Towards a catalogue of complete sauropods necks

Early in my 2015 preprint on the incompleteness of sauropod necks, I wrote “Unambiguously complete necks are known from published account of only six species of sauropod, two of which are species of the same genus”, and listed them.

Taylor 2015: Figure 3. W. H. Reed’s diagram of Quarry C near Camp Carnegie on Sheep Creek, in Albany County, Wyoming. The coloured bones belong to CM 84, the holotype of Diplodocus carnegii; other bones belong to other individuals, chiefly of Brontosaurus, Camarasaurus and Stegosaurus. Modified (cropped and coloured) from Hatcher (1901: plate I). Cervical vertebrae are purple (and greatly simplified in outline), dorsals are red, the sacrum is orange, caudals are yellow, limb girdle elements are blue, and limb bones are green.

Haha, stupid me! I had hugely under-counted. With thanks to the three peer-reviewers of the submitted manuscript and to SV-POW! commenters, I have revised this list, in preparation for forthcoming resubmission. The table as it stands currently consists of 24 candidates, not all of them very solid. Of these, 15 were found in articulation, the others mostly not — though we don’t know for sure in all cases. Not all of the necks have been properly described, and not all of the ones that have been described have been named. And other questions hang over some of them, very briefly summarised in notes.

Here is the list, sorted by date of description. If I got the Google-docs permissions right, you should be able to see it but not edit it. (If you can edit, please don’t! And let me know.)

Please let me know if you find any mistakes, or if you think I have missed anything. Everyone who contributes will get a mention in the acknowledgements.