Monthly Archives: April 2026

Upcoming public talks about dinosaurs at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History

Image courtesy of the SNOMNH

I’ll be at OU and the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History on May 8 and 9.

On Friday, May 8, I’m giving a lunch and learn thing for OU graduate students on how to make new discoveries in anatomy. That evening I’m giving a public talk on horned dinosaurs. Admission is free! Details here.

On Saturday, May 9, I’ll be back at the museum for the “Curiousiday: Collections Celebration”. One of the jackets of the Sauroposeidon holotype specimen will be on display in the museum’s public galleries, and I’ll be giving a couple of short talks about Sauroposeidon. Time for my talks is TBD, but probably something like 11:00 and 2:00. The first 25 visitors get in free, after that it’s regular museum admission ($12 for 18 and up, $10 seniors, $7 kids 4-17, free for babies and toddlers). Details here.

I don’t know yet if there will be a formal book signing, but if you have one of my books and would like it signed, I’ve never turned anyone down.

If you’re within striking distance of Norman, come on out, see the museum’s awesome fossils, and maybe put up with some geek banging on about dinosaurs and/or vandalizing your library.

In honor of the upcoming horned dinosaur talk, here’s a Triceratops I drew. More on that another time.

doi:10.59350/hnkz4-b3d26

On the evolution of the atlas-axis complex

Matt and I were discussing a paper from last year, Korneisel and Maddin (2025) on the evolution of the atlas–axis complex. (It’s excellent, by the way. Really comprehensive.)

Mike: Atlases are so weird. It occurs to me that had the nomenclatural dice fallen differently, we might not even consider them vertebrae at all, just as we don’t consider metacarpals to be manual phalanges. We might have considered the axial skeleton to consist of skull, atlas, and a sequence of vertebrae starting with the axis. (And, yes, ribs, chevrons and sternal plates.)

Matt: Good point on […] the weirdness of the atlas. The atlas in particular really does feel like an embryonic segmentation error codified and exapted into a useful structure.

Mike: Your mom is an embryonic segmentation error codified and exapted into a useful structure.

References

 

doi:10.59350/xsxxj-yre49

In search of rearing mounted sauropod skeletons

I’m pretty sure that our old friend the AMNH Barosaurus was the first sauropod skeleton even mounted in a rearing pose.

Taylor and Wedel 2016:Figure 1. Mounted cast skeleton of Barosaurus referred specimen AMNH 6341, in the entrance hall of the American Museum of Natural History. Homo sapiens (MPT) for scale. Photograph by MJW.

(Does anyone know of an earlier one? That would be fascinating!)

But what other mounted sauropods have been placed in a rearing posture, with both forefeet off the ground? I know of four others. First, the rearing Diplodocus at the Museum of Science and Innovation in Tampa, Florida, that we discussed in detail in Taylor et al. (2023:80–82):

Taylor et al. 2023:Figure 10. Double Diplodocus mount at the Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI), Tampa, Florida. Both individuals are identical, having been cast from the molds made by Dinolab from the concrete Diplodocus of Vernal. Photograph by Anthony Pelaez, taken between 1997 and 2017.

Strangely enough, the other three are all individuals of Camarasaurus, an ugly four-square sauropod whose centre of gravity was well forward of the acetabulum in normal posture, and which would have found rearing much more difficult than in diplodocids. My guess is that’s just because Camarasaurus is so abundant that there are a lot of mounted skeletons out there, and some have been mounted in rearing postures because, well, why not?

Here is one from the Wyoming Dinosaur Centre in Thermopolis:

Camarasaurus skeleton from the BS (Beside Sauropod) quarry, on display at the Wyoming Dinosaur Center. Photograph by CryolophosaurusEllioti, CC By. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WDC_-_Camarasaurus_skeleton.jpg

(I can’t find a good photo of this mount from the front or the side: if anyone can, please let me know in the comments.)

The next is in the US National Museum (USNM), otherwise known as the NMNH, otherwise known as the Smithsonian. It’s on the right of this photo:

Rearing Camarasaurus (right of photo, the smaller of the two sauropods) at the USNM/NMNH/Smithsonian. Photo by Ben Miller. https://sauropods.win/@extinctmonsters/109293854660129716

And finally, as I was putting this post together, I stumbled across this mount at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, the Netherlands:

Yet another rearing Camarasaurus, at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, the Netherlands. Photo by thedogg, CC By-SA. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WLANL_-_thedogg_-_Camarasaurus_(2).jpg

I know nothing about this one, and would welcome any details.

