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Some quick backstory: lots of sauropods have long, overlapping cervical ribs, like the ones shown here in Sauroposeidon (diagram from this old post): {.size-large .wp-image-10817 .aligncenter loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“10817” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2014/09/22/wheelbarrow-handles-for-vertebrae-the-cervical-rib-bundles-of-sauroposeidon-and-other-sauropods/sauroposeidon-cervical-rib-cross-sections-v3/”

I was googling around some photos, confirming to myself that turtles don’t have cervical ribs, when I stumbled across this monstrosity (and when I use that word I mean it as a compliment): {.size-full .wp-image-20555 aria-describedby=“caption-attachment-20555” loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“20555” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2022/12/07/the-cylindrical-zygapophyses-of-trionyx-spinifera/trionyx_spinifera_1496_std/”

Just to wash our mouths out after all the theropod-related unpleasantness yesterday: {.alignnone .size-full .wp-image-20548 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“20548” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2022/12/04/heres-that-ventral-view-apatosaur-cervical-anaglyph-you-ordered/dscn1412-1413-big-bink-apatosaur-c7-ventral-anaglyph/” orig-file=“https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2022/12/dscn1412-1413-big-bink-apatosaur-c7-ventral-anaglyph.jpeg”

Last time, I showed you a photo of the head and neck of the London Diplodocus and asked what was wrong. Quite a few of you got it right (including Matt when we were chatting, but I asked him not to give it away by posting a comment). The 100 SV-POW! dollars, with their cash value of $0.00, go to Orribec, who was the first to reply that the atlas (cervical 1) is upside-down.

Last Saturday I was at a wedding at Holy Trinity Brompton, a London church that is conveniently located a ten-minute stroll from the Natural History Museum. As I am currently working on a history paper concerning the Carnegie Diplodocus , I persuaded my wife, my eldest son and his fiancée to join me for a quick scoot around the “Dippy Returns” exhibition.

Long-time readers will recall that I’m fascinated by neurocentral joints, and not merely that they exist (although they are pretty cool), but that in some vertebrae they migrate dorsally or ventrally from their typical position (see this and this). {.size-large .wp-image-20346 .aligncenter loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“20346”

This is a lovely cosmic alignment: right after the 15th anniversary of this blog, Mike and I have our 11th coauthored publication (not counting abstracts and preprints) out today. Taylor, Michael P., and Wedel, Mathew J. 2022. What do we mean by the directions “cranial” and “caudal” on a vertebra?

They grow up so fast, don’t they? Matt and I, with our silent partner Darren, started SV-POW! fifteen years ago to the day, as a sort of jokey riff on NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day.