Dinochick Blogs

Happy Steno Day

2012-01-10T18:00:00.000-07:00

I hope everyone had a good day and remembered to celebrate the 374th birthday of Nicolas Steno. Google celebrated his birthday with a good doodle:

Thanks to Steve for the heads up on the doodle. © ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

Merry Christmas everyone!

2011-12-25T01:10:00.000-07:00

Happy birthday to Jimmy Buffett as well. Hope everyone has a great Christmas!

Thanks to T. Holz for the heads up on this gem!

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

Tragedy #363

2011-12-18T22:38:00.002-07:00

Link

Job openings: internships, summer field work and even a few "real" jobs

2011-12-01T22:36:00.001-07:00

For all those students and recent graduates who are going to be looking for work this summer, now is the time to start paying attention (there are even a few "real" jobs showing up). Jobs and internships have started to be advertised and are often popping up until around February/March, so keep your eyes peeled. Check the SVP jobs page for updates as well.

Here are a few that are currently open:

2012 GeoCorp Positions (applications due by February 1, 2012) -

Badlands National Park (Interior, SD): Field Paleontologist
Badlands National Park (Interior, SD): Quarry Paleontologist
Dinosaur National Monument (Jensen, UT): Field Paleontologist (2 Positions)
Dinosaur National Monument (Jensen, UT): Information Technology / Paleontologist
Great Basin National Park (Baker, NV): Field Paleontologist (2 Positions)
Bryce Canyon National Park (Bryce Canyon, UT): Field Paleontologist / Geomorphologist / Geologist
Wind Cave National Park (Hot Springs, SD): Field Paleontologist / Preparator / Curator
John Day Fossil Beds National Monument (Kimberly, OR): Geologist / Paleontologist
John Day Fossil Beds National Monument (Kimberly, OR): Geologist / Paleontologist [Guest Scientist] *
Grand Canyon National Park (South Rim, AZ): Paleontologist
Denali National Park and Preserve (AK): Paleontologist / GIS Technician (2 positions)
Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument (Florissant, CO): Paleontology / Museum Intern (2 Positions)
Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument (Florissant, CO): Paleontology Intern [Diversity Internship] **
Guadalupe Mountains National Park (Salt Flat, TX): Paleontology Technician
Fossil Butte National Monument (Kemmerer, WY): Public Education Geology / Paleontology (2 Positions)
Fossil Butte National Monument (Kemmerer, WY): Paleontology Museum Technician [Diversity Internship] **
White Sands National Monument (Alamogordo, NM): Field Paleontologist [Diversity Internship] **

Petrified Forest National Park
Petrified Forest National Park in northeastern Arizona currently has a position open for a GS-7 Physical Science Technician. This is a full-time seasonal position that will start in May of 2012 and continuing through August of 2012 (dates are flexible for students). This position will be the lead for a field based program working in exposures of the Upper Triassic Chinle Formation, including intensive prospecting as well as excavation of vertebrate fossils from existing quarries. As the lead this person will oversee all aspects of field work including daily supervision of student interns. This position will work closely with the Park Paleontologist to successfully carryout and document this work. Interested applicants should have experience in the collection of vertebrate fossils, especially successful construction and removal of field jackets as well as the willingness/ability to supervise this type of work. This is a U. S. federal government position open to all U.S. citizens. The incumbent must possess a valid U. S. drivers license. This job also requires the successful completion of a background check as currently required for all U. S. Federal positions.

For more information and to apply please see the current job announcement at www.usajobs.gov
(http://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/303892400). Please review all details especially the section on "How to Apply".

The position will close on December 9, 2011.

The Wyoming Dinosaur Center

The Wyoming Dinosaur Center is looking for undergraduate and graduate students interested in paleontology, biology, geology and education to help with summer programs. Responsibilities will include excavation of dinosaur quarries, tours, cleaning fossils in the prep lab, assist in the molding and casting lab, and participation in the Dig-for-a-Day and Kids Dig programs. No paleontology field experience is necessary but preferred. Preference will also be given to those with an interest in Morrison Fm. fauna and associated paleoenvironments in the Big Horn Basin. Housing is provided. Valid drivers license is required. Training will begin May 24th, please send resume. For more information contact Angie Guyon at angie@wyodino.org

"REAL" JOB ALERTS:

GS-7 Museum Technician (Fossil Preparator, permanent full time), Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument: Primary duties willbe preparation of Pliocene-aged mammals from the Hagerman HorseQuarry. This position closes December 9th and can be found on USAJOBS.
Assistant or Associate Professor in Paleontology, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology - The Department of Geology and Geological Engineering at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology invites applications for a nine-month tenure track position in paleontology at the Assistant or Associate Professor level. The successful applicant should have a robust background in analytical paleontology, such as geochemical applications in paleontology, and will teach courses and advise student research at the undergraduate and graduate level. He or she is expected to develop an externally funded research program that complements current departmental research strengths. The department offers BS, MS and Ph.D. degrees with emphases in geology or paleontology, including an MS in Paleontology. The Museum of Geology’s paleontology collections, consisting of 500,000+ specimens, are housed in the James E. Martin Paleontology Research Laboratory. A Ph.D. in geology or a closely related field is required at the time of appointment. Nine-month salary range will be commensurate with background and experience. Application deadline: February 1, 2012 [link]
Vertebrate Paleontologist: Assistant or Associate Professor, Fort Hays State University - Fort Hays State University is seeking a Vertebrate Paleontologist at the Assistant or Associate Professor level (tenure track) beginning June 11, 2012. This position is a joint appointment between the Department of Geosciences (0.5 FTE) and the Sternberg Museum of Natural History (0.5 FTE).... Preference will be given to individuals with knowledge of vertebrate fossils from the Late Cretaceous or Late Cenozoic of the Great Plains....Application deadline: January 15, 2012 [link]
Earth Sciences Collection Manager, University of Alaska Museum - The Earth Science Department at the University of Alaska Museum in Fairbanks seeks a full time Collections Manager to help oversee its paleontological and geological collection. The Collections Manager’s responsibilities include the day-to-day care and organization of the collection, managing collections data using a computerized database (Arctos), specimen preparation and conservation, supervising students and volunteers, administering loans, and public contact.... The minimum qualifications are a Master’s degree in a related field (paleontology, biology, geology, museum science) or equivalent training and experience. Preference is given to applicants who have are familiar with using a relational database, and have at least two years experience conducting fossil preparation.To view a full position description or apply for the job, go to: www.uakjobs.com/applicants/Central?quickFind=75729 Application deadline: December 15, 2011 [link]

Good luck to all the applicants!

* This position is classified as "Guest Scientist" positions. This position generally requires a higher level of qualifications and may involve a longer project and a higher stipend. Past GeoCorps participants can ONLY apply to Guest Scientist positions. Those who have not participated in GeoCorps before can also apply. To see details and eligibility requirements, please go to the About GeoCorps page.

** The following positions are part of the GeoCorps Diversity Internship Program and the GeoCorps American Indian Internship Program. To see details and eligibility requirements, please go to the GeoCorps Diversity Internship home page and the GeoCorps American Indian Internship home page.

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

BLM fun + job

2011-10-16T12:54:00.001-06:00

And now you too can be part of all the BLM fun! A full-time Paleontologist job has been listed for the Billings, Montana office. You know you want to be humming the BLM rap while working in that office. Apply now!

Thanks to Darrin P. for the heads up on the video.

New Early Cretaceous Dinosaur Tracks from Southwestern Arkansas

2011-10-05T23:45:00.002-06:00

Earlier this summer some new tracks, most notably sauropods and theropods, were found in southwestern Arkansas, in the same gypsum quarry where other tracks were located in the 1980's. Back then, Jeff Pittman had been doing some work at the quarry and often was displeased with the potholes he had to drive across every day. In late 1983 he and Dave Gillette confirmed that the "potholes" were actually thousands of sauropod tracks. The tracks were destroyed the next year. An account of that story can be found here.

Large theropod track in the Cedar Mountain Formation near Moab, Utah

The large theropod tracks at the Arkansas site look very similar to a new track series near Moab near the base of Ruby Ranch Member of Cedar Mountain Formation (picture right). This site is currently being developed into a protected interpreted trail by the BLM. Stay tuned for more information on this site as it becomes available. The site is being worked on by Brent Breithaupt (BLM regional paleontologist), Neffra Matthews (BLM), and Martin Lockley (CU Denver - retired). It should prove to be a very interesting site once it is described. Work is planned to compare this site to the Arkansas site.

Working at the Cedar Mountain track site last summer, September 9, 2009
(l-r: Me, Scott Foss [BLM], Neffra Matthews & Brent Breithaupt)

The story below is the report from the University of Arkansas, my alma mater, who worked most recently on the Arkansas tracks. I was not involved in the work at this site. If you have any specific questions please direct them to Steve Boss.

Large Field of Dinosaur Tracks Uncovered in Southwest Arkansas
High-tech and traditional techniques used to study footprints
Wednesday, October 05, 2011 [link]

This July 12, 2011, photo provided by the University
of Arkansas shows tracks from a three-toed
dinosaur that researchers are studying
in Southwest Arkansas. (AP Photo/
University of Arkansas, Russell Cothren)

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The discovery of a large field of dinosaur tracks in Arkansas has researchers busy using cutting-edge technology and traditional techniques to learn all that they can about the animals and environment that existed there 120 million years ago.

The track site, found in southwest Arkansas, covers an area of about two football fields and contains the fossilized tracks of several species and tracks from multiple animals of the same species, some of which have never been previously documented in Arkansas. The site will help researchers learn not only about the creatures that once roamed through the area, but also about the climate during the Early Cretaceous period 115 to 120 million years ago.

“The quality of the tracks and the length of the trackways make this an important site,” said Stephen K. Boss, who led the National Science Foundation-funded project. Based on the rock in which the footprints were found, researchers have a good idea of what the climate would have been like.

“Picture an environment much like that of the shores of the Persian Gulf today. The air temperature was hot. The water was shallow and very salty,” Boss said. “It was a harsh environment. We’re not sure what the animals were doing here, but clearly they were here in some abundance.”

The most dramatic tracks found, those of a three-toed dinosaur, measure about two feet long by a foot wide. The researchers believe the footprints might belong to Acrocanthosaurus atokensis, one of the largest predators ever to walk the earth. The site also contains the giant prints of sauropods, large, long-necked plant-eating dinosaurs such as Pleurocoelus and Paluxysaurus. Other prints pepper the site as well, but it will take scientists some time to determine what other creatures might have walked through that area.

“Through tracks, we can learn all sorts things about dinosaur biomechanics and behavior,” said Brian Platt of the University of Kansas. “Dinosaur bones can be dragged away by animals or swept out to sea. But we know that about 120 million years ago, dinosaurs walked right through here.”

Thanks to a fast-track grant from the National Science Foundation, the University of Arkansas office of research and economic development and the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, a team of researchers spent two weeks studying the site, which is on private property. In addition to chisels, hand-held brooms and plaster, some scientists brought along their computers. Jackson Cothren and Malcolm Williamson, researchers from the department of geosciences and the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies at the university, documented the tracks using LiDAR, short for “light detection and ranging.” They used two different instruments to map the site.

First, they used a Z+F Imager 5006i mounted on a cherry picker. The imager is a phase-based scanner that emits a constant beam of laser light, which is swept across the landscape to measure and record up to 500,000 points per second.

The second unit, used to record an overview of the site from the ridge above, is a Leica ScanStation C10. This time-of-flight scanner incorporates discrete pulses of laser light at a rate of 50,000 per second, each recording a point in space. Depending on the path of a given laser pulse, up to four return pulses are recorded by the instrument's receiver. The location where each LiDAR return pulse originated is computed, allowing the researchers to study a three-dimensional “point cloud” representing the tracks.

By using LiDAR, the researchers will be able to view a highly accurate map of the site’s tracks and take detailed measurements of the height, width and depth of individual tracks as well as measurements of the trackways. These measurements will help them learn details about the animals’ identities, movements and behavior.

While computer imagery can give an overview of the dinosaurs, rock samples from the site can offer clues to climate.

“Because we see footprints here, we know that this surface was at one time exposed to the elements,” said Celina Suarez, a postdoctoral researcher at Boise State University who will be joining the faculty at the University of Arkansas in the fall of 2012. This exposure means that scientists can learn information about the frequency of rain and amount of evaporation that affected this site 120 million years ago. Using this site and others, they can reconstruct a regional paleoclimate during the Early Cretaceous period, which may help them make predictions about Earth’s future climate.

“This site will add to the knowledge of both the animals and climate of the Early Cretaceous,” Boss said. “Scientists will be studying these data for many years.”

Other researchers involved with the project include geosciences master’s candidate Terryl Daniels; senior geosciences major and Honors College student Alex Hamlin; junior geosciences major Ryan Shell; Joann Kvamme, coordinator for the environmental dynamics program; and Kenneth Kvamme, professor of anthropology, all at the University of Arkansas; and Greg Ludvigson of the Kansas Geological Survey.

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster, University of Arkansas story from here

Fruita Friday 8

2011-07-01T14:09:00.001-06:00

Sadly this piece of art is no longer with us. It was originally painted on the back of a downtown building but was removed in ~2008(?).

Photos from "Roadside Dinosaurs/RoadsideArchitecture.com"

Former Location: 122 East Aspen Street, facing the Fruita Fitness Center.

Fruita Friday 7

2011-06-24T13:51:00.000-06:00

Not really art, but how often can you stand on the corner of the Jurassic and the Cretaceous??

Location: Corner of Jurassic Avenue and Cretaceous Street, in front of the Comfort Inn and behind El Tapatio Restaurant.

View Larger Map
© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

Barbie's take on Evolution

2011-06-24T00:05:00.001-06:00

The Miss USA contestants were each asked if they thought evolution should be taught in school. I am surprised which states representatives were for it, and which states wanted "both sides" taught....Note that Miss California/Miss USA 2011 is in favor of evolution being taught in schools.

Thanks to my aunt for the heads up!

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

Fruita Friday 6

2011-06-17T13:39:00.001-06:00

Painting on the northeast side of a downtown Fruita building (artist unknown)

Location: The northeast corner of Mulberry and Aspen Streets.

View Larger Map
© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

RIP Patti Kane-Vanni

2011-06-13T23:41:00.012-06:00

After a long battle against cancer, we have lost one of our own ....

Artist

Explorer

Friend

Rest in Peace PaleoPatti

Services will be held at St Mathias Church in Bala Cynwyd at 11:00 AM on Wednesday.

Random Picture Monday

2011-06-13T00:30:00.000-06:00

In Delta, Colorado

Fruita Friday 5

2011-06-10T01:19:00.001-06:00

Grrrreta can be found in the Fruita City Circle. It was named by local school children in 2000 and she is decorated for Christmas with a giant Santa hat and the Grinch hanging out of her mouth.

Location: Fruita Park Circle (see map below)

View Larger Map
© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

McInnis Canyons Mygatt-Moore Quarry Gives Up Fossil Clues

2011-06-09T22:36:00.111-06:00

John and I have been continuing our research out at the Mygatt-Moore Quarry in western Colorado, and recently had a paper on one of our findings published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology in May.

Foster, John R. and Hunt-Foster, Rebecca K.(2011) 'New occurrences of dinosaur skin of two types (Sauropoda? and Dinosauria indet.) from the Late Jurassic of North America (Mygatt-Moore Quarry, Morrison Formation)', Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 31: 3, 717 — 721 DOI: 10.1080/02724634.2011.55741

We work each summer at this quarry under a paleontological permit from the Bureau of Land Management, which is located in the McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area (NCA), near the Colorado/Utah state line. “The national significance of the area's paleontological resources is one of the many reasons this special place was designated as a National Conservation Area,” said Katie Stevens, NCA Manager for the BLM’s Grand Junction Field Office. “With experts like John and ReBecca working in these quarries, we can recover and share this exciting and important scientific information with the public.” John is currently working under a scientific grant from the BLM to better understand the extent of the quarry and the conditions that made it such an ideal location for preserving fossils [details].

The first specimen was located by Jim Kirkland and his expedition to the quarry in 1993 (MWC 1903). A expedition member, Dan Libecap, discovered the second specimen (MWC 5537) in 2003. Two of our museum volunteers, Kay Fredette and Ray Bley, uncovered the most recent specimen (MWC 6718) in 2008.

Two of the three specimens (MWC 6718 & 5537) are possibly from sauropods, and we attributed the third specimen to Dinosauria indeterminate (MWC 1993). The two possible sauropod specimens represent the first occurrence in the Morrison Formation of preserved sauropod skin associated with abundant nearby specimens of Apatosaurus. They also show how similar the general structure of skin patterns within known Morrison diplodocids are.

