Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week

I need to be sleeping, not blogging, so here are just the highlights, with no touch-ups and minimal commentary.

I don’t know what these real street signs were doing sitting on the ground when I walked to the museum this morning, but it was a good omen for the conference.

Home base for this part of the conference. We head to Green River, Utah, on Friday for the Early Cretaceous half.

I had never seen this on exhibit. This is not the Brachiosaurus scapulocoracoid formerly referred to “Ultrasauros”, this is the other big scap from Dry Mesa, from the giant diplodocid Supersaurus.

Seems legit.

This is not Dinosaur Baptist Church–it is a cathedral of an entirely different order.

And that order is Sauropoda.

The sauropod bones are entombed in a matrix consisting of super-hard sandstone and non-sauropod bits.

I got about 150 photos of the Wall, but only because I ran out of time. You probably already know what I’m going to attempt with them. (If not, here’s a hint.)

Jim Kirkland (center left) literally walked us through the Morrison and Cedar Mountain Formations at this set of exposures north of the visitor center. The reddish stuff on the lower left is Morrison, and after that it’s CMF all the way up this ridge and next two behind it.

A cast of Diplodocus carnegii at the Utah Field House of Natural History State Park Museum, signalling that we’ve come to end of this tail–er, tale.

Further updates as time and opportunity allow. If you tweet about the conference, please use #MMFC14!