Cary Woodruff

A paleontologist who loves to research & share all things sauropod (🦕) related.
Curator of Vert Paleo @FrostScience.
PhD. FLS.
He/Him.

[Cary Woodruff @DoubleBeam]

NEW PAPER DAY! After A LONG TIME in the works, I want to share with you all the VERY 1ST CASE of an avian-style RESPIRATORY INFECTION in a non-avian DINOSAUR! You heard me right readers – AND IT’S IN A #SAUROPOD!

(Ewan Wolff, Matt Wedel, Sophie Dennison, & @WitmerLab)

[Cary Woodruff @DoubleBeam]

@Paleodude123 @paleoacker

[Cary Woodruff @DoubleBeam]

It's also neat that for such an iconic group that we've known of for well over 100 years, this is a bone we've never seen before. And 2026 has been a good year for pachycephalosaur 'missing bones', 'cause we've found, and are reporting on, the two that were 'missing' 😎

[Cary Woodruff @DoubleBeam]

HA! I beat @TomHoltzPaleo *AND* Ben Creisler in posting a new paleo paper! 

Just published in @thePeerJ, a paper with @histo_holly, Laura Rooney, & Joe Frederickson on what we believe is the *first* ceratobranchial (aka hyoid) ever found/reported from a pachycephalosaur!
🧵

[Cary Woodruff @DoubleBeam]

We also question hyoids as reliable osteohistological recorders of growth - but we didn't, nor are we wading into any ontogimorph debates (but "Draco" ain't a real thing...)

[Cary Woodruff @DoubleBeam]

(*also, Sally & I did not plan to color coordinate... But, I got to the Institute first that day, so she's the one who needs to change...)

[Cary Woodruff @DoubleBeam]

If I had a nickel for every paleontologist with a pachycephalosaur tattoo posing with a pachycephalosaur fossil, I’d have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.

Here's Sally Hurst & I with a HUGE specimen of Prenocephale we're working on.

[Cary Woodruff @DoubleBeam]

🎉🎉 *IT'S HUNTER'S BIRTHDAY*!!!! 🎉🎉

My baby boy turns *7* today! 7?! How can it be 7 years already?! Here's a big birthday steak for the big birthday man, and here's to the bestest boy!
(and per tradition, the annual birthday growth curve)

[Cary Woodruff @DoubleBeam]

Which I think is hella cool & goes to show that sauropods just simply didn't get big throughout their evolutionary history. Throughout their history & throughout various clades, there were various ways - & various combos of those ways, that they achieved their immense sizes.
-fin

[Cary Woodruff @DoubleBeam]

Holy cow! 😲 Here are two great sauropod (🦕) papers that I've completely spaced on mentioning:

1) Anatomical network analysis of sauropodomorph cranial topology.
2) Built for bulk: posture, microanatomy and soft tissue shaped gigantism in Sauropoda.
🧵

[Cary Woodruff @DoubleBeam]

"These findings suggest that sauropod gigantism was sustained by lineage-specific combinations of femoral geometry, internal architecture and articular soft tissues."
(fig 6 from Silva Junior et al)

[Cary Woodruff @DoubleBeam]

@DoradoFish55 Mongolian Institute of Paleontology
(I wish there wasn't the character limit that made me only put the abbreviation)

[Cary Woodruff @DoubleBeam]

I swear I was gonna do a tyrannosaur #FossilFriday even before Tromerosaurus dropped! 😅

Each time I'm at the MIP, even I have to admire and drool over the 'baby' Tarbosaurus MPC-D 107/7. Check out the 'chicken wing'-sized articulated arm from this specimen!!!!🤩

[Cary Woodruff @DoubleBeam]

@Dino_Chinzorig Thank you!

[Cary Woodruff @DoubleBeam]

Does anyone out there by chance have a pdf of these two papers?

1) KHOSATZKY, L.I. 1997. Big turtle of the Late Cretaceous of Mongolia. Russian Journal of Herpetology 4:148–154.

And...