About SV-POW!
October 1, 2007
Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week, or SV-POW! for short, was first conceived as a sort of joke response to the excellent Astronomy Picture of the Day. But before long, it became apparent to the three of us that SV-POW! had legs of its own, and that there really was an almost infinite amount of material we could cover. We originally intended each post to be super-short, basically just an image and a caption, but that’s not how it’s turning out.
Three of us write this site, and we all also have our own sites elsewhere:
Darren is an omnivore, and works on pretty much every group of tetrapods: in the past few years he’s published on sauropods, theropods, ornithischians, sloths, birds, ichthyosaurs, pterosaurs, turtles, all sorts of critters. Matt and especially Mike are a bit more focussed: Matt works on sauropods and, to a lesser extent, theropods including birds, especially in relation to skeletal pneumaticity; Mike works on partial mid-to-posterior dorsal vertebrae of sauropods. We frequently collaborate with each other and with other authors on a whole range of topics, from nomenclature to neck posture.
All three of us are working paleontologists and occasionally, against all odds, we get new papers out. Many of our papers were published before we started SV-POW!, and you can find out about them at the links above. As new papers come out, we are putting up supplementary information here. Since we started this blog in the fall of 2007, we have published:
- Taylor and Naish (2007) on Xenoposeidon
- Wedel (2009) on air sacs in saurischian dinosaurs
- Upchurch, Martin and Taylor (2009) on Cetiosaurus nomenclature
- Taylor, Wedel, and Naish (2009) on neck posture
Although it’s not yet widely recognised, SV-POW! is the future of the Internet. Yes, I (Mike) am serious. It’s nice that companies like Amazon and E-Bay are out there, using the net for useful commerical purposes, but what it’s really about is facilitating small, super-focussed groups of people with a shared interest … whether that’s sauropod vertebrae, 14th Century French pottery, the history of biscuits, whatever. I’d love to see more special-interest palaeo-blogs around: Ornithopod Manual Phalanx Picture of the Week, for example, or Basal Tyrannosaurid Metatarsal Picture of the Week.
May 8, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Sauropod dining question
Hey everyone, I’ve checking out your site lately and it’s a goldmine!
I have a very probably dumb question, but it’s one I’ve never seen addressed. No matter what sauropds dined on, I have to wonder how they swallowed. I always hear about the blah blah gastroliths down in the guts, but I never hear about ideas about how they swallow the stuff in the first place. Their heads seem too small to accommodate the firehose sized salivary glands to move that dry sharp coniferous stuff down those lengthy necks.
The peg or spoon-like teeth which apparently just strip the branches also add to the swallowing puzzle. Like dumping a bowl of dry Wheaties down your throat without chewing and without being able to wash them down with water
They’re so giant it would seem they would have to continuously gorge to the extent that swallowing a big lump python-like and allowing it to gradually work it’s way down seems a bit awkward, too.
Have you folks written about the subject or can you direct me to any material relating to sauropod throats and swallowing?
Thanks! Love your site!
June 18, 2009 at 1:04 am
Hi Jack, sorry to take so embarrassingly long to get back to you on this.
I don’t know that anyone has addressed this in print, although it’s been the subject of a few bar conversations. It’s a great problem. I imagine many sauropods just drooled like fiends. Which is kinda odd, since it is usually the bloodthirsty theropods pictured with dripping jowls. It would have been a funny sight, watching a herd of sauropods slavering uncontrollably as they approached a stand of trees.
I have no idea how to test anything in this area. Someone else might, though.
June 18, 2009 at 2:51 am
The movie Tremors (or one of its sequels?) introduced the term graboids, multiple, prehensile tongues. Can anyone suggest a more plausible mechanism?
October 9, 2009 at 9:42 pm
Gravity! It’s an argument for keeping those necks vertical; or at least raising them occasionally well above horizontal.
Peristalsis might work too; isn’t it pretty well universal across zoology, for gastrointestinal tracts?
Maybe they ate mostly in the morning, when vegetation was wet with dew; or waited till it rained.
More fanciful explanations await, but I want to leave scope for other people’s ideas ;-)