Just in case you haven't had enough of enigmatic dinosaurs over the past 24 hours, National Geographic is apparently planning a new article all about "Bizarre Dinosaurs" in their December 2007 issue. How do I know this? If you go to the National Geographic Society website featuring some reconstructions of a certain sauropod celebrity and click the "Dinosaur Wallpaper" button on the left, a chorus line of odd dinosaurs shows up with the caption "From 'Bizarre Dinosaurs,' National Geographic, December 2007." There's Amargasaurus, Carnotaurus, Dracorex, Epidendrosaurus, and (one of my personal favorites) Masiakasaurus among others, but what I found most interesting was the inclusion of a feathery Deinocherius, which makes me wonder if there is going to be some sort of upcoming announcement about this dinosaur. There are even more dinosaurs (including many more sauropods) on an interactive page, giving us some clue as to what we have to look forward to, but in my opinion these dinosaurs don't hold a candle to the classic artwork of John Gurche and stunning photographs of Louie Psihoyos of the January 1993 issue of National Geographic (any dinophile knows the one I mean).
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For all I know, yes, there's a Deinocheirus announcement coming up. Don't ask me more, though.
Ach, the feathers are terrible.
Interesting, as far as "pop culture" stuff on dinos...but there are parts of this that are already wanting to make me punch babies :P
1) The interactive page on Velociraptor in particular...yuck. Firstly, most littler dromaeosaurs (and in particular Velociraptor) are known to have flight feathers--could National Geographic not have seen, oh, all the press releases done a month or two ago on the discovery of feather knobs? We even know how many feathers Velociraptor likely had per "wing-limb", too.
2) The arm reconstruction, which again uses a much older model (whilst it couldn't fold up its arms as tight as a bird, it still had somewhat birdy-ish arm movement); in fact, the general structure of "ground-runner" dromaeosaurs' arms are one of the things (along with, more recently, discovery of flight feathers on the arms) that have led to Greg Paul's theory of secondary flightlessness in critters like Velociraptor and Deinonychus. (For that matter, Mahakala also gives pretty good evidence of possible secondary flightlessness in the big ground-runner dromies.)
3) As I understand it, the present debates on dromaeosaurs and the use of their sickle claws isn't so much whether they were used in killing prey but *how* they were used (evidence is pointing to a similar method of hunting to how sabertooth cats and nimravids are now thought to have used their large teeth--namely, slicing open the jugular and throat and causing a bleed-out). There are some who advocate the use of the claws as essentially "crampons", too. (I myself--mind, strictly as an amateur dino buff who likes to read the literature on such things--would think the famous "Fighting Velociraptor/Protoceratops" find might well point to dromies "going for the jugular", so to speak.
4) I'd have liked to see more discussion on the debate on "predatory flocking" in dromaeosaurs (for a while, we thought Deinonychus hunted in packs, then some thought they mostly mobbed over kills, and now evidence (namely in the form of the new dromie tracks out of China) that suggest they flocked after all. Seeing as the new dromaeosaur tracks have only recently been published, though, that's understandable why that hasn't made it into print.
5) Yucky interactive two-fingered T. rex. (We know now, and have known for about three months running, that tyrannosaurs--including T. rex herself--had three fingers. Yes, the new digit is a teeny-tiny dinosaurian "pinky", but still...) Again, something that should've been corrected pre-publication, but this could well be me being a crotchety old bastard about the thing :D
6) Wot, no theriziniosaurs? (Yes, I'd have liked to see much more treatment of these wonderfully strange theropods, which seem to have been dinosaurian ground sloth analogues. :D Theropods which regained functionally four-toed feet, went to herbivory, and had huge guts and shaggy dinofuzz that (until the Liaoning fossils) were thought to be everything from chimaeras to abberant sauropods--if that's not a "bizarre dinosaur", I don't know what is!)
That rant over the interactive section completed... :D (Sorry, but yes, I *do* tend to rant over Bad Dromaeosaur Depictions from groups that should know better. I find it personally offensive)
As for Deinocherius, I think the reason they're putting feathers on the thing is due to the assumption it's an ornithomimid; as best as I am aware of, the jury was not yet out on what the heck Deinocherius was, and "ornithomimid" is but one of a number of possible interpretations. (If it's an ornithomimid, it's generally considered to be a rather primitive one, and hence there've been problems in clearly placing it cladistically.) Based on just arms and a few ribs and vertebrae, it's hard to say for sure--that's pretty much the situation we had with theriziniosaurs till recently, too.
