Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week

Last time we looked at the humeri in the Field Museum’s mounted Brachiosaurus skeleton — especially the right humerus, which is a cast from the holotype, while the left is a sculpture. But Matt’s and my photos of that mount are all pretty much useless scientifically — partly because we were terrible photographers back then, but also partly because the very light background of sky tended to put the skeleton into silhouette and lose a lot of detail.

But fortunately there’s another Brachiosaurus in Chicago!

(We’ve featured this mount once before.)

This in fact the original Brachiosaurus mount that was erected in the Field Museum’s main hall in 1993. When a certain vulgar, over-studied theropod was installed in that hall in 2000, the surprising decision was made to remove the Brachiosaurus to “make room” for it (even though it’s objectively tiny). The mount was not built to be exposed to the elements, so it couldn’t just be moved outdoors. Instead, a new one was made from more suitable materials for the picnic area, and the original mount was moved to O’Hare Airport.

[Aside: what the heck were the museum thinking when they booted Brachiosaurus out of the main hall? However much you love T. rex, and I admit I do, Sue makes a feeble centrepiece compared with a brachiosaur. I can only assume there was some subtle political motivation for reducing their main hall’s Awesome Quotient so dramatically. The poor thing was only there seven years.]

Anyway, the original mount is now at Terminal 1 at O’Hare Airport, where it can be photographed less inadequately than outdoors. Here are those contrasting humeri again: the real cast on the right side of the animal (left side of photo) and the sculpture on the left (right side of photo):

And a zoom into the relevant section:

As it happens, I flew into a different terminal at O’Hare. But I knew that this mount was in Terminal 1, so before I get the transit to my hotel, I dragged my luggage across to Terminal 1 and begged the ticket clerk to let me through into the departure area so I could look at it. I don’t now remember exactly what the sequence of events was, but I do recall that phone-calls were made and supervisors were consulted. In the end, someone on staff gave me a platform ticket, and I was able to go and spend a quality hour with this glorious object.

It also meant I got to watch nearly every single traveller amble straight past Brachiosaurus giving it literally not even a single glance — see the first photo for an example. Truly depressing.

Anyway, I was able to get some slightly better photos of this cast humerus than I subsequently got of the outdoor mount. Though not very many, because — stop me if you’ve heard this — I was young and stupid then.

Anyway, here is the humerus in anterior view. Or as close to anterior as I could manage. By holding the camera above my head, I could get it nearly level with the distal margin of the mounted bone, so what we have here is really more like anterodistal:

And here is that some bone in lateral view (again, really laterodistal). From this angle, you can really see how shapeless parts of the lateral border of the cast are — which is odd, because there are sharp lips on the actual fossil.

In terms of general appreciation of the bone, this next one, in anterolaterodistal view,  is probably best — the light caught it in an informative way. Unfortunately, I cut off the distal margin. Sorry.

As you can see, the level of detail in the cast is mostly pretty good. For example, you can clearly make out the broken-off base of the deltopectoral crest (the tall light-coloured oval about a quarter of the way down and a third of the way across the bone). That makes the lumpenness of the distal part of the lateral aspect all the more mysterious.

Finally, here are both humeri, more or less from the left, so that the real cast is in something approaching medial view.

From this angle, you can see that the humerus is noticeably less anteroposteriorly deep than its transverse width. We’ll see this theme cropping up again with brachiosaur limb bones — stay tuned for future posts!

Also of interest: the very nice sculpted humerus on the left side has a complete deltopectoral crest — modelled, I imagine, after those of the various Giraffatitan humeri. It also has a finished distal end which is much broader than that of the cast humerus. In this, it’s probably right, as the real bone suffered from some decay.

And that, I am afraid, is all: stupidly, I neglected to photograph the humerus in posterior aspect, or any of the diagonals other than anterolateral.

Next time: exciting news about the relative breadth of humerus and femur in brachiosaurs!