Vintage Dinosaur Art: Paper Dinosaurs

Hello faithful LITC readers! I'm back from 5 weeks in the wilderness and SVP, and have a pretty cute piece of vintage dinosaur art to share with you. Today we're looking at Paper Dinosaurs: 20 Model Monsters to Cut and Fold, by David Hawcock and published in 1988 by Marshall Cavendish Books.

TetZooCon 2016

Yes, it's still going. The third annual TetZooCon was held on October 1, 2016 in the same venue as before, the WWT London Wetland Centre, and you know Natee (Niroot) and I wouldn't have missed it for anything. I'm quite sure more-or-less every reader of this blog also reads Tetrapod Zoology, and if you don't, well, you should go and read author Darren Naish's entire blogging back catalogue right now. Don't worry, civilisation will probably still be here when you're finished. In any case, grab a beer, glass of wine or nice cup of tea, and let's take a look at what happened this year. (All photos are by Natee - see the complete gallery on the Fezbooks.)

FISH!!!

Book Review: Tales of Prehistoric Life by Daniel Loxton

This spring, Daniel Loxton published his third and final children's book in the Tales of Prehistoric Life series: Plesiosaur Peril, the story of the dangerous life of a young Cryptoclidus in the Jurassic. It was proceeded by Ankylosaur Attack (2011) and Pterosaur Trouble (2013). Today I'll cover all three. The TL;DR version: they're great.



Daniel Loxton's name is probably recognizable to the portion of our readers who also follow skeptical media. He cowrote Abominable Science with Donald Prothero as well as writing and illustrating the children's book Evolution: How We And All Living Things Came to Be. Loxton is also well-known for his work editing the Junior Skeptic section of Skeptic Magazine. Illustrator Jim WW Smith, who has also worked for Junior Skeptic, provides work on the models for the Tales of Prehistoric Life series. Loxton provides the finishing textures and colors, as well as photographing environments.

I especially appreciate Loxton's series for taking up the mantle of the Rourke titles we've covered so many times during the Vintage Dinosaur Art series. Like the Rourke collection, each Tales of Prehistoric Life book is a narrative story, detailing interactions between temporally and geographically appropriate animals. I love this approach. When grounded in modern paleontological understanding of the life and times of the animals involved, it's both engaging and educational. Like the Rourke titles of yesteryear, each book in this series also wraps up with a brief explanation of the scientific grounding of the story.

The Cryptoclidus family swims through a teeming Jurassic sea. © Daniel Loxton.

The animal interactions are firmly in the realm of plausibility. There are moments that seem a bit of a stretch, such as a veritable army of Saurornitholestes laying seige to the Quetzalcoatlus hero of Pterosaur Trouble. However, there's nothing more outlandish than Dinosaur Revolution's more slapstick moments. Since I'm on the record of admiring much of what that series did, you can predict my reaction here. When the Quetzalcoatus quad-launches to escape his attackers, one of them inadvertently hitches a ride before being flung onto the head shield of a Triceratops, and I couldn't help but crack a smile.

3D dinosaur art is too often only mentioned when picking out the worst offenders, so it's easy to forget that it is often done very well, and Loxton's work here is a prime example. For the most part, the animals are integrated into their photographic environments very smoothly, and interact with them believably - there is a sense of weight and heft to the animals as they walk on sand, browse vegetation, or fall into water. The experience is an immersive one, with illustrations filling entire spreads. The point of view is often right in the middle of the action. Loxton's attention to detail rewards free exploration of the environments and their inhabitants. Feathers float on the air in the midst of combat. Age and experience are obvious, as in an old ankylosaur with battle-damaged armor or a pycnofibre-covered pterosaur.


Quetzalcoatlus soars over the late Cretaceous world. © Daniel Loxton.


An Ankylosaurus couple browses in the forest. © Daniel Loxton.

Coloration is handled conservatively. There are no Rey-style color schemes. Proto-birds and dromaeosaurs are given the most colorful integument. I particularly liked the ruddy tones of Saurornitholestes, reminiscent of the Brown Thrashers who inhabit a similar woodland habitat in my neck of the... er, woods. I also enjoyed touches like subtle sexually dimorphic coloring on the Triceratops, and a seaweedy-green on the Cryptoclidus family at the heart of the most recent book. The tyrannosaurs who appear in Ankylosaur Attack and Pterosaur Trouble could do with some plumage and a splash of color (as well as some more neck musculature, which to my eye looked a little skinny). On the other hand, it's refreshing for the tyrant king to step out of the spotlight.


A Saurornitholestes pack smells something big and tasty on the wind. © Daniel Loxton.

Loxton's choices in depicting behavior are the strongest aspect of the stories, as pains are taken to focus on details of Mesozoic life lent us by recent paleontological research. Quetzalcoatlus falls prey to small dromaeosaurs because of tooth marks found on actual fossils of the great azhdarchid. It bears repeating that the pterosaur is depicted performing a quad-launch, too (a touch which pleased Mark Witton greatly). The family unit in Plesiosaur Peril is based on evidence that these marine reptiles were viviparous. It's a stretch to lump Loxton's book series in with the All Yesterdays Movement. But it is certainly complimentary in its dedication to anatomical fidelity and reasonable inference, while offering views of prehistoric life which reflects the way extant animals act rather than what Hollywood dinosaurs are asked to perform for the masses. There's no need to layer on excessive personification or spectacle after spectacle. Loxton's adherence to this is the main reason the books succeed.

The Cryptoclidus family feeds on belemnites. © Daniel Loxton.

My only major critique is that a more readable typeface for the body copy of the books could have been chosen, but that's a small quibble in the big scheme of things. This is as good as prehistoric fiction gets. The life restorations are exactly the kind that the new generation of paleontology fans should have access to: contemporary, not stuck in decades-old knowledge. All books in the series are available at major booksellers or via Skeptic.

Around the web: Check out Loxton's post about Plesiosaur Peril at SkepticBlog. Darren Naish wrote a detailed post about the book at TetZoo - fitting since he served as technical consultant for the whole series. Adam Stuart Smith reviewed Plesiosaur Peril at Plesiosauria.com. Dispersal of Darwin's Michael Barton reviewed Plesiosaur Peril in March (and reviewed the other titles in the series previously). Ankylosaur Attack recieved positive reviews from Quill and Quire, Kirkus, and SkepticDad.

