Colour photos of the “Ultrasaurus” quarry

Long-time SV-POW! reader Tyler Holmes came across a book with the very un-searchable title “Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs” — I tried to find it in the Internet Archive, but there are waaay too many books of that name. He emailed me about it because it contains three colour photos of the excavation of our old friend “Ultrasaurus“.

Here they are, with their captions as they appear in the book.

First, a very familiar image — a similar but not identical one is reproduced in Jensen (1985:figure 4A) and Jensen (1987:fig 6A) — but here it appears for the first time in colour.

Jim Jensen lays alongside the nine-foot-long scapula (shoulder blade) of Ultrasaurus. ” data-medium-file=”https://svpow.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/ultrasaurus-close-up-1.jpeg?w=300″ data-large-file=”https://svpow.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/ultrasaurus-close-up-1.jpeg?w=584″ class=”size-full wp-image-24441″ src=”https://svpow.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/ultrasaurus-close-up-1.jpeg” alt=”" width=”480″ height=”373″ />

Jim Jensen lays alongside the nine-foot-long scapula (shoulder blade) of Ultrasaurus.

(No: Jim Jensen lies alongside the scapula. Also, it’s not just a scapula, it’s a scapulocoracoid, i.e. the coracoid is fused to the scapula. Also, it’s not nine feet long, it’s 2500 mm (Curtice et al. 1995:88), which is eight feet 2.5 inches. Otherwise, this caption is fine.)

Next, a photo that is completely new to me:

Half of a scapula (shoulder blade) of Ultrasaurus is lifted by a crane. ” data-medium-file=”https://svpow.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/ultrasaurus-close-up-2.jpeg?w=300″ data-large-file=”https://svpow.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/ultrasaurus-close-up-2.jpeg?w=584″ class=”size-full wp-image-24445″ src=”https://svpow.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/ultrasaurus-close-up-2.jpeg” alt=”" width=”480″ height=”365″ />

Half of a scapula (shoulder blade) of Ultrasaurus is lifted by a crane.

Is this the scapula? Maaaybe, but the shape of the jacket, and the cross-section of bone shown in the end of the jacket closest to us, doesn’t seem right. This looks more like part of a long bone — femur or humerus, or maybe radius/ulna or tibia/fibula. But I’m not aware of any femur or humerus having come out of the Dry Mesa quarry, so who knows?

Finally, this:

The scapula of Ultrasaurus being excavated. ” data-image-caption=”" data-medium-file=”https://svpow.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/ultrasaurus-close-up-3.jpeg?w=300″ data-large-file=”https://svpow.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/ultrasaurus-close-up-3.jpeg?w=584″ class=”wp-image-24447 size-full” src=”https://svpow.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/ultrasaurus-close-up-3.jpeg” alt=”" width=”480″ height=”428″ />

The scapula of Ultrasaurus being excavated.

This can’t be right. In the photo above, which definitely is the “Ultrasauros” scap, the glenoid is facing clockwise if you think of the whole bone as being able to rotate about its midpoint; but in this photo it must be facing anticlockwise at top left. So I conclude it’s one of the Supersaurus scaps — either the left in lateral view or the right in medial.

I wonder where the originals of these photos are, and whether there are more? I suppose I ought to ask the people at BYU.

References

• Curtice, Brian D., Kenneth L. Stadtman and Linda J. Curtice. 1996. A reassessment of Ultrasauros macintoshi (Jensen, 1985). The continental Jurassic M. Morales (Ed.) Museum of Northern Arizona Bulleti. 60:87-95.
• Jensen, James A. 1985. Three new sauropod dinosaurs from the Upper Jurassic of Colorado. Great Basin Naturalist 45(4):697-709.
• Jensen, James A. 1987. New brachiosaur material from the Late Jurassic of Utah and Colorado. Great Basin Naturalist 47(4):592-608.