dinosaurs
laelaps | June 16, 2008If you were to ask someone walking along the street what a fossil is, they'd probably tell you that fossils are the bones of ancient creatures that have turned into stone (or something similar). This isn't wrong, prehistoric bones that have been replaced by minerals are certainly fossils, but bones are not the only kind of fossils. Fossils are any trace of prehistoric life found in the strata of the earth, from the bones of vertebrates to the shells of brachiopods to body impressions. Within the last category footprints and trackways are abundant trace fossils, and a new paper published in…
laelaps | June 13, 2008[Note: I know I'm about a month late coming to this one, but it still provided for some good blog fodder. It seems that the initial response at Pharyngula ended up changing the summary I discuss [see comments section], and that's definitely a good thing. The show has also been pushed back to July, it seems. Rather than scrap the post due to relative irrelevancy, I'll leave it up as I think it still speaks to some continuing problems in science communication.]
About a month or so ago I was contacted by someone from the History Channel about where to find some good images of prehistoric life on…
laelaps | June 12, 2008A cast of the skull of Yangchuanosaurus. Photographed May 18, 2008 at the Delaware Museum of Natural History.
laelaps | June 11, 2008When I was 7 almost every smooth, oval stone was a dinosaur egg. I would spent hours in my grandparent's backyard hacking away at the dirt knowing that there just had to be a Triceratops or a Tyrannosaurus just beneath the surface. (I even got in trouble once for trying to clear out some of the tiny maple seedlings with a hatchet that I found in the shed.) I never found anything, but the hunt for fossils was a helluva lot of fun. My interest in paleontology waned a little as I got older, but I thankfully have rediscovered that interest and aspire to be the "dinosaur hunter" I felt like as I…
laelaps | June 11, 2008
When I wrote about the new sauropod Futalognkosaurus dukei last October, I noted that the authors of the paper describing the animal also included a brief summary of the other animals found nearby. Remains of crocodiles, fish, and pterosaurs provided some clues as to the paleoecology of the area about 90 million years ago, but one of the big surprises was a big honkin' claw from Megaraptor. At first the remains of Megaraptor were thought to represent a coelurosaur, but the complete hand has shown that it is probably either a spinosaurid or carcharodontosaurid. A recent study of the hand,…
laelaps | June 10, 2008A cast of Tuojiangosaurus on display at the Delaware Museum of Natural History. Photographed May 18, 2008.
laelaps | May 30, 2008Finding old technical literature can be maddeningly difficult. There are many important papers that are not readily available as journals have gone under or access to those publications is limited despite the research being so old that copyright no longer applies, but thankfully there is a move to make older work more freely available. One such effort, just launched, is The Theropod Archives, a collection of classic papers and links to more recent ones. My hard drive has already become saturated with the available material and I'm sure there's more to come, so make sure you keep checking back…
laelaps | May 27, 2008Paleo-artist Michael SkrepnickIt is difficult for me to pick up a book about dinosaurs and not find some gorgeous artwork by artist Michael Skrepnick gracing the pages, if not the cover, of the book. He has created beautiful restorations of the distant past for Nature, National Geographic, Project Exploration, and many books about prehistoric life, making him one of the most hard-working and well-known paleo-illustrators around today. (For those who have been itching to see some of his new artwork, Michael has some good news for you. His website is going to be rebuilt and stocked up with new…
laelaps | May 21, 2008 When I think about taphonomy, the science that studies what happens to an organism after death (often summed up as "the laws of burial"), my thoughts most immediately turn to large scavengers, wind, and water. When an elephant dies on the African savanna, for instance, the carcass is sure to attract carnivores that will strip some of the flesh from the bones and depending on the location of the body parts of it may or may not end up being preserved. It's easier to ignore the chemical changes and smaller organisms that contribute to the breakdown of a carcass, but the action of these…
laelaps | May 19, 2008[Note: I believe I have all the entries that have been submitted for this edition of The Boneyard. If yours is missing please let me know asap and I will put it in immediately.]
Early Saturday morning, before the sun burned off the last bit of moisture left by the previous night's rainstorm, my wife and I struck off for the beach of Cape Henlopen State Park. In May and June, when the tide is high and the moon is full, horseshoe crabs (Limulus polyphemus) crawl out of the surf to spawn. Not all of them make it back to the water, however, and the beach was littered with slowly drying dead…
laelaps | May 17, 2008
Blake Stacey has a review of The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing that is, simply put, and unalloyed pleasure to read. Indeed, it's so good that I have only two alternatives; try to improve my own reviews or commission Blake to start writing more of them!
Michael has the scoop about a Royal Society podcast about the "true Darwin." Even during his own time Darwin's views were sometimes twisted or misrepresented, and it is certainly important to ask the question "Which Charles Darwin are we talking about?" Have a listen, and then why not pick up On the Origin of Species or The Descent of…
laelaps | May 15, 2008
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…
laelaps | May 13, 2008Our 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.
I should probably preface my remarks by…
laelaps | May 13, 2008Since I've got a bit of studying to do for my osteology exam, here's some, erm, "vintage" television to keep things going here. It's an episode of Batman called "How to Hatch a Dinosaur";
laelaps | May 9, 2008Not only does the commercial dare to mention evolution, but it also features a prominent paleontologist and (gasp) some actual science. I have no idea whether it has been broadcast in the U.S., but I would guess not;
laelaps | May 8, 2008The articulated skeleton of Gorgosaurus (AMNH 5428) found in the Belly River Formation near the Red Deer River, Alberta, Canada. From Matthew & Brown 1923.In 1913, an American Museum of Natural History expedition led by Barnum Brown (with P.C. Kaisen and George Sternberg as assistants) searched the Cretaceous Belly River Formation in Alberta, Canada for dinosaurs. Although there had been an expedition to the same area the year before, the 1913 trip yielded "more exhibition material," including the articulated skeleton of Gorgosaurus*. When it arrived in New York it was prepared by Kaisen…