Specimen MWC 6718 - carbonized sauropod? skin impression from the Mygatt-Moore Quarry. Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic) of Mesa County, Colorado. scale bar =5 cm

These discoveries were unique because the soft tissue associated with the skin was preserved as carbonaceous layers rather than as trace fossil impressions, yielding better information about skin pattern, scale size and scale shape. This discovery is is the sixth occurrence recovered from the Morrison Formation.

If you would like a PDF of this paper please contact me here or by email and I would be happy to share one with you. We plan for this paper to be the first of many that will be published over the next few years. Below is a complete bibliography of research from Mygatt-Moore Quarry that has been done to date (PDF's of select papers are also available):

Foster, John R. and Hunt-Foster, Rebecca K. (2011). New occurrences of dinosaur skin of two types (Sauropoda? and Dinosauria indet.) from the Late Jurassic of North America (Mygatt-Moore Quarry, Morrison Formation) Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 31 (3), 717-721 : 10.1080/02724634.2011.55741

Foster, John R. 2007. Jurassic West: The Dinosaurs of the Morrison Formation and Their World. Indian University Press, 416 pages.

Foster, John R; Hunt, ReBecca K; King, Lorin. 2007. Taphonomy of the Mygatt-Moore quarry, a large dinosaur bonebed in the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation of western Colorado. Geological Society of America, 2007 annual meeting, Abstracts with Programs - Geological Society of America, vol. 39, no. 6, pp.400

King, Lorin R; Foster, John. 2006. Under the feet of giants; an investigation of the small vertebrates at the Mygatt-Moore Quarry, Morrison Formation, western Colorado. Sixty-sixth annual meeting, Society of Vertebrate Paleontology; abstracts of papers. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, vol.26, no.3, Suppl., pp.85

King, Lorin R; Foster, John R; Scheetz, Rodney D. 2006. New pterosaur specimens from the Morrison Formation and a summary of the Late Jurassic pterosaur record of the Rocky Mountain region. In (editors - Foster, John R; Lucas, Spencer G) Paleontology and geology of the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation. Bulletin - New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, vol.36, pp.109-113

Foster, John. 2005. Evidence of size-classes and scavenging in the theropod Allosaurus fragilis at the Mygatt-Moore Quarry (Late Jurassic), Rabbit Valley, Colorado. Sixty-fifth annual meeting, Society of Vertebrate Paleontology; abstracts of papers. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, vol.25, no.3, Suppl., pp.59

King, Lorin; Foster, John; Scheetz, Rodney. 2005. Mesadactylus and other new pterosaur specimens from the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic) of western Colorado. Sixty-fifth annual meeting, Society of Vertebrate Paleontology; abstracts of papers. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, vol.25, no.3, Suppl., pp.78

Kirkland, James I. 1998. Morrison fishes. Modern Geology 22: 503-533

Tidwell, W.D., Britt, B.B., and Ash, S.R. 1998, Preliminary floral analysis of the Mygatt-Moore Quarry in the Jurassic Morrison Formation, west-central Colorado: Modern Geology 22: 341-378

Chin, K. and Kirkland, J.I. 1998. Probable herbivore coprolites from the Upper Jurassic Mygatt-Moore Quarry, Western Colorado. Modern Geology 23: 249-275.

Kirkland, J. and K. Carpenter. 1994. North America's first pre-Cretaceous ankylosaur (Dinosauria) from the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation of Western Colorado. Brigham Young University Geology Studies, 40:25-42.

Kirkland, James I; Armstrong, Harley J. 1992. Taphonomy of the Mygatt-Moore Quarry, middle Brushy Basin Member, Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic), western Colorado. Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, fifty-second annual meeting. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, vol. 12, no. 3, Suppl., pp.37A

Mygatt, Peter. 1991. The Mygatt-Moore Quarry, Rabbit Valley, Mesa County, Colorado. Pages 57-58 in (editor - Averett, Walter R.) Guidebook for dinosaur quarries and tracksite tour, western Colorado and eastern Utah. Grand Junction Geol. Soc., Grand Junction, CO

Random picture Monday

2011-06-06T11:58:00.000-06:00

Dinosaur, Colorado

Fruita Friday 4

2011-06-03T13:14:00.000-06:00

"Stegosaurus" bike rack

Location: 220 East Aspen Street, in front of Carquest Auto Parts

View Larger Map
© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

Looking for a job?

2011-06-02T00:03:00.002-06:00

Check out PaleoJobs.com. They currently have a few postings up and it seems to be a website that is kept up to date. At this point it seems to be a bit heavy in the geology side of jobs (not all paleo jobs), but if some bio- or museum people (even though there is a separate museum specific job site) submitted job postings they were aware of, it would be a good resource for everyone. And, yes, there is a facebook and twitter page.

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

Random picture Monday

2011-05-30T11:23:00.000-06:00

Murals at the new City of Kemmerer Training & Event Center (Wyoming).

Fruita Friday 3

2011-05-27T13:05:00.000-06:00

Ceratopsian bench, artist unknown

Location: Corner of South Plum Street and Highway 6 & 50, behind City Market.

Threadless Reprints

2011-05-26T01:12:00.002-06:00

3 classic Threadless styles have been reprinted. Get them while you still can!

Picket

Fossil Fuel

We're On the Same Level

Random picture Monday

2011-05-23T11:56:00.000-06:00

Welcome to Utah

Fruita Friday 2

2011-05-20T00:33:00.017-06:00

Ceratosaurus, the official city dinosaur of Fruita.

Location: Corner of East Aspen Street and North Park Square. It can be found in front of Christie Burns Photography at 122 E. Aspen Unit A and across the street from Turn the Page Used Book Store.

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The End of Days(?)

2011-05-17T00:29:00.000-06:00

It seems as if part of the US population thinks that the world is going to end this Saturday, May 21, 2011. Specifically, the rapture if going to happen and the whole earth is not going down until October 21th. But there is predicted to be serious earthquakes on Saturday [link]. Who knew all this time you could actually predict earthquakes. Too bad I will be in Nevada instead of a more tectonically stable area!

2011 AD—On May 21^st, Judgment Day will begin and the rapture (the taking up into heaven of God’s elect people) will occur at the end of the 23-year great tribulation. On October 21^st, the world will be destroyed by fire (7000 years from the flood; 13,023 years from creation). [link]

We even saw a convoy today of RV's covered in signs telling of the impending woe outside Price, Utah, heading east. Maybe they know something I don't?

So, how do you plan on spending your last days? Does this mean I do not have to pay back my credit card debts or student loans??! I guess some people have up till October 21st to decide what they will do, not that it will matter in the end. I will be at a friends wedding this Saturday. Should be interesting to see who is able to make it.

You??

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster [note: I am not trying to taunt anyone or questions anyones religious beliefs or lack there of. I am just curious what you would do if this situation were to happen, this Saturday or 2012 or 10 years from now....]

Random picture Monday

2011-05-16T11:00:00.001-06:00

Images from plaques in the floor of the new City of Kemmerer Training & Event Center (Wyoming).

Fruita Friday 1

2011-05-13T12:18:00.001-06:00

For some time now I have wanted to feature the Paleo Art found in the Grand Valley of Western Colorado, the City of Fruita particularly. This area of Colorado has a high concentration of artist and you can see the geology and paleontology of our area often reflected in the many art pieces produced and on display. Over the next few weeks I will feature different pieces of art and note where they can be found, in case you would ever like to stop and visit.

Week 1: "Dinosaur Diamond" by Gary L Hauschulz

Location: on the north side of East Aspen Street (near the corner of Mulberry Street), across the street from Aspen Street Coffee and a few doors down from Turn the Page Used Book Store.

View Larger Map

The Dinosaur Diamond also refers to the Dinosaur Diamond National Scenic Byway, of which Fruita/Grand Junction is the eastern corner of the Diamond.

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

Random picture Monday

2011-05-09T11:54:00.000-06:00

Random picture Monday

2011-05-02T11:52:00.000-06:00

Who knew dinosaurs had a religious affiliation!?

Friday Field Photo - what is it??

2011-03-25T23:43:00.001-06:00

We spent the day down by Gateway, Colorado, prospecting and looking at various tracks in the Chinle and Wingate Formations. While looking at a huge track slab I happened to see something weird hanging from a tree branch. I took these two photo of it (horrible lighting, apologies). Unfortunately we forgot the good camera at home, the ok camera at the hotel, and were only left with my cell phone, so that is what I used. Since it was so cool and not something I had ever seen, I thought I would share it and see if anyone else could guess what it is.

Any guesses?!?!? :-)

[edit: check out the comments...]

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

Pimp Your Ride

2011-03-13T00:10:00.000-07:00

A friend of ours got this first shirt for his birthday tonight. The great search that ensued to find it yielded the following results:

Raptor Bandit Shirt via TopatoCo for $17.50

DinoGirl, sadly not (yet?) available in grown-up sizes, via Jusami for $26 (the smallest shirt (and short sleeved at that!!), yet it cost the most. That blows. A black, long sleeve version is on sale for $19.99 however. And a boys version is on sale for $12.99. What gives?! Whey is the girl version more expensive?! I might have to make my own, affordable, version.)

Rodeosaur via uneetee for $19.99

Creation Dragons, paleoreligiology & Altoona

2011-03-04T23:23:00.000-07:00

LOL This is a good one:

You can buy it over at Headline Shirts.

The description of the shirt goes like this:

"Archaeologists with the group Creationists in Labcoats (CIL) said they have discovered caveman drawings in the remote town of Altoona, Kansas that confirm the coexistence of humans and dinosaurs some 6,000 years ago. What's more, they said the drawings prove that dinosaurs marched two-by-two, along with all the other animals, onto Noah's Ark.

"This discovery shatters more than a century's worth of so called scientific evidence," said expedition leader, Samuel Featherstone, who is a professor of paleoreligiology at CIL. "Dinosaurs - or 'Creation Dragons,' as they will henceforth be known - did not predate humans by some 200 million years. Rather, they walked with Adam and Eve and may have even had a hand in Jesus' crucifixion."

The news has forced scholars to completely rethink the size of Noah's Ark, which is now estimated to have been roughly the size of Alaska"

Thanks to Tom H. for the heads up.

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

Scelidosaurus now on display at the Dinosaur Discovery Track Site Museum in Saint George, Utah

2011-02-09T00:16:00.002-07:00

Today the Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm in Saint George, Utah, will unveil its newest exhibit - the first Scelidosaurus to ever be displayed in the Western Hemisphere! The museum will hold a unveiling of the specimen today, Wednesday, February 9, at 5 pm. Admission is free and refreshments will be served (all right, free food!). I caught up with Dr. Jerry Harris (director of paleontology at Dixie State College) yesterday to ask him some questions regarding this new display.

[RKHF]: What was the toughest part of the instillation and design of the new exhibit?

[JH]: Well, putting this exhibit together has been relatively easy for some pleasantly fortuitous reasons. Making signage was pretty simple because we're fortunate enough to have a really terrific poster plotter in the Science Department at Dixie State College; the biggest problem along those lines was bouncing drafts between people and collating comments from multiple people. That's the kind of thing that would be easier if everyone was consistently in the same place, which just wasn't feasible for various reasons. But as we get experience doing that kind of thing, it's getting easier!

The specimen itself was the biggest issue. For various political reasons, I won't get into some details, but getting the pieces of the replica assembled and put together in a way that can be exhibited safely and attractively without a lot of money or technical equipment and expertise (like welding) has been a bit of a challenge. As I write this, I have not seen the final product that was still being constructed yesterday [see picture below for final product]! And we'll have a second challenge along those lines when we move it to it's permanent home within the museum in late May/early June -- presently, it will be on a temporary, special exhibit devoted specifically to the animal in our designated temporary exhibit space, where it can have more associated signage and material than it will in its permanent space. Part of the challenge, both with the specimen and signage, was making it capable of being used in two different configurations of different sizes!

The new exhibit of Scelidosaurus at the Dinosaur Discovery Track Site Museum in Saint George. Photo © Jerry Harris.

One last challenge we had was trying to find enough physical material to display along with the replica. Spouting on endlessly about the animal in text is easy, but an exhibit full of signs but few objects isn't attractive. Finding relevant, physical objects to display with it was more difficult. We managed to get our hands on some other (invertebrate) fossils from the same locality that also produced Scelidosaurus (one is an ammonite from the same horizon; others are from slightly higher horizons), as well as a few models (toys, really) of Scelidosaurus that will be used in a display about how perceptions of the animal have changed over time, most recently because of this virtually complete specimen of which we now have a replica. I also have some other replicas of thyreophoran dinosaurs that I use in teaching here at the college, and those will be used in a display about later relatives of Scelidosaurus: one on stegosaurs, including a Stegosaurus skull, plate, and tail spike, and one on ankylosaurs, including skulls of Pawpawsaurus and Saichania (er, Minotaurosaurus) and a Saichania tail club. Lastly, we have some displays on why Scelidosaurus is relevant to our site, even though the animal itself hasn't been found here -- in this display, we'll have some of our Anomoepus tracks, which were made by early ornithischians, possible something like Scutellosaurus, which is about the only thyreophoran more primitive than Scelidosaurus (depending on how much traction you give to the hypothesis that Lesothosaurus is a basal thyreophoran and where Emausaurus fits).

[RKHF]: How will Scelidosaurus work into your current exhibit setup?

[JH]: In late May/Early June, when we move the replica to it's permanent home, it will be up at the top (for visitors, about the last area visited) of our exhibit space, which is an appropriate area to talk about what isn't preserved at our site but could easily have been represented in one form or another based on paleobiogeography and biostratigraphy. In other words, the visitors go through our museum and see how incredibly detailed is the "snapshot" of earliest Jurassic terrestrial life that is preserved here, but it's good to also impress that "detailed" doesn't mean "complete"! While we certainly hope to fill in some of the missing pieces with discoveries from our area, it's great to be able to bring in material from elsewhere, too, that complements our existing material in order to better educate our visitors. In this case, the donation makes it possible for them to see something that they'd have a very difficult time seeing otherwise -- the only other places that one could see this specimen are the Bristol Museum (where the original specimen is on temporary display) or the Charmouth Heritage Center in England and the natural history museum in Belfast, Ireland (both with twin replicas to ours). This is the only time Scelidosaurus has ever been displayed in the Western Hemisphere, or anywhere in the world outside the British Isles!

[RKHF]: How does Scelidosaurus fit in with the whole radiation of Ornithischians?

[JH]: That's a good question! Richard Butler has been working on this issue -- not specifically, but on early ornithischian radiations as a whole. In his last analysis, it fell out more or less where it always has, as a pretty basal thyreophoran, neither a stegosaur nor an ankylosaur, but a bit more derived than Scutellosaurus (despite being about the same age). It may even be more derived than the much younger Emausaurus from northern Germany, but that specimen really needs redescription, especially in light of everything that's been learned about Scelidosaurus and both ankylosaur and stegosaur evolution and diversity since it was first described! Scelidosaurus is still, I believe, the earliest quadrupedal ornithischian known, indicating that ornithischians were beginning to bulk up even in the earliest Jurassic, possibly as a function of competition with herbivorous saurischians (sauropodomorphs) that had been big since the Late Triassic, and possibly also as a function of reduced competition as a result of the extinction of many of the other big herbivores of the Late Triassic (dicynodonts, aetosaurs, rhynchosaurs, etc.)

I'll also say that there are some workers out there that suspect that Scelidosaurus may be much closer to ankylosaurs than stegosaurs -- if that's correct, that pushes the eurypodan (stegosaurs + ankylosaurs) split much farther back in time than has been generally perceived. That would mean that there are a lot more early thyreophorans, and eurypodans, out there that have yet to be discovered -- that's exciting not only because thyreophorans are just plain awesome but also because they're rather understudied as a group, particularly this far down the cladogram! And I say this having been primarily a saurischian worker for most of my career!

[RKHF]: Can you give us any sneak peak on future exhibit plans for the museum?

[JH]: Well, come May, when the Dabney Scelidosaurus replica migrates to its permanent spot in the museum, our temporary exhibit space will be filled with another exhibit that we will make ourselves that we think will be unique in the annals of natural history exhibitions. We're calling it "Prehistorigami," and it will feature origami models of various prehistoric animals (lots of, but not exclusively, dinosaurs). The purpose will be to educate visitors about both origami as a very unusual art form with strong roots in science as well as about a variety of prehistoric animals. That exhibit will be up through the summer. In September, we'll install another exhibit (in time for SVP visitors!), though the subject of that is currently under discussion, so I can't provide more detail yet...!

