bounce off flesh, which I doubt they will (the rounds were designed to penetrate tank armor). I suspect that the carrier-killing Chinese missile they’re talking about might work too, as might all sorts of other conventional ordnance. These all make big bangs, of course, but not sufficiently awesome, I’m thinking. I mean, comparing the largest non-nuclear explosive to a 250 meter tall mecha armed with a sword? The mecha is, of course, more awesome.
Then, once someone figures out how to work the dimensional gate in reverse, we could fairly easily take some ballistic missile submarines, rig them to detonate their nuclear missiles on the other side of the gate, roll them up in kaiju tissue like the world’s biggest explosive salami, and drop them through the gate, using something akin to the Hughes Glomar Explorer if we didn’t want to, oh, hang our sausages between two aircraft carriers (since that would be a more awesome testimony to America’s machismo). Think of boomer subs rigged with trident missiles exploding inside as nuclear bomb fragmentation grenades on an epic scale. But that might remind people of the Hurt Locker, so it would, of course, not be awesome.
Aw well. It’s summer. Why should I complain?
July 22, 2013 at 7:11 am
I hear you. Supposedly it took them six days to kill the first one with conventional weapons. Seems a bit unlikely, given what we see later on (e.g., in Sydney). I was about to write, “But watching A-10s and B-52s rain depleted uranium rounds and laser-guided bombs on one of those suckers would have been less awesome.” But actually, I would totally watch that movie. In fact, I want to see that: how we took down the first four (or more) kaiju without jaegers. I’m imagining attack subs trying to get in close enough to hit them in the legs with torpedoes, transport planes dropping daisy-cutters and oversized fuel-air bombs, platoons of M1s trying to put the monsters’ eyes out with sabot rounds, Apaches hammering them with Hellfires…
That said, I had a big dopey grin on my face straight through the movie. Both times. And I probably will again soon.
July 25, 2013 at 4:32 pm
[…] was inspired in part by others’ blogs about Pacific Rim, so credit to SVPOW and TetZoo for what follows. […]
July 27, 2013 at 5:01 am
I spotted a goblin shark head on one of the monsters (actually, the skeleton on the ship in the top picture might also be based on that, but one of the live ones in an early fight also has that head), and one of the monsters in the opening has big claws that look just like ones I’ve seen on an illustration of Drepanosaurus.