Sauroposeidon, the early years: my first drawing

As part of a major spring cleaning operation that we started the first week of January, this week I opened the last two boxes left over from when we moved into our current house. One of them had a bundle of framed art. I knew most of what was in there before I opened the box, but I had somehow completely forgotten about this. I must have gotten it framed in late 90s, and it hung on the walls of our apartments in Norman and Santa Cruz. At some point it went into a box, and I forgot it even existed.

This is the first technical drawing I ever attempted of OMNH 53062, which would later become the holotype of Sauroposeidon. I drew it for my poster at the 1997 SVP meeting in Chicago, and it went on to become Figure 5 in my undergraduate thesis (which is preserved for posterity here). I’d do other, better drawings of the specimen in later years, but this one came first.

I know I’m biased, but that second vertebra in the preserved series, which I interpreted as C6 back when, will probably always be the most gorgeous natural object on the planet in my book. I don’t expect anyone else to feel the same. I worked on that specimen for three years – some of it seeped into my soul, and vice versa. Then again, I don’t care how jaded you are about long vertebrae, that one is still a pretty arresting sight.

For a much more recent take on the appearance of the Sauroposeidon vertebrae, see this post.