I'd like to say one more thing, although you didn't ask a question specifically on this subject: the St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm is deeply honored by the donation by Virginius "Jinks" and Barbara Anne Dabney, and they fully deserve all the credit for making this exhibit happen! The donation story itself is a nice exemplar of serendipity. I've been researching the possibilities of our museum obtaining replicas for a long time, something for which we could do targeted fund-raising. Given the fossils we have, replicas of, say, Dilophosaurus and Megapnosaurus would be ideal and beautifully complement our most abundant fossils, but they simply don't exist. Megapnosaurus (particularly "M." kayentakatae) hasn't ever really been molded, and what few Dilophosaurus replicas exist out there were made from molds that have long-since disintegrated. The fossils of both taxa really are too fragile to mold and de-mold safely, so it will be a long time before we can get those. So I've been looking for other things. I've known about this particular specimen of Scelidosaurus for a while, and even saw the original in Bristol during the SVP meeting there. But poking around on-line I saw a replica of it on display at the Charmouth Heritage Center. So I contacted them and asked them where they got it; they pointed me to the owner of the specimen, Mr. David Sole, and were kind enough to give me his contact information. So I contacted him; he's an incredibly nice and generous guy! He said he still had one replica available and told us what it would cost. That just happened to be the day on which our last temporary exhibit, "Dino-right, Dino-wrong," opened. So I took the information to the opening to chat about with other members of our Board, who were very excited about it. The exhibit was opened with a ribbon-cutting by the Dixie Sunshiners, and Jinks was one of them. Wandering through the exhibit after the opening ceremony, he overheard some of our Board members talking about how to proceed with the fund-raising to buy it, and mentioned that he'd like to get in on it. When pressed, he basically said he'd like to buy the whole kit 'n' kaboodle for the museum. I was literally stunned into silence by this news (anyone that knows me even a little will be surprised to hear that!)...and moved by the generosity. And as an aside, it's the easiest freakin' fund-raising I've ever done, and I say this as the kid that, when he had to sell band candy back in junior high, wasn't ever able to sell anything except the ones I ate myself!

So while I know that the dinosaur community will be heavily focused on the replica itself, I want to make sure that everyone knows that the real story here isn't the replica, but Jinks Dabney and the donation of the specimen -- all the credit goes to him and Barbara Anne!

Thanks to Jerry for taking the time to answer my questions and for alerting me to their new exhibit! I am looking forward to see it and their origami exhibit! Below is an article on the donation that was recently published in the Salt Lake Tribune. All museums should be so lucky to have such great patrons as the Dabney's! If you have not had a chance to see the Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm in Saint George yet I highly recommended it. It is a very nice museum and I have to give kudos to Andrew Milner also for all of the hard work he has done there, along with his volunteers and staff [here is a link to a post I wrote about the museum in 2009]. The museum is worth the visit, so be sure to stop the next time you are in Utah!

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Dinosaur replica donated to St. George museum
By Mark Havnes
The Salt Lake Tribune
Published: February 4, 2011 09:42PM
Updated: February 5, 2011 12:35AM

A St. George lawyer says his nine grandchildren, who love dinosaurs, compelled him to pay for a replica of a 195-million-year-old scelidosaurus to go on permanent display at the Discovery Track Site Museum in this southwestern Utah city.

St. George resident Virginius Dabney looks at the replica skeleton of a Scelidosaurus dinosaur he purchased from a museum in England. It will go on display at the Discovery Track Site Museum in St. George. Image by Mark Havnes | The Salt Lake Tribune

“We were in the right place at the right time to get this little sucker,” said Virginius Dabney, who contributed most of the $7,000 it cost to bring the replicated skeleton of the plant-munching beast to St. George. “Now the grandchildren can see grandpa’s dinosaur.”

The public will get an opportunity to see the skeleton Wednesday.

The model of the scelidosaurus (skel-eye-doh-SAWR-us) is based on one on display in the Charmouth Heritage Center in southern England near where the species was first discovered in 1859.

Jerry Harris, director of paleontology at Dixie State College in St. George, said that the replica will be the first one of the species on display in the Western Hemisphere.

He said the scelidosaurus roamed southwestern England during the early Jurassic period. The armor-plated dinosaur was 11 feet long and about 4 feet high, weighed three-quarters of a ton, and ate vegetation it ground with child-sized teeth.

“The replica is based on the most complete fossil [of scelidosaurus] ever found,” said Harris.

The St. George museum is built on the site of a prehistoric shoreline where dinosaurs roamed during the early Jurassic period. In 2000, a St. George doctor discovered dinosaur tracks when he turned over a slab of earth. Those tracks are on display at the Discovery museum.

Harris said that, in addition to tracks, only a few bone scraps have been found at the St. George site. But that doesn’t rule out skeletons.

“We just haven’t found them yet,” he said.

Rusty Salmon, director of the St. George museum, said the scelidosaurus replica will be the first skeleton to be displayed at the museum and she hopes there will be others in the future.

“Kids love to see dinosaurs on display, so the more the better,” she said.

Dabney said he has always had a soft spot for dinosaurs. “This is like buying a piece of history.”

His wife, Barbara Dabney, said she was a little surprised when she heard of her husband’s investment in prehistory.

“I was a little shocked at first, but once that wore off, I’m very supportive,” she said.

Original text © ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster, Photo of exhibit © Jerry Harris unless otherwise stated. Article © Salt Lake Tribune

Dinosaur Wars: The Beauty of the Big Game Hunt in Deep Time

2011-01-16T16:16:00.003-07:00

This week the PBS’s series “American Experience” is profiling the infamous paleontologists O.C. Marsh and E.D. Cope. These two men are probably the two most famous paleontologists in history. Unfortunately, they are just as well known for their long running fossil feud as they are for their contributions to paleontology.

The documentary is filled with wonderful historical photos, including one of a young Marsh that I had not seen before, along with excerpts from their letters to and from colleagues and family. Interviews with paleontologists Peter Dodson, Bob Bakker, Jacques Gauthier, and Tim Rowe, along with historian Steven Conn and writer Mark Jaffe help to flesh out scenes. One of the most interesting aspects of the show is the perspective on the respective approaches to the science taken by the two antangonists – Cope’s traditionally scientific and Marsh’s Machiavellian and old-school business. One valued progress, the other success and domination at all costs. Not that Marsh didn’t strive for scientific contributions and make them, but the goal of owning the field seemed to drive him.

The episode was very well done. I encourage everyone to tune in tomorrow night (Monday, January 17, 2011) and watch. Below is my summary of the episode.

The episode begins in 1868, introducing us to the two men. Marsh, a professor of paleontology at Yale, took a train trip out west. He observed all of the wide open terrain and exposed rocks and while he collected little, he did catch the fossil collecting bug. His position at Yale was funded by his millionaire uncle, George Peabody. As he was not paid a salary by the university itself, he did not have to answer to anyone. This gave him the freedom to define his position within the university and his science.

Also in 1868, Hadrosaurus foulki went on display at Philadelphia Academy of Science. The skeleton had been assembled by a group of scientists including a 28 year old Edward D. Cope. He had already made a name for himself with the discovery of the second known American dinosaur skeleton, Laelaps. Self taught, he gained admission to the Academy at a young age to study the material. In the fall of 1868 Marsh asked Cope to show him the Hadrosaurus quarry. After his tour, Marsh made a deal with the quarry owners to send any new fossils to him at Yale. This obviously upset Cope, who before hand had been receiving the fossils.

The feud between the two men was fully ignited when Cope reconstructed the skeleton of Elasmosaurus with the skull placed on the tail rather than the neck. Cope later noticed his mistake and tried to retract the publication before it was released, but unfortunately it was too late. Marsh pointed out his mistake right away.

In 1870 Marsh embarked on the first fossil prospecting trip to the western frontier. This well publicized trip had a budget of $15,000 and was guided by Buffalo Bill. Cope was keeping up with the press on Marsh’s expedition, but had no budget to set off on his own fossil collecting trip. He wrote to geologist Ferdinand Hayden who had been mapping out west for the government. Hayden wrote back and offered to fund a fossil collecting trip for Cope in 1872, if he could meet them in Ft. Bridger, Wyoming, where Marsh had been collecting fossil mammals the year before. Unfortunately, when Cope arrived in Wyoming Haden had already departed the fort. Cope was able to recruit men to accompany him to the badlands to collect, all the while being followed by Marsh’s “spies.” When Marsh heard what Cope was doing, he headed west. Little did they both known at the time, Joseph Leidy was also headed west to collect fossils in the same area. Soon the field was becoming more crowded than Cope and Marsh liked. All three men were finding the remains of a large mammal with huge tusks. Cope wrote up his findings and dashed them off by telegraph from Wyoming, in hopes to be the first to publish the findings. Marsh did the same. However, Leidy beat them both, naming the species Uintatherium robustum. Cope and Marsh continued over the years to ignore the work of each other and Leidy, naming the same species different names and rushing short papers to press. In a great quote from Bakker in this segment, the enthusiastic assignment of unique names to multiple specimens of what in reality was a single species of uintathere was equated to “…taxonomic carpet-bombing.”

The winter and spring following the 1872 field season started a campaign by Marsh to discredit Cope, a process that started off scientific and becoming personal. Colleagues were appalled, so much so that Leidy got disgusted by it all and walked away from paleontology, leaving Marsh and Cope to fight it out. The rivals see the field of paleontology as wide open, and instead of working together or carving it up they look for ways to cut each other out.

Marsh was very secretive, keeping his collections off limits to most scientists, with the noted exception of Thomas Huxley. Marsh showed Huxley his collection of horse fossils (33 different species in 3 families), along with a prehistoric bird fossil with teeth, astonishing Huxley. Darwin later wrote Marsh a letter proclaiming his horse collection “…the best support to the theory of evolution which has appeared in the last 20 years…” (August 30, 1880).

After the death of his father, Cope was left a large inheritance he could use to fund his own fossil expeditions. In 1876, he set out for Montana, just weeks after Custer’s resounding defeat at Little Big Horn. These trips were very successful, and he was able to produce many publications from his numerous discoveries. His many letters home shed light on his home life and on his field fossil exploits, and many of these letters are highlighted throughout the episode.

By the spring of 1877 Cope and Marsh were barely communicating. In the foothills above Morrison, Colorado, a local artist and high school teacher named Arthur Lakes discovered large bones in the Late Jurassic river sediments of the area. He wrote to Marsh and Cope about his finds, shipping a few bones to each. Marsh immediately put Lakes on the payroll, but was upset to discover that Cope had already hired another high school teacher to work in a similar area to the south (Garden Park, Colorado).

Around this same time Marsh received word on another location, at Como Bluff, Wyoming, from two railroad workers. Cope and Mash had passed this location many times on the railroad. Marsh tried to quickly claim the area, but Cope had also heard about the location and soon opened quarries (hiring, in fact, one of Marsh’s original railworkers out from under him). Determined to keep his men ahead of Cope, Marsh had his men work through the winter in Wyoming at 7000 feet elevation. It was brutal work, and Lakes’s journal documents plenty of frozen toes and fingers and subzero temperatures and blowing snow while they were trying to work their quarries. As Peter Dodson points out “Working in the winter just seems utter madness. Paleontologists, with rare exception, do not subject themselves to this sort of abuse anymore.”

During this time the two men’s teams discovered hundreds of dinosaur specimens. Ever secretive, Marsh would exchange coded telegrams with spies about Cope, and sadly he would even order his men to destroy fossils so that Cope could not collect them. (This latter offense, however, was rare, generally only occurring in the winter slow season when Marsh’s crews were often down to one man working alone and trying to work and guard multiple sites. In fairness to Marsh, in at least one case this action was taken by his field man of his own initiative and was not directly ordered by the Yale professor.) In a revealing insight to the depth of Marsh’s frustration with Cope, he is said to have occasionally been overheard exclaiming “God dammit! I wish the Lord would take him!!” Presumably this would have been heard by his staff, and one can imagine the exchange of glances between lab assistants on hearing such words being bellowed at great volume from the boss’s office!

In November of 1878 O.C. Marsh, who was now president of the National Academy of Science, joined forces with John Wesley Powell. In 1881, the US Geological Survey was formed and headed by Powell, who then appointed Marsh head paleontologist. With unlimited funding, 50 employees, and a salary, Marsh now thought he could finally get rid of Cope.

Without government sponsorship, and his inheritance dwindling, Cope invested in a mining corporation that unfortunately went bust. He applied for jobs with no success. By 1889 he was separated from his wife and living in a small apartment.

Years earlier Marsh had inserted language in the USGS charter stating that any fossils collected with government funds had to be turned over to the Smithsonian Institution. Marsh had made a deal with Powell to keep his own specimens at Yale. Fortunately for Cope, he was a good record keeper. He was able to show how he had spent his own money and the money of the government and was able to keep his own fossils, which formed the bulk of his collection. Upset by this audit, Cope went after Mash. He had been documenting Marsh’s actions over the years and turned his notes over to a journalist who wrote a story in the New York Herald. Cope accused Marsh of incompetence, ignorance, and plagiarism, with headlines reading “Men of Science Agog.” Cope also accused Powell of corruption and misuses of government funds at the USGS. Marsh and Powell fought back calling Cope a liar and a thief. Headlines read “Professor Cope and Director Powell still engaged in the pleasant pastime of damaging each other’s scientific reputation. ‘Give and Take’ seems the rule.”

This went on for 3 weeks, and left Marsh in a bad position. All of the bad press caught the eye of politicians. They viewed science as a waste of taxpayer money, with Alabama senator Hillary Herbert leading the attack. The USGS budget was ultimately cut in half and the department of paleontology was eliminated. Powell sent Marsh a telegram simply stating “Appropriation out off. Please send your resignation at once.” Marsh lost all of his funding and staff. He had to mortgage his house and ask for a salary from Yale. And then the Smithsonian contacted Marsh and asked for all fossils collected with government money to be turned over. Marsh had not kept up with his accounting and did not know which fossils were collected with private funds and which with government money. As Tim Rowe points out, Marsh had set a trap for Cope and instead had ensnared himself. In the end over 80 tons of fossils were sent to Washington D.C.

By 1897 Cope had kidney disease and was very sick. He was contacted by a young artist named Charles Knight who asked for help in reconstructing his discoveries, which Cope did for two weeks. A few days after finishing the work Cope was found dead in his room. He was only 56. During his life he had collected over 1300 specimens. The resulting artwork of Knight’s was the most dynamic reconstruction of past vertebrate life made up to that time.

In February of 1899 Marsh was returning from a trip to the Smithsonian and walked home from the train station in a cold rain, contracting pneumonia. He died a few weeks later with only $186 left in his bank account (1899 dollars). He was 68 years old. He left behind a huge fossil collection, with some of the best evidence of evolution.

The show covers the first round in the exploration of the large dinosaur fossils of the West. Around the time Cope and Marsh had exhausted their respective resources and energies pummeling each other, the large museums of the country began a more friendly but no less competitive race to mount skeletons of these dinosaurs in their exhibits [Read Paul Brinkman’s “The Second Jurassic Dinosaur Rush” for the rest of this story]. This is also a story involving clashing personalities and egos and big budgets, but it is perhaps a story for another episode.

Thanks to PBS for the opportunity to review this episode from American Experience! © ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

Nerdasaurus-Rex

2011-01-11T18:31:00.000-07:00

If you have $10 hurry on over to Shirt.Woot and grab yourself this geeky T! Its only good for one day, and you still have a few hours left!

Hevisaurus

2011-01-07T08:57:00.004-07:00

Upon first watching this I had a very distinct moment that could only be described as "WTF?!" I do not know Finnish. I am not even sure I knew it was Finnish at the time. Come to find out this band, called Hevisaurus, is a Finnish metal band that writes children's songs. Our friend Pete sent this to us, no idea how he found it. So I, like a good lemming, post it on my facebook page, which starts a most interesting conversation with a tall, pale friend of Norwegian decent. He points out to me that this is a song written about the last mammoth. They are singing him into his final sleep.

"Brushing his long hair

Blowing his trunk as well

He cleans his tusks

On top of the cold permafrost

He lays down his great and mighty head

And straightens his tail

The wind blows

All land covered in snow

He falls asleep under the tree

Good night, the last mammoth

It's time to go to sleep

Good night, the last mammoth

You will be remembered"

Wow.

Thanks to Pete and EBG!!

