May 15, 2008
Category: Dinosaurs • Paleontology • Religion
As regular readers of this blog know, I have an extreme affinity for museums and always welcome the news of a long-lost specimen that was locked away in storage turning out to be something new and significant. In 2006 one such discovery occurred when Mike Taylor (seen left, holding the specimen) came across a sauropod vertebra named BMNH R2095, a fossil that would turn out to be something so entirely different that one year later it was assigned the name Xenoposeidon. Mike Taylor has done much more than bring Xenoposeidon to light, however, and I caught up with him to ask a few questions about sauropods, paleontology, and the ever controversial issue of religion vs. science.
Read on »
Posted by Brian Switek at 11:09 AM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Administrative
I just realized something; I'm not going to be able to put up the special edition of The Boneyard #20 this Saturday as planned. Being that I'll be somewhere along the shores of Delaware trying to photograph some horseshoe crabs I won't be able to see all the last-minute submissions and put them up. So, instead of putting it up on Saturday, I'm going to post the carnival on Monday. That gives everyone who wants to put in an entry a few more days to come up with something (all entires will have to be in before 10AM eastern time on Monday). I've received a few wonderful submissions so far, but I hope that they keep rolling in.
Posted by Brian Switek at 9:25 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Books
Columbia University Press is presently having it's "White Sale" until May 31, and there's a lot of good books going on sale for cheap. The "Science" section has some particularly good stuff, like Slotten's The Heretic in Darwin's Court: The Life of Alfred Russel Wallace, Agusti and Anton's Mammoths, Sabertooths, and Hominids: 65 Million Years of Mammalian Evolution in Europe, Laporte's George Gaylord Simpson: Paleontologist and Evolutionist, and even some more technical material like The Eocene-Oligocene Transition: Paradise Lost by Prothero and New Approaches to Speciation in the Fossil Record edited by Erwin and Antsey.
I already have a huge stack of books that I've been meaning to get through, but I may have to give in to temptation and pick up a few Columbia titles while they're on sale. (Just check other sources to see if you can still get a better price, though. Even though these books are on sale, you can usually get used copies for even less.)
Posted by Brian Switek at 9:07 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Administrative • Paleontology
Later today I'll be posting the next installment of my series of interviews with paleontologists, this time asking Mike Taylor to tell us a little about PhyloCode, strange sauropods, and the present "Aetogate" controversy (just to start). It's another long, detail-rich interview, so be sure to check back later today to have a look.
Posted by Brian Switek at 7:26 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Mammals • Photography
A greater mouse deer (Tragulus napu), photographed last year at the National Zoo.
[Note]: My brand new Nikon D60 arrived yesterday, so I'll soon have some brand new images to use for this daily photo post.
Posted by Brian Switek at 7:19 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 14, 2008
Category: Administrative • College
I just finished the last exam of the semester, but rather than being relieved I am seriously pissed off. I'm not going to divulge the details of the situation just yet, but for now I'll just say that once again I'm going head-to-head with the administration over my academic future. The full story will show up here eventually, but presently I've got to see some people who I hope will be able to help me out of what I feel is an unjust situation. As if I had any remaining doubt, coming back to Rutgers to try and finish my degree was a huge mistake.
Posted by Brian Switek at 12:55 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Mammals • Photography
A Plains zebra (Equus quagga), photographed last year at the Philadelphia Zoo.
Posted by Brian Switek at 12:50 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 13, 2008
Category: Dinosaurs • History of Science • Paleontology
Our understanding of dinosaurs today is a far cry from the massive, crocodile-like beasts envisioned by Richard Owen and William Buckland, but the way in which ideas about dinosaurs held by earlier paleontologists are presented has been troubling me lately. In many documentaries it is fashionable to say that dinosaurs were traditionally viewed as big lizards, making them slow, dumb, and cold-blooded animals, but the more I have read about the early days of paleontology the more I've come to doubt that such generalizations can really be maintained.
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Posted by Brian Switek at 11:32 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