Interview: Paleoartist Maija Karala

"Forest Green." A dandy paravian, © Maija Karala and used with her permission.

I'm always excited to see new work pop up in Maija Karala's DeviantArt gallery. A Finnish biologist and writer, her enthusiasm for biology also finds voice through her illustrations, which range from fleshed out scenes to charming sketches. I can't remember exactly when I began following Maija's illustrations, but I do remember being particularly struck by her Tarpan fending off a lion.


"Don't Mess With Tarpans." © Maija Karala and used with her permission.

Maija writes:

Here, a young cave lion is about to learn why one should be careful with tarpans. It's July somewhere close to the edge of the ice and the steppe-tundra is blooming. The plants depicted include Betula nana, Viscaria alpina, Rhododendron lapponicum, Orthilia secunda, Pedicularis sceptrum-carolinum and Dryas octopetala. Yes, the latter is the plant that was so common at the time at gave its name to the Dryas climatic periods.

It's a great example of the qualities I admire in much of her work: a sense of drama, subtle and naturalistic color, dedication to research, all wrapped up in an eminently approachable aesthetic. I was happy when Maija agreed to do an interview for Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs, so I could ask her more about how she works.

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What is your background as an artist? Is it your profession or hobby?
For me, art is mostly a hobby. I make my living as a science writer, mostly writing for newspapers and magazines. I do paid illustrations whenever I get a chance, but it's not very often. I'd love to do more of it, but the fact that I always thought it as just a hobby now hinders me a bit. As I haven't really practised my skills systematically, I only became good at the things I like doing.


"Hamipterus." © Maija Karala and used with her permission.

Do you get many opportunities to cover paleontology in your science writing?
I get to cover paleontology fairly often, though not as often as I'd like. A few articles per year or so. On my blog (which is unfortunately in Finnish, but can be found at http://planeetanihmeet.wordpress.com/) I do write a lot about paleontology and use my own illustrations as well.

Do you plan on continuing to do illustration as a hobby, or do you have professional aspirations?
I'm working to become a better artist, and I'd love to do more professional illustrations too. Though writing is probably still going to be my main occupation.

Was illustrating extinct animals always something you did or did you come to it later in life?
I drew dinosaurs as a kid, like everyone else, but stopped somewhere in my early teen years and only started again when I began my university studies, seven years ago (I studied biology). During the gap, I mostly drew fantasy creatures, dragons and elves and stuff. I think the main reason I started making paleoart was to find sort of a compromise between drawing fantasy creatures and being a science student. Illustrating extinct animals is firmly rooted in science, but also lets you use your imagination in a way not really possible with bioillustration.


"Eye Contact." Anurognathus ammoni, © Maija Karala and used with her permission.

At what point in an illustration do you focus on the eyes? It's often a striking element in your work, whether fantasy or paleoart.
I have never really thought about that. I do tend to think the eyes and expressions as the most important part of my drawings, as that's also what I pay the most attention when looking at live animals (or people, for that matter). Though I have no idea if everyone else does that too. After making a general sketch on what I want there to be and where, the eyes (or the facial areas in general) are usually the first thing I focus on.

You seem to be especially drawn to feathery theropods. Is this due to a bird interest or is there some aspect of their form that is especially fun to draw?
I think it's a bit of both. I like birds, sure. I also like drawing small and pretty animals. And feathers are always fun. Anyway, the main reason is probably that there's plenty of references and easily accessible knowledge available on feathered dinosaurs. It was an easy place to start back when I started making paleoart, and once I was familiar with them, it was also easy to continue.

Lately, I have been moving on to other critters as a part of trying to learn new things. My DeviantArt gallery is now starting to have more things like fossil mammals and non-dinosaurian archosaurs than feathered theropods on the first pages.

When illustrating an animal that has been covered by other illustrators, in what ways do you try to make it your own?
I always try to find other sources of inspiration besides other people's depictions of the same animal, sometimes actively avoiding looking at them when planning to make my own reconstruction. I often look up modern animals with somewhat similar ecology and use their soft tissues and behaviour as inspiration, but try never to directly copy anything. I mostly avoid using the most obvious colour themes or soft tissue ideas. That's not to say I never stumble on paleoart memes, but I do try to avoid it.


"The Feathered Yeti." Xiaotingia zhengi, © Maija Karala and used with her permission.

How much do comments on dA influence your work? For instance on your "Feathered Yeti," the comments get into some serious detail about integument. When posting work do you post with the expectation that you'll receive critique on areas you're not sure about?
To be honest, DeviantArt comments have probably been the most important thing pushing me to get better at making paleoart. These days I usually do my research before drawing, but especially earlier it was a great motivator to make embarrassing mistakes and get someone tell it to me. I'm pretty sure I never made the same mistake twice.

As I have mostly learned paleontology and anatomy on my own (for years, I had no paleontologically oriented friends nor any education on either subject), the criticism has been invaluable. I still greatly appreciate all the experts who go through the trouble to nitpick on amateur drawings.


"I Immediately Regret This Decision." Thalassodromeus attempting to eat Mirischia, © Maija Karala and used with her permission.

So, who are some of your favorite expert paleoartists? Is there a particular piece of advice or critique you received that has stuck with you?
I really like the works of people like Alain Bénéteau, Ville Sinkkonen, Carl Buell and Mauricio Anton, just to mention a few. My favourites are the people who can combine an expert understanding of science with truly beautiful art and get the animals to really come to life. I also really like Niroot's style. And John Conway's. And... ok, I'll stop here before the list becomes ridiculously long.

I don't think there's any particular piece of advice that has been especially memorable. It has been more about the general message that I need to know more. It's something I simply didn't get elsewhere for most of the time. As nobody I knew personally had the expertice to tell me the feet of my Quetzalcoatlus are wrong, most feedback was more like "oh, a nice dinosaur. What do you mean it isn't a dinosaur?".

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Thank you to Maija for answering my questions - and patiently waiting for me to have time to put the post together! I hope you'll stop by her DeviantArt gallery and leave some support and constructive criticism on her illustrations. Also check out the recent post at i09 featuring Maija's Protoceratops/ Griffin illustration.


