A forthcoming issue of The Journal of Zoology will contain our paper on why sexual selection was not the main driver of neck elongation in sauropods. That journal’s “Early View” facility publishes online before print, so it’s available to the world already.
The paper
- Taylor, Michael P., David W. E. Hone, Mathew J. Wedel and Darren Naish. 2011. The long necks of sauropods did not evolve primarily through sexual selection. Journal of Zoology, Early View (Online Version of Record published before inclusion in an issue). doi: 10.1111/j.1469-7998.2011.00824.x
High resolution figures
You can get these from Mike’s web-site. They’re the same figures as appear in the paper, but in higher resolutions.
SV-POW! posts
- Why did sauropods have such long necks? [pre-publication teaser]
- Why the long necks? Probably not sexually selection.
- How long was the neck of Diplodocus?
Elsewhere on the Web
- Sauropod necks – what were they for? on co-author Dave Hone’s Archosaur Musings.
- Necks for sex? No thank you, we’re sauropod dinosaurs on co-author and SV-POW!sketeer Darren Naish’s Tetrapod Zoology.
- Neck multifunctionality, again on Archosaur Musings.
- Evolution, sex and dinosaur necks on the BBC’s Wonder Monkey.
Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week 
May 25, 2011 at 9:09 pm
[…] Tuesday morning, a rather nice article about our recent sauropod-necks-were-not-sexually-selected paper appeared on the BBC web-site. At the time of writing, it’s just topped 100 comments […]
June 1, 2011 at 12:33 am
I would agree that sauropod necks did not primarily evolve for sexual selection, but primarily for food reaching. Maybe sexual selection came as a secondary trait for the sauropod neck lengths, but it was not the primal factor. Perhaps bull sauropods neck wrestled as competition for mating rights. It is just like how the plates of a “Stegosaurus” primarily evolved as heat regulators and for intimidation against predators. However, the plates also became a secondary trait for sexual selection, such as a “Stegosaurus” having the most imposing plates as being the most attractive during mating season.
June 2, 2011 at 2:52 pm
[…] in the Journal of Zoology applied the “necks for sex” hypothesis to sauropods. Naish and the guys at SV-POW! have posted a preview of their paper [pdf] refuting the […]
July 6, 2011 at 11:45 am
[…] work. Those two papers are the Taylor et al. (2009) paper on habitual sauropod neck posture and Taylor et al. (2011) on sexual selection of sauropod necks. These were three- and four-way collaborations between myself, Matt, Darren, and for the latter […]
August 6, 2011 at 1:02 am
[…] deserved a wider audience: I hate to admit it, but those two papers (i.e., Taylor et al. 2009 and 2011) that had particularly protracted gestations and lots of review time are among the ones I am most […]
April 2, 2012 at 10:54 pm
[…] is a very useful thing. In our recentish paper on how sauropod necks were not sexually selected (Taylor et al. 2011), we wanted to mention in […]
December 23, 2012 at 9:35 am
[…] posted the reviews I receive? I already make pages on this site for each of my published papers (example): it would be easy to extend those pages by also […]
January 14, 2013 at 6:55 am
[…] friend, colleague, and sometime coauthor Dave Hone sent the above cartoon, knowing about my more-than-passing interest in sauropod […]
June 22, 2014 at 10:34 am
[…] As it happens, right around now is also an important time for me, Matt and Darren because on Friday night we submitted our first joint-authored paper. I’ll say no more about that now, because hopefully before too long we’ll be able to discuss the published version. [Note added 22 June 2014: we did, extensively.] But making that submission was a landmark moment for The Three SV-POW!sketeers. Hopefully there’ll be more where that came from. [Note added 22 June 2014: there was.] […]
June 23, 2014 at 5:56 pm
[…] active and knowledgeable researchers–including our fellow SV-POW!sketeer, Darren Naish, and sometime coauthor Dave Hone–writing on a broad range of interesting topics under the umbrella of […]
October 20, 2014 at 1:19 pm
[…] Better yet, make a statement. Summarise the paper’s principal finding, if you can do it in a single short sentence. Bonaparte wrote an abstract in 1999 entitled “Rebbachisaurus tessonei Calvo and Salgado 1996 is not Rebbachisaurus Lavocat 1954.” Mitchell et al. (2009) called their paper “Sexual selection is not the origin of long necks in giraffes”. (I guess we had that in mind when we named our 2011 paper.) […]
June 4, 2017 at 1:52 pm
[…] introductory here’s-what-sauropod-necks-are-like illustration from our 2011 paper on why those necks were not sexually […]
April 30, 2021 at 9:43 pm
[…] The sole survivor, showing the introductory here’s-what-sauropod-necks-are-like illustration from our 2011 paper on why those necks were not sexually selected. […]