Mesozoic Miscellany #18

Happy Darwin Day!

Awesome LEGO Darwin by Kaptain Kobold, via Flickr.

Big Stories

You may remember back in September when a Brazilian newspaper reporter mistakenly leaked the name of Tapuiasaurus macedoi, a new titanosaur. Well, it's formally published now in PLoS ONE, and it's a valuable find. The abstract states, Tapuiasaurus "preserves the most complete skull among titanosaurians, further revealing that their low and elongated diplodocid-like skull morphology appeared much earlier than previously thought." More at Dinosaur Tracking.

Albinykus is this week's addition to the alvarezsaur roster. Switek also wrote about this guy at Dinosaur Tracking. About the incomplete, though unique remains, he writes, "Both legs seem to straddle the sandstone block, with parts of the hip preserved between them. Whatever killed it and preserved this dinosaur kept it in a seated position, just like a bird."

Around the Dinosaur Blogosphere

At The Bite Stuff, Jaime Headden takes a look at the debate over sauropod neck posture.

Trish Arnold wrote about that Terra Nova preview that aired during the Super Bowl.

Get a sneak peak at that plucky little tyrannosaur Traumador's new video series at The Tyrannosaur Chronicles.

The Darwinapterus paper that came out a few weeks ago, featuring an egg associated with what appears to be a female skeleton, has received the TetZoo treatment.

Gary from Project Dryptosaurus was on a radio show! Check it out.

Dave Hone wrote about anomalous theropod teeth from the Jurassic at Archosaur Musings.

At the Great Cretaceous Walk, the amazing, charming, Tony "Master of Ichnology" Martin* writes about Cyclone Yasi and how it relates to interpretations of gastroliths from the Cretaceous period.

At Other Branch, Ian provided another report on a dinosaur book from days of yore: this time, the Humongous Book of Dinosaurs.

And here at LITC, I released a set of dinosaur valentines and was a guest on the podcast "Meet the Skeptics!"

Twit Picks

• Crurotarsi on Neptunidraco
• Title page from Prehistoric Life, 1965 . Awesome crinoids!
• LOL, David Maas speedpaints Darren Tanke Prepping Gorgosaurus
• Chinleana: Cynodont Burrows from the Upper Triassic of Poland
• @superoceras continues walking In Darwin's Footsteps: Field Studies in the Galápagos Archipelago

Tumblin'

This illustration, by Eduardo San Gil, was shared by Rampaged Reality. +1 for citing the artist!


Paleoart of the Week

Since beginning this weekly digest, I haven't featured Matt Martyniuk here, so I will now right this wrong. This week's pick is a recent piece from Matt's DeviantArt account which is drawn from research. He writes:

Recent studies have shown that the wing and foot claws of dromaeosaurs were ideal for climbing trees, a behavior probably restricted mainly to juveniles in larger species like D. antirrhopus. But that probably wouldn't stop a near adult Deinonychus from attempting to climb as high as it could to avoid the attention of a 6 tonne sauropod killer as it passes through a gully in search of fresh water.

I was thinking about this research this week as I watched a couple of nuthatches in my yard. Nice to see an excellent piece of paleoart coincide with my idle musings!

Outrageously Off-Topic Indulgence

Amy Sedaris!

*I'm so sorry I typoed your name!

Pterosaurs and Dinosaurs

Yesterday, I wrote a few kind words about the pterosaurs, the flying reptiles who were the first vertebrates to figure out flight. Pterosaurs are so frequently referred to as dinosaurs that yesterday, I felt the need to clarify that I am definitely not one of the philistines who would make such a mistake. Biology has its own form of the gene that regulates the behavior of the "grammar police," and I bashfully admit that my hackles are raised when any old freaking big dead thing is referred to as a dinosaur. To me, it's as ridiculous as referring to a bear, a mountain lion, and a cow as dogs. Seriously, that's like a toddler level mistake.

But it's more than simple persnickityness. It's the desire to call things by their right names, to set order to the world. Just as a flat piece of paper with colored lines on it can help us get a handle on the world we move around on, classifying organisms puts them in context so we can learn how they interact to create that world. It puts us in context. It's a basic tool, and blithely throwing around names is essentially dumb. It cheats us out of knowledge. It also seems to me that especially when dealing with knowledge that requires some sort of translation for the everyday reader (such as science), using the proper terms and explaining them clearly is really, really important. Crucial, even.

So over the next few posts, I'll try to explain what makes a dinosaur a dinosaur. Since we have plenty of time and plenty of bytes, I'll start with how it is that we classify any living thing at all.

Here's how it breaks down. You're probably familiar with Linnaean classification. Most of us learned this in grade school. The major divisions are Kingdoms, Phylums, Classes, Orders, Familys, Genera, and Species. There are many smaller divisions, as well. For you and I (apologies to any genetically engineered smart-sharks who may be reading this), our basic Linnaean classification breaks down thisaway:

Kingdom Animalia (internal digestion, soft cell walls)

Phylum Chordata (backbones)

Class Mammalia (furry milk-producers)

Order Primates (monkeys, greater and lesser apes)

Family Hominidae (bipedal, tailless apes)

Genus Homo (smart apes)

Species Sapiens (us)

Carl Linnaeus (or Carolus, as he preferred) came up with this system of classification in the eighteenth century, around a hundred years before Darwin published The Origin of Species. Linnaean classification is largely concerned with grouping organisms into large groups and then tying those large groups together. The way organsims are divided into groups, and then into their own species, is by morphology, or physical characteristics. It was a hugely important step in the quest to figure out how all of the stuff in the world is related to each other. And Linnaeus really was concerned with stuff. He applied this system to minerals, as well. Before biological evolution was accepted, anything was on the table. We didn't understand what fossils were - they sure looked like living things, so maybe they were living things, in a different state of development.

After Darwin figured out the mechanism by which organisms diverged into species, it became necessary to classify organisms according to evolutionary relationships. For this, we use a system called cladistics. This is an elegant system which groups organisms into clades, or groups with a shared ancestor. In his day, Darwin wondered about the means of inheritence: how in the heck does my sister end up with blue eyes while mine are brown? We now understand genetics, and we can use DNA and RNA sequencing to establish evolutionary links which crude physical characteristics would never let us know.

But we're going to save cladistics for next time. HAVE A GOOD WEEKEND ALREADY.

Today's post brought to you by the National Commision on Italicization.

Lumbering Dead Ends

Leaping Laelaps by Charles Knight, 1896

I am in love with that painting, one hundred percent. Knight's image is a good reminder that the now-deceased myth of dinosaurs as slow-witted, lumbering reptilian beasts wasn't always in fashion. Sir Richard Owen himself, the man who coined the term "dinosaur," noted that the fossil bones he'd examined exhibited both reptilian and avian characteristics.

But as the world grappled with the implications of Charles Darwin's great contribution to our collective knowledge, a different idea sprang up. People just weren't comfortable with the idea that Mankind, the finest and most sublime of creatures, shared a common ancestor with monkeys, rats, and lizards. Thus, the idea that evolution was an upward progression, with direction and purpose. Extinct creatures, such as our beloved denizens of the mesozoic, couldn't cut it. They were too stupid, dull, and unworthy of survival. Luckily, that idea proved to be stupid, dull, and unworthy of survival.

Knight's subject, Laelaps, was eventually renamed Dryptosaurus (after it was realized that Laelaps already was being used for a genus of mites) and now is considered a basal tyrannosauroid, (which is a less loaded way of saying it's a "primitive" one) of its own dryptosaurid family. It is the first American theropod, and was discovered by quarry workers in New Jersey shortly after the civil war. Crimony, that painting is inspiring.