"Go Home, Evolution." Atopodentatus, © Maija Karala and used with her permission.

Pterrible Courier

Pterrible Courier. Sepia ink, sepia powder, white Conté and gouache on recycled paper, 112 x 178mm.

Pterosaurs make terrible couriers. Especially of food parcels.

This is the context in which this drawing originated. I'm hard-pressed to refrain from making another self-deprecatory remark about its silliness, but I had been persuaded to share this on the grounds that pterosaurs figure so rarely among my work (thereby passing the buck altogether). I also realised rather too late how much this resembles the arm-munching T. rex in action and posture. I hope you won't upbraid.


N.

Hashtagopteryx twitterensis

#PterosaurMyths: Pteranodon had the most frequent occurence of tooth decay in all of the pterosauria; in fact, sometimes individuals are found with no teeth at all! This restoration correctly depicts the animal with a full compliment of teeth. Photo by Arborwin, via Flickr.

The other day, I tweeted a link to my post about the Royal Tyrrell video of Dr. Michael Habib's pterosaur lecture. It's a great talk, and could bring the general public up to speed quickly on current pterosaur research, so I mentioned that it dispels some lingering myths about pterosaurs. Desert blogger Chris Clarke decided to make this joke.

Which led to this inspired bit of hashtaggery.

It slowly grew, with Chris and I trading tweets back and forth, then more of his followers joining in... and then the dark overlord himself, PZ Myers, joined in, bringing even more folks over. It's petered out a bit, but I have a feeling it's not quite dead, so hop on over to twitter and share your own ptweets. You should also check out Darren Naish's takedown of pterosaur tropes at Pterosaur.net. And if you aren't already, do follow Chris Clarke at @canislatrans as well as Coyote Crossing and Desert Biodiversity, where he cuts through a lot of BS and writes incisively about the state of desert ecosystems.

Michael Habib talks "Air Giants" at the Royal Tyrrell

Dr. Michael Habib of Chatham University, who along with Justin Hall blogs at H2VP, recently delivered a talk at the Royal Tyrrell Museum as part of their 2012 speaker series. Titled "Air Giants: Launch, flight, and ecology of Cretaceous pterosaurs," it is an hour of pure pterosaurian indulgence, an overview of pterosaur science that clears up many misconceptions the public has about these awesome creatures. Posted below for your viewing pleasure.



Dig that he took a moment to thank the artists whose work he used in the presentation! Extra props as well to the Royal Tyrrell for their super-cool interactive geological timeline on their main page.

On crests and feathers

People have long wondered what exactly the quite weird and wonderful head crests of both dinosaurs and pterosaurs were doing there. Why did they evolve - what were they for? Today Lethaia published (online) a paper by David Hone, Darren Naish and Innes Cuthill entitled Does mutual sexual selection explain the evolution of head crests in pterosaurs and dinosaurs? In the paper, Hone et al propose that a potential key evolutionary factor has so far been largely overlooked - that of mutual sexual selection.

Citipati, an animal unusual in combining a large, bony head crest with feathers. While the display feathers here are speculative, similar structures are known from the oviraptorosaur Caudipteryx. Art by Niroot Puttapipat.

'Mutual sexual selection' is pretty self-explanatory. While 'sexual selection' is a one-sided process, with one sex selecting for highly dimorphic traits in the other (Hone himself gives the "endlessly repeated" example of peacocks), 'mutual sexual selection' is, well, mutual. As such, it is likely that both genders of the animal concerned will have ornamentation, or similar sexually selective traits. As is noted in the paper,

"An instructive example is the crested auklet, Aethia cristatella...in which both sexes bear feather plumes on their heads [and] both sexes prefer mates with longer crests" (p. 3)

The authors contend that palaeontologists are largely ignoring this idea and failing to realise its changing status in behavioural ecology. They propose that since "there are many circumstances under which male mating time and effort are limited", and given the varying quality of females, it makes sense that males should be selective rather than simply trying to copulate with everything in sight (pp. 11-12).

In formulating this hypothesis, the authors run through a number of others that have been proposed down the years. Some, such as the evolution of crests as weaponry or thermoregulatory devices, can obviously be ruled out for a lot of species. However, what's probably going to raise people's heckles is the authors' rejection of the 'species recognition' hypothesis, that is to say the idea that (some) crested dinosaurs and pterosaurs evolved their displays so that members of the same species could recognise one another. As the authors point out, this idea doesn't explain why "lambeosaurine hadrosaurs required large crests for species recognition, when...members of [the] closely related iguanodontian lineage did not" (p. 10). They also note that a lot of animals today don't require such obvious signals to be able to differentiate between even very similar species. For example:

"...tyrant flycatchers notorious for showing little to no morphological variation exhibit clear boundaries between species, despite sympatry" (p. 9)

Mutual sexual selection also neatly solves a problem as regards ceratopsians - that although sexual dimorphism has been proposed for certain species, "the proposed degree of sexual dimorphism is weak" (p. 5) with all mature individuals in a species seemingly being near-equally well-adorned with fancy head ornaments. The same has been found to be true of certain pterosaurs and theropods. As far as theropods go, the authors note the prevalence of crests in relatively basal clades (like the coelophysoids and ceratosaurs), but hypothesise that feathers might have replaced head crests as a sexual display in more advanced coelurosaurs and especially maniraptorans (the clade that includes dromaeosaurs, troodonts, oviraptorosaurs and birds). The known presence of display feathers on animals like Caudipteryx and Epidexipteryx would appear to back up this claim (pp. 12-13).

Of course, one problem with this is that some oviraptorosaurs have well-developed crests, but were presumably fully feathered. While acknowledging this as an "anomaly", the authors point out that the clade is very unusual among coelurosaurs in this respect. Furthermore, they also contend that modern birds that possess bony head crests - like cassowaries and certain hornbills - are also very unusual in having them (p. 13).

Noting that ornithodirans (dinosaurs and pterosaurs) likely relied heavily on vision - with a great deal of evidence backing this up - Hone et al also propose that

"...the evolution of the flight-capable feather and of flight itself may well have its roots in the evolution of ornithodiran sociosexual display." (p. 14)

It's an idea that's been proposed before, but here it's presented in the context of mutual sexual selection. Could it be that, in maniraptoran dinosaurs, it was a case of both sexes trying to impress each other that sped along the evolution of the flight feather?

