Amargasaurus had a sail on its neck after all...

[bmathison1972]

I have been struggling to chose an Amargasaurus figure, but I think I'll go with the Carnegie version by Safari. I like the newer WS version, but it's sooooo big. The Carnegie seems to best balance morphology and size, even for its age.

[Gwangi]

The Carnegie Amargasaurus is still my personal favorite Amargasaurus, and one of my favorite Carnegie figures in general. A beautiful and elegant piece, and at just the right scale.

[bmathison1972]

The Carnegie Amargasaurus is still my personal favorite Amargasaurus, and one of my favorite Carnegie figures in general. A beautiful and elegant piece, and at just the right scale.

Thank you @Gwangi - you're seal of approval cinches it for me!

[Gwangi]

The Carnegie Amargasaurus is still my personal favorite Amargasaurus, and one of my favorite Carnegie figures in general. A beautiful and elegant piece, and at just the right scale.

Thank you @Gwangi - you're seal of approval cinches it for me!

Happy to be of service B @bmathison1972, I think you'll like it.

[Faelrin]

The Carnegie one is still on my wishlist. Love the coloration of it too. Don't know why, but I just feel that shade of green looks really good on Amargasaurus.

[Huskies]

Based on the mentioned paper, Battat Amargasaurus seems to be the most accurate. It makes me admire Dan LoRusso's skill even more.

[leidy]

Based on the mentioned paper, Battat Amargasaurus seems to be the most accurate. It makes me admire Dan LoRusso's skill even more.

I don't consider it the best example of Dan's skill, due to some asymetry in the sculpt, and a somewhat squashed ribcage, but the general proportions and overall posture is great, I really like the whip action of the tail.  It almost feels like it's in motion.

The Smithsonian figure is also worth having, they make a nice contrast. Both are to the same scale and reasonably accurate, but so different in many respects.   

[Sim]

Still have my Battat Amargasaurus.  Not sure why the sail fell out of favour, but I've always found it more believable than the alternatives.

I've read that the reason the sail hypothesis became doubted is because the spines of Amargasaurus are circular in cross-section in contrast to the flattened spines of sail-bearing animals.


An often overlooked feature is also that the first neck spine of Amargasaurus is single, not paired like the rest, so would that single spine be connected to the two sail rows?  Does anyone who's read the paper know if it answers this, I'm unable to read the paper currently?  There is still no accurate figure of Amargasaurus, surprisingly, all the nice ones miss the single first neck spine.

In any case I found the conclusion of this paper surprising as the neck spines being covered in keratin made more sense in my opinion, but if the tips were still exposed and keratinised even in a sail and could therefore be used for defense it would be less surprising to me that sails were present.

[Shane]

Still have my Battat Amargasaurus.  Not sure why the sail fell out of favour, but I've always found it more believable than the alternatives.

I've read that the reason the sail hypothesis became doubted is because the spines of Amargasaurus are circular in cross-section in contrast to the flattened spines of sail-bearing animals.


An often overlooked feature is also that the first neck spine of Amargasaurus is single, not paired like the rest, so would that single spine be connected to the two sail rows?  Does anyone who's read the paper know if it answers this, I'm unable to read the paper currently?  There is still no accurate figure of Amargasaurus, surprisingly, all the nice ones miss the single first neck spine.

In any case I found the conclusion of this paper surprising as the neck spines being covered in keratin made more sense in my opinion, but if the tips were still exposed and keratinised even in a sail and could therefore be used for defense it would be less surprising to me that sails were present.

There are plenty of non-sail Amargas with the central spine, and plenty of sailed Amargas without the central spine, but there's only one version I can find that has the central spine AND a sail, and it's....

The Papo.

[Sim]

I've had a read of the paper that was kindly provided by @EarthboundEiniosaurus, and my understanding is it suggests the spines of Amargasaurus were completely enclosed in a sail, including the first neck spine so the sail split into two from that spine.  It's very bizzare, but it seems to be well argued for.