3185: Sauropods
| Sauropods |
 Title text: Vertebrae Georg |
Explanation[edit]
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This is one of 60 incomplete explanations: This page was created by an explainxkcd user who created 3184 pages. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page! |
This comic attempts to correct people on the skeletal structure of sauropod dinosaurs, claiming that most individuals actually had short necks and tails, and the "queen" of the colony had an enormous number of vertebrae, possibly resembling a snake with legs. The idea is that paleontologists misconstructed the skeletons, averaging the vertebrae out between all specimens, and not giving most of them to the queen.
In reality, most of the animal species that have colonies with queens are insects, particularly termites, ants, bees, and wasps. No sauropods or other reptiles are known to do so.
The title-text references Spiders Georg, an internet meme character who eats over 10,000 spiders a day, skewing the average, creating the factoid that "the average person swallows 3 spiders a year."
Transcript[edit]
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This is one of 33 incomplete transcripts: Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page! |
- [Top panel: A sauropod with a normal long neck and tail, crossed out with a large red X.]
- [Bottom panel: Two sauropods with very short necks and tails, with a green check mark drawn in between and an eel-like supposed "sauropod queen" situated above them, who is predominantly composed of sauropod necks winding off both sides of the panel, with a single head and tip of the tail visible. The sauropod queen and the sauropod on the left look at each other.]
- [Caption below the comic:]
- Thanks to modern paleontological reconstructions, we now know that most sauropods had short necks, and all those extra vertebrae belonged to the sauropod colony's queen.
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I was going to put in the first draft of an explanation, but that would have meant sticking my neck out... ;) 92.23.2.208 01:24, 25 December 2025 (UTC)
I also wanted to try explaining, by it's scary, I feel spineless 62.56.149.220 01:33, 25 December 2025 (UTC)
The title text is referencing Spiders Georg. DanielLC (talk) 01:37, 25 December 2025 (UTC)
- i came here to yell "spiders georg!" but i see you have beat me to it - Vaedez (talk) 01:40, 25 December 2025 (UTC)
The extremely short, punctuationless title text definitely evokes the spirit of early xkcd title texts like “disgusting” or “just thought you should know” KelOfTheStars! (talk) 02:51, 25 December 2025 (UTC)
i just discovered that paleology is not the study of fossils and such, by trying to check if "paleontological" was a mashup of paleological and ontological; nope, paleology is the study of antiquities, paleontology the study of fossils - Vaedez (talk) 05:34, 25 December 2025 (UTC) Add comment