Obviously, this is really just scratching the surface of what's in the paper and, knowing me, I've probably cocked up somewhere along the line (cf. some of the Planet Dinosaur reviews). I'd urge you to get hold of a copy of the paper for all the information - it's actually very accessible for laymen (I should know!).

Goertzen's Case for the Historical Scaphognathus

In the first half of this post, I wrote about the shaky relationship between cryptozoological research and science, as well as the way creationism worms its way into the equation. I also introduced John Goertzen's paper The Rhamphorhynchoid Pterosaur Scaphognathus crassirostris: A "Living Fossil" Until the 17th Century. Today, we'll dig into it and look at the evidence presented.

First, a summary of what we know about Scaphognathus. A denizen of Late Jurassic Germany, it was a small pterosaur of the family Rhamphorhynchidae. The Pterosaur Database writes,

Three near complete specimens have been preserves [sic] along with some fragmentary remains, almost exclusively from the Solnhofen Limestone of Bavaria. Typically, this species had a skull length close to 12cm and a wingspan of about 90cm. A characteristically broad jaw, relatively short tail and short wings in comparison to other rhamphorhynchoids and a broad sternum.[PDF]

For those allergic to the metric system, the wingspan came to about three feet, making the animal about the size of your average hawk. The head was about four inches long. It's highly likely that Scaphognathus bore a covering of the hair-like structures called pycnofibers, as the closely related Sordes has been found to possess them (and it's likely that all pterosaurs did). Like their cousins the dinosaurs, where pterosaurs were once believed to have been lizard-like creatures, new discoveries and technological advancements have revealed them to be unique creatures not like anything that we share the Earth with today.


The S. crassirostris holotype. From my Flickr set dedicated to the beastie.

I made my best effort to read Goertzen's paper objectively, but this isn't entirely possible. His claim has little prior plausibility, and therefore he has a higher mountain to climb than someone who makes a claim that doesn't contradict centuries of well-supported scientific evidence. The major failing of most cryptozoological claims is that the evidence is weak, relying too heavily on personal accounts. A good story can be intriguing, but this doesn't amount to evidence. Knowing that the writer's goal is to demonstrate the existence of  pterosaurs during human history based on artifacts and ancient writings, a stiff dollop of skepticism is warranted and outright cynicism is understandable. Unfortunately, Goertzen stumbles at the very outset. After a brief description of the two fossils of Scaphognathus, he writes,

Because the S. is the only rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur with a head crest, ancient artifacts enable us to tell what the soft tissue of the head crest looked like and identify ancient S. representations with a high degree of confidence.

Despite putting on a crisp white lab coat labeled "scientist" in the paper's opening, he's just given up all pretense to rational thought. It's irresponsible to imply that the head crest of Scaphognathus has been confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt. It hasn't. As Palaeocritti's page on the pterosaur states, there "is no direct evidence of a crest like the one shown on the illustration below, and this is merely inferred from the presence of a flange of bone above the anterior portion of the rostrum which might have supported a fleshy crest," similarly stated in Buffetaut and Mazin's Evolution and Palaeobiology of Pterosaurs. The Dmitri Bogdanov illustration shared at Palaeocritti is included below for reference.


Illustration by Dmitri Bogdanov, via Wikipedia.

But I'm willing to give Goertzen space and allow that if a line of rhamphorynchoid pterosaurs survived the end-Jurassic extinction, and then the K-Pg extinction, some of them may have evolved a head crest or whatever other bodily adornments folks want to find in the archaeological and historical record. Those pterosaurs may have survived the intervening 65 million years. And over all of that time, by chance they may have avoided preservation in the known fossil record. Their habitat preferences may have changed so they became isolated in areas that aren't likely to lead to fossilization. It's a lot of if's and maybe's to build on, but it's not completely out of the realm of possibility. However, my charity is probably misplaced. Goertzen writes (all emphasis his),

I need to stress that the methodology of Paleocryptozoology is not necessarily to find artifacts that look like modern reconstructions of scientists based on fossils. Indeed, that may be helpful and there may be some accuracy with some of the scientific reconstructions. However, the best method for success is to search for distinct morphological features that are difficult to explain by any other means than that a particular fossil species was observed and accurately described or depicted by its witnesses. An example of a distinct morphological feature is the tail vane of some rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs. Also, it could be a distinctive skull like that of a Dimorphodon. ...For the S., the distinctive feature is a rhamphorhynchoid pterosaur with a head crest. The S. is the only long-tailed pterosaur presently known from the fossil record with that feature. That will be examined in the present study.

I can clear a wider path for Goertzen, but he's already committed to a pretty narrow one. He sees a crested Scaphognathus in all sorts of odd places, including both written accounts and visual representations on seals, coins, and maps. Beyond a basic description of a reptilian creature with wings and a head crest (with no pycnofibers, it must be noted), the descriptions and drawings vary so widely that only wishful thinking can cobble them into a single, consistent creature. Of course, this is the sort of thing a biblical literalist is adept at.

The Coins and the Egyptian Seal
Goertzen sees crude images of Scaphognathus on a Roman coin, but the  image provided is so low resolution, it's as if he's trying to make the reader work to make out a pterosaurian form in the squiggles and blotches. Luckily, over the years better versions have been made available, such as the one on page 181 of Wayne Sayles' Ancient Coin Collecting IV. The two serpents pulling a chariot sure don't look like Scaphognathus to me. He correctly identifies the driver of the chariot as Triptolemus, a mythological figure. Certainly, this mythological figure might employ steeds with an similar founding in mythology? Or is it more likely that the ancients employed a hawk-sized pterosaur as a draft animal?

On a 1622 German coin, a knight on a horse overpowers a creature that looks like a dragon/ griffin half-breed. Again, it's too large for Scaphognathus. And only a feat of imagination can make it resemble one. Worse yet, two plum chances to make a joke about a pterosaur on a coin sail right by Goertzen. Brother, can you spare a Dimorphodon?