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

SVP prep calendars available online

2011-01-06T15:35:00.000-07:00

Just a note to remind everyone that the SVP prep calendars are now available online!! They are only $20 (+ shipping) and all of the funds go into the pot for the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Preparator's Grant! Its a great cause and a cool calendar to have hanging around your lab, office, or home. We had one in our lab last year and it was so popular that I ordered a new one for our lab today!

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

4th Fossil Preparation and Collections Symposium & 9th Conference on Fossil Resources

2011-01-04T17:29:00.001-07:00

Abstracts are due this Monday (January 10, 2011) for the 9th Conference on Fossil Resources and the 4th Fossil Preparation and Collections Symposium! Check out the details below:

Preliminary Schedule :

9th Conference on Fossil Resources Registration form link
4th Fossil Preparation and Collections Symposium Registration Form Link

Held at the South Lincoln Training and Events Center in Kemmerer, Wyoming.

Suggestions for session topics are welcome. Please e-mail suggested topics to Arvid Aase by October 31, 2010.

Registration for each conference is $100. Attend both conferences for $160, a $40 savings (no coupon necessary).

Motel rooms will be scarce during spring of 2011 due to industrial projects in the Kemmerer area! Roommates are encouraged so enough rooms are available for all who want to attend. (Evanston is the next closest town at 45 miles away) Make reservations now!! Only 24 rooms remain in the host hotel as of Sept. 7, 2010 (April in Kemmerer = very cold camping)

Host motel is Best Western Fossil Country Inn Mention 'Fossil Conference' to receive $70 room rate. The block of 50 rooms will be held until February 26, 2010. 307-877-3388

Other motels are:

Antler Motel

307-877-4461

Energy Inn

307-877-6901

Fairview Motel

307-877-3938

Fossil Butte Motel

307-877-3996

Frontier Suites

307-877-3377

Contact Arvid for more information:

Arvid Aase

Fossil Butte National Monument

PO Box 592

864 Chicken Creek Road

Kemmerer, WY 83101

ph 307/877-4455

For more information on the 9th Conference on Fossil Resources visit the official site.
For more information on the 4th Fossil Preparation and Collections Symposium visit fossilprep.org.

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

Creationism: the great embellishment

2010-11-26T22:30:00.000-07:00

You know you want to.....

2010-11-17T17:03:00.001-07:00

You know you would like to do this. Maybe not in public, but how many of you have seen a sculpture or even a cast you think would be fun to scale (assuming it could hold your weight, which most cast can't, so do not try it at home folks!). Can't say I would really want to scale a skeletal replica, but I can think of a certain Pentaceratops sculpture I have had my eye on for years.....

I can also think of one museum in particular that would love to take that Brachiosaurus off the Field Museum's hands, since they just have it outside and another in the airport....return it to its "home" you could say.....

Thanks to Jim K. and Matt B. or the heads up!

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

Brahana Receives Distinquished Service Award From GSA

2010-11-09T14:30:00.000-07:00

Congrats to my former professor, Van Brahana, for receiving the Award for Distinguished Service in Hydrogeology from the hydrogeology division of the the Geological Society of America! I never had an interest in hydro until I had a chance to work with Brahana at the University of Arkansas' field camp in 2003 (although he has always been a great professor for advice and general fun and havoc!!). He had constructed 2 hydro projects for students, both of which were really interesting and fun. It made me wish I had actually taken a class from him when I had been working on my degree! I had a chance to catch up with Brahana at GSA last week and it was great to see him, as always. Congrats Brahana!!!

From the University of Arkansas Newswire:

Professor J. Van Brahana of the department of geosciences received the Award for Distinguished Service in Hydrogeology from the hydrogeology division of the the Geological Society of America on Nov. 2, in Denver, Colo. The award is given annually for distinguished service and contibutions to the field of hydrogeology.

Hydrogeology is defined in the bylaws of the division as "that branch of geology which is concerned with the character, source, occurence, movement, availability, and use of water." The award is based on a history of sustained, creditable service to the hydrogeology profession.

Brahana considers himself remarkably fortunate to have discovered his passion for geology early in life, and for the opportunity to work at this profession for almost 50 years. His fourth-grade teacher ignited the initial geologic spark, and a succession of outstanding mentors fueled his passion for understanding processes and controls of ground water flow and transport in fractured-carbonate rocks. Stanley N. Davis served as his adviser for both his master's and doctoral degrees at the University of Missouri, and Bill Back provided insight and encouragement as a U.S. Geological Survey mentor; both were excellent role models by which Brahana guided his own career.

Brahana's professional career includes more than 28 years with the USGS as a research hydrologist (now emeritus), and currently, 20 years as a Professor at the University of Arkansas. In addition to these two major jobs, he has served as an adjunct professor at three universities, as a consultant and expert witness, and as a lab and field assistant for the Illinois Geological Survey. The focus of his professional research included regional hydrogeologic studies in the midcontinent utilizing flow tracing, aqueous geochemistry, and numerical simulation for hypothesis testing. He has contributed more than 70 peer-reviewed papers to the literature. As a professor, he has supervised more than 20 master's and doctoral students in hydrogeology, 10 REUs and Honors students, and has served on more than 100 graduate research committees. With Tom Sauer, USDA-ARS, he established the Savoy Experimental Watershed for long-term karst research.

Brahana's service record has been exemplary, including numerous committee assignments and leadership positions in which he has directed or served as chair of regional, national, and international meetings. He is a Fellow of GSA, chair of Fulbright College Cabinet at the University of Arkansas and a member of Aquifer Science Advisory Panel of the Edwards Aquifer Authority. He typically provides about 10 reviews for hydro-journals each year. He is most proud of the success of the large number of students with whom he has had the opportunity to work.

Over the past four decades, Brahana has served the geological profession in the academic and government arenas. His cheerleading of the hydrogeologic profession is famous, bringing many students and professionals to appreciate the varied aspects of the discipline.

After starting his career at the Illinois State Geological Survey while studying at the University of Illinois, Brahana consulted prior to gaining his master's and Ph.D. at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Brahana then went to the USGS and served for over 25 years publishing on a range of topics. For the past 20 years he has been associated with the University of Arkansas providing an understanding of how structural geology and soil processes affect the area's flow and transport in karst aquifers.

Brahana's service to the profession and to GSA, specifically the hydrogeology division, illustrates his strong commitment to the discipline. He has served on the hydrogeology volume committee of the decade of North American Geology series, on the GSA joint technical program committee, and on the South Central GSA board of directors. He has also served as program chairman and the secretary-treasurer of the hydrogeology division, as the technical program chair for the South-Central GSA, and as a convener and chair for numerous theme sessions at GSA meetings.

Brahana's greatest contributions has been his mentoring of hydrogeologists. He has educated hundreds of students on the theory and application of hydrogeology, specifically in the area of Karst Hydrogeology. He encourages students to "Be the Aquifer" in order to conceptualize the processes and to better understand the physics and mechanics behind theory.

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster & University of Arkansas Newswire

New horned dinosaurs from Utah provide evidence for intracontinental dinosaur endemism

2010-09-22T10:00:00.130-06:00

Utahceratops (above) and Kosmoceratops (below).
© Lukas Panzarin

I am super excited to help spread the word on two newly named chasmosaurine ceratopsians: Utahceratops gettyi and Kosmoceratops richardsoni!! I know I have been anxiously awaiting these guys for a while now and I am very happy to see them finally published. Both taxa were found in the Kaiparowits Formation of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, southern Utah. Utahceratops was discovered in 2000 by Mike Getty and is thus far the most abundant ceratopsian found in the monument, known from 6 localities. It is estimated that Utahceratops would have stood 6 feet tall at the shoulder and hips and was 18 to 22 feet in length, weighing about 3-4 tonnes. Kosmoceratops would have been slightly smaller, perhaps 15 feet long and 2.5 tonnes, with 15 bony horns/horn-like features on its skull, making it one of the more ornate-headed dinosaur known. Subadults and adults are known for both of these new species.

For those of you who have seen the various talks, and specifically the new paper in the recently published in 'New Perspectives on Horned Dinosaurs' (Getty et al. 2010), referring to these animals as "Kaiparowits New Taxon A" and "Kaiparowits New Taxon B" you will be happy to know that Taxon A is Kosmoceratops and Taxon B is Utahceratops. At least three individuals (an adult and two subadults) of Utahceratops were recovered from one monodominant bonebed, the first of its kind in the Kaiparowits Formation.

Chasmosaurus irvinensis is also addressed and renamed Vagaceratops irvinensis (“wandering horned face”) in this paper, as it was found to share closest affinities not with Chasmosaurus, as originally believed, but with Kosmoceratops. The study has helped to show that there is some sort of northern and southern provincialism taking place during the Campanian stage of western North America, also known as Laramidia [read more here]. Both specimens are curated at the Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City, Utah, and are currently on display for the rest of this year.

Citation:
Sampson, S. D., M. A. Loewen, A. A. Farke, E. M. Roberts, C. A. Forster, J. A. Smith, and A. L. Titus. 2010. New horned dinosaurs from Utah provide evidence for intracontinental dinosaur endemism. PLoS ONE 5(9): e12292. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0012292

REFERENCE:
Getty, M.A., M.A. Loewen, E. Roberts, A. L. Titus, and S.D. Sampson. 2010. Taphonomy of Horned Dinosaurs (Ornithischia: Ceratopsidae) from the Late Campanian Kaiparowits Formation, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah. Pp. 478-494 in M. J. Ryan, B. J. Chinnery-Allgeier, and D. A. Eberth (eds.), New Perspectives on Horned Dinosaurs. Indiana University Press, Bloomington.

From the official press release:

Amazing Horned Dinosaurs Unearthed on “Lost Continent”
Discoveries Include Bizarre Beast with 15 Horns

September 22, 2010 – Two remarkable new species of horned dinosaurs have been found in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, southern Utah. The giant plant-eaters were inhabitants of the “lost continent” of Laramidia, formed when a shallow sea flooded the central region of North America, isolating the eastern and western portions of the continent for millions of years during the Late Cretaceous Period. The newly discovered dinosaurs, close relatives of the famous Triceratops, were announced today in PLoS ONE, the online open-access journal produced by the Public Library of Science.

The study, funded in large part by the Bureau of Land Management and the National Science Foundation, was led by Scott Sampson and Mark Loewen of the Utah Museum of Natural History (UMNH) and Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Utah. Additional authors include Andrew Farke (Raymond Alf Museum), Eric Roberts (James Cook University), Joshua Smith (University of Utah), Catherine Forster (George Washington University), and Alan Titus (Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument).

Image of Utahceratops from "The Whirlpool of Life"

The bigger of the two new dinosaurs, with a skull 2.3 meters (about 7 feet) long, is Utahceratops gettyi (U-tah-SARA-tops get-EE-i). The first part of the name combines the state of origin with ceratops, Greek for “horned face.” The second part of the name honors Mike Getty, paleontology collections manager at the Utah Museum of Natural History and the discoverer of this animal. In addition to a large horn over the nose, Utahceratops has short and blunt eye horns that project strongly to the side rather than upward, much more like the horns of modern bison than those of Triceratops or other ceratopsians. Mark Loewen, one of the authors on the paper, likened Utahceratops to “a giant rhino with a ridiculously supersized head.”

Image of Kosmoceratops from "Scratching the Surface"

Second of the new species is Kosmoceratops richardsoni (KOZ-mo-SARA-tops RICH-ard-SON-i). Here, the first part of the name refers to kosmos, Latin for “ornate,” and ceratops, once again meaning “horned face.” The latter part of the name honors Scott Richardson, the volunteer who discovered two skulls of this animal. Kosmoceratops also has sideways oriented eye horns, although much longer and more pointed than in Utahceratops. In all, Kosmoceratops possesses a total of 15 horns—one over the nose, one atop each eye, one at the tip of each cheek bone, and ten across the rear margin of the bony frill—making it the most ornate-headed dinosaur known. Scott Sampson, the paper’s lead author, claimed that, “Kosmoceratops is one of the most amazing animals known, with a huge skull decorated with an assortment of bony bells and whistles.”

Although much speculation has ensued about the function of ceratopsian horns and frills—from fighting off predators to recognizing other members of the same species or controlling body temperature—the dominant idea today is that these features functioned first and foremost to enhance reproductive success. Sampson added, “Most of these bizarre features would have made lousy weapons to fend off predators. It’s far more likely that they were used to intimidate or do battle with rivals of the same sex, as well as to attract individuals of the opposite sex.”

Monumental Dinosaurs on a Small Continent
The dinosaurs were discovered in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM), which encompasses 1.9 million acres of high desert terrain in south-central Utah. This vast and rugged region, part of the National Landscape Conservation System administered by the Bureau of Land Management, was the last major area in the lower 48 states to be formally mapped by cartographers. Today GSENM is the largest national monument in the United States. Sampson added that, “Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is now one of the country’s last great, largely unexplored dinosaur boneyards.”

For most of the Late Cretaceous, exceptionally high sea levels flooded the low-lying portions of several continents around the world. In North America, a warm, shallow sea called the Western Interior Seaway extended from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, subdividing the continent into eastern and western landmasses, known as Appalachia and Laramidia, respectively. Whereas little is known of the plants and animals that lived on Appalachia, the rocks of Laramidia exposed in the Western Interior of North America have generated a plethora of dinosaur remains. Laramidia was less than one-third the size of present day North America, approximating the area of Australia.

Most known Laramidian dinosaurs were concentrated in a narrow belt of plains sandwiched between the seaway to the east and mountains to the west. Today, thanks to an abundant fossil record and more than a century of collecting by paleontologists, Laramidia is the best known major landmass for the entire Age of Dinosaurs, with dig sites spanning from Alaska to Mexico. Utah was located in the southern part of Laramidia, which has yielded far fewer dinosaur remains than the fossil-rich north. The world of dinosaurs was much warmer than the present day; Utahceratops and Kosmoceratops lived in a subtropical swampy environment about 100 km from the seaway.

Distribution of ceratopsians during the Campanian
stage of the Late Cretaceous period

Beginning in the 1960’s, paleontologists began to notice that the same major groups of dinosaurs seemed to be present all over this Late Cretaceous landmass, but different species of these groups occurred in the north (for example, Alberta and Montana) than in the south (New Mexico and Texas). This finding of “dinosaur provincialism” was very puzzling, given the giant body sizes of many of the dinosaurs together with the diminutive dimensions of Laramidia. Currently, there are five giant (rhino-to-elephant-sized) mammals on the entire continent of Africa. Seventy-six million years ago, there may have been more than two dozen giant dinosaurs living on a landmass about one-quarter that size. Mark Loewen asks, “How could so many different varieties of giant animals have co-existed on such a small chunk of real estate?” One option is that there was a greater abundance of food during the Cretaceous. Another is that dinosaurs did not need to eat as much, perhaps because of slower metabolic rates more akin to those of modern day lizards and crocodiles than to those of mammals and birds. Whatever the factors permitting the presence of so many dinosaurs, it appears that some kind of barrier near the latitude of northern Utah and Colorado limited the exchange of dinosaur species north and south. Possibilities include physical barriers such as mountains, or climatic barriers that resulted in distinct northern and southern plant communities. Testing of these ideas have been severely hampered by a dearth of dinosaurs from the southern part of Laramidia. The new fossils from GSENM are now filling that major gap.

During the past decade, crews from the University of Utah and several partner institutions (e.g., the Utah Geologic Survey, the Raymond Alf Museum of Paleontology, and the Bureau of Land Management) have unearthed a new assemblage of more than a dozen dinosaurs in GSENM. In addition to Utahceratops and Kosmoceratops, the collection includes a variety of other plant-eating dinosaurs—among them duck-billed hadrosaurs, armored ankylosaurs, and dome-headed pachycephalosaurs—together with carnivorous dinosaurs great and small, from “raptor-like” predators to mega-sized tyrannosaurs (not T. rex but rather its smaller-bodied relatives). Also recovered have been fossil plants, insect traces, clams, fishes, amphibians, lizards, turtles, crocodiles, and mammals, offering a direct glimpse into this entire ancient ecosystem. Most remarkable of all is that virtually every identifiable dinosaur variety found in GSENM turns out to be new to science, offering dramatic confirmation of the dinosaur provincialism hypothesis. Many of these animals are still under study, but two have been previously named: the giant duck-billed hadrosaur Gryposaurus monumentensis and the raptor-like theropod Hagryphus giganteus.

Utahceratops and Kosmoceratops are part of a recent spate of ceratopsian dinosaur discoveries. Andrew Farke, another of the paper’s authors, stated, "The past year has been a remarkable one for horned dinosaurs, with several new species named. The new Utah creatures are the icing on the cake, showing anatomy even more bizarre than typically expected for a group of animals known for its weird skulls."