In fact, I don’t know much about any of the three rearing camarasaurs. Can anyone tell me, for example, when they went up? And whether the AMNH Barosaurus was a conscious inspiration?

And the $64,000 question: does anyone know of other rearing sauropod mounts?

References

 

doi:10.59350/qg664-9be62

The Nazi sauropod — Giraffatitan (= “Brachiosaurus“) brancai in 1937

Back in 2010, I wrote about early artistic depictions of Brachiosaurus (including Giraffatitan). There, I wrote of the iconic mount MB.R.2181 (then HMN S II):

When the mount was completed, shortly before the start of World War II, it was unveiled against a backdrop of Nazi banners. I have not been able to find a photograph of this (and if anyone has one, please do let me know), but I do have this drawing of the event, taken from an Italian magazine and dated 23rd December 1937.

(See that post for the drawing.)

Recently the historian Ilja Nieuwland (one of the authors on our recent paper on the Carnegie Diplodocus, Taylor et al. 2025) sent me two photos of this unveiling, again with swastikas prominent in the background:

EEN MOOIE AANSWINST — voor het museum van natuurlijke historie te Berlijn: het skelet van een Brachiosaurus, het grooste voorwereld-lijke landdier ooit gevonden. Het skelet is 11.87 meter hoog.

Surprisingly, perhaps, this is in a Dutch newspaper, Haagsche Courant of 14 December 1937. The caption, which is in Dutch, reads: “A GREAT ADDITION — to the Museum of Natural History in Berlin: the skeleton of a Brachiosaurus, the largest prehistoric land animal ever found. The skeleton is 11.87 meters tall.” Ilja helpfully supplied a PDF containing the front page of the newspaper and the page that contained this image.

The second is similar, but from a different angle that highlights the human skeleton that was placed down by the forefeet for scale:

EEN PRAEHISTORISCH MONSTER werd ongeveer zeven jaar geleden door een Duitsch geleerde in Oost-Africa ontdekt. Na moeizamen arbeid is men er in geslaagd het skelet van den brachiosaurus op te bouwen, dat in ‘n museum te Berlijn is opgesteld

Again, this is in Dutch, and the filename suggests that the source is a newspaper called Maasbode for 27 November 1937. The caption reads: “A PREHISTORIC MONSTER was discovered about seven years ago by a German scientist in East Africa. After arduous work, they succeeded in reconstructing the skeleton of the brachiosaurus, which is on display in a museum in Berlin.”

I don’t know about you, but I feel it as a gut-punch when I see this animal, which I deeply love, against a backdrop of Nazi symbols. Gerhard Maier’s usually very detailed book African Dinosaurs Unearthed (Maier 2003) is uncharacteristically terse about this, saying of the unveiling only this (on page 267):

With swastika banners hanging from the walls as a backdrop, the exciting new exhibit opened in August 1937. A curious public, especially schoolchildren, formed long lines, waiting to see Berlin’s latest attraction.

I don’t know to what extent the rising Nazi regime used the brachiosaur mount as a PR event, an advertisement for their national superiority or what have you. (Has anyone written about this?)

I was thinking about this because I get a daily notification of Wikipedia’s most-viewed article of the previous 24 hours. In recent times, it’s mostly been some article about bad news, or a person causing bad news. But a couple of days ago, it was Artemis II, and I remarked on Mastodon how nice it was, just for one day, to have good news as the most read article. And someone quickly replied “I love space exploration, but having the Trump administration take credit for something like this is the last thing we need.”

But here’s the thing. The Berlin brachiosaur mount has long outlived the Nazis (or at least the OG Nazis). And whatever the current moon mission achieves will long outlive the Trump administration.

We don’t really write about politics on this blog. I like that about it, and I’m guessing most readers do as well. I’m not going to change that — the Web is full of places to go and read about politics. But I do like the sense that scientific achievements are outside of the particular people who happen to be in power when they happen. The Berlin brachiosaur, and the Artemis II moon mission, are achievements for all humankind.

References

 

doi:10.59350/9d5gk-fm764