The Egyptian seal he provides doesn't fare much better, and the quality of the image is even worse than the Roman coin. Again, there's the problem of the alleged Scaphognathus engaging in an activity it's probably not suited for. This time, hunting a gazelle. A line drawing is supposed to clear up the matter, but's kind of useless. I personally see a hot dog stand, but my worldview doesn't depend on hot dog stands in ancient Rome, so I'll probably not bother with putting up a website devoted to it.

The Maps
Goertzen provides two 15th century maps which supposedly bear illustrations of Scaphognathus, the 1435 Borgia map and the 1457 Genoese map. Dragons aren't exactly unprecedented in ancient maps; and the Wikipedia article linked here includes an inscription that Goertzen omits. Above a dragon in Asia, a Latin inscription states, "Here there are even men who have large four-foot horns, and there are even serpents so large that they could eat an ox whole." Goertzen seems to take ancient historians and other writers at their word, believing their accounts to be reliable. It's not the sturdiest foundation on which to base what claims to be a rigorous academic essay.

The Sketches
The last form of visual record provided are two sketches of dragons. Goertzen relays the story of the dragon of St. Radegonde, "The Grand Goule," which the second of them is supposed to depict. "This had been encountered previously by those who worked in the monastery. and that monster devoured the monks who, too imprudently, approached its privacy." Now, Scaphognathus is large enough to devour monks. There were certainly large pterosaurs. But Scaphognathus wasn't one of them.

The Personal Accounts
In addition to the visual evidence of ancient artists and artisans, Goertzen provides written accounts he claims describe Scaphognathus clearly. Just as the images above didn't do the trick, I'm afraid that I don't find any of this convincing. Remember how valuable anecdotes are as scientific evidence? They aren't, unless paired with something better. Humans are pretty good at exaggeration and mistakes of perception. Here are what his various naturalists, historians, and other observers saw:

• "...winged serpents, small in size, and various in form, guard the trees that bear frankincense, a great number around each tree. These are the same serpents that invade Egypt..."
• "...a small serpent, as long as a palm branch, and thick like a small finger. It has a small piece of skin, like a crest, on its head and, in the middle of the back, two scales placed on one side and the other which serve as wings in order to advance more quickly"
• "...a cruel kind of serpent, not past four feet long and as thick as a man's arm out of whose sides grow wings much like unto gristles"
• "...Serpents with wings... they had two legs and small wings so that they could scarce fly. The head was little and like to the head of a serpent. Their color was bright and they were without hair or feathers..."
• "...winged and flying serpents that can be found who are venomous, who snort, and are savage and kill with pain worse than fire..."
• "...serpents who are very degenerate and, just as it becomes evening, they fly rising over the land, and rest on the end of their tail, rapidly going into motion."

Even if all of the accounts were consistent - which, despite Goertzen's insistence, they are not - it's more parsimonious to guess that an extant animal explains the sightings of "flying reptiles," and folk legend accounts for their more fearsome aspects. Intriguing stories, but without some sort of physical remains, we just don't know what these animals, with their diverse behaviors, actually were.

Putting it to rest

As I wrote yesterday, I would flip my lid if a living pterosaur was found to exist, but I have to be acutely skeptical of any hypothesis that a large terrestrial vertebrate known only from fossils has survived into the modern day. The scientific evidence of Earth's deep history is overwhelming, and science has established itself as the most reliable way we have to understand the world around us. While people who don't like what science reveals about the world paint it as nothing more than an alternate religion, science does not rely upon faith. What opponents of science brand as faith is actually trust: trust earned by scientists working within a refined system of rational inquiry, strengthened by competition between researchers with differing hypotheses, manifest in technology. What Goertzen's up to here... it's not science.

As someone who does not believe that faith is a path to truth, I find it difficult to don the shoes of a young-earther. If these dragons are supposed to have been living, breathing animals, are we to assume that every mythological creature the thinking ape has invented once walked the Earth, swam the seas, or terrorized the skies? What kind of soul-sucking enterprise is that? Excuse the hyperbole, but in my opinion it's a form of self-hatred, denying humanity its imaginative capacity. Ancient artists and writers are reduced to mere chroniclers of their surroundings, bankrupt of the creativity of invention. As the excellent Bible critic Robert M. Price writes, literalism is a "hollow mockery of the old fundamentalist preaching of the gospel of grace." The sort of literalism Goertzen employs when looking at his "evidence" is, to me, a hollow mockery of mythology. And lest you should be mistaken about whether he's a literalist, read the conclusion of the paper, in which he states that "Pterosaurs were very likely preserved on Noah's ark and survived in Egypt and Europe (and probably elsewhere) until recent times."

It's telling that the title of Goertzen's essay includes the phrase "until the 17th Century," roughly when the age of global exploration and the Enlightenment began. Could it be that the true cause of these cryptids' demise was the clearer vision of the natural world given to us by science? In that case, the last place for the living pterosaur to hide is in the murky fringes of our imaginations.

Massive thanks to Michael Barton, blogger at The Dispersal of Darwin, for helping me access a copy of Adrienne Mayor's Paleocryptozoology: A Call for Collaboration, allowing me to write this.

Dr. David Martill on MonsterTalk

Caulkicephalus, which, like all of its pterosaurian brethren, has been extinct for millions and millions and millions of years. By Mark Witton, via Flickr.

I've been working on a post dealing with cryptozoology for the last couple months (thankfully, it's almost done). Poking around for bits of good information on-line, I found a 2009 episode of the podcast MonsterTalk I had not heard. It features Dr. David Martill of the University of Portsmouth, who discusses what science has to say about pterosaurs and the ropen, a supposed bioluminescent pterosaur from New Guinea. Besides poking holes in the feeble hypothesis that there is a population of living pterosaurs there, or anywhere else for that matter, Martill provides a nice summary of what paleontologists know about the pterosaurs. Check it out here.

Prehistory and the Press - Part 1

This month saw the end of my three-year stint at university, and the offloading of my undergraduate thesis into the hands of whichever poor souls have to read it. Inevitably, I managed to crowbar in my precious pet hobby pertaining to prehistory, and as such I had a look at palaeontology-related coverage in three UK national newspapers - the Guardian, Daily Telegraph and (oh yes) Daily Mail. I thought it might be fun to share some of my findings in a series of posts (what can I say? I'm short of ideas) starting with this one – all, or at least mostly, about pterosaurs. Launching Pteranodon below by Mark Witton (not the Press Association), from Flickr.