Now, if there have been new fossils turning up of this beast that better sort out its place as an ornithomimid, I'd be interested in hearing about that! :D
And even then, I'd think that ornithomimids would have more feathers or at least more "dinofuzz", at that :D
It wouldn't have been visible.
Still, I think it's pretty sad that they can't hire actual artists to do their shit. Or at least consult a bit.
Sounds like a Nat. Geographic worth buying! And wouldn't you know it--I'll be right next to Boarders Books tonight! I didn't especially like the wallpaper reconstructions. Too computery. Where did the days of pen & ink recontructions go? Why does everything have to be CGI?
And I can't WAIT for more info on Deinocheirus.
Tyrannosaurids did NOT have three fingers. Get over it.
The "announcement" was nothing new: we've known tyrannosaurids had metacarpal IIIs since 1914. A metacarpal is not a finger, and would not protrude out of the palm of the hand: it IS the palm of the hand.
Thanks for the heads up, Laelaps. I'll be looking forward to getting my hands on it real soon.
I did browse through a copy at the bookstore just yesterday, and I do miss the good ol' traditional pen-and-paper art by the likes of James Gurney, John Gurche and Mark Hallett. Dracorex is nicely done, and Masiakasaurus too, but the rest are just... meh.
Anon; I know Darren dropped a hint a while back, too, so I'll keep my eyes open. I agree thought; the feathers on the dinosaurs are terrible.
dogemporer; 1) The article in Science you mention was a bit too brief for my tastes and the models were probably done before it came out. It would be nice to have things completely up to date, but it's probably just a matter of timing.
2) I know there's been a lot of complaints about the position of the arms in these dinosaurs. It's not that big of an issue to me, but something to consider nonetheless.
3) I think the "crampon" argument is pretty interesting. I don't doubt that the claws could have done slashing damage, but I think the mechanical study you allude to showed something interesting that the flesh below the wound the claw makes becomes compressed, making it hard to withdraw the claw. In the case of the "Fighting Dinosaurs" it may be that the Protoceratops attacked the Velociraptor in defense (it wasn't necessarily predation), so I don't think the position of the claws/limbs in this specimen can say whether the claws were slashers or "crampons" during predation.
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5) I haven't seen the three-fingered Tyrannosaurus paper, only the abstract, but at best I think it reflects an atavism. Even if this one individual had three fingers it doesn't mean that all Tyrannosaurus did or that all tyrannosaurids did. If anything I think the fossil is valuable, if there really is a third finger, in showing variation and possibly a developmental mutation; I see no reason to think that Tyrannosaurus or its close relatives had three fingers.
6) Yea, the omission of therizinosaurs seems odd, especially given the amount of genera that have come to light on both sides of the Pacific in recent years.
As for Deinocherius, I think it's an ornithomimid, but I'll be curious to see what might be announced in the near future about it. A more interesting question, though, is why so many theropods that were small grew to such gigantic proportions in Asia.
As for the rest, I'm pretty disappointed with this computer generated stuff too. The "Sea Monsters" issue from two years ago was pretty good, but I would much prefer actual artwork to all this CGI junk (the theropods look terrible, especially Carcharadontosaurus and Afrovenator). Maybe I'm just spoiled by my current reading material though; Douglas Henderson's work in Dawn of the Dinosaurs is mind-blowing, IMO the closest thing there is to actual photographs from the Triassic.
Brian, I don't think the problem is with CGI as much as with the fact it is seen as a way of speeding up artistry. If artists spent as much time and effort on CGI pieces, we'd have some real beasts on our hands.
I agree that the NG illustrations are hardly up to modern standards of the likes of Varner, Henderson, Paul, Marshall, Skrepnick, Rey, etc., etc. A real shame. Back in the day, they used to find the top paleoillustrators out there.
Honestly, I don't think the problem is so much that it's CG, but that it's really, really shitty CG. I went to college to do 3D modeling and animation, and I can tell you these models are simply terrible, especially in the way they're rigged and weighted. Half the theropods and sauropods featured have legs that bend at mid-thigh because...it doesn't really look like the artists even modeled thighs. And the Velociraptor's hair effects are a complete nightmare, as apparently the artists had no clue how to actually pick what geometry the hair goes into (seeing as there's hair growing out of the claws and all...).
I mean honestly, I've hashed out dinosaur models for my student portfolio under incredibly tight deadlines, and short of the texturing (which I'm no good at, anyway), I know I did a better job than these people and I don't think I've had half as much actual experience as they have.
Not to take anything away from traditional art, but CG done right can be amazing. Unfortunately, hardly anybody ever bothers to track down artists that can in fact do CG right.