dinosaurs
laelaps | May 6, 2008In case you missed it, my post on paleo-art "'What Rules the World?'" is up at Science Creative Quarterly. I wish I caught some of the typos, but I still think that it's a pretty good piece.
Coincidentally, Reverend H.N. Hutchinson's Extinct Monsters arrived in the mail today and a battered copy of William Flower's An Introduction to the Osteology of the Mammalia came yesterday, so I've got plenty of old books about bones to look through.
laelaps | May 5, 2008On May 17 I'll be hosting the 20th edition of The Boneyard, but rather than just collecting a group of links from whatever might happen to pop up on the web I've decided to do something a little different. I want to run a contest for anyone who might be interested, and the theme of the competition is going to be "Meeting a prehistoric creature."
You could write some fiction about coming across a dinosaur in the woods or a Neanderthal on a subway, relate a real-life experience digging up fossils, talk about an early trip to the museum, or anything else that might come to mind on the theme of…
laelaps | May 3, 2008The latest edition of the Boneyard is up over at Familiarity Breeds Content. The next edition will be back here in two weeks, but it isn't going to be your usual collection of links. The next edition will bring with it the potential to win a copy of Ralph O'Connor's The Earth on Show, Edwin Colbert's Men and Dinosaurs, and a few other books from my own library. I'll divulge all the details this coming Monday.
laelaps | May 2, 2008In 1944, G.G. Simpson published his important (but often overlooked) book Tempo and Mode in Evolution, one of the key works of the Modern Synthesis that attempted to explain the relevance of paleontology to evolutionary studies. In the Introduction, Simpson includes this passage about the lack of communication between geneticists and paleontologists;
The attempted synthesis of paleontology and genetics, an essential part of the present study, may be particularly surprising and possibly hazardous. Not long ago paleontologists felt that a geneticist was a person who shut himself in a room,…
laelaps | April 29, 2008Today I've got a human osteology exam, so while I'm trying to make sure I know all my processes, foramina, and sutures things are going to be a bit light here. Still, I've got a few items of interest to unload here before trying to cram more of White's Human Osteology into my brain;
The next edition of the Boneyard is coming up this Saturday and will appear at Familiarity Breeds Content. Get your submissions in to me or Nick soon! Two weeks after that the carnival will be back here with a special edition where participants will have a chance to win some paleontology books from my own library…
laelaps | April 27, 2008If ever there was a documentary that made me want to be a paleontologist when I grew up, it was the Christopher Reeve-hosted Dinosaur! The stop-motion animation by Phil Tippet still looks good, but even though things have changed a bit since the show came out, it's still fun to watch and provides a good personal follow-up to Friday's open thread. Enjoy!
laelaps | April 27, 2008After the success of The Lost World: Jurassic Park, the minds behind the franchise were in a bit of a fix. Tyrannosaurus and "Velociraptor"* had the run of the fictional islands for the past two movies; something new was needed to up the ante. The decision was made to make Spinosaurus the new villain in Jurassic Park III, the strange theropod being said to possess an 8-foot-long skull and stretch 60 feet from the tip of its crocodile-like snout to the end of its tail by the creative team. As if this weren't enough, the writers of the film had Spinosaurus kick the tar of of Tyrannosaurus,…
laelaps | April 25, 2008The Apatosaurus mount at the AMNH.Every person who loves paleontology has their own story about how they became fascinated with strange creatures and ancient world. For me it was solidified by a visit to the American Museum of Natural History in New York when I was only knee-high to a Ceratosaurus, but everyone has their own story to tell. What's more, there's more to suffering PNS (Paleo-Nerd Syndrome) aren't just impressed with ancient life but utterly enthralled by it; there are always more questions and amazing discoveries to think about. I always ask professional paleontologists about…
laelaps | April 25, 2008Yesterday a short notice was printed in the journal Science describing where Tyrannosaurus fell in relation to birds on the basis of molecular evidence (i.e. proteins recovered from a Tyrannosaurus femur). Surprise, surprise, the study found that Tyrannosaurus is more closely related to birds than the American alligator or the green anole lizard. Not everything came out perfectly, however. The phylogenetic tree created by the molecular data but Tyrannosaurus in the same group as the birds, meaning that (in the words of the authors) it "leaves Dinosauria unresolved."
An even more obvious error…
laelaps | April 24, 2008
In the first two installments of this series I had the chance to interview two of the most famous paleontologists in the field today, but there are many, many other skilled scientists that you may never have heard of. Dr. Jerry Harris, Director of Paleontology at Dixie State College, is an outstanding scientist (and friend) who has studied a variety of fossil vertebrates from Mesozoic bird tracks to enormous sauropods. Even though I botched some of the questions, Dr. Harris took the time to come up with some excellent responses about his work.