One of the most frequent errors made in palaeontology-related articles in newspapers is the use of the word 'dinosaur' to mean anything big, reptilian, and dead. Most frequently, it is pterosaurs that are blighted with the 'dinosaur' tag, even in the 'quality' newspapers – which should be a source of embarrassment. This is not mere pedantry. After all, if someone were to label humans as 'marsupials', they'd quite rightly quickly accumulate an enormous pile of correspondence ridiculing their basic mistake. Someone really ought to make it clear to newspaper journalists that even the most basic fact-checking would reveal the (as Mark Witton put it to me – see below) “non-dinosaury nature” of pterosaurs, and surely this is among the fundamental requirements of journalism?

Tellingly, the articles that make such errors tend not to be written by specialist science journalists (of which there are alarmingly few) but by jobbing freelancers and non-specialists. Nevertheless, if they were to simply copy information provided in press releases, they wouldn't end up calling pterosaurs 'dinosaurs' – and yet they do anyway. One of my favourite examples comes from what was (until very recently) my local newspaper, the venerable Lincolnshire Echo.

Now, you might say criticising some hapless, overstretched regional newspaper hack for their lack of knowledge in this area is rather cruel. And perhaps it is. However, most of the article is copied from a press release sent out by the University of Lincoln, concerning the famous Darwinopterus specimen 'Mrs T', and more specifically the collaboration of the university's own Dr Charles Deeming in the “research team that studied the fossil”. It begins:

“The discovery of an ancient fossil, nicknamed ‘Mrs T’, has allowed scientists for the first time to sex pterodactyls [sic] – flying reptiles that lived alongside dinosaurs between 220-65 million years ago.” (Source)

Which is basically fine. However, the Echo hack knew better than to simply copy the press release. They knew that pterosaurs were dinosaurs, and that the word 'dinosaur' was more likely to draw in the casual reader. As such, the introduction to the Echo article reads:

“Fresh light could be shed on the sex lives of flying dinosaurs thanks to a scientist from Lincoln.” (Source)

Which, unfortunately, is completely and utterly wrong. And misleading. Still, what does one expect when the 'quality' national papers are making exactly the same mistakes? According to the Daily Telegraph,

“A dinosaur the size of a giraffe was capable of launching itself into the air and flying for thousands of miles...” (Source)

I dumped this article - headlined 'Dinosaur the size of a giraffe could fly across continents' - in Mark Witton's lap and asked him about his experiences with the press. His response was pretty typical among the scientists I contacted. (With apologies for the huge blockquote.)

“In my experience, most journalists are pretty clueless about even basic aspects of reporting palaeontology, and they don't seem terribly bothered about changing that. Pterosaurs, for instance, are almost always labelled as dinosaurs, despite often very clear statements to the opposite in press releases and God knows how many references to their non-dinosaury nature online. Worst thing is, as with the article you cite, the headlines will often refer to pterosaurs being a type of dinosaur but then, in the text, the journalist will explain that pterosaurs aren't dinosaurs. They contradict themselves, demonstrating either a chronic lack of fact checking or, perhaps more likely, a flippant attitude to accurate reporting.

As a scientist, this is very frustrating: science is all about accurately interpreting the world around us, after all: what's the point in making scientific findings known to the press if they're just going to fudge passing it onto the public?”

Out of the Telegraph and Guardian (which I picked as examples of a right-leaning and left-leaning 'quality' paper, respectively, and because they have different owners), the Telegraph fared a lot worse when it came to basic accuracy. Which is hardly surprising, when they can produce an article discussing pelycosaurs and pterosaurs and refer to them both as 'dinosaurs' with a straight face and are still referring to Tyrannosaurus as “the largest land predators to ever to stalk the earth” – the latter being all the more worrisome, given that it was written by Richard Alleyne, one of the tiny number of Telegraph science specialists.

My main problem – and no doubt some of you will agree – with reporters referring to pterosaurs (or god-knows-what-else) as 'dinosaurs' is that it fosters a cycle of ignorance among the general public as to the true nature of not just dinosaurs, or pterosaurs, or even archosaurs, but the history of life on Earth and the reality of evolution. If people believe that pterosaurs, which are extinct, were 'flying dinosaurs', then they will be blind to the continued evolution and diversification of the real 'flying dinosaurs' that are still around, and will continue to believe – as one commenter on the Telegraph's 'Cannibal T. rex' story put it – that “we do not need to know any more about dinosaurs” because “they're dead”. (Pterosaurs are very interesting in themselves of course, and definitely worthy of continued study. But you catch my drift, I hope.)

There's more, though. Especially on how newspaper journalists fudge things in simplification and create what Ben Goldacre (in Bad Science) has called "a parody of science". Oh boy. Next time!

The Mysteries of the Pterosaur Wing

A pterosaur model from the 2010 Royal Society Summer Festival. Photo by Mark Hillary, via Flickr.

Pterosaurs, among the most enigmatic of the prehistoric beasts, have been the subject of a colorful variety of reconstructions in the two centuries of their study. From their essential nature - even once imagined to have been flying marsupials - to their feeding habits and methods of locomotion, they've kept the brains of paleontologists buzzing and whirring.

In the newest issue of the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, Ross Elgin, Dave Hone, and Eberhard Frey take a look across the pterosaur family to determine what evidence we have for the extent of their wing membranes. This may sound familiar to you; Hone posted about it at Archosaur Musings in September, but noted that what had come available then were uncorrected proofs. The published version is now available online. [PDF].

Like Victoria Arbour's recent paper on the pelvic shields of ankylosaurs, what Elgin, Hone, and Frey do here is provide a summary look at a contested bit of anatomy and lay groundwork for future research. Their conclusion is that this membrane - the brachiopatagium for you lovers of multisyllabic jargon - attached at the ankle. In the past, various researchers have attached it to places all along the leg or to the body, free of the leg completely. Based on their analysis of numerous fossils, Elgin et al concluded that these other attachment sites are erroneous, and chosen due to distortions in the wing profile before or after the animal died and was preserved.

