Click to embiggen
White rami are usually thicker than gray rami, and sometimes they are visibly different in color, but they are always the more lateral connections between the sympathetic chain and the intercostal nerves, and the ones you’ll see first when you peel off the parietal pleura. You may even see the white rami through the parietal pleura if it’s thin enough. Even if both rami have been exposed, just trace the one that’s more ventral and lateral (“in front” from your view peering into someone’s chest) and that’s the white ramus.
I’ve seen the white rami lie superior to the intercostal nerves in some cases and inferior to the intercostal nerves in others. Since that seems to be variable, I don’t rely on superio-inferior position at all in making my identifications. The mediolateral position of the rami will always steer you correctly, everything else is potentially subject to variation.
One thing to watch out for: the intercostal veins are often wrapping around the vertebrae to get to the azygous/hemiazygous/accessory hemiazygous veins, and those veins may pass behind the sympathetic chain and either obscure or mimic the appearance of the gray rami.
Remember that gray rami exist at every level of the sympathetic chain, including cervical, lumbar, and sacral, but the white rami are only present between T1 and L2, where sympathetic fibers are entering the chain from the spinal cord.
Super-brief, content-free Aquilops update
June 26, 2025
Gotta say, watching Scarlett Johansson making eyes at Aquilops is not getting old. Screengrab from this clip, the good stuff starts about 6:19. This short clip from the Tonight Show is also pretty great.
Aaaand Halloween costume: sorted. I already have everything I need!
(…except the lifelike Aquilops puppet. Dammit.)
I may get back to posting actual science when I’m not drowning in summer anatomy teaching. Three days to go.
Come hear Matt and Mike at Darren’s DinoCon!
June 24, 2025
Most regular readers will know about DinoCon, a two-day semi-technical/semi-popular conference being run by SV-POW!’s own Darren Naish. (Darren is very much a silent partner here, and is much better known for his own blog Tetrapod Zoology, and of course for his technical work.)
The first ever DinoCon will be this summer — Saturday 16th & Sunday 17th August at the University of Exeter. It’s the successor to the popular TetZooCon, which ran from 2014 to 2024, but with more of a focus on palaeontology in particular.
What you may not know is that both Matt and I — and of course Darren — will be giving talks:
- From 1:30 to 2:30pm on Saturday, I’ll be presenting The Untold Story of the Carnegie Diplodocus. Lincoln SVPCA attendees got a very truncated version of this in 2023, and there’s a less rushed version of that talk on YouTube, but I have so much more to say!
- From 11am to noon on Sunday, Matt will be talking about The Sauropod Heresies. You can get a bird’s-eye view of the ideas he’ll be presenting from his account of the 2024 Tate conference, where he was the keynote speaker, and from the six-pager that was described as his talk’s “abstract”.
- And Darren will of course be everywhere — opening the conference, introducing talks, participating in panels.
DinoCon also features yet another major talk on sauropods: Tess Gallagher on diplodocid skin from 11:30-12:30pm on the Saturday. And lots more good stuff: you can get all the details from the web-site.
Matt and I are really excited about this. (I assume Darren is, too!) I know most of you aren’t in England, but for those who are, I think this would be a great event. We’d love to meet some of you there.
a-QUILL-ops, birthday, Lego sets, etc.
June 6, 2025
First, before the world drowns in madness, it’s a-QUILL-ops, like a quill pen. Not AWK-wuh-lops, like Aquafina.
Second, I made good use of my recent birthday and went to the Lego store at the local mall.
Shortly thereafter:
The little custom figure that comes in the 76972 “Raptor Off-Road Escape” set is *tiny*, and I love it:
Speaking of my birthday, a fair few of you out there in the paleosphere contributed to the birthday book that Jenny put together for me. Thank you, sincerely!
I’m ridiculously fortunate to have so many great friends and colleagues.
Best. Birthday. EVAR!!
Jenny also managed to surprise me with this imaginext Aquilops, which I (A) did not know existed, and (B) would have not expected before June 11, which I believe is when most of the non-Lego Jurassic World Rebirth toys are becoming available. It…has some design choices, all right. But I suppose when a dinosaur is known from a partial skull, reconstructed based on relatives from another continent, turned into a movie character, and then toddler-ified in plastic, some latitude is expected. I’m just stoked that there will be little kids who grow up loving this weird little cat-ceratops — and maybe the attention will translate into more fieldwork and more fossils. Fingers firmly crossed.
Parting shot: hearing Scarlett Johansson breathily talk about one of ‘my’ dinosaurs was not on my bingo card for 2025. Or ever. But here we are.
Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week 