paleontology
laelaps | February 27, 2008By now most of you are probably familiar that this blog takes its name from a tyrannosauroid dinosaur originally named Laelaps by E.D. Cope but changed to Dryptosaurus by O.C. Marsh when it was discovered that the name Laelaps was preoccupied by a kind of mite. According to a taxonomic note in the latest issue of the Journal of Paleontology, a similar change-up is now in order, this time involving the ceratopsian dinosaurs Diceratops (Lull, 1905) and Microceratops (Bohlin, 1953). As it turns out, both Diceratops and Microceratops were originally applied to insects in the order hymenoptera (…
laelaps | February 27, 2008Update: You can get a look at some fossils and diagrams from the University of Oslo team here.
In 2006 the BBC ran an article about a team of scientists from the University of Oslo that uncovered a "treasure trove" of Jurassic ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and pliosaurs, including an extremely large pliosaur informally dubbed "the Monster." According to a follow-up report released today, the "Monster" (it is still awaiting formal description) is the largest pliosaur yet known, estimated as being 20% larger than the famous Kronosaurus.
Although the team initially hoped that the skeleton would be…
laelaps | February 26, 2008You may recall how I blogged about Norman Silberling's inappropriate comments involving Aetogate the other day, specifically his tacit charge that there's a conspiracy of young paleontologists who are out to get Spencer Lucas for some unknown reason. If you're one of those wretched un- or under-emplyed paleontologists, though, you can proclaim it to the world with some new t-shirts made by ReBecca ("Dinochick") available through her Cafepress store.
[Hat-tip to the Ethical Palaeontologist]
laelaps | February 25, 2008Amanda's got the latest edition of The Boneyard up over at her blog; check it out, and remember that the next iteration will be right here at Laelaps on March 8. (Given that the film 10,000 B.C. will be out that weekend, it would be cool if we could have a Pleistocene theme.)
Elsewhere in the blogosphere, two of my colleagues have picked up on the continuing aetosaur controversy. Dr. Free-Ride and Dinochick have both posted their thoughts on the ongoing investigation. You can keep up with the story via Mike Taylor's frequently updated website about the case.
laelaps | February 23, 2008
Henry de la Beche's "Duria Antiquior," an image of the carnage that must have taken place on the shores of the ancient Dorset.
Years ago, when touring dino-mation exhibits were all the rage, my parents took me to "see the dinosaurs" at the Morris Museum. I was terrified. I had seen dinosaur skeletons before, but the moving, roaring beasts sent me scurrying around the corner, peeking around it as if from a blind. My father walked up to a Triceratops and touched it to show me I was safe, but even though I was so excited about seeing dinosaurs I could not contain my fear when confronted with…
laelaps | February 23, 2008Last month I blogged about the ongoing ethics case in which paleontologist Spencer Lucas and several of his colleagues were accused of claim-jumping research from a number of individuals and institutions involving ancient archosaurs called aetosaurs. Mike Taylor has been keeping track and all the developments on an exhaustively-detailed website, and some of the latest news is most disconcerting.
On February 21, 2008, it became known that the Department of Cultural Affairs was holding a third inquiry into the case, an article published that very day in the Albuquerque Journal announcing the…
grrlscientist | February 23, 2008tags: Evolution: What The Fossils Say And Why it Matters, fossils, dinosaurs, creationism, Donald Prothero, book review
I was in love with dinosaurs when I was a kid, and I still am. It was my love for dinosaurs and fossils and especially my time spent learning the minutea of the evolutionary history of horses that quickly brought me into direct conflict with the church that I was being inculcated into when I was very young and innocent. Subsequently, I had to learn about evolution in small niblets on the sly. But I wish I had been able to read paleontologist Don Prothero's beautifully…
gregladen | February 22, 2008In 1833, Darwin spent a fair amount of time on the East Coast of South America, including in the Pampas, where he had access to abundant fossil material. Here I'd like to examine his writings about some of the megafauna, including Toxodon, Mastodon, and horses, and his further considerations of biogeography and evolution.
In the vicinity of Rio Tercero...
Hearing ... of the remains of one of the old giants, which a man told me he had seen on the banks of the Parana, I procured a canoe, and proceeded to the place. Two groups of immense bones projected in bold relief from the perpendicular…
clock | February 22, 2008I was lucky to be in the car at the right time this morning to catch a story about Mastodons in Manhattan: A Botanical Puzzle, i.e., why honey locust trees in NYCity have long thorns - an interesting story (click on the link and click on "Listen Now") which, among others, features our blog-friend Carl Buell.
laelaps | February 20, 2008Amanda is already far more prepared than I am for the next Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting that will be held in Cleveland, Ohio this coming October. I'm hoping to be there, but somehow I get the feeling that my own experience is going to be a relatively last-minute mad dash to get everything together (if I'm able to scrounge enough money to get me there and back to begin with). I'm pretty optimistic that I'll make it, although I'm sure I'll feel like an extremely little fish in a pond filled with Dunkleosteus.
gregladen | February 18, 2008Charles Darwin wrote a book called Geological Observations on South America. Since Fitzroy needed to carry out intensive and extensive coastal mapping in South America, and Darwin was, at heart, a geologist more than anything else (at least during the Beagle's voyage), this meant that Darwin would become the world's expert on South American geology. Much of The Voyage is about his expeditions and observations. Part of this, of course, was figuring out the paleontology of the region.