As Hone wrote in September, though the exact arrangement of the branches and twigs of the pterosaur family tree is still a contested matter, "it’s hard to ignore the possibility (and indeed most parsimonious explanation) that all pterosaurs likely had this attachment. At the very least, it should be the default assumption."

Just in case you don't already know, Hone is essential reading for pterosaur lovers. This week, he's been posting photos of various pterosaur fossils (start here) from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, and in 2008 he gave a nice review of knowledge about pterosaur soft tissues.

Attenborough and Pterosaurs

Can't wait for this to come to the US. I hope at the end Attenborough flies into the sunset on the back of an azhdarchid.



From the movie's official website:

In Flying Monsters 3D, Sir David Attenborough the world’s leading naturalist, sets out to uncover the truth about the enigmatic pterosaurs, whose wingspans of up to 40 feet were equal to that of a modern day jet plane.

The central question and one of the greatest mysteries in palaeontology is: how and why did pterosaurs fly? How did creatures the size of giraffes defy gravity and soar
through prehistoric skies?

Driven by the information he finds as he attempts to answer these questions, Attenborough starts to unravel one of science’s more enduring mysteries, discovering that the marvel of pterosaur flight has evolutionary echoes that resonate even today.

Did any of my UK readers happen to catch the special television version on Christmas or New Year's Day?

Mark Witton, Author of Note

Launching Pteranodon by Mark Witton, via Flickr.

Welcome news: Mark Witton is writing a book on the pterosaurs. It's going to be released by Princeton University Press next year. Click here for a teaser, immediately. If you read that "immediately," you didn't click fast enough.

Here's hoping that it's liberally sprinkled with the slice-of-life anecdotes that make his writings so enjoyably nifty.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: German Dinosaur Cards

Today, we're taking a look at some more from the collections of Norman Felchle. These are from a collection of German dinosaur cards. Not sure who the illustrator(s) might be, but they are pretty fantastic. I'm a sucker for ancient prints like this. If you have any information on who published or illustrated them, let me know.

Update: Thanks to commenters, I learned that these are the work of German artist Heinrich Harder, and the series is titled Tiere der Urwelt, which translates to "Animals of the Prehistoric World." He was an art instructor and landscape painter who became involved in natural history illustrations in the early part of the last century. I'll probably do a future VDA post dedicated to him.

Here's a strange Triceratops; it looks like the artist worked from a verbal description rather than physical specimens. It's much more reptilian than our modern conception of the ceratopsians, with their pebbly skin and occasional quills.


The thirsty hadrosaur: another classic meme of paleoart.


This painting of rhamphorhynchid pterosaurs by the shore at sunset has a great moody feel to it.


Here's a great depiction of the antiquated notion of the "sprawling sauropod." My knees are aching in sympathy for this poor Diplodocus.

The London Pterosaurs Arrive

Over at the Pterosaur.net blog, Mark Witton reports that the moment of truth has arrived: the Dragons of the Air exhibition in London goes up this week. It should be a great PR boost for the pterosaurs, and hopefully at least a few people will have the assumption that they're just funny-looking flying dinosaurs struck from their heads. The exhibition includes enormous life-size azhdarchids strung between buildings, which would be pretty awesome to stumble upon while out on a stroll.

The exhibition is part of the See Further Festival, celebrating the 35oth anniversary of the Royal Society. The Royal Society is also providing open access to its archives until July 30, 2010. There are nearly 70,000 papers available covering the entire 350 years. It's like standing in front of a geological exposure that preserves everything from the Cambrian to the Miocene.

If only airfare to the UK hadn't doubled since a year ago...

Ahoy hoy, Aetodactylus!

Thus far, North America has not produced a wealth of toothed Cretaceous pterosaurs. One was discovered sixteen years ago: Coloborhynchus wadleighi from the mid-Cretaceous of Texas. Now the total has been doubled with the discovery of the slightly later Aetodactylus halli, also hailing from the Lone Star State. It was discovered by fossil hunter Lance Hall, then studied and described by paleontologist Timothy S. Myers of Southern Methodist University. Myers has published his description in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Like so many pterosaur fossils, the remains of Aetodactylus aren't exactly complete. All Myers had to work with was a fifteen-inch lower jaw, but it differs enough from similar pterosaurs to warrant the designation of a new genus. Myers classifies Aetodactylus as one of the last known ornithocheirids, a family of toothed pterosaurs. Assuming that this classification is borne out as other paleontologists weight in, and that the jaw represents a full-grown specimen, Aetodactylus would have been one of the smaller members of the family, with an estimated wingspan of nine feet.

While not all pterosaurs fit the stereotype of being soaring fish-eaters, Aetodactylus fits the lifestyle nicely. The fine sandstone in which this jaw was found was at one time the sediment of a shallow, abundant coastal area, and the rock around the jaw was littered with bits of fish bones. And the fifty-four teeth studding the lower jaw would have been perfect for snaring a tasty seafood dinner.

More: Discovery, Science Daily, Southern Methodist University.

UPDATE: Foxnews.com just dropped a whole bucket of fail on this puppy, with a story headlined New Toothy, Flying Dino Discovered in Texas. They must have deemed fact-checking optional for this sloppy regurgitation of the SMU press release. Aetodactylus is called a dinosaur four times in the story, all within passages added to link together quotes from the press release. Fair, balanced, and frickin' lazy!

UPDATE 2: Edited to reflect debate over exactly how Aetodactylus fits in with other pterosaurs taxonomically.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Lewis Zacks

This week, the featured artist is Lewis Zacks. Unlike many illustrators put in the spotlight here, he has a solid web presence, including an honest-to-gosh website. However, most of what I've found has been the art he's produced later in life, after leaving the illustration game in the late sixties.

In 1963, Zacks illustrated In the Time of Dinosaurs, written by veteran children's book author William Wise. It's a run-of-the-mill kid's title, hitting all of the usual basic points: dinosaurs were big, dinosaurs were dumb, dinosaurs fought each other, dinosaurs died and no one knows exactly why. It starts with a typical mistake: the first critters shown aren't dinosaurs at all, and lived millions of years apart. Additionally - andI've admitted to my still-small knowledge of paleobotany before - I'm pretty sure that tree, which looks kind of angiospermy, wouldn't have been familiar to Dimetrodon.



