This paper describes the application of three-dimensional digitizing in vertebrate paleontological studies, specifically biomechanical studies of sauropod dinosaurs. The use of three-dimensional modeling techniques in vertebrate paleontology has received attention recently by Chapman and Weishhampel (1998) and Rowe et al. (2001). Currently, the main source of three-dimensional data is computed tomography (CT) scanning, which primarily is used for evaluating the internal anatomy (Rowe et al. 1999). This study focuses exclusively on the external morphology of the appendicular skeleton, and for this reason, a three-dimensional point digitizer was used to gather three-dimensional morphological data. While the focus of this study was the functional morphology of the sauropod appendicular skeleton, three-dimensional digitized data would also be useful in morphometric studies, studies involving ontogenetic variation, and virtually any other study which focuses on external skeletal morphology.