Sauropod Vertebra of the Week: get a look at this beauty: Xenoposeidon proneukos, a new English dinosaur. The XenoposeIdon vertebra is shown here:
This partial vertebra was collected in the 1890s and stored away in the London Museum of Natural History until recently, when palaeontologist Mike Taylor discovered that it was unusual. He asked Darren Naish of Tetrapod Zoology about it, and Darren had a partially written review article, so they decided to collaborate on a new description. The bone turned out to belong to a very large, unknown dinosaur which was different enough to be placed in its own genus. There’s a whole week of posts about it in the link, plus another link to a web-friendly page with lots of detailed images and a simple connecting narrative. Enjoy!
This reminds me of the Barosaurus found by the Royal Ontario Museum last year in its own closet:
- “ROM finds skeleton in its closet“
- “Barosaurus in ROM’s new dinosaur gallery“
- “Dude, where’s my sauropod?” on Steve Chatterton’s blog
Wednesday, 14 May 2008 at 13:26
My article is liking the least scientific of the three links pertaining to the ROM’s Barosaurus, but I do appreciate the mention.
Thanks for covering this. I was heretofore unaware of Xenoposeidon (killer name, btw).
Thursday, 15 May 2008 at 09:22
Steve, your article might be the least scientific but it gives the human side of the story very nicely.