Back in 2013, we showed you Bob Nicholls’ beautiful sketch “The Giant & Company”, featuring a giant Apatosaurus with a shaggy beard running along its neck. In the years since, I’d forgotten that he drew another sketch at the same time showing … well, he’s just posted both sketches on Mastodon, so let me show you:
I don’t know what taxon Bob intended this to be, but based on the relatively short forelimbs I’m seeing it as a diplodocine, and the length of the neck makes me think Barosaurus.
As with the beard in part 2, the sideburns here are purely speculative — we have no particular reason to think that Barosaurus had these, but it really wouldn’t surprise me at if at least some sauropod did. Until we start finding sauropod Lagerstätten, we won’t know.
But this is beautiful work. I often prefer sketches like these over finished pieces — they can have so much life in them.
Update (12 September 2024): Bob posted a photo on Mastodon of him drawing this during an SVPCA session:
I’ve been away for two weeks with Fiona in Kefalonia, one of the Greek islands. While we were there, we ate this excellent meal:
Excellent Greek meal. Back row: grilled octopus; middle row (left to right): sardines, shrimp saganaki; front row: deep-fried calamari
As we made our way through the calamari, we noticed this chunk:
Take a closer look and I think you will be struck, as I was, by the resemblance to an anterior dorsal vertebra of a tendaguriid sauropod in posterior view:
Here for comparison is the more anterior of the two known dorsal vertebrae of the enigmatic sauropod Tendaguria:
Bonaparte, Heinrich and Wilde (1999:figure 11B): anterior dorsal vertebra of Tendaguria in posterior view.
If you doubt me, take a look at this red-cyan anaglyph and appreciate the perfect 3D structure, with the diapophyseal wings stretching out laterally from a point some way anterior to the cotyle. (Evidently the neural arch has been destroyed by post-mortem damage):
What are we seeing here? An unprecendented example of horizontal gene transfer? Or simply convergance based on similarity of lifestyle?
References
- Bonaparte, Jose F., Wolf-Dieter Heinrich and R. Wild. 2000. Review of Janenschia WILD, with the description of a new sauropod from the Tendaguru beds of Tanzania and a discussion on the systematic value of procoelous caudal vertebrae in the sauropoda. Palaeontographica Abt. A 256(1-3):25-76.
What’s up with your crazy-ass hands, Utahraptor?
October 20, 2023
Utahraptor is a “giant” dromaeosaurid from Utah, described by Kirkland et al. (1993). Famously, its existence was part of the reason that the people making Jurassic Park felt at liberty to make their “Velociraptor” individuals not only much bigger than the turkey-sized Velociraptor proper, but also than than sheep-sized Deinonychus.
Here’s a mounted skeleton, right in the state of Utah — specifically, at the Prehistoric Museum in Price, which you will recall is currently exhibiting the Concrete Diplodocus.
(Photo from the Prehistoric Museum’s own site.)
I didn’t register the skeleton back when Matt and I visited in 2016. Maybe it wasn’t even up back then, or maybe we were too distracted by the Camarasaurus pit. But anyway, when I saw the photo above, my immediate thought was Holy Heck What’s Up With Your Hands??! It looks more like a giant Scansoriopteryx.
So for a few days, I thought, well, that’s just what Utahraptor hands are like, and the world has somehow failed to register how morally wrong that is. But then I saw this photo of another Utahraptor mount, this in from the BYU Museum of Palaeontology (from Wikipedia):
(Yes, Matt and I were also at the BYU Museum in 2016, and Matt has been there on numerous other occasions. Somehow we never noticed the stinkin’ theropod.)
And this one has perfectly cromulent hands.
So what’s the deal here? Is the Price mount Just Plain Wrong?
References
A good scan of Riggs’s (1904) Brachiosaurus monograph
October 5, 2023
As all good SV-POW! regulars will know, Elmer S. Riggs published the name Brachiosaurus altothorax in a short (but not trival) 1903 paper (Riggs 1903) and followed it up with a proper descriptive monograph (Riggs 1904) that had several useful plates. I’ve never seen a real copy of the latter (or indeed the former), so for the last quarter-century I’ve made do with various low-quality photocopies and scans.
Now, finally, we have Riggs1904-brachiosaurus-altithorax–GOOD-SCAN! which you can download from https://svpow.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/riggs1904-brachiosaurus-altithorax-good-scan.pdf or from a backup copy at http://www.miketaylor.org.uk/tmp/Riggs1904-brachiosaurus-altithorax–GOOD-SCAN.pdf — behold the beauty of Riggs’s plates as he intended them to look!
Lateral and posterior views of the first seven presacral vertebrae of Brachiosaurus atithorax (Riggs 1904:plate LXXII).
This scan comes to us courtesy of Katherine Olson at the University of Chicago Library. This is appropriate, as Brachiosaurus is very much a Chicago dinosaur. Many thanks indeed to Katherine!
Update (8 October 2023)
This lovely scan of this classic monograph is now also available on the Internet Archive, thanks to a Mastodon friend known to me only as “gay ornithopod”. (At least, it’s there until the organizations ironically known as “publishers” succeed in destroying the Internet Archive, as they are currently trying to do.)
References
- Riggs, Elmer S. (1903). Brachiosaurus altithorax, the largest
known dinosaur. American Journal of Science 15(4):299-306. - Riggs, Elmer S. 1904. Structure and relationships of opisthocoelian dinosaurs. Part II, the Brachiosauridae. Field Columbian Museum, Geological Series 2(6):229-247, plus plates LXXI-LXXV.
Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week 
