GunnarBivens

I wish I could tell you, but unfortunately I haven't spoken to him in several years now.

I have many thoughts on Gnatalie, but I'm not able to discuss much of it at this point as I got to see all the material a few months ago before the mount was complete. I can say since it's been mentioned in the press before that she'll be described as a new taxon.

Diplodocines generally cluster in a couple distinct groupings (what we could call tribes), Barosaurus-like, Diplodocus-like, & Galeamopus-like, which clearly diverged from a common ancestor early in the Morrison (see the Moffett Saddle diplodocid that's finally getting some public traction thanks to SVP last year). The easiest way to tell these groups apart in isolation is their caudals, as the caudals of all of these species are wildly varying & easy to tell apart (especially Galeamopus, which hasn't been published on much yet sadly - we're working on it! - & Seismosaurus). Barosaurus & Diplodocus are more similar but can still be distinguished by a few characters (general centrum elongation, ventral sulcus depth, neural spine bifurcation, size & extent of caudal ribs, etc). The biggest wrench in this is Supersaurus, which has anterior caudals very similar to those of it's (likely) sister taxon Barosaurus, but the mid-posterior caudals are all very similar to apatosaurines instead (very likely not an artifact of preservation as we have multiple articulated & isolated Supersaurus skeletons - again work in progress!). Cervicals are fairly distinct, with these three "tribes" having their own morphology/proportions. Appendicularly, diplodocines are basically impossible to distinguish from each other except for Galeamopus once again, which has nearly identical humeri to apatosaurines. Skulls haven't been touched enough but they're broadly very similar within Diplodocidae.

Thank you for the compliments!