Terrifying actual cervical vertebrae of the Morrison Formation
February 17, 2013
If you found the hypothetical Amphicoelias fragillimus cervical in a recent post a bit too much to swallow, I won’t blame you. But how big do we know Morrison diplodocoid cervicals got?
The longest centrum of any specimen of anything, anywhere, is that of the cervical vertebra BYU 9024 that’s part of the Supersaurus vivianae holotype. It’s 138 cm long, which means that composited at scale with an MTSRSU, it looks like this:
This is not hypothetical. It’s an actual fossil.
(Just for the record: C8 of the Sauroposeidon holotype OMNH 53062 is slightly longer overall, at 140 cm. But that includes overhanging prezygapophyses. Its centrum is “only” 125 cm long.)
Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week 
February 26, 2013 at 11:02 pm
[…] greatly contributed to the overall size of these dinosaurs. Indeed, Taylor and Wedel estimate, the neck of Supersaurus probably stretched about 50 feet long, nearly half the animal’s entire length. […]
March 11, 2013 at 7:48 am
[…] length”) goes to the anteriormost point of the condyle. The distinction is important: as noted recently, the longest vertebra in the world belongs to Sauroposeidon if we use total length, but to […]
March 13, 2013 at 10:42 am
[…] the top: our old friend BYU 9024 — the cervical vertebra that’s part of the Supersaurus vivianae holotype. At […]
May 12, 2016 at 5:52 am
[…] bone before – I first posted on it 8 years ago this month, and it turned up again here and here. It is still the longest known vertebra of any animal that has ever […]
January 2, 2017 at 1:15 pm
[…] had looked over the slides for our 2016 SVPCA talk on new Barosaurus specimens, which claims that Jensen’s Dry Mesa “Supersaurus” cervical BYU 9024 actually belongs to […]
June 13, 2019 at 6:49 pm
[…] To this, he referred BYU 9462 (BYU 5001 of his usage), a scapulocoracoid measuring 2.7 m in length; BYU 9024 (BYU 5003 of his usage), a huge cervical vertebra; and an anterior caudal […]