[Brian Switek] What fascinates you about…
laelaps | April 18, 2008It's difficult to think about dinosaurs and not imagine what they might have been like in life. Museum restorations have tried to recreate scenes from the Mesozoic from the bones of dinosaurs for about a century, but new technologies are allowing museum patrons a new way to think about what dinosaurs might have been like. A new exhibit called "Be the Dinosaur" will soon be launching at the Louisville Science Center, and visitors will be able to not only take control of a dinosaur in a virtual world, but also to observe the virtual behaviors of dinosaurs programmed with artificial intelligence…
laelaps | April 11, 2008
Dr. Jack Horner is one of the most recognized paleontologists working in the field today, and is presently the Ameya Preserve Curator of Paleontology and Montana State University Regents' Professor of Paleontology. He has authored numerous books, papers, and popular articles, and during his career has named the dinosaurs Maiasaura peeblesorum, Orodromeus makelai, Hypacrosaurus stebingeri, Prosaurolophus blackfeetensis, Gryposaurus latidens, and Brachylophosaurus goodwini, although he is probably most well-known for his studies of the eggs & young of Maiasaura. This week I had the chance…
laelaps | April 9, 2008If you enjoyed this week's interview with paleontologist Robert Bakker, then you'll definitely want to stop by the new blog of the Houston Museum of Natural Science, Beyond Bones. In addition to posts from people covering all aspects of the museum, Bakker will contribute to the blog as well, so I definitely would encourage you to keep your eye on it.
Speaking of blogging paleontologists, the Museum of the Rockies has its own Bone Blog where you can learn about what Jack Horner and his students have been studying lately. I definitely want to try and feature an interview with Horner here in the…
laelaps | April 8, 2008
The other day I wrote about reconstructions of Camarasaurus made in the 1920's by H.F. Osborn, C.G. Mook, and W.K. Gregory at the AMNH based upon previously collected material obtained by E.D. Cope. Dan Varner was kind enough to send me an image of the reconstruction and to point out that copy of it is in the Rutgers geology museum. When I eventually obtain a new camera I'll take some photos.
laelaps | April 7, 2008
Dr. Robert Bakker is one of the most famous paleontologists working today, an iconoclastic figure who has played a leading role of rehabilitating our understanding of dinosaurs from the inception of the "Dinosaur Renaissance" through the present. He is currently the curator of paleontology for the Houston Museum of Natural Science and the Director of the Morrison Natural History Museum in Colorado, and has recently been involved in the study of the hadrosaur mummy "Leonardo." In 1986 he published the classic book The Dinosaur Heresies, fully bringing his revolutionized vision of dinosaurs to…
laelaps | April 6, 2008I'm nearly finished with Lucy, but before I close the book I thought I would share Owen Lovejoy's hypothesis about the extinction of dinosaurs as related by Don Johansen. Keep in mind that the book was first published in 1982 when ideas about what killed the dinosaurs were legion;
[Also, for some of the terminology here to make sense, organisms are sometimes referred to being r-selected or k-selected in terms of their reproductive strategies. A r-selected organism produces lots of offspring with little investment in each, like corals that release egg & sperm in great quantities.…
laelaps | April 6, 2008Camarasaurus is an unappreciated sauropod. It wasn't the heaviest or longest of the earth-shaking dinosaurs, but the blunted skull and large teeth of the Jurassic sauropod indicate that it had a different lifestyle than the more famous Diplodocus and Apatosaurus. In 1920, paleontologists at the AMNH created a skeletal and muscular reconstruction of the dinosaur, Camarasaurus being proportionally bulkier for its size than other sauropods then known.
The reconstruction of a model of Camarasaurus had another purpose, as well. In 1908 Oliver Hay published a paper advocating a sprawling, crocodile…
laelaps | April 5, 2008Last week I looked at reconstructions of Diplodocus (both humorous and scientific) by Oliver Hay and G.G. Simpson. After rifling through my collection of papers, I came upon a description of Diplodocus by H.F. Osborn and thought I would continue the trend I had set earlier.
In 1897, the AMNH sent a field crew to look over the famous Como Bluff quarries that were so productive for O.C. Marsh in previous years, and although the site was considered exhausted Barnum Brown quickly came across a Diplodocus femur. There was more than just a femur, however, and soon J.L. Wortmann was supervising the…