Clearly many more dinosaurs remain to be unearthed in southern Utah. “It’s an exciting time to be a paleontologist,” Sampson added. “With many new dinosaurs still discovered each year, we can be quite certain that plenty of surprises still await us out there.”

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster unless other wise noted

The BLM hires Breithaupt

2010-09-17T15:54:00.002-06:00

Brent Breithaupt (left) and Dale Hanson (right)
after the 2008 Society of Vertebrate Paleontology
Live Auction

I am very happy to spread the word that Brent Breithaupt has been recently hired as the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Regional Paleontologist for Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, South Dakota, North Dakota and Nebraska!! Brent will be taking over the job left by Dale Hanson, who recently retired. I am very, very excited and happy to see Brent moving on to this wonderful position, where I know he will excel. Congrats Brent!!!

Remember, you can find a list to all of the BLM Regional Paleontologist and their contact information here. You can also find links there for information on Paleontological laws, regulations, legislation, fossil collecting and education.

Photo © Neffra Matthews, post © ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

Politics and Paleo

2010-08-23T15:39:00.001-06:00

As members of the VertPaleo listserv may have recently noticed (or noticed for years now), politics and paleontology often don't go together. You can never make anyone in a group happy when you talk about politics to start off with, and it is generally wise to just keep your thoughts to yourself.

Politics recently entered the realm of paleontology again, this time to bitch about sending students on a trip to China. And, no suprise, it involved two of my "favorite" guys: Arizona Senator John McCain and Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. You may remember our old friend Coburn who was a pain in the ass about PRPA. I guess these two guys (or thier interns and staff most likely) got together and put together a list of "100 stimulus projects that give taxpayers the blues." [pdf link to report]

The 76th item on their list was a NSF funded trip for Montana State students to travel to China to study dinosaur eggs. Which they did. And sure, while they were over there, they saw things other than dinosaur eggs. So whats the big deal? Its not like the school was spending the NSF money on extra trips to sight-see. But isn't it in the best interest of students visiting another country to experience all that country has to offer?

From the report:

Field Trip to Study Dinosaur Eggs…in China (Bozeman, MT) - $141,002463

This past spring, nine students from Montana State University (MSU) were given a six-week, all expense paid trip to China, funded by the National Science Foundation.464 MSU received a grant to send students to work with researchers at the Natural History Museum in Hangzhou studying various dinosaur eggs and other fossils.465 In a conversation with a local resident of Wuzhen, one of the students said “I told him that I was here to study dinosaur eggs. He replied with, ’Bloody hell! That’s the sort of thing you just can’t make up!’” While there, the students spent six weeks examining and cataloguing the eggs. As recorded on the group’s blog, however, they were still able to take plenty of time to let their hair down hiking on the Great Wall, spending a day at the Xixi National Wetland Park, exploring several small towns, visiting the opera, and touring the Tiatai temples. Not to worry though, according to one student blogger, “Believe it or not from previous blog posts, we have been hard at work doing research.” [page 39-40 of report]

Once again, politicians making a big deal out of nothing.

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

Fieldwork Friday #12

2010-07-23T07:13:00.000-06:00

Yikes! I have not done a Fieldwork Friday in a year! Something is just wrong with that!! I have been pretty busy at work recently. I am running the Mygatt-Moore Quarry in western Colorado this summer. I had been intending on doing some Fieldwork Friday post now that I have been out in the field, but have never gotten around to it. Sorry about the lack of post recently. There is a lot going on in my life at the moment that keeps me from blogging. So I thought I would give you a quick update on one of the more interesting find we have had at the quarry recently.

Tibia with dig participant for scale

A week ago this past Thursday we successfully removed a large sauropod tibia from the quarry. This is most likely from Apatosaurus, or possibly Diplodocus (but we are pretty sure at this point it’s Apato). It was initially discovered by one of our museum’s volunteers, Tom S., on July 1st as we worked the quarry. We worked hard to get it out of the ground on July 8th. Luckily for us this bone was relatively easy to excavate! It was 1100 mm long and nice and straight. We commonly get sauropod vertebra at the quarry (too many in my opinion lol), so it was nice to find something easy to excavate for once. Those freaking verts can take way to long to get out (sorry, I could rant on verts all day). The last time we removed a sauropod limb bone from the quarry in 2007 – a nice Apatosaurus fibula. It only took 8 trip participants, museum volunteers, and employees to drag the tibia on a tarp the short distance from its former 150 million year old resting place to the awaiting truck for its trip back to the museum prep lab.

Tibia encased in the field jacket and ready to be flipped

The down side of the tibia

Tom and his great find!

It would be nice if we could get several more limb bones this summer. So far it has been dominated by sauropod verts, ribs, plenty of float and quite a few Diplodocus, Apatosaurus and Allosaurus teeth. My dream is to finally get a Mymoorapelta femur from this quarry. Fingers crossed.

Two of the teeth collected this summer

If anything else of interest pop’s up this summer I will be sure to post something about it. If you are going to be in western Colorado this summer be sure to pull off on exit 2 of I-70 and say hello!

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster. Please see the "Field Work Friday Rules" about the work I do and collection practices.

Book Suggestion: The Second Jurassic Dinosaur Rush

2010-07-19T13:32:00.000-06:00

My friend Paul Brinkman has a new book out that I encourage everyone to check out – The Second Jurassic Dinosaur Rush: Museums; Paleontology in America at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. It is available on Amazon.com from University of Chicago Press (preview here on Google Books). I have not had a chance to finish the book yet, but I am really enjoying reading it so far! It covers some of the local paleontology that took place in my area of western Colorado back in the early 1900’s when Elmer Riggs of the Chicago Field Museum was excavating the worlds first Brachiosaurus here in Grand Junction. He later also collected a partial Apatosaurus specimen from Dinosaur Hill in Fruita, just down the road from the museum where I work. The Brachiosaurus site is now on property owned by the museum (“Riggs Hill”) and is an island of Morrison Formation lost in a sea of subdivisions. I wonder if Riggs would still recognize the area today. The Dinosaur Hill area is still relatively undeveloped (especially compared to Riggs Hill) and the museum maintains a trail here that we co-manage with our local BLM office. Paul’s book is giving a great background on Riggs, along with work that took place post Marsh & Cope for big east coast museum. I suggest that anyone who is interested in paleo history check out this book, especially if you are curious about many of the immense, classic dinosaurs that you see on display in the old, big museums of the east. If I get a chance when I finish the book I will post a better review of its contents.

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

Movie Review: Creation

2010-07-17T17:13:00.001-06:00

I FINALLY got to see Creation this week. It is available on Netflixs now. I never had a chance to see it when it was in theaters (it never showed anywhere near where I lived). I really enjoyed the movie and felt like the showed Darwin for the human that he was. I am sure there were some liberties Hollywood took for dramatic effect, but I thought it played well to convey the point. Darwin was a Christian that grappled with his observations in science and his faith, or lack there of after his daughter dies. Darwin has to deal with hypocrites and trouble makers, and his wife, who was a devout Unitarian, and her fear that they would never live together in heaven if he continued to pursue his thoughts on evolution. Huxley proclaimed that Darwin would finally be the man who is known for “killing God” which seems to freak Darwin out pretty bad (see the trailer below at about 65 seconds in). It was an interesting insight into Darwin’s home and family life. There are quite a bit of flashbacks to move the story along. My husband did not like this, but it did not bother me too much. In the end I thought it was well acted and an interesting story. I really do not understand why so many Christians would be afraid to see this film. Maybe they would be more understanding of the man behind the Origin of Species and stop being so afraid of what they really do not know. Darwin was just another human, not a demon for his thoughts on evolution.

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

The First National Fossil Day!!

2010-06-16T12:59:00.000-06:00

The National Park Service and the American Geological Institute are partnering to host the first National Fossil Day on October 13, 2010 during Earth Science Week. National Fossil Day is a celebration organized to promote public awareness and stewardship of fossils, as well as to foster a greater appreciation of their scientific and educational value.

This year’s Earth Science Week toolkit includes a “Fossils of the National Parks” poster, featuring a map showing more than 228 parks managed by the National Park Service that contain fossils. The poster also includes a “How to be a Paleontologist” classroom activity.

Fossils discovered on the nation’s public lands preserve ancient life from all major eras of Earth’s history, and from every major group of animal or plant. In the national parks, for example, fossils range from primitive algae found high in the mountains of Glacier National Park, Montana, to the remains of ice-age animals found in caves at Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona. Public lands provide visitors with opportunities to interpret a fossil’s ecological context by observing fossils in the same place those animals and plants lived millions of years ago.

National Fossil Day activities will also highlight fossil fuels to correlate with this year’s Earth Science Week theme, “Exploring Energy”.

National Fossil Day is being promoted through partnerships with professional organizations, government agencies, and other groups. Supporters include the Arizona Museum of Natural History, the Association of American State Geologists, the International Palaeontological Association, the Museum of Western Colorado, National Association of Geoscience Teachers, National Earth Science Teachers Association (NESTA), National Park Foundation, National Parks Conservation Association, Paleontological Research Institution (PRI), Utah Friends of Paleontology and Utah Geological Survey. Representatives from NESTA and PRI are also assisting with planning.

On October 13, paleontologists and park rangers will share fossil discoveries at special events nationwide and explain the importance of preserving fossils where they are found, so that everyone can share a sense of discovery!

To learn more, visit the National Fossil Day website or send a message to National_Fossil_Day@nps.gov. Join in the celebration of National Fossil Day today!

This blog post, and all post on Dinochick Blogs, are © ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster, unless otherwise stated

Stolen Content

2010-06-09T16:16:00.000-06:00

I would like to point out that a blog called "The Lounge Forum.net" is stealing content from this blog, complete with my name and posting it on their blog. I have contacted the individual and have been ignored and have also contacted their server and have also still been ignored. I would like to point out that I am not affiliated with this blog nor do I know who owns it. I would love for them to knock it off and run their own damn blog and stop stealing my content.

Thanks to Callan for the heads up!

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

Ajkaceratops

2010-05-26T12:50:00.000-06:00

Ősi, A., Butler, R.J. & Weishampel, D.B. 2010. A Late Cretaceous ceratopsian dinosaur from Europe with Asian affinities. Nature 465: 466–468. doi: 10.1038/nature09019 [link]


"Figure 1: *Anatomy of Ajkaceratops kozmai* gen. et sp. nov.**"			image from paper.

Ceratopsians (horned dinosaurs) represent a highly diverse and abundant radiation of non-avian dinosaurs known primarily from the Cretaceous period (65–145 million years ago). This radiation has been considered to be geographically limited to Asia and western North America with only controversial remains reported from other continents. Here we describe new ceratopsian cranial material from the Late Cretaceous of Iharkút, Hungary, from a coronosaurian ceratopsian, Ajkaceratops kozmai. Ajkaceratops is most similar to ‘bagaceratopsids’ such as Bagaceratops and Magnirostris, previously known only from Late Cretaceous east Asia. The new material unambiguously demonstrates that ceratopsians occupied Late Cretaceous Europe and, when considered with the recent discovery of possible leptoceratopsid teeth from Sweden, indicates that the clade may have reached Europe on at least two independent occasions. European Late Cretaceous dinosaur faunas have been characterized as consisting of a mix of endemic ‘relictual’ taxa and ‘Gondwanan’ taxa, with typical Asian and North American groups largely absent. Ajkaceratops demonstrates that this prevailing biogeographical hypothesis is overly simplified and requires reassessment. Iharkút was part of the western Tethyan archipelago, a tectonically complex series of island chains between Africa and Europe, and the occurrence of a coronosaurian ceratopsian in this locality may represent an early Late Cretaceous ‘island-hopping’ dispersal across the Tethys Ocean.

Thanks to TH for the heads up!

A new paleo blog!

2010-05-19T00:02:00.000-06:00

There is a new paleo blog on the block - Jurassic Journeys by Dr. Matt Bonnan - who stopped by the museum today with some of his former and current students on their way to the Hanksville-Burpee quarry in Utah. It was nice to show them around our collections and have a chance to talk with everyone. Sounds like they are off to another great start at the HBQ. You can find out more about the dig in this video:

On a related note, we began opening the Mygatt-Moore Quarry today and will be back out in the field tomorrow (if we can get the rain to knock it off). Our first official day of work is a week from today! It will be here before we know it!

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

Maybe I am doing it right ;)

2010-05-13T21:21:00.003-06:00

Hat tip to Steve

Hand lens + cell phone vs. DinoLight

2010-05-12T12:22:00.001-06:00

Callan Bentley recently introduced many of us to the idea of using your cell phone with a hand lens to get macro images (he saw this on at Microecos and Myrmecos). Callan and Chris used a iPhone, which I sadly still do not have. Silver Fox tried a 2MP HTC 6800 phone. I have an LG enV, so I tried that. Below are the results with my phone + 1 hand lens.

Dryosaurus caudal vertebra (ventral view), taken with an LG enV phone and a hand lens.

I was pretty happy with the outcome.

I decided to try to take a picture of the same vert with our new "DinoLight" [here is a review of the camera]. John recently purchased this to try an get some better macro pictures of his trilobites than we were getting with our default camera. Below is the same vert, taken with the scope camera:

Dryosaurus caudal vertebra (ventral view), taken with the "DinoLight"

Not too surprising, the scope camera worked somewhat better. It can be a tad on the touchy side when focusing, but over all it is pretty easy to use. I just wish the resolution was a little better. It is also nice to know that your phone and the hand lens will work in a pinch.

Just for fun, here is another fossil that happened to be in reach... under the DinoLight:

Tiny mammal jaw (Morrison Formation, upper Jurassic of Wyoming) mounted on pin head.

Happy Birthday Glacier!!

2010-05-11T07:15:00.003-06:00

100 years ago today President William Howard Taft signed a bill establishing Glacier National Park as the 10th park in the United States of America! The good folks at Glacier National Park Centennial have put together a nice timeline here where you can read about the last 100 years of Glacier's history.

Mt. Gould with flowers in July of 2005.

Glacier National Park was originally inhabited by the Piegan Blackfeet tribe in the east and the Flathead tribe in the west. The Piegan reservation now borders the park to the east and the Flathead tribes can be found the west and south of the park.

One of my favorite historic pictures from the park.

Also taking place in 1910 the Great Northern Railroad commissioned 9 chalets and tent camps be built in the national park, using the slogan "See America First." The first the Belton Chalet, was open for business on June 27th, 1910. The Great Northern Railroad also built a permanent rail station in the town of Belton, now known as West Glacier. The railroads publicity and building efforts help to make Glacier assessable and a popular travel destination. Today many of these lodges are still operating.

Glacier Park Lodge, East Glacier, Montana. This lodge opened on June 15th, 1913. The Blackfeet Indians, from which the land for the lodge was purchased, named the new lodge “Omahkoyis” or “Big Tree Lodge".

"The immense timbers that support the Lodge were probably 500 to 800 years old when they were cut and all of them retain their bark. There are 60 of them, 36 to 42 inches in diameter and 40 feet long. The timbers in the lobby are Douglas fir and the verandahs are supported by Cedars from Washington." [link]


Glacier Park Lodge 2008

Historical Many Glacier Hotel, which opened to the public on July 4, 1915.

The 100 year anniversary will be continuing all year. I hope you all have a chance to visit this wonderful park! You can read some of my other Glacier related post here.

Lake McDonald

Happy Birthday GLACIER!!

Looking down from above Grinnell Glacier, to the east. From upper to lower: meltwater pond on Salamander Glacier, meltwater pond on Grinnell Glacier, Grinnell Lake, Lake Josephine, and Lake Sherburne in far distance.

Long time no write

2010-04-28T23:44:00.000-06:00

I realize the blog post here recently have been getting fewer and fewer. Sorry about that. Some understand what's up, some will find out in time. One of the things I have been up to is trying to shed this horribly long winter. Its finally "wind" season here (in some places its called "Spring"), so we are able to go outside and start doing some field work. In early April we headed back out to the Marble Mountains of California (former post here) and the Frenchman Mountains of Nevada, along with a 'new' site at Emigrant Pass, California. Over all is was a very nice and successful trip. It was nice to head west where it was a bit warmer and the plants were actually bloomed out.

The wind in the Marble Mountains was strong as it always seems to be this time of year. Two of our trip-mates had tents that were not really made to withstand the wind we were dealing with, and they were pretty interesting to watch:

Lucky for us all of the tents survived, many trilobites were collected that will help with John's continuing research, and when we arrived home green things were blooming here as well. Over all it was a nice trip. We will have a post up about it in more detail on the Museum's blog soon so keep your eyes peeled for that.