Bahia Blanca is a port at the northern end of Patagonia. Chapter V of The Voyage begins:
THE Beagle…
laelaps | February 17, 2008
The American mastodon (Mammut americanum), illustrated in one of Cuvier's memoirs.
I've had a bit of a rough weekend, but I did read something last night that brought a smile to my face. I was reading Paul Semonin's American Monster and I came across an unintentionally amusing quote from Thomas Jefferson, taken from one of Jefferson's letters to Willson Peale. The subject of the letter was what the name of the animal previously known as the "American incognitum," "Ohio animal," or mammoth should be called, Peale being unsure about a new moniker even though Georges Cuvier had shown the…
gregladen | February 16, 2008<-- If you can tell me what this thing is, I'd be much obliged.
The Boneyard. This is approximately the 13th installment of The Boneyard Web Carnival, dated February 9th, plus or minus a week or so. In paleontology, we do not concern ourselves with trifles such as exact dates.
The Boneyard web carnival is about fossils, and bones, paleontology and taphonomy. It is about anything boney except actual boneyards, although actual boneyards would be of interest as well because we are a morbid, bone loving bunch.
The previous edition of the boneyard was at The Dragon's Tales. Check the…
laelaps | February 16, 2008
The fiberglass skull of Barnum Brown's second Tyrannosaurus rex fitted on the revised mount now standing on the 4th floor of the AMNH.
I guess it's appropriate that I just posted the trailer to the new Indiana Jones film, because as soon as I heard that there's a Tyrannosaurus up for auction on eBay my first thought was "That belongs in a museum!" I'm sure that some of you readers are more familiar with this particular case than I am, but according to the eBay listing the individual specimen is about 20% complete, primarily consisting of almost half the skull material, some leg bones,…
laelaps | February 15, 2008When I wrote about the new species of predatory dinosaur, Carcharodontosaurus iguidensis, this past December, I made a note of how interesting it was that in Cretaceous Gondwana there seems to be a certain triumvirate of predatory dinosaur groups. According to the data presented in Brusatte and Sereno (2007), remains of spinosaurids, carcharodontosaurids, and abelisauroids have been found near each other in various locations in a range of Cretaceous-aged strata on the African continent, perhaps reflecting a guild structure like that of extant mammalian African carnivores.
Approximately 95…
grrlscientist | February 13, 2008tags: researchblogging.org, evolution, bird-dinosaur split, dinosaurs, birds, rocks-versus-clocks, fossil record, molecular clocks
The first feathered dinosaur fossil found in China -- Sinosauropteryx.
The feathers can be seen in the dark line running along the specimen's back.
Image: Mick Ellison, AMNH [larger view]
There is a lot of controversy among scientists regarding when modern birds first appeared. The current fossil record suggests that modern birds appeared approximately 60-65 million years ago when the other lineages of dinosaurs (along with at least half of all terrestrial…
laelaps | February 13, 2008Archosaurs have been making a lot of news over the past day or so. First, there's the diminutive new pterosaur Nemicolopterus crypticus, a toothless Early Cretaceous form that may have been arboreal. As far as dinosaurs go, the hadrosaur Velafrons coahuilensis was described in the December issue of Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, but it's just now getting some time in the limelight.
Paul Sereno and Stephen L. Brusatte, fresh from reporting a new species of Carcharodontosaurus, hit us with a double-dose of new theropods in the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, describing the…
clock | February 13, 2008Karl Mogel interviews Neil Shubin. Paleontology makes testable predictions, with cool results.
laelaps | February 12, 2008
Before I knew very much at all about ancient marine reptiles, I had only encountered two names for the long-necked plesiosaurs (Plesiosaurus & Elasmosaurus) and had assumed that the incredibly long skeleton hanging from the 4th floor ceiling of the AMNH was a representative of the latter. I wasn't right, but I wasn't far off; it was a skeleton of Thalassomedon haningtoni, and elasmosaurid and close relative of Elasmosaurus.
While not scientifically accurate, today's photo reminded me of Will Cuppy's sketch of "The Plesiosaur" collected in How to Become Extinct (just remember that this is…
gregladen | February 10, 2008A very important and truly wonderful paper in Nature described a tour-de-force analysis of the Mammalian Evolutionary Record, and draws the following two important conclusions:
The diversification of the major groups of mammals occurred millions of years prior to the KT boundary event; and
The further diversification of these groups into the modern pattern of mammalian diversity occurred millions of years later than the KT boundary event.
[This is a repost from gregladen.com]
The KT boundary event is the moment in time when a ca. 10 km. diameter object going very fast hit the earth in the…