Neck ontogeny in Tyrannosaurus rex

Having spend much of the last few days playing with the cervical vertebrae of a subadult apatosaur, and trying to make sense of those of the mounted adult, neck ontogeny is much on our minds. Here’s an example from the less charismatic half of Saurischia.

I was forcibly struck, when seeing a cast of Jane the juvenile Tyrannosaurus in the museum gift-shop, by how weedy its neck is:

This being the Carnegie Museum, it was with us the work of a moment to scoot across to the Cretaceous gallery and compare with the neck of an adult:

As you can see, the transformation of the neck is every bit as dramatic as that of the skull, as slender animal optimised for pursuit grows in a total freakin’ monster.

Someone ought to quantify this. I’m talking to you, theropod workers! (We’ll be busy over here with sauropods.)

Here are the full, uncropped and uncorrected, versions of the photos that I extracted the above from:

This is truly a magnificent museum.