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Sweet seventy-five and never been
kissed. The Natural History Museum's Tendaguru
brachiosaur Mike Taylor University of
Portsmouth dino_at_miketaylor.org.uk
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• This is where were headed in the next twenty
  minutes
• Historical background
• German expeditions
• British expeditions
• The M23 sauropod of Migeod and Parrington
• Material
• Migeods account
• Comparison with Brachiosaurus specimens

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From 1907-1914, German expeditions led by Werner
Janensch excavated dinosaur bones from Tendaguru
Hill in what was then German East Africa (now
Tanzania).
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The expeditions used hundreds of
native labourers and recovered many spectacular sp
ecimens.
Photo modified from Maier 2003
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The best-known result of the German Tendaguru
expeditions is the Brachiosaurus brancai mount at
the Humboldt Museum in Berlin. This includes
elements of the holotype HMN SII (although the
mounted skull and vertebrae are plaster models).
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German East Africa changed hands in the Great War
(1914-1918), becoming the British territory of
Tanganyika. The British Museum (Natural
History), aware of the German material, wanted to
recover its own exhibit-quality specimens. From
1924-1930, the BMNH sent a series of expeditions
led first by Cutler and Leakey, and then by
Migeod and Parrington. They went with the express
intention of recovering a specimen for
display. This talk is about what they found.
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In the 1930 field season, Migeod and Parrington
opened their 23rd quarry, named M23. This
proved to contain the greater part of a sauropod
skeleton, which was excavated and shipped to
London. It is widely assumed to be Brachiosaurus
brancai. This specimen has often been
incorrectly referred to as BMNH M23 (e.g. Paul
1988), but is correctly BMNH R 5937.
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In the 1930 field season, Migeod and Parrington
opened their 23rd quarry, named M23. This
proved to contain the greater part of a sauropod
skeleton, which was excavated and shipped to
London. It is widely assumed to be Brachiosaurus
brancai. This specimen has often been
incorrectly referred to as BMNH M23 (e.g. Paul
1988), but is correctly BMNH R 5937. I call it
The Archbishop.
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• The material identified and excavated by Migeod
  includes
• Three teeth (doubtfully associated)
• A sequence of at least 21 articulated presacral
  vertebrae
• (probably C4-D11, with maybe D12 and even D13)
• Sacrum, consisting of five vertebrae
• A sequence of nine articulated caudal vertebrae
• Cervical ribs and ossified tendons (probably
  the same)
• Dorsal ribs
• Left scapulocoracoid
• Both humeri
• Ilium, broken ischium and partial pubis
• Broken femur, fragments of another, and a
  calcaneum

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• The material identified and excavated by Migeod
  includes
• Three teeth (doubtfully associated)
• A sequence of at least 21 articulated presacral
  vertebrae
• (probably C4-D11, with maybe D12 and even D13)
• Sacrum, consisting of five vertebrae
• A sequence of nine articulated caudal vertebrae
• Cervical ribs and ossified tendons (probably
  the same)
• Dorsal ribs
• Left scapulocoracoid
• Both humeri
• Ilium, broken ischium and partial pubis
• Broken femur, fragments of another, and a
  calcaneum

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The only published paper on BMNH R 5937 is
Migeod's (1931) account of the 1930 field
season. This says many surprising things, such
as The anterior dorsal vertebrae apparently
had their neural spines in two parts, which led
me at first to the opinion that this dinosaur
was a Dicraeosaurus. This view proved on
further excavation to be untenable, and indeed
the bifurcate spines were similar to neither
species of Dicraeosaurus found at Tendaguru by
the Germans
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Parrington soon discovered that Migeod's
pretensions concealed a profound ignorance of
many subjects. -- Charig's obituary of
Parrington. The few good bones he collected
would not constitute a single limb and but a few
feet of backbone. Indeed, much of East Africa
was enclosed in plaster with the mistaken
impression that bone was contained within. --
W. E. Swinton, letter to John McIntosh, October
1962. A charlatan -- Parrington's description
of Migeod.
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... and my favourite ... Migeod does not have
the slightest notion of palaeontology. --
Friedrich von Huene, letter to Janensch, March
1927.
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The quarry map is very useful. While the
association of the scapula and humeri are
doubtful, it shows that the vertebral sequence is
real.
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• Total length of proximal neck (C9-C13) 442cm
• Total length of torso
• (D1-D12) 347cm
• Proximal neck/torso 1.27
• In HMN SII, this ratio is 1.11
• So the Archbishop's neck is
• proportionally 14 longer.
• (probably more, in fact.)