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster, video by Zeb Miracle. Any material we collected are covered under a permit though the appropriate agency (when required) and curated at the Museum of Western Colorado, unless otherwise noted.

Ask A Biologist

2010-04-18T23:42:00.000-06:00

Ask A Biologist recently went through an update and is now back and better than ever! In case you have never been by the site, AAB is a place where the public can interact with scientist and have their questions answered by a team of biologist that volunteer their time to the site. The website has been operating for 3 years now and they have now answered nearly 2500 questions! The site is the brain child of Dr. David Hone of Archosaur Musings, who recently discussed the site and how it came to be [link]. This site is a really good asset and I hope that if you have not had a chance to check the site out yet you will. If you have, help spread the word about the update and let folks know about this great resource!!

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

Flash Floods!

2010-04-15T11:01:00.000-06:00

There is some great Flash Flood footage here from Rankin Studio. Pretty cool!

Thanks to Jim Kirkland for the heads up!

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

Academia.edu

2010-04-12T23:52:00.000-06:00

Are you on Academia.edu yet? This newer website seems to have quite the paleontology following. There is a subgroup on the site for members of the Vertebrate Paleontology mailing list (VRTPALEO), which currently has 55 members. I am not sure how many paleontologist and geologist in general are on Academia.edu, but there seems to be a good number and variety of people.

What exactly is Academia.edu? This website helps academics answer the question 'Who's researching what?' via a "social networking" type interface. Think a basic, research geared version of facebook. You can find people with similar research interests to yours, keep track of the latest developments in your research area - the latest papers, talks, blog posts and status updates, and can create an easy-to-maintain academic webpage, listing your research interests and any papers you have written. [link]

It has been fun to have better access to papers that are made available by fellow researchers, see who has read what papers, and what kind of research people might be working on. You can find me on Academia.edu here. Be sure to sign up and post some of your info! I look forward to seeing you all there!

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

Seitaad rises from the sands of time

2010-03-23T16:22:00.012-06:00

This new dinosaur gets my vote for one of the coolest names of 2010! In tomorrow’s (March 24th) issue of PLoS ONE the new sauropodomorph Seitaad ruessi will be unveiled [you can read it now here]! Seitaad is derived from Seit’aad, a sand-desert monster from the Navajo (Diné) creation legend that swallowed its victims in sand dunes. The skeleton of Seitaad was found encased in a Jurassic sand dune (Navajo Formation) in the Comb Ridge area near Bluff, Utah (pictured below). While tracks are relatively common fossils found in the Navajo Sandstone, Segisaurus, a small coelophysoid (thropod, meat eater) discovered in Arizona, is the only other dinosaur body fossils known from the Navajo Sandstone at this time (Camp 1936; Carrano et al. 2005[as far as I know]). The species name, ruessi, is derived from Everett Ruess, famous young artist, poet, historian, and explorer who disappeared in southern Utah in 1934, and subject on this blog in the past. The name Seitaad ruessi is pronounced SAY-eet-AWD ROO-ess-EYE. There is a great interview with Mark Loewen, one of the studies authors, over at the Open Source Paleontologist! Be sure to check it out for some great details!

Location of Seitaad find and reconstruction of animal.

The official press release:

New Dinosaur from Utah’s Red Rocks
Plant-Eater Named for Vanished Explorer Everett Ruess
March 23, 2010 – Utah’s red rocks – world-famous attractions at numerous national parks, monuments and state parks – have yielded a rare skeleton of a new species of plant-eating dinosaur that lived 185 million years ago and may have been buried alive by a collapsing sand dune. The discovery confirms the widespread success of sauropodomorph dinosaurs during the Early Jurassic Period.

Until now, Utah’s red rocks were known only for a few scattered bones and dinosaur footprints. However, discovery of a remarkably preserved partial skeleton is being published in the March 24 edition of PLoS ONE, the online open-access journal produced by the Public Library of Science.

The study was conducted by Joseph Sertich, a former University of Utah master’s student and current Stony Brook University Ph.D. student, and Mark Loewen (pictured to left), a paleontologist at the Utah Museum of Natural History and instructor in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Utah.

The new dinosaur species is named Seitaad ruessi (SAY-eet-AWD ROO-ess-EYE), which is derived from the Navajo word, “Seit’aad,” a sand-desert monster from the Navajo (Diné) creation legend that swallowed its victims in sand dunes (the skeleton of Seitaad had been “swallowed” in a fossilized sand dune when it was discovered); and Ruess, after the artist, poet, naturalist and explorer Everett Ruess who mysteriously disappeared in the red rock country of southern Utah in 1934 at age 20.

Seitaad ruessi is part of a group of dinosaurs known as sauropodomorphs. Sauropodomorphs were distributed across the globe during the Early Jurassic, when all of the continents were still together in the supercontinent named Pangaea. Millions of years later, sauropodomorphs evolved into gigantic sauropods, long-necked plant eaters whose fossils are well known from elsewhere in Utah, including Dinosaur National Monument.

A Dinosaur Buried by the Dunes
The skeleton of Seitaad was discovered protruding from the multicolored cliffs of Navajo Sandstone in 2004 by local historian and artist, Joe Pachak, while hiking in the Comb Ridge area near Bluff, Utah. His discovery, located just below an ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi) cliff-dwelling, was subsequently reported to the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Utah Museum of Natural History. Museum paleontologists and crews excavated and collected the specimen in 2005 (picture to right, (left to right) Mike Getty, Josh Smith and Joe Gentry).

The beautifully preserved specimen includes most bones of the skeleton, except for the head, and parts of the neck and tail. Seitaad was found in fossilized sand dunes that were part of a vast desert that covered the region nearly 185 million years ago during the Jurassic Period. Research suggests that the animal was buried in a suddenly collapsing sand dune that engulfed the remains and stood them on their head. The missing parts of the skeleton were lost to erosion over the past thousand years, but were almost certainly visible when Native Americans lived on the cliff just above the skeleton.

In life, the animal would have stood about 3 to 4 feet (about 1 meter) tall at the hips and was 10 to 15 feet (3 to 4.5 meters) long. It would have weighed approximately 150 to 200 pounds (70 to 90 kilograms), and could walk on two or four legs. Like its later gigantic relatives, Seitaad most likely ate plants.

Early sauropodomorphs, including Seitaad, had long necks and tails with small heads and leaf-shaped teeth, suggesting that they were specialized for an herbivorous (plant-eating) diet. These same traits were carried on in their much larger descendents, the sauropods. “Although Seitaad was preserved in a sand dune, this ancient desert must have included wetter areas with enough plants to support these smaller dinosaurs and other animals,” said Sertich. “Just like in deserts today, life would have been difficult in Utah’s ancient ‘sand sea.’”

According to Loewen, “We know from geologic evidence that seasonal rainstorms like today’s summer monsoons provided much of the moisture in this sand sea, filling ponds and other low spots between the sand dunes.”

The closest relatives of Seitaad are known from similar-aged rocks in South America and southern Africa. Other, less complete, fossils from northern Arizona hinted at the presence of sauropodomorphs like Seitaad, but none were complete enough to understand exactly what species was living in the American Southwest. The discovery of Seitaad confirms that this group of dinosaurs was extremely widespread and successful during the Early Jurassic, approximately 175 million to 200 million years ago.

Although the Navajo Sandstone is exposed all over Utah and Arizona, fossils are extremely rare and we have not yet learned much about the animals that lived in this giant desert. Other animals that lived in the Navajo Sandstone were all relatively small animals, including a carnivorous dinosaur, crocodile relatives and proto-mammals called tritylodonts. Even though Seitaad was quite small, it was likely the largest herbivore during this time period in southern Utah. “This new find suggests that there may be more dinosaurs yet to be discovered in these rocks,” said Sertich.

References:

Camp, C. 1936. A new type of small bipedal dinosaur from the Navajo sandstone of Arizona. University of California Publications, Bulletin of the Department of Geological Sciences 24: 39-56.

Carrano, M.T, Hutchinson, J.R, and Sampson, S.D. 2005. New information on Segisaurus halli, a small theropod dinosaur from the Early Jurassic of Arizona. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 25(4): 835-849

Sertich, J.J.W. and Loewen, M.A. 2010. A New Basal Sauropodomorph Dinosaur from the Lower Jurassic Navajo Sandstone of Southern Utah. PLoS ONE 5(3): e9789. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0009789

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster, all images from Mark Loewen and Sertich and Loewen 2010.

Exxon Paleontologists Call for Increased U.S. Fossil Production

2010-03-17T22:29:00.000-06:00

Hat tip to Steve

A watch that keeps "shitty" time?

2010-03-15T15:41:00.003-06:00

Hopefully not! MSN is reporting that the Swiss watch company Artya has designed a watch out of a dinosaur coprolite. The watch comes complete with a wrist band made from the skin from an American cane toad and will retail for $11,290 .

From the press release:

"When it comes to daring innovation, Yvan Arpa is forever ahead and sets the trend for others to follow. He sublimates controversial materials and harnesses untamed elements in his creative processes. Rust, dust, and toad skin are turned into luxury icons, while lightning furiously engraves its mark on bare steel. Today the spotlight is on coprolite. He brandishes these fossilized feces in his pioneering style, raising this paleontological curiosity to the status of a work of art.

A relic of the Jurassic period, it has taken millions of years for this organic substance to embrace its present warm and matchless tints. Designed with an understated aesthetic sense, the dial is free of indexes or any other pointless features. In its mineral aspect, it forcefully underscores the pristine strength emanating from the very dawn of life. As a true memento, it is encircled in a round case sculpted in stainless steel grade 316 or, as an affirmation to its prehistoric lineage, in bronze with its characteristic blazing hues......"

Why didn't I think of this lol! The sad thing is it is probably just a concretion ;)

Journey To The Beginning Of Time

2010-03-15T07:25:00.004-06:00

Don Prothero was recently searching for a tv series he remembered from the 1960's on the vertebrate paleontology list server. Several people remembered it and were able to point us in the direction of YouTube, where several of the episodes are posted. I thought I would share the links for those who might be interested.

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

Paleo and Geo must reads

2010-03-11T12:28:00.002-07:00

My friend Jim is trying to come up with a seminar type class for sometime in the future and he was wondering - if you had to pick a set of books or journal articles that you felt all paleontologists should read, what would you include? Feel free to read his post here to leave any comments and suggestions you might have.

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

Glenwood Canyon Rockfall on I-70

2010-03-10T17:30:00.004-07:00

The Colorado Department of Transportation has done a nice job of keeping everyone informed on the closure of I-70 due to a rockfall in Glenwood Canyon. Its weeks like this that I think it would be interesting to work for their geoHazards group. As of earlier today they were waiting on the removal of a 20 foot boulder up on the hill that is in danger of possibly falling about 900 feet to the interstate below, further damaging the road. The CDOT had a helicopter on scene this morning to drop off drilling equipment and a generator for the planned drilling/blasting operations. I appreciate the fact that they have been posting pictures of the whole process on tweet photo, which I find rather interesting.

Sadly today, another rockfall on the road drivers have been diverted to, killed a woman near Steamboat Springs [link]. Rockfalls had not occurred in the area since 1998. In the Glenwood Canyon area the last significant rockfall was in 2004.

For now you can watch the clean up work live streaming on the CDOT website by clicking on the Glenwood Springs link here.

pictures © CDOT, text by ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

Paleozoic Park

2010-02-20T17:02:00.002-07:00

Swing over to BustedTees to score this shirt for $20!

Thanks to Jim for the heads up!

Paper shines new light on the feather details of Microraptor gui

2010-02-12T18:04:00.002-07:00

A new paper coming out on Monday (the 15th of February) in the journal PLoS One will present innovative details of the feathers of Microraptor gui. Dr David Hone, a British researcher working in China, and who is also the author of the blog Archosaur Musings and runs Ask a Biologist, is the lead researcher on this study, where the best preserved fossil of Microraptor were studied under UV light. They observed that while the feathers do indeed reach the bones as expected, they are covered by the remains of decayed soft tissues and so cannot be seen under natural light. Their study shows that the feathers of Microraptor were larger than originally thought and that they have not moved from their original positions, but are preserved in a natural position in the fossil. Dr. Hone graciously agreed to let me ask him some questions about this current research:

RKHF: Where did the idea to use a UV light to detect the furthest reaches of the feathers on Microraptor originate? What are the mechanics behind it that make it work?

DH: Well the idea was not so much to find the feathers as to see what was there. Helmut Tischlinger's work with UV light on the various fossils of the Solnhofen limestones in Germany (that give us things like Archaeopteryx) have often recovered 'hidden' information. Parts of the fossils that are not clear or even visible at all under natural light, but then can be seen clearly under UV. We simply hoped the same might be true of the Lianoning specimens we have in China, so I was able to persuade my colleagues here to fund a trip to Beijing for Helmut for some initial investigations. It was chance in a sense that we found the missing feathers in Microraptor - this was after all the first time someone had seriously looked at the Liaoning stuff like this and the preservation is rather different, it may not have worked at all, or may have taken weeks to get the set-up just right. As it was, Helmut fairly quickly found a few features on various fossils, obviously including some nice bits on Microraptor.

Microraptor gui (holotype specimen) under natural light showing the feathers (white arrows) and ‘halo’ (black arrows). Image from Xu Xing.

The mechanics are fairly simple in that we basically just shine some very powerful UV lights at the fossil and take photos. However, that process can take hours or days to get a good image. Different parts of the fossil bones, soft tissues and the rock itself will reflect or fluoresce differently according to the wavelengths of the light being used and the filters added to the camera. It can take dozens of shots to get a good one (assuming something is even there) and some of the exposures take an hour or more. It therefore takes a lot of time, skill, patience and especially experience to get these results. In a sense we are fortunate we got so much so soon - Helmut tells me that it often takes a week or more working on a single fossil to get results he's really happy with and with all the likely details found. Here we had less than two weeks and dozens of specimens to work on, so it's fortunate we have as much as we do.

Microraptor gui under UV light showing the differences in colour of the bones, feathers and degraded soft tissues. Image from Helmut Tischlinger.

RKHF: Is the soft tissue identifiable?

DH: Not really. It's patchy and very varied which is why we think that it was preserved well after it began to decay. In some fossils you can see blocks that can be readily identified as muscles or scales etc. but not here. We just have some loose patches of very brightly fluorescing tissues.

RKHF: Are there any differences between the arm and leg feather implantation sites on Microraptor? Do the leg feathers appear to be flight related?

DH: Well unfortunately it's only in a few key places that you can really see the attachment points penetrating the 'halo' on the specimens and the arms are no part of that. So while we can fairly safely infer that the arm feathers are there and do reach the bones (picture to right), we can't observe it directly (at least not yet, more work might yet reveal them). This also means we can't really compare them to the leg feathers in terms of attachment, though having deep arm feather attachments is no surprise at all, and really it's probably better that we can really confirm the same is true of the legs.

I suppose that the fact that the leg feathers do have bone-deep attachments could be used as an argument that they are used in flight. However, the asymmetry of these feathers is a far more important character and we can't really add anything to the previous work in that respect.

RKHF: Has this technique been used on any other fossil genera at this time or only Microraptor?

DH: A great many things have been examined under UV. I've posted up various photos of different specimens of Archaeopteryx on my blog, and other dinosaurs like Compsognathus and Juravenator have been published on and of course pterosaurs like Jeholopterus (pictured right from Kellner et al. 2009), Pterodactylus and Anuroganthus and a fair few others. However, most of the work has been directed at invertebrates as the contrast between the shells and rock is often not great under normal light, but superb under UV which really helps show up their detailed structure. UV light work has been going on for decades but few people do much of it, and with the cost of colour photos often only a few minor images are published, or the results are simply used to help improve a description. As such even within scientific circles this work is not too well known, something I hope will change.

RKHF: How many specimens of Microraptor did you analyze?

DH: Just the one unfortunately. When Helmut was here he had a limited amount of time to work on as many specimens as possible. The exceptional preservation of the holotype, even next to other Liaoning material, made it a prime candidate, but we didn't look at other Microraptors. I guess I should add the word 'yet' to that sentence as we fully intend to, but of course time and money constraints make that much easier said than done for the short-term at least.

RKHF: Is there something about the preservation or sediment type found in the Solnhofen, Yixian and Daohugou formations that makes the use of this specific technique more successful than you would find in other locations? For instance, do you think an environment like that preserved in the ancient lake beds found in the Green River Formation of the United States could benefit from similar studies?

