Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week

Left lateral view

Have we ever posted decent photos of the Brachiosaurus altithorax caudals? Has anyone? I can’t remember either thing ever happening. When I need images of brachiosaur bits, including caudals, I usually go to Taylor (2009).

Taylor (2009: fig. 3)

Which is silly, not because Mike’s diagrams compiling old illustrations aren’t good – they definitely are – but because I’m sitting on a war chest of decent photos of the actual material. I am home sick with a sore throat today, and I can’t be arsed to (1) follow up on the “Down in Flames” post, (2) add anything thoughtful to the vertebral orientation discussion, or (3) crop or color-adjust these photos. You’re getting them just as they came out of my camera, from my trip to the Field Museum in 2012.

Here are the rest of the orthogonal views:

Right lateral view

Anterior view

Posterior view

Dorsal view of caudal 1

Dorsal view of caudal 2

And here’s a virtual walkaround using a series of oblique shots. Making a set like this is part of my standard practice now for important specimens during museum visits.

Now, I said up top that I wasn’t going to add anything thoughtful to the vertebral orientation discussion. I have thoughts on that, but I’m tired and hopped up on cold medicine and now ain’t the time. In lieu of blather, here are a couple of relevant photos.

I wanted to capture for my future self the pronounced non-orthogonality of the neural canal and centrum, so I rolled up a piece of paper and stuck it through the neural canal. I haven’t run the numbers, but in terms of “angle of the articular faces away from the neural canal”, these verts look like they’re right up there with my beloved Snowmass Haplocanthosaurus.

More on that next time, I reckon. In the meantime, all these photos are yours now (CC-BY, like everything on this site [that someone else hasn’t asserted copyright over]). Go have fun.

Reference

• Taylor, Michael P.  2009.  A re-evaluation of Brachiosaurus altithorax Riggs 1903 (Dinosauria, Sauropoda) and its generic separation from Giraffatitan brancai (Janensch 1914).  Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 29(3):787-806.