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• General shape of vertebrae is definitely
  Brachiosaurus-like.
• Proportionally longer neck suggests something
  unusual.
• Migeod's bifurcated neural spines are
  intriguing.
• Migeod also described great wings in D1-D4.
• Proportions of appendicular skeleton are all
  wrong, e.g.
• Archbishop humerus/C9-C13 146/442 33
• HMN SII humerus/C9-C13 213/466 48
• So Archbishop humerus is only 70 expected
  length!
• (IF we can trust Migeod's measurement and
  association.)
• This suggests that it might not be Boring Old
  Brachiosaurus.

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Migeod 1931 says All the dorsal centra ...
were with one exception adhering very firmly to
each other, especially the more anterior
ones, so that some of them could only be
separated by cutting The exception was a
break between D6 and D7. So AB are Migeod's D7
and D8. However, these vertebrae of Migeod's
usage are in fact D8 and D9, as an extra dorsal
was found beneath his D6 after the numbers were
assigned.
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Posterior dorsals of each specimen.
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Posterior dorsals of each specimen.
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Both dorsals have prominent ridges running along
the neural arches. In posterior view, the neural
arch appears waisted below the ridges. I have
not seen this morphology in any other sauropod.
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D89 of Brachiosaurus altithorax (left), B.
brancai (middle), and Archbishop (right). Centra
scaled to similar lengths. Archbishop verts are
30 taller than B. altithorax, 20 taller than B.
brancai.
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Brachiosaurus brancai cotyles (left) Upper
SIID7 -- height/width 0.62 Lower AR1 --
height/width 0.60
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• BMNH R 5937 includes some very well preserved
  material (despite Swinton's dismissal of the
  specimen).
• The skeleton is comparable to HMN SII in
  completeness.
• Much of the excavated material remains
  unprepared.
• Migeod's interpretations of the material are
  unreliable.
• The specimen is a brachiosaurid sauropod.
• Serial variation in Brachiosaurus brancai makes
  it difficult to interpret the NHM specimen.
• The Archbishop's neck is proportionally longer
  than in B. brancai.
• BMNH R 5937 may represent a new taxon, based on
  five unique characters of the well-preserved pair
  of dorsals.

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• Thanks are due to
• Dave Martill for his supervision.
• Sandra Chapman and Paul Barrett (Natural History
  Museum), Dave Unwin and Wolf-Dieter Heinrich
  (Humboldt Musuem fur Naturkunde) and Bill Simpson
  (Field Museum of Natural History) for access to
  specimens.
• Matt Wedel for making me realise I could do this.
• This work has not been supported by any grant.
• Please feel free to remedy this deficiency.

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It's all a bit of a mystery. Unfortunately the
1930 expedition (no fault of Parrington's) was
ill-conceived and ill-prepared. They did collect
the greater part of the skeleton of a huge
brachiosaurid dinosaur but even that was left
for decades to rot in the basements of South
Kensington, the only elements that were ever
prepared and exhibited being two gigantic
vertebrae. -- Charig's obituary of
Parrington. For whatever reason, most of the
material is still in jackets.
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The Archbishop has NO hyposphene just a
narrow medial infrapostzygapophyseal
lamina. BUT is this just a preparation defect?
Brachiosaurus brancai, HMN SII, D4. This is a
typical brachiosaur hyposphene.