DH: Well certainly all of these formations are Lagerstatt-like so they are preserving things in a fairly similar way. It's also true that the Yixian and Daohugou are really quite different to the Solnhofen and while studies of the former have been looked at much less than the latter they have things in common. My background is zoology not geology, but the few Green River specimens I've seen look much more like the Solnhofen than they do the Chinese beds, so I would say hopes are high. The Green River often preserves things in superb detail and with soft-tissues so I'd be surprised if *nothing * was there. It's well worth a good look one day at some of the better birds or fish for example, just as a better look at some of the pterosaur material from Brazil.

RKHF: Have the methods, techniques or conclusions learned from this project led to any other new research projects?

DH: Well it's a bit early to say. Certainly there are a bunch of slides knocking around the IVPP with various UV pictures on them that other people are working on (slowly) so in a sense there will be a follow-up to this. I've certainly developed a greater interest in feathers so I'll be looking into that more if I ever clear the mountain of papers off my desk to get that far. Obviously there are a great many important and interesting fossils in China and elsewhere that could benefit from being examined with UV and slowly more and more of this is being done. There's lots more to find, but it will take a while.

RKHF: Any additional information you would like to share?

DH: Well I think the real message here is less about what can be said about Microraptor (cool though that is) and more what it means for fossil preservation and preparation. There really is genuine information 'hidden' in fossils and we need UV light and other techniques to bring this out. If we don't (and few people do) we risk missing out on all kinds of rare and valuable soft-tissue information and even destroying it during preparation while exposing the bones. This is obviously really critical and something more people need to be aware of.

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Hone, David W.E., Tischlinger, Helmut, Xu, Xing, & Zhang, Fucheng. 2010. The extent of the preserved feathers on the four-winged dinosaur Microraptor gui under ultraviolet light. PLoS ONE 5 (2) : 10.1371/journal.pone.0009223

Abstract:
Background:

The holotype of the theropod non-avian dinosaur Microraptor gui from the Early Cretaceous of China shows extensive preservation of feathers in a halo around the body and with flight feathers associated with both the fore and hindlimbs. It has been questioned as to whether or not the feathers did extend into the halo to reach the body, or had disassociated and moved before preservation. This taxon has important implications for the origin of flight in birds and the possibility of a four-winged gliding phase.

Methodology / Principle Findings:

Examination of the specimen under ultraviolet light reveals that these feathers actually reach the body of the animal and were not disassociated from the bones. Instead they may have been chemically altered by the body tissues of the animal meaning that they did not carbonize close into the animal or more likely were covered by other decaying tissue, though evidence of their presence remains.

Conclusions / Significance:

These UV images show that the feathers preserved on the slab are genuinely associated with the skeleton and that their arrangement and orientation is likely correct. The methods used here to reveal hidden features of the specimen may be applicable to other specimens from the fossil beds of Liaoning that produced Microraptor.

Reference:

Kellner AWA, Wang X, Tischlinger H, Campos DA, Hone DWE, et al. (2009) The soft tissue of Jeholopterus (Pterosauria, Anurognathidae, Batrachognathidae) and the structure of the pterosaur wing membrane. Proc Royal Soc B 277: 321-329

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

Elastic Park

2010-02-11T11:10:00.000-07:00

Funny name, neat idea.

Overview
The project combines building community and creating and sharing art with a large-scale science project that will entertain and educate people of all ages and all walks of life. It can have far-reaching effects by serving as an example of what people can accomplish together, as well as by serving as a template for a national museum tour.

Deliverables:

Exhibit at Exploration Place, Wichita, KS will serve as template for national museum tour 100's of community volunteers & 1,000's of visitors

educational opportunities for learning about pre-history and art in unique way

New appreciation for what communities can build together could have far-reaching effects

Seriously?!? What next.....

2010-02-10T22:09:00.006-07:00

Entertainment Weekly and Rissa are informing us that, if you have no other plans for your Valentines Day, you might want to stay in and watch a new 1 hour special on the Discovery Channel - Tyrannosaurus Sex. Yup. You read that correctly. Seriously, who comes up with this stuff?!?

From the press release: "The one-hour special explores the mysteries, wonders and newest evidence surrounding ritual courtship and mating habits of dinosaurs. How did a ferocious T-Rex woo his lady? How did a female Titanosaur support the weight of a male who was as long as a four-story building is high? How did a Stegosaurus couple negotiate sex with all those deadly plates and spikes?...Tyrannosaurus Sex doesn’t just answer the questions, it shows dinosaur sex in all its glory with state-of-the-art CGI animation. The scenes created for the special are all based on fact. Interviews with scientists on the cutting-edge of palaeontology bring new life to one of the last mysteries of these mighty giants."

Do we even have enough information to get this show past the whole one minute mark? I predict mucho arm waving (although possibly all in good fun, why turn down the $$!?). I guess it could just be silly fun. Let me know.....

Thanks to Rissa for the heads up (I think, lol) ;)

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

Jurassic Spiders!

2010-02-09T22:57:00.003-07:00

Selden, Paul A. and Huang, Diying. 2010. The oldest haplogyne spider (Araneae: Plectreuridae), from the Middle Jurassic of China. Naturwissenschaften. [link]

Abstract: New fossil spiders (Arachnida: Araneae) from Middle Jurassic (ca. 165 Ma) strata of Daohugou, Inner Mongolia, China are described as Eoplectreurys gertschi gen. et sp. nov. and referred to the modern haplogyne family Plectreuridae. This small family is restricted to southwestern USA, Mexico, and the adjacent Caribbean area today and hitherto has only a sparse Cenozoic fossil record. The morphology of Eoplectreurys is remarkably similar to modern forms and thus demonstrates great evolutionary conservatism. This new discovery not only extends the fossil record of the family by at least 120 Ma to the Middle Jurassic but also supports the hypothesis of a different distribution of the family in the past than today and subsequent extinction over much of its former range.

Via Wired Science:

Scientists have unearthed an almost perfectly preserved spider fossil in China dating back to the middle Jurassic era, 165 million years ago. The fossilized spiders, Eoplectreurys gertschi, are older than the only two other specimens known by around 120 million years.

The level of detail preserved in the fossils is amazing, said paleontologist Paul Selden of the University of Kansas and lead author of the study appearing Feb. 6 in Naturwissenschaften. “You go in with a microscope, and bingo! It’s fantastic.”

The fossils were found at a site called Daohugou in Northern China that is filled with fossilized salamanders, small primitive mammals, insects and water crustaceans. During the Jurassic era, the fossil bed was part of a lake in a volcanic region, Selden said.

Spider fossils from this period are rare, because the arachnids’ soft bodies don’t preserve well. The pristine fossil pictured in these photos was probably created when the spider was trapped in volcanic ash. The ultrafine clay particles squashed the spider without breaking up the animals’ delicate cuticle as more coarse sediment would, Selden said.

E. gertschi shows all the features of the modern members of the family, found in North America, suggesting it has evolved very little since the Jurassic period, Selden said. “The scimitar-shaped structure you notice out of the male is so distinctive,” he said. “Looking at modern ones, you think, well, it’s just a dead ringer.”

The findings also suggest this family of spiders, the Plectreuridae, was once much more widespread than it is today. Currently, the family has only been found living in California, Arizona, Mexico and Cuba. Yet 165 million years ago, they lived on a small continent called the North China Block.

“At some point something caused their range to contract to this part of southern North America,” Selden said. He speculates that changes in vegetation during an ice age or other climactic event wiped them out in other areas, “but they were still happy in these arid areas of the Southwest.”

Images © Paul Selden

Utah's Dino Graveyard

2010-02-08T01:59:00.003-07:00

Check out the Science Channel's Utah's Dino Graveyard on YouTube!

Thanks to Jim Kirkland for the heads up!

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

New Blogs

2010-02-03T10:15:00.001-07:00

Swing over and check out Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs - a blog about "dinosaurs, their relations, their neighbors, their study, and their various manifestations in pop culture." And then take a look at dot dot Dinosaur, a new paleoart blog!

© ReBecca K. Hunt-Foster

Williamson and Carr introduce the destroyer - Bistahieversor sealeyi: Part 2

2010-01-31T07:00:00.003-07:00

We are continuing our interview from yesterday with Dr. Tom Williamson and Dr. Thomas Carr regarding their research on the new species of tyrannosaur, Bistahieversor sealeyi. This is the final part of the two-part series.

NMMNH P-25049, incomplete skull and skeleton of juvenile Bistahieversor sealeyi, as seen on display in the New Mexico’s Seacoast Hall at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science in 2004.

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RKHF to TW: You are a very well respected paleontologist who has worked for over 20 years in the badlands of New Mexico on a variety of projects. How did this research work into your larger overall work studying the Late Cretaceous through Paleogene evolutionary history.

TW: I have been very interested in the biostratigraphy of vertebrates in terrestrial deposits as well as their paleobiogeography; that is the study of the ancient stratigraphic and geographic distribution of vertebrate animals. As the fossil record of Late Cretaceous and Paleogene vertebrates improves, we are able to get more precise ages of various vertebrate faunas and this allows us to correlate much more accurately between faunas distributed among numerous depositional basins scattered throughout western North America and the rest of the world. This is allowing us to build up a better picture of the movements of different groups of animals over the globe. When this is combined with the evolutionary history of certain clades of animals, such as dinosaurs, we can begin to see patterns of how dinosaurs moved and evolved in response to global events such as climate change, changes in global sea level, changes in connectivity and dispersal routes between different biogeographic areas, and provinciality.

[Above: Artist reconstruction of Bistahieversor sealeyi. Image by Mary Sundstrom and Matt Celeskey, for the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.]

RKHF: What are the origins of the name Bistahieversor sealeyi?

TC: Tom and I really wanted to credit Paul Sealey, who discovered the holotype (the adult) specimen. So the species name was an easy choice. If I recall correctly, Tom wanted to acknowledge both the BLM and the Navajo Nation, so he suggested using the Navajo term “bisti”, which means “place of the adobe formations” and also is part of the name of the “Bisti/De-na-zin Wilderness area”. I suggested “eversor”, which is Latin for “destroyer”, instead of “saurus” or “tyrannus”, which are used quite frequently. The name is pronounced “bis-tah-hee-ee-versor”; if you say it enough times, it rolls off the tongue quite easily!

RKHF: What does the discover of Bistahieversor tell us about dinosaurs that lived in the American southwest? How does it help to fill in our view of this part of the world, since more seems to be known about the American northwest and southern portions of Canada.

TW: Most dinosaur faunas of late Campanian age have, until recently, come primarily from the northern Rocky Mountain Region, especially Montana and southern Alberta. Few dinosaurs have been documented from more southerly regions until very recently. Now faunas are becoming better documented from New Mexico, southern Utah (Kaiparowits Formation), and West Texas (Aguja Formation), and even Mexico (Cerro del Pueblo Formation, Coahuila, Mexico). These show that there was pronounced provinciality among dinosaurs so that each basin has a largely unique dinosaur fauna. Tyrannosaurs show a similar pattern so that each depositional basin that contains an identifiable tyrannosaur taxon has an endemic genus and/or species. This is not true of the latest Cretaceous when only one tyrannosaur is known from across western North America; Tyrannosaurus rex. This remains a mystery, but might partially explain why dinosaur faunas are so diverse in the late Campanian compared to the late Maastrichtian.

RKHF: Do you think there were geographical barriers between the northern portion of the US and the southwest US that would have restricted movement, and if so, to what degree.

TW: There is no evidence for geographical barriers between northern and southern regions of the US that I'm aware of, other than simple latitudinal differences. In addition, we see distinctive differences in the dinosaurian faunas between nearby areas of the southwest such as southern Utah and the San Juan Basin. It's not clear if these differences are due to slight age differences between the faunas or if they reflect something else. It's all very puzzling, but that's what makes it so interesting.

RKHF: What type of research is currently in your future?

TC: I presently have two projects on the go regarding T. rex ontogeny, and two others on Daspletosaurus diversity and ontogeny. Also, Tom and I will produce a monographic treatment of Bistahieversor, so this short article is a taste!

TW: Recently, I have focused on the early Paleocene vertebrate record in the San Juan Basin. This record is one of the best in the world, spanning about four million years in the interval immediately following the mass extinction that wiped out so many of the latest Cretaceous dinosaurs and other animals. The early Paleocene was a time of ecological recovery during which animals and plants, and especially mammals underwent rapid evolutionary change, accompanied by an explosive increase in diversity and morphological variation. This is considered one of the best examples of an evolutionary radiation and is one of the most significant events in mammal evolutionary history. I am working with several colleagues including Anne Weil (Oklahoma State University), Ross Secord (University of Nebraska), Dan Peppe (Baylor University), and Steve Brusatte (a PH.D. student at Columbia University and the American Museum of Natural History) to explore, in unprecedented detail, the changes in faunal and floral changes and how they might be related to local and global climate change. We also plan to examine the evolutionary radiation of mammals in western North America using this refined record and by applying new analytical techniques.

RKHF to TC: Can you tell us more about your Vertebrate Paleontology program at Carthage College?

TC: At Carthage I offer a variety of courses to undergraduate students, including: Introduction to Vertebrate Paleontology, Dinosaur Evolution and Extinction, Comparative Anatomy of the Vertebrates, Human Evolution, Independent Study in Dinosaur Evolution and Ontogeny, and Senior Thesis in Dinosaur Evolution and Ontogeny. I also offer a field experience for students, but that is not always for credit hours. In short, my goal is to provide students with the training that they require for success in graduate school. Presently there’s a trickle of students, so more are always welcome!

RKHF to TW: Can you tell us more about your Vertebrate Paleontology program at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science or your work with the University of New Mexico?

TW: As a Curator of Paleontology at the Museum, I am conducting an active field based research program. My primary research area is in the San Juan Basin of northwestern New Mexico and the most distant parts of this are within about a 3 hour drive of Albuquerque. Much of this land is on federal land administered by the Bureau of Land Management and I work closely with that agency to share data and coordinate fieldwork. I am also an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Some of my research has previously been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Bureau of Land Management.

As part of my research program, I collect fossils using a variety of methods. We employ screen washing to collect microvertebrates. Microvertebrates consist primarily of isolated teeth or jaw fragments. These are small enough that they are usually not collected by typical surface collecting techniques. Through screen washing we are finding many new or previously poorly known mammal specimens and this is greatly increasing our understanding of Cretaceous and Paleogene mammals of the San Juan Basin. We are also employing other collecting techniques and have had increasing success at recovering more complete vertebrate specimens. Over the past several years we have been very successful in collecting partial and nearly complete skeletons of mammals, reptiles, and other animals. These have greatly enriched our understanding of the morphology and biology, and evolutionary relationships of these animals.

Thanks to the Museum's collecting efforts over the past twenty years, it now holds the largest collection of vertebrate fossils from the San Juan Basin.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Carr, Thomas D. and Williamson, Thomas E. 2010. Bistahieversor sealeyi, gen. et sp. nov., a new tyrannosauroid from New Mexico and the origin of deep snouts in Tyrannosauroidea. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 30(1): 1 — 16, DOI: 10.1080/02724630903413032

Abstract: Skeletal remains of Late Cretaceous (Campanian and Maastrichtian) tyrannosauroids are rare in southwestern North America (Carr and Williamson, 2000). Historically, the identity and diversity of southwestern tyrannosauroids was unclear because most of the fossils were isolated teeth and bones that are not diagnostic of known genera or species (Carr and Williamson, 2000). One partial skull and skeleton (OMNH 10131) from the upper Campanian of New Mexico was referred to the problematic tooth taxon Aublysodon cf. A. mirandus, a referral that was later falsified (Lehman and Carpenter, 1990; Carr and Williamson, 2004). Recently, two fairly complete skulls and skeletons were collected that enabled a review of tyrannosauroid fossils from the Campanian of New Mexico. These specimens provide the opportunity to accurately characterize Campanian tyrannosauroids of the southwest, and recover their phylogenetic relationships with well known species (Carr and Williamson, 2000). We report the presence of a new genus and species of deep-snouted tyrannosauroid from the upper Campanian of New Mexico, represented by several specimens including the partial skeleton of an adult and a juvenile. This new taxon is part of the diversification of deepsnouted tyrannosauroids and emphasizes the high species richness of this widespread clade in the upper Campanian of western North America.

References:
Carr, T. D., and T. E. Williamson. 2000. A review of Tyrannosauridae (Dinosauria: Coelurosauria) from New Mexico. New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin 17:113–145.

Carr, T. D., and T. E. Williamson. 2004. Diversity of Late Maastrichtian Tyrannosauridae (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from western North America. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 142:419–523.

