Scott, considering that you have the largest body of modern skeletals of dinosaurs (besides Greg Paul) and by virtue of being the heir apparent standard skeletal illustrator, the truth is you could probably pick a skeletal pose without asking anybody and anybody else who seriously wants to restore skeletons in a standardized way would probably follow your lead (I know I would). But I digress.

Even before the GSP's cease-and-desist order I did not particularly like the "running" pose as most animals don't most of the time and some animals can't (and as Heinrich Mallison has pointed out, sometimes the Greg Paul pose violates the basic anatomy).

Because of this, I think a walking or standing pose would be best. I like your walking Majungasaurus as a standard for bipedal animals.

Finding a walking quadrapedal pose is a bit harder I think because ideally, in order for a skeletal to have maximum educational benefit, one should be able to see the medial and lateral aspects of the all the limbs all at once. I must admit that GSP's quadrapedal pose had this advantage.

A common walking pose that I think could be usefully adopted is illustrated in the fourth or eighth picture of an elephant walk cycle here. There you can see all the aspects of the limbs and has the advantage of not being too Greg Paul-like, unlike the seventh photo in that link.

To answer some of the questions you posed, I think that skeletal poses do matter. They help cross-compare taxa much the same way standardized poses in animal field guides help facilitate cross-comparing. The best way to go about creating a pose is finding one that a large number of species could feasibly adopt without violating the anatomy and one which maximizes the views of all parts of the body. We serve with these poses amateur dinosaur enthusiasts, professional scientists who want to be able to do comparative anatomy, and artists who want to make attractive and accurate life reconstructions. Skeletal poses are, in my view, essential to disseminating scientific knowledge in the field of paleontology and making it accessible to others. As for balancing "conflicting needs", it might be difficult for some artists to visualize other realistic poses to put the animals in. I think this effect might be dampened by a large number of multi-view recontrustions for those species for which they are feasible.

Anyways, that's my initial thoughts on the subject.

As I wrote, I am okay with multiple poses. I'd like to have postures that display maximal information while also being mechanically feasible. I've gotten to the point, based on work implying crouching gaits by Hutchinson et al., that the always vertical femur is a defect of the old order, Paulian system, and it should be among the first to go. In your Majunga skeletal above, you have this guy taking a long stride, and I see no reason why the femur should be close to maximal retraction there.

But that said, preserving the sense of comparability while also deviating from the Paulian model requires us to adopt what I think are two general replacements:

1) The model you have been using, while not "exciting," shows a careful, stable posture, all locomotory limbs on the ground, and thus a large departure from Paul while still in general easily comparable.

or 2) something utterly different. I am not advocating my postures, because they are all quite different, and they can be dynamically unfeasible in some cases. Flying animals, especially deserve comment on how they should be represented: Paul shows them afoot and launching, I show them afoot and launching, some like John Conway show them diagrammatically and in flight.

Before I rush into agreeance... if the standard pose were the extreme gait (as it is now in the "Paul" stance) isn't it a wonderful bit of inherent information that Majungasaurus is walking. It communicates that IS its extreme gait. (Freaky beast that it is.) If all skeletals are reduced to a walk, well - that's less information, because we know that if something can run, it can walk.

So, let me now rush into agreeance:
you can set the standard and I'll happily follow. it has little effect on my work, as the 'standard' pose will be one frame from a sequence of images in a run/walk-cycle. After all, paper (even the flexible, read-on-the-toilet-type) will soon be digital, allowing for animated sequences.
Most animators set the first frame of a cycle at either the extreme, or at the mid-phase leg pass. The leg pass obscures information, so if you'd like to reflect animation standards in selecting a standard, this is an argument for nubbing Paul and maintaining the extreme stride pose. Then again, the still print standard can simply be determined frame 6 instead of 1, hence my unconditional agreement.

Your suggested new standardization seems quite reasonable to me. I think that your incredulity regarding the sprinting pose is not only well founded for many taxa, but also raises an additional issue: it is distracting from the point of the reconstruction if the viewer spends time trying to work out if the pose is realistic. Ideally, a "standard" pose should be a 'no-brainer' for most taxa, so that viewers can focus on, you know, the *skeleton*.

There is similar issue with pterosaurs, actually. The standard set by Greg Paul was to show pterosaurs in the middle of a bird-like running launch. Since it is unlikely that the ever did this (or even could), those images have the problem of showing an implausible behavior for the sake of standardization.

