Curiousiday at the Sam Noble Museum: Sauroposeidon, Apatosaurus, Aquilops, and more

Last Friday night I was at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History to talk about horned dinosaurs, for the launch of the “Bizarre Headgear” exhibit. But last Saturday I was there for “Curiousiday”, to talk about Sauroposeidon. I was set up at the south end of the museum’s main hall, with a table and some specimens to show off. On the left here is a 1/8 scale 3D print of OMNH 53062, the holotype cervical vertebrae of Sauroposeidon. On the right is OMNH 1094, a cervical vertebra of Apatosaurus (or the giant Oklahoma apatosaurine) that was the first thing that Kent Sanders and I CT scanned back in the spring of 1998 after the vertebrae of what would become Sauroposeidon. And on the far right is a monitor showing the three best slices, a version of an image that I’ve used in many papers and blog posts. Good old OMNH 1094 must surely rival OMNH 53062 as my most-figured specimen. I should tally up the occurrences and see who’s ahead. Anyway: back to Sauroposeidon! Just outside the…