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. 2020 Aug 24;10:14106. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-70751-2

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© The Author(s) 2020

Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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Histology of mesosaur, ichthyosaur and dinosaur intervertebral spaces, all fossil ground sections. (a) Stereosternum tumidum IGPB R 622, sagittal section of two articulated dorsal vertebral centra with intervertebral space, showing the notochordal amphicoelous shape and the persisting notochord. Image is in cross-polarised light with lambda filter. (b) Hadrosauridae indet. UALVP 59650. Close up of the articular surface showing obliquely arranged mineralised fibres in between poorly defined files of chondrocyte lacunae (arrows). Image is in cross-polarised light with lambda filter. (c) Stenopterygius sp. IGPB R 661 sagittal section of two articulated centra showing the amphicoelous shape. Note the differentiation of the content of the intervertebral space into a coarse into a fine fraction, probably representing the nucleus pulposus (NP) and the annulus fibrosus (AF). (d) Enlargement of the concave part of the articular surface, showing a thin layer of irregularly arranged chondrocyte lacunae, underlying the nucleus pulposus (NP). (e) Enlargement of the convex part of the articular surface, showing obliquely arranged files of chondrocyte lacunae, representing the insertion of the annulus fibrosus (AF) (arrows). Scale bar in (a) represents 500 µm, scale bar in (b) represents 100 µm, scale bar in (c) represents 2 mm, scale bars in (d, e) represent 100 µm. AF annulus fibrosus, B bone tissue, C cartilage, N notochord, NC neural canal, NP nucleus pulposus.