Great post Scott, and I agree a new standard is an excellent idea, and I would certainly adhere to the final pose. As Mike said, the running pose does itself require a certain degree of interpretation and could be open to accusations of subjectivity on the part of anyone referring to the skeleton.

My suggestions would be: that one of the rear limbs should be placed in it's natural standing position, reflecting how the limb would be positioned if the subject was static, and in the case of quadrupeds one of the front limbs should also be in this position. The would allow at a glance an idea of the correct position of the foot at rest (which would be in it's maximum contact with the ground) plus give a clearer idea of how the appendicular and axial skeletons relate to each other (with regards to weight distribution and stance, etc). In the case of bipeds, forelimbs in relaxed and extended states, if that doesn't become to confusing . . . for example Pterosaurs could be depicted as if on the ground, with one wing flexed upward.

An interesting discussion.

Ok, lots of good stuff, I'll try to reply to everyone:

@Zach - Thanks! It did occur to me that simply changing 120 or so skeletals would have a large impact on the poses chosen by others, but honestly I feel like the first time around (with GSPs poses) it became a standard as an afterthought, so I thought this would be a great opportunity to get more voices involved, so we get a better result. You're other thoughts are excellent, and herald some future articles...

@Jamie - I'm not saying that no one should ever be allowed to use a unique pose. But there are many cases (including those "march of evolution" diagrams) where it's more useful to have a common pose, so I still think a standard is useful. I myself repose skeletals to meet the needs of museums, media projects, other researchers, etc. But I still feel strongly that there should be an open standard for everyone to use.

@David - I agree about losing the implicit statement about Majungasaurus, but what about T. rex? In the past I've followed Greg and posed my 'rex skeletals running, but at best that's a controversial idea, and at worst it's unlikely. Should my idea of a controversial subject (assuming it's my stance) be the standard against which others match their T. rex skeletals?

@Mike - Thanks - and I agree, there's a strong need for an alternative pose for pterosaurs. Perhaps now before someone feels they've made one that should be their...

@Stu - Those are some very interesting ideas on how to convey maximal information. Hmm...

Sorry to be late to this party. Just wanted to throw in my wholehearted endorsement. I strongly agree that there should be some recognised standard pose that everyone can use freely without fear of chilling effects, and I applaud your notion of "crowd-sourcing" what that pose should be. I hope you've been actively inviting the other skeletal artists you know of to come and join in the process.

I don't have any strong feelings on what the standard pose should be; just that there should be one.

If the author creates T. rex in a running pose, it would be inherent information that he/she feels that this was plausible. If the Trex is at a fast walk, this would indicate that the author feels that this was the plausible extreme.

At the risk of lending this one point too much weight - isn't it fantastic to get this added info about the author's views? And if there are various skeletals reflecting various opinions as to what the extreme pose is, then all the better. People will understand that there is discussion, and perhaps some will drift into the mechanics of the discussion itself.

David Maas wrote: If the author creates T. rex in a running pose, it would be inherent information that he/she feels that this was plausible. If the Trex is at a fast walk, this would indicate that the author feels that this was the plausible extreme.

David, you've said this a couple of times. I don't see why that would be true at all. I've certainly never assumed that skeletal reconstructions show animals in extreme stance while locomoting at top speed -- has everyone else been assuming this all along?

At the risk of lending this one point too much weight - isn't it fantastic to get this added info about the author's views?

I don't think so. It would conflate two things that belong separate: hard data about the shape, proportions and constrained articulations of the bones vs. a specific author's palaeobiological hypothesis. I would rather get those two things from two different places, not least so that I know which is which.

From what I've been reading, even a standing pose will have these issues. (ie. straight-legged Trex vs bent etc.). Isn't the 'hard-data' version a partially or fully exploded diagram-type reconstruction? ie. is there a viable neutral pose that excludes controversy?

@David - It depends on how much weight you give to certain controversies. There's no credible arguement to allow say T. rex to straighten out its knee all the way (i.e., those who have done it have never published an explanation for how the anatomy could accomplish that, especially in light of how similar the morphology is to living bird knees).

At the same time, we've done a terrible job documenting the issue, even though there's half a dozen or more places where it's published (even Huxley and Dollo managed to correctly describe dinosaur knees - Compsognathus and Iquanodon respectively). That's part of why I started this blog (once we get past this whole skeletal repose issue).

But I agree if you want a diagram that doesn't make any claims, I think the exploded one is the best option.