Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week

As a break from photography posts, here are four pretty big vertebrae that swirl in the same thought-space in my head. All are shown to scale, in right lateral view. These are not the biggest sauropod cervical vertebrae–Supersaurus beats them all, and there are vertebrae of Puertasaurus, Alamosaurus, and Futalognkosaurus that rival the big Sauroposeidon vert, but those are either less well preserved or still awaiting detailed description.

Incidentally, I think BYU 12867 is a C10. The centrum proportions are about right, compared to Giraffatitan, and the neural spine looks good, too, like a geometric transformation of the big Giraffatitan C8. Also, the drawn-in prezyg outline for MIWG.7306 is a little short; the actual prezyg is a monster and would have overhung the condyle by another 10cm or so. I’m pretty sure that we had a composite photograph showing this at one point, but irritatingly none of us can find it at the moment. If it turns up, I’ll update the image.

For a long time I thought Sauroposeidon was a brachiosaurid. Now it seems to be a somphospondyl (D’Emic 2012) or possibly even a basal titanosaur (Mannion et al. 2013), even if we stick just to the holotype. But if it’s not a brachiosaurid, it’s cervical vertebrae are at least coarsely brachiosaur-y in outline.

You  may recall from Naish et al. (2004) that MIWG.7306 shares several derived characters with the holotype vertebrae of Sauroposeidon. Does that mean that Angloposeidon is a somphospondyl or titanosaur as well? I dunno–as always, we need more material–but it’s an interesting possibility.

References

• D’Emic, M.D. 2012. The early evolution of titanosauriform sauropod dinosaurs. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 166: 624–671.
• Mannion, P.D., Upchurch, P., Barnes, R.N., and Mateus, O. 2013. Osteology of the Late Jurassic Portuguese sauropod dinosaur Lusotitan atalaiensis (Macronaria) and the evolutionary history of basal titanosauriforms. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 168(1): 98-206.
• Naish, D., Martill, D. M., Cooper, D. & Stevens, K. A. 2004. Europe’s largest dinosaur? A giant brachiosaurid cervical vertebra from the Wessex Formation (Early Cretaceous) of southern England. Cretaceous Research 25:787-795.