Mounted sauropods in dorsal view!

Mike’s and Matt’s excellent adventure in Pittsburgh continues! Today was Day 4, and just as yesterday offered us a unique opportunity to see the mounted Dipodocus and Apatosaurus skeletons up close on a lift, so today we got to look the two mounts from directly above!

Thanks to our host Amy Henrici and to Calder Dudgeon, we were able to go up to the maintenance balconies above the dinosaur hall, and from there we were able to see this:

It was a little bit scary up there: here’s Matt’s vertical panorama photo of me. Just below the balcony I’m standing on you can see another, which is actually far below up but further back. Below that is the main balcony that overlooks the hall. And below that, the hall itself, showing Diplodocus from above:

We think this is a first: we don’t know of any published photos of mounted sauropods from above — but now, there are some. Let’s take a closer look at the torsos:

Diplodocus carnegii holotype CM 84, torso, in dorsal view, anterior to right.

Apatosaurus louisae holotype CM 3018, torso, in dorsal view, anterior to left.

You can immediately see from here that Apatosaurus is a much broader animal than Diplodocus. That much, we could have guessed. What’s more interesting is that Apatosaurus seems to be slightly broader at the shoulders than at the hips, whereas the opposite is the case in Diplodocus.

This observation left us wondering what’s known about the relative widths of the forelimb and hindlimb articulations in extant animals. What, from the modern bestiary, has hips broader than its shoulders, and what has shoulders wider than its hips? We have no idea. Does anyone know if this has been studied, or better yet summarised?