Massive changes incoming to diplodocid sauropod stance

April 1, 2013

Skeletal reconstruction of a diplodocid sauropod in left lateral view with a long neck and long whip-like tail

I know it’s been a while since I posted anything, and luckily I have a backlog of content to share in the coming weeks, but I’m so excited about this project that I felt I had to post this, if for no other reason than as a warning to artists out there that are thinking about restoring sauropods in the near future. In particular diplodocoids - think “therizinosaur” and you’ll be on the right track. I can’t say too much until the paper clears embargo later this week, but all of the oddities we see in diplodocoids will make a lot more sense, including the massive upcurve in the tail. It also nicely links Taylor et al’s work on neck posture with Emily Giffin’s older work on reduced forelimb innervation in Apatosaurus.

More as soon as the journal will allow it!

Edit: Well it’s April 2nd, and I’m going to have a post on this prank up in the next day or two, but in case you are landing on this page from an external source I wanted to clarify that it was indeed an April Fool’s prank.

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4 comments

  1. Mike Keeseyfrom the archive

    MMM HMMMM

  2. Mike Taylorfrom the archive

    Matt and I have often thought that Diplodocus is built like a facultative biped. It's nice to get validation of that in the peer-reviewed literature.

  3. Tracy (Dino Hunter) Fordfrom the archive

    Bipedal sauropods, interesting. I wonder if anyone has thought of that before...hmmm...oh yea ME!!! I wrote about it in a Prehistoric Times article, and did an illustration of a bipedal Apatosaur walking through a terminte field in 2000.... :)

  4. Scott Hartmanfrom the archive

    People have been discussing bipedal sauropods since at least the mid '90s - Bob Bakker loved to float the idea regularly. This was just a fun "sprinting sauropods" joke :)

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