They be like "he the 'Pod," but I'm really a thunder-thighs

Brontomerus plays dromaeosaur hacky-sack (poorly, it must be said). Illustration by Francisco Gascó, from the Acta Palaeontologica Polonica paper.

Yup, I'm bring back the pop culture reference post title in a big way for the arrival of Matt Wedel, Mike Taylor, and Richard Cifelli's description of Brontomerus mcintoshi, a new camarasauromorph sauropod from early Cretaceous Utah. Brontomerus means "thunder thighs" and refers to the fact that its ilium appears to have anchored one heck of a robust musculature.

The description is accompanied with the absolutely wickedly cool illustration above by Francisco Gascó, which certainly is in line with Wedel's advice to Brian Engh concerning his recent Sauroposeidon piece. This is an image that is going to grab some eyeballs, and those eyeballs will hopefully stick around to learn a bit about the Cedar Mountain Formation from which Brontomerus hails. It will probably also find a home on many desktop backgrounds. Like the poor dromaeosaur above, the mighty Ron Swanson has been booted from my own desktop.

As Taylor and Wedel are part of the SV-POW crew, they've written an introductory post about the paper and promise much more content to come. More at Dinosaur Tracking as well, but you knoew that.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to point you to a new blog called Paleo Illustrato written by Stu Pond, who writes about Gascó's illustration today. The blog's been on its feet for just under a couple weeks, and I'm looking forward to following Pond on his journey to explore paleoart and enter the field himself.