Lehman, T. M., and K. Carpenter. 1990. A partial skeleton of the tyrannosaurid dinosaur Aublysodon from the Upper Cretaceous of New Mexico. Journal of Paleontology 64:1026–1032.

Press:
Society of Vertebrate Paleontology
Live Science

National Geographic

Discovery News

Williamson and Carr introduce the destroyer - Bistahieversor sealeyi: Part 1

2010-01-30T14:23:00.003-07:00

The featured article in the January 2010 issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology names a new species of tyrannosaur, Bistahieversor sealeyi (pronounced: bistah-he-ee-versor see-lee-eye), which was discovered in the Bisti/De-na-zin Wilderness of New Mexico. This research was conducted by two of my colleagues and friends, paleontologists Thomas Williamson of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History/University of New Mexico and Thomas Carr of Carthage College, who graciously agreed to let me interview them about their recent work. This is the first part of a two-part series. Tune in tomorrow for the second half.

RKHF to TW: Briefly tell us about your work prior to the discovery of Bistahieversor.

TW: The San Juan Basin contains a fantastic record of Late Cretaceous through early Eocene deposits. Vertebrate fossils have been collected from these deposits for well over 100 years. As a graduate student, I studied early Paleocene mammals and their stratigraphic distribution in these strata. After being hired by the New Mexico Museum of Natural and Science in 1994, I launched a vigorous field program to explore Cretaceous rocks in search of vertebrate fossils. This resulted in the recovery of numerous dinosaur specimens including a skull of Parasaurolophus (1995), a partial skeleton of a subadult tyrannosaur (1995), that is referred to Bistahieversor, a skull of a new pachycephalosaur, Sphaerotholus (1998), and the skull and skeleton of Bistahieversor (1998). Much of this work was conducted with the assistance of Museum Volunteers including Paul Sealey. He discovered the Sphaerotholus and the adult Bistahieversor specimens.

RKHF: Tell us about the discovery of Bistahieversor.

TW: Paul Sealey, a volunteer at the Museum who has worked with me for many years, found the specimen on a weekend trip to the Bisti/De-na-zin Wilderness back in 1997. He photographed it and showed the pictures to me. One of the pictures showed a dentary with a tooth. From that, I knew he had found a tyrannosaur. I worked with the BLM to obtain an excavation permit, the first ever issued for a paleontological excavation on Federal Wilderness (or so I've been told). I collected the specimen during the summer of 1998 with help from lots of volunteers. The New Mexico Army National Guard volunteered to lift the specimen from the wilderness as part of a training exercise in September of that year. Preparation on the specimen did not start until about 2001 and was completed in 2003. The specimen is now on exhibit in the Cretaceous Seacoast Exhibit at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.

[Photo: Group photo of Dr. Thomas Williamson (front row, standing in black t-shirt) with his crew with a field jacket containing portions of the holotype of Bistahieversor sealeyi in the Bisti/De-na-zin Wilderness Area of New Mexico (September, 1998). Photo by Ray Nelson.]

RKHF to TC: You are a renowned tyrannosaurus researcher - how did you become involved in this particular project?

TC: Tom Williamson invited me on board back at the Chicago SVP meeting in 1997. Some time before that he requested a copy of my Master’s thesis. On the strength of that, he wanted to work with me in writing up the juvenile specimen. The adult was discovered a short time after SVP, if I recall correctly.

RKHF: What formation was the Bisti Beast collected from and what is its age? Tell us a little about the world Bistahieversor would have lived in and what other types of animals it would have lived around - or eaten!

TW: Bistahieversor is from the Upper Cretaceous (upper Campanian) Hunter Wash Member, Kirtland Formation. The age is based on radiometric dates obtained from volcanic ashes above and below the fossil horizons as about 74 million years. This is slightly younger than most other late Campanian dinosaur faunas described from western North America - those tend to be closer to about 76 million years in age. The Hunter Wash Member represents an alluvial floodplain environment, inland from the western edge of the Western Interior Seaway. The San Juan Basin was a lush tropical forest at this time. The vertebrate fauna included abundant mammals, turtles, lizards, crocodilians, and dinosaurs. Dinosaurs included the hadrosaurs Kritosaurus and Parasaurolophus, the pachycephalosaur Stegoceras (Sphaerotholus is known from slightly younger deposits), the ceratopsian Pentaceratops, ankylosaurs, "raptors" such as Saurornitholestes and Dromaeosaurus (known primarily from teeth, but also from some foot bones), ornithomimids, and tyrannosaurs. Bistahieversor is the only tyrannosaur certainly identified from these rocks. However, previously some workers have incorrectly referred isolated teeth to Albertosaurus. It turns out that these dinosaurs cannot be distinguished by isolated teeth alone.

RKHF: What are some of the particular characteristics that make Bistahieversor unique and how do these characters compare to other known relatives of Bistahieversor?

TC: In Bistahieversor there are numerous autapomorphies, and the salient ones are described in the article. For example there is a pneumatic foramen in the lacrimal above the orbital fenestra, this opening is absent in all other tyrannosauroids; there is a single pneumatic foramen in the lateral surface of the palatine, whereas there are two in all other tyrannosauroids from the level of Appalachiosaurus on up; there are seven prongs that extend from the nasal into the frontals, whereas the usual number in tyrannosaurids is three; there is a keel formed by the angular and prearticular along the lower edge of the mandibular ramus, whereas these bones meet along a flat surface in tyrannosaurids; a deep flange extends dorsally from the lower margin of the rostral mylohyoid foramen of the splenial, whereas in other tyrannosauroids (from the level of Appalachiosaurus on up) this flange is absent; finally, there is a notch in the angular that secures the dentary, this notch is absent in tyrannosauroids from the level of Appalachiosaurus on up.

RKHF: Are there any obvious ontogenetic variations between the adult and "teenager" Bistahieversor specimens?

TC: The subadult specimen is referable to B. sealeyi based on the common possession of the supernumerary processes of the nasal that extend into the frontal and the single pneumatic opening in the palatine. As in tyrannosaurids, such as Albertosaurus libratus, Tyrannosaurus rex, Tyrannosaurus bataar, and Daspletosaurus sp., the subadult is delicately built, whereas the adult is much more massive; the internal sinuses are not inflated in the lacrimal, as they are in the adult; the lacrimal horn is small, whereas it is enlarged in the adult; and the palatine is not inflated as it is in the adult. Overall, the difference between the subadult and the adult are identical to those seen in other derived tyrannosauroids. However, some difference are not seen in tyrannosaurids, such as the subadult possessing an ectopterygoid that is inflated relative to the adult; in tyrannosaurids the reverse is true.

National Geographic

Discovery News

Bistahieversor is coming...

2010-01-30T01:08:00.002-07:00

Tomorrow (if not earlier) I plan to have a two-part interview with Dr. Tom Williamson and Dr. Thomas Carr on their newly published tyrannosaur, Bistahieversor. Please stay tuned!

Image courtesy David Baccadutre, New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science

Geo Sapiens exhibit

2010-01-29T16:00:00.005-07:00

Way back in March of last year I helped to pass on information about a Geologic Art Exhibit at the Two Wall Gallery in Vashon, Washington. It sounds like the show was a success with work from around 50 earth scientist from around the world being displayed this past November. You can view images of the art work that was displayed here. The image to the left is called Trilobite Coquina by Ancil Meacham. Be sure to check out all of the beautiful art that was submitted for the show.

Greg Wessel, a Geologist and co-curator of the Two Wall Gallery, mentioned that they plan to hold another exhibit in the future:

"We plan to host another exhibit of work done by geoscientists, Geo sapiens II, later this year. In addition, we hope to coordinate similar shows at other sites across the country and possibly overseas at about the same time, and so we invite you to help with that effort and assist with the advertising and organization of geo-art shows in your neighborhood. If you are interested in participating and helping with an exhibit in your neighborhood, let me know and we'll share ideas. I can say from personal experience that it's a LOT of fun and not nearly as much work as it seems. And you get to meet a mess of people in your profession and have a few beers with them! What could be better than that?"

I really hope they will have another show. I think it would be great to see some of this cool art, while also seeing more of the wonderful paleo-art that is out there also displayed!

Art © by Ancil Meacham

Tracking China’s Dinosaurs

2010-01-20T16:46:00.001-07:00

Experience China and its dinosaurs!

Tracking China’s Dinosaurs

May 12 (Wednesday) ---- 22 (Saturday), 2010 (11 days)

Type of Trip: Geotour (Paleontology)

Location: northwestern China (cities of Beijing, Xian, and Lanzhou)
Science Leaders: Andrew R. C. Milner and Hailu You
Minimum Number: 10
Maximum number: 20

Trip Overview:
Sinofossa Institute and St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site are proud to offer a unique opportunity to experience the cultural, historical, and geological wonders of China while following professional paleontologists Andrew R. C. Milner (City Paleontologist, St. George, Utah) and Dr. Hai-Lu You (Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences) to explore dinosaur footprint-bearing sites at China’s first track-based national geopark in Gansu Province. Participants will also have the opportunity to visit two well-known museums holding dinosaurs in Beijing: the Beijing Natural History Museum and Chinese Paleozoological Museum; and see scenic cultural and historical attractions in Xian, where the Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses are located.

Who Should Attend?
Persons interested in dinosaurs and fossil birds, especially their tracks, and who desire a unique, natural history-oriented experience in China.

Tour Fee, Deposit & Payment:
US$ 2,495.00/person (double occupancy)
US$ 2,995.00/person (single occupancy)
Deposit: US$ 200.00
Deposit Deadline: February 11, 2010
Full Payment Deadline: March 11, 2010

For terms and conditions, please visit http://www.sinofossa.org/joinus-01.html.

Included in Tour Package:
- All transportation within China, including transfers between airports and hotels.
- Deluxe accommodations in Beijing and Xian, and clean, comfortable accommodations in Gansu.
- All meals and beverages.
- All tickets for sightseeing attractions throughout the trip.
- Permits required to explore for and excavate dinosaur fossils.
- All tools for fossil excavation, including gloves, brushes, and chisels for individual use, and equipment (e.g., pickaxes, shovels, spades, generators) and supplies (plaster, glues, burlap, etc.) for group use if necessary.
- English-speaking, professional leadership.
- Full pre-trip information and assistance.

Not Included in Tour Price:
- Passport and visa fees.
- International airfare.
- Travel insurance.
- Gratuities.
- Laundry.
- Optional two-day pre-trip sightseeing excursion in Beijing (see below).

Your Science Trip Leaders:

Andrew R. C. Milner
St. George City Paleontologist and SGDS Museum Curator

Andrew works with all scientific aspects of the St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm dealing with paleontology and geology. Other research interests in southern Utah include the paleontology of the Triassic Moenkopi and Chinle formations, the Early Jurassic Moenave, Kayenta, and Navajo formations, and the Upper Cretaceous Iron Springs Formation. Andrew also works on Late Pleistocene Champlain Sea fossils from eastern North America. He lectures, provides higher educational services such as field trips, and has been a member of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology since 1988. He helped establish the nation's first BLM Paleontological Site Stewardship Program in Washington County, Utah, and he continues to work with the BLM and other federal and state organizations in recording and monitoring paleontological localities in the region. In 2008, Andrew successfully co-led his first “Tracking China’s Dinosaurs” geotour.

Dr. Hailu You
Institute of Geology, Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences
Hai-Lu’s extensive knowledge on vertebrate paleontology, especially dinosaurs was gained through six years of Ph.D. study at University of Pennsylvania, as well as more than fifteen years of field and laboratory works on vertebrate fossils. As a lead scientist, Hai-Lu’s recent research is focusing on two projects: in search of the new evolutionary “missing links” from the Early Cretaceous of China, and the evolution of basal horned dinosaurs, in collaborating with his colleagues from Carnegie Museum of Natural History, University of Pennsylvania, Canadian Museum of Nature, and various Chinese institutions. Hai-Lu has named nine new dinosaur genera since 2003.

Itinerary:
Day 1, Beijing: arrival and welcome.
Feel free to arrive at any time of the day. We’ll meet you at the Beijing Capital International Airport, and transfer you to your hotel. We’ll celebrate your arrival with a welcome reception in the evening.

Day 2, Beijing: Beijing Natural History Museum and Chinese Paleozoological Museum.
Today, we’ll visit the Beijing Natural History Museum in the morning, and the unparalleled fossil collections of the Chinese Paleozoological Museum of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in the afternoon. IVPP is one of the largest paleontological institutions in the world, and a global leader in the study of vertebrate fossils.

Feather dinosaurs and other amazing fossils in Bejing museums

Day 3, Beijing > Xian: Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses.
Today, we’ll fly to Xian in the morning, and visit the Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses in the afternoon.

Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses

Day 4, Xian > Lanzhou: Fossil Research and Development Center.
Today, we’ll fly to Lanzhou, the capital city of Gansu Province, in the morning, and in the afternoon, visit the unique dinosaur collection of the Fossil Research and Development Center of the Gansu Provincial Bureau of Geo-Exploration and Mineral Development.

In the lab at the Fossil Research and Development Center of the Gansu Provincial Bureau of Geo-Exploration and Mineral Development

Days 5-9, Liujiaxia Dinosaur National Geopark.
In these days, we’ll work at the Liujiaxia Dinosaur National Geopark, and explore the dinosaur-bearing rocks nearby*. You can spend all these days with Andrew at the footprint site, or if you like to dig, you can spend 2 of these days following Hai-Lu to dig dinosaur bones at the nearby sites. Here, a diverse and well-preserved assemblage of dinosaur (meat-eating theropod, long-necked sauropod, and plant-eating ornithopod), pterosaur, and bird tracks have been recovered from Lower Cretaceous-aged (about 130 million years ago) rocks exposed along the Yellow River (click here to see a paper on this). Several bizarre new dinosaurs have also been recently found in the same geological horizons, including the huge ornithopod Lanzhousaurus magnidens and the gigantic sauropod Huanghetitan liujiaxiaensis.

Early Cretaceous sauropod tracks at the Liujiaxia Dinosaur National Geopark study site.

We’ll focus most of our attention on one footprint quarry, and help Andrew and Hai-Lu study these. Work at the site will include a detailed cleaning of the track surfaces, followed by the accurate mapping, photographing, and measuring of tracks, trackways, associated trace fossils, and sedimentary structures. Several unusual trackway features are preserved at this locality, and we have the opportunity to discover what kind of environment they were formed in and what behavioral implications of the animals they may represent. Our goal is to get as much information as possible in the field and publish our result in a peer reviewed journal.

Day 10, Lanzhou > Beijing.
Today, we’ll fly back to Beijing. If time allows, we’ll go shopping. We’ll enjoy Peking Duck for dinner.

Day 11, Beijing: fond farewells.
We’ll take you to the airport, guide you to your terminal, and share a final lunch together if you depart in the afternoon.

*According to Chinese laws, all fossils belong to the nation. Any and all specimens we collect will be permanently reposited in Chinese institutions.

Optional Pre-trip Two-day Sightseeing Excursion in Beijing:
To participate in this optional sightseeing excursion (which is not included in the tour prices listed above), please arrive in Beijing on Monday, May 10, 2010.

Fees:
US$ 400.00/person (double occupancy)
US$ 500.00/person (single occupancy)

Day 1, Beijing: The Great Wall and Ming Tombs.
We’ll drive north, to visit the Great Wall and Ming Tombs for the entire day.

Day 2, Beijing: The Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, and Temple of Heaven.
We’ll visit the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square in the morning and the Temple of Heaven in the afternoon. In the evening, we’ll join our other participants for dinner.

Questions? Please contact:

Andrew R. C. Milner
St. George City Paleontologist
Tel: 1-435-574-3466 ext. #2
Email: amilner@sgcity.org
Web: http://www.dinotrax.com

Hai-Lu You
Institute of Geology
Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences
Cell (China): 86-13691587251
Email: youhailu@sinofossa.org
Web: http://www.sinofossa.org

Proposed Mining on Ellesmere Island

2010-01-14T21:45:00.003-07:00

Please check out this link for important information regarding proposed mining on Ellesmere Island.

"A proposed coal mining project by Westar Resources, Inc. on Ellesmere Island (Nunavut) in Canada's eastern High Arctic is currently under review by the Nunavut Impact Review Board (NIRB), an environmental assessment agency established under the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement whose objectives are to protect and promote the well-being of the residents, communities and ecosystems of Nunavut. The proposed development area includes fossil sites of a broad range of ages that include some of the most significant sites in the world, and the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) is deeply concerned over the possible loss of these valuable resources...."

Continue reading here.