How not to illustrate your new skeletal reconstruction in its descriptive paper

A brief one today while I finish the Rocasaurus post. So we have a new basal sauropodomorph described from the Late Triassic Santo Domingo Formation of Argentina- Huayracursor (Hechenleitner et al., 2025). All well and good, except when you look at the only anatomical figure in the main paper (it's Nature- you only get one), this is the skeletal reconstruction-

So the post-cervical skeleton is in an oblique anterolateral view. Thus you can't really get a good feel of its proportions, or see elements like the femur, tibia, fibula, etc. in strict lateral view. And they're never figured that way elsewhere either (Extended Data Figure 3 claims to be proximal femora in lateral view, but their Huayracursor drawing is literally a tracing of Figure 2k correctly labeled as cranial view). There's a reason you don't just take a photo of a mounted skeleton at some random angle and use that in your descriptive paper for scientific purposes. For one, most scored characters depend on a standardized perspective if they involve shape, and anterolateral is never involved in my experience. 

But at least a photo saves time on illustrative work, whereas someone went through great effort to create this 3D model of Huayracursor's skeleton. But that makes it so much worse because the model is not actually representative of the anatomy. Most basically, they just made any element represented by some material completely brown, but e.g. the distal scapula, distal metacarpal III, distal manual unguals, dorsal ilium, and distal pubes are all unpreserved. And even worse, in one of the rare cases you can actually check the model against the real anatomy because it happens to be on the same plane, the scapula clearly has a more prominent acromion, a greater distal expansion prior to midshaft, an obtuse angle at the glenoid, etc.. So the anatomy isn't even correct. And Figure 2q shows metatarsals II and III tightly articulated, but the reconstruction has the right foot with their distal ends splayed which I think would be a pretty tragic injury in the living animal. You might as well represent Archaeopteryx with one of those sculpted models of its skeleton, done by somebody who didn't put in the work, and at an oblique angle to boot. It's just scientifically sorta worthless. 

And this one image isn't the end of it. If you check out the Extended and Supplementary Information, we get these-
 

So the upper left is Huayracursor again, but basically useless because now we have an oblique dorsoposterolateral view. But at least it's the actual effing elements as preserved, so here's our equivalent of taking a picture of a museum mount. In the upper right you have the therapsid Exaeretodon sp. "3D rendering with preserved bones in orange, based on preserved specimens CRILAR-Pv 156-160." So besides cranial material, the authors list "CRILAR-Pv 156, ... and right femur. ... CRILAR-Pv 160, ... left femur, left tibia and fibula, metatarsal (?), and other fragmentary remains", and I can't help but notice we only got the CRILAR-Pv 160 femur but also not the tibia, fibula and possible metatarsal, but instead the radius and ulna that don't seem to be preserved. It and the lower right Hyperodapedon take up space in Supplementary Figures S5 and S7, but if I were a rhynchosaur or cynodont worker I would much rather you just photographed another bone or view of an already figured bone there. 

And at bottom left is Extended Data Figure 1a-e, er... the second time. Because Extended Data Figure 1 actually has ten images labeled a, c, e, b, d, a, b, c, d, e.  Good thing Nature is so discerning. The first letters (elements) match the second letters (3D models) taxonomically, but that's not really how figure captions work. In any case, this is the image you put on the magazine cover, or the first and last slide of your conference presentation, but not in your technical publication. It's not even useful in a vague ecosystem illustration sort of way because due to foreshortening and a vague Z axis, their relative size is imprecise.

To sum up- represent your skeletal reconstructions in strict lateral view, and if you use computer models use the elements as preserved instead of idealized creations. Unless your publication literally involves computer models like a study of vertebral articulation or center of gravity, etc.. And if you want to insert a flashy 'cool' 3D model as a figure, 9 out of 10 serious researchers would rather just have another photo of a bone. Check out the description of fellow Late Triassic Argentinian basal saurischian Anteavis (Martinez et al., 2025) for how it's done in a tabloid.

References-  Hechenleitner, Martinelli, Rocher, Fiorelli, Juarez, Taborda and Desojo, 2025. A long-necked early dinosaur from a newly discovered Upper Triassic basin in the Andes. Nature. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09634-3

Martínez, Colombi, Ezcurra, Abelín, Cerda and Alcober, 2025. A Carnian theropod with unexpectedly derived features during the first dinosaur radiation. Nature Ecology & Evolution. DOI: 10.1038/s41559-025-02868-4