Yesterday John Lynch (he of the Stranger Fruit) took me to see the Arizona Museum of Natural History in Mesa, which had some truly excellent displays of the feathered dinosaurs from China (they wouldn't let me photograph them, though, and none of the souvenir postcards had them either, but see here). Here's Lynch underneath an excellent bronze outside the museum - a Velociraptor, I think, or a Deinonychus, which was the core exhibit of the display.
Today we're off to Tuscon to shoot some bad guys see the Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum. I gather Wile E. Coyote will be there.
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Yesterday I took John Wilkins to the Feathered Dinosaurs and the Origin of Flight exhibit at the Arizona Natural History Museum. It was a wonderful opportunity to see 30+ fossils from China along with assorted models and recreations, particularly of Deinonychus (above, particularly cool),…
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For a long time feathered dinosaurs just looked weird to me. Seeing fuzzy Deinonychus or some other dromeosaur with a splash of plumage never looked quite right and I didn't understand why in the course of a few years predatory dinosaurs went from being scaly to being covered in down. Most of the…
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It's a Dilophosaurus...
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/saurischia/ceratosauria.html
The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum is wonderful. I haven't been there in a while, so a report would be good. http://www.desertmuseum.org/
I had been driving from San Diago to Yuma in 2001, in that time people experimented Johoba plantation. I am not sure is there still planting it. Yuma was a good place for retired senior people from Canada as I observed.
My mission in that time was to study the feasibility of culturing marine shrimp in desert. The underground water in Arizona desert is saline water.
I'll get burnt for this, but: Paiwan, articles are your friend. The desert. A desert. etc.
Now I stay in Phuket, Thailand. Doing shrimp work and research on marine viruses. Anyone pass this part of the world. Come to see me, I'll treat you hundred of shrimps and 10 cups of beer. :-)
Brian - are you sure paiwan didn't just miss off an s?
Mr English, if you are going to be a language fascist and needlessly criticise paiwan, who is obviously not a native speaker, then you should pay attention to your own punctuation, which is anything but conform with the normal rules for the English language or any other language that I have ever come across for that matter. ;)
which is anything but conform with the normal rules for the English language or any other language that I have ever come across for that matter.
But I just learnt about articles. I haven't got to punctuation yet. I'm bad. :)
John, now you'll be really close to my home state of Chihuahua! There are some nice things to see in Northern Mexico, and maybe you can take some time to visit.
I would expect Wile E. Coyote to live near the Grand Canyon, as he keeps falling into its precipices.
Well if you don't use the Australian Manual of Style, you simply aren't using proper English. But I'll allow you all to post here until I get you spelling words the right way.
John: That exhibit sounds like the same one that we saw in Toronto, when you were here in '06.
Now that you mention it, it might be, but there was no frisson of recognition. The exhibit I remembered had casts, not original fossils.
It is a brave or a foolhardy man who combines the words "Australian" and "style" in one sentence without a negative.
Grant him a chance to say "brave" a time, to show that he doesn't have Achilles' heel to govern his blog independently among all nationalities.
In fact, Australia style is too heavy; for instance, if you say American style, does it mean East Coast or West Coast or Montana Indian?
Perhaps he tried to say was, that "I would like to assure you an equal platform despite the cultures differences and races." Then, he can say my style is not less than London and catching up New York City.
Thony C, I know you are a senior English, hope that you are not offended by what I say here. And I always remember your " lower down the tone" advice. :-)
Tuscon is a common typo, but it's actually Tucson.
Forget about the desert, you spelled Tucson wrong.
No I didn't. I made a typo...
Late comment here, thanks to John Wilkins' post I became aware of the Arizona Museum of Natural History and since I was visiting Phoenix I was able to squeeze in a visit. The museum is quite nice and worth a visit even without feathered dinos.
However, I wonder what people at science blogs think of the extremely unorthodox position which the displays and docents took in the interpretation of the fossils. Too summarize: Birds are not descended from dinosaurs, bird flight evolved in the trees, Caudipteryx is not a dinosaur, and pterosaurs had primitive feathers. While they have every right to advocate any position they wish, they should have made it clear that what they are advocating is extremely controversial in the scientific community.