It's not the only anachronism, either. Later, a Triceratops and Stegosaurus share a page. It seems that this book was published merely because dinosaurs are a safe gamble. The prose is pretty simple, and besides getting basic things like spelling right, not a lot of time or effort was put into the science. Zacks' illustrations seem to have been done pretty quickly, without much reference to fossils for accuracy. Take this Triceratops, whose beak sprouts from his face above the mouth, as if it's another horn.



Yet in this next drawing, the beak is clearly part of the mouth. Note that the Tyrannosaurus with which it's fighting has three fingers; this reflects then-incomplete knowledge of T. rex forelimbs rather than disregard for anatomy.



The book ends with this solitary T. rex, another common trope of kid's books.



I've done quite a bit of searching, and can find no other examples of work from Zacks' illustrating career. I don't know how the dinosaurs in this book fits in with his body of work. Some of the wider views, such as that last T. rex, are pretty nice, and I love the limited color pallettes of many of these old books. The larger close-ups aren't as nice. They seem both busy and rushed. Not that I doubt the artist's skills; I'm sure many of these illustrators were working under short deadlines.

Here's a recent interview with Zacks, concerning his current artistic interest in the architectural artifacts of the mid-20th Century, especially old signs. If you'd like to see more from this title, head over to the Vintage Dinosaur Art flickr group.

LITC Interview: Mark Witton

A feeding frenzy surrounds a fallen azhdarchid pterosaur. By Dr. Mark Witton. Used with permission.

Today's interview subject is Dr. Mark Witton, a research associate with the School of Earth & Environmental Sciences at the University of Portsmouth, currently working on a project which will bring life-size models of various pterosaurs to London. He is also one of the main contributors to the brand new Pterosaur.net, the first comprehensive website dedicated exclusively to pterosaurs.

Witton has become well known in the paleo-blogosphere for his striking illustrations of extinct critters, primarily pterosaurs. His are some of my very favorite reproductions of ancient life - images that reflect a strong personal style and depict animals interacting with their surroundings in unique, yet plausible ways. A new image popping up on his flickr stream is always a welcome shot of joy in an otherwise gray and suffocating day.

Right then. Witton provided thoughtful, generous answers to my questions. I should have expected such candor - his illustrations are always accompanied by colorful descriptions of the ideas they depict, often pulling in anecdotes from his personal life and references to pop culture. They're as fun to read as the art is to look at. His writings exemplify what I love about the science blogosphere (a world it took me too long to find, honestly), providing a personal dimension the journals simply cannot. One of the things that really excites me about the future of science education is this increased interactivity; I can imagine how thrilling it would have been as a youngster to be able to discuss The Dinosaur Heresies on dinosaur blogs as I read it for the first time.

Anyway. Enough appetizer, let's get to the meat. Most of the images used here are from Witton's aforementioned flickr stream, which warrants a good, thorough perusing by anyone interested in really cool stuff.


Pterodaustro, a bunch of them. Or is it a gaggle?

Were you the kind of student who would doodle in your school notebooks when you should have been listening?

Sort of, but I was quite snobbish in my approach to doodling. Drawing pictures on file paper or in a school jotter meant that your images would always have lines printed beneath them, and I couldn’t stand that. Instead, at the age of 13 or so I started carrying plain paper around with me, starting with small bits that would fold away to be stuck inside my school blazer pocket and eventually bits of A4 or A3 that I would keep in a folder carried around school for that purpose alone. I still have the folder now, though it’s not looking quite as snazzy as it once did, and it’s still being carted around and doing the same job.

At school I drew at every available opportunity. People thought I was pretty strange as I regularly sat on my own, doodling away. Come to think of it, they’re probably right: most people don’t do that. Still, I didn’t really ‘gel’ that well at school: I wasn’t bullied or anything, but I certainly didn’t really feel like I fit in. On occasion, I would draw through classes too and, yes, the teachers assumed I wasn’t listening. Thing is, I genuinely was: although generally useless at multitasking, I can draw and listen or talk simultaneously. So, while my Year 9 English teacher was talking about Romeo and Juliet I was really, truthfully listening whilst another part of my brain was in a Cretaceous swamp with a Lambeosaurus. There can’t be many people who has memories of Shakespeare forever intertwined with giant hadrosaurs, but there you go.

Your artwork and interest in science certainly appear to go hand in hand, each influencing the other. Were you ever conflicted between going into art or going into science?

When I was growing up there was never any question about it: science reigned without question. My two big interests – drawing and palaeontology – have stuck with me since before I can remember and, at about age nine, the two became so linked that no other career paths – art or otherwise – were considered. With few exceptions, virtually every picture I drew between the ages of 9 and 23 were of some sort of prehistoric beastie and, yes, you’re absolutely right: the drawings fueled my desire to learn more about the animals, and what I learned fueled more ideas for pictures. It self-perpetuated, I suppose, and that momentum carried me, without question, towards my Ph.D. studies and my current job.

About halfway through my doctorate studies, though, other thoughts crept in. I started drawing non-palaeo-based topics: strange scenes of grotesque or anthropomorphised animals, deformed landscapes made of twisted, humanoid shapes, entirely mechanised people doing very human activities… that sort of thing. I really enjoyed it, and still draw similar things now. In fact, if I’m idly sitting in a café or pub with my sketchpad, I’m far more likely to draw a headless, overweight and naked man throwing consumables into a bottomless basket or a chain-smoking, boozing lion than I am to draw something palaeontologically related. Hence, it’s taken a while to develop, but the last few years has seen something of a personal conflict between art and science and, while I think I’ve made the right decision to stick with science, I can’t help wonder where I may have ended up if I’d gone down the arty route. I was walking through a workshop in our university art department this week and I reckon I could be quite happy there, frolicking about in a paint-covered smock, listening to weird, abstract tunes and conversing in melodramatic tones. That said, my current job is so heavily based in palaeoart that I have little tand, sad as it is, I miss the research-focused days of my Ph.D. I guess I wouldn’t be able to do just art, then: there needs to be some science in there somewhere, too.

Have you had any experience with the "generation gap" in the paleontology community, between younger folks who are comfortable with the open-source movement and blogging and older folks who came up through the journal-centric world?

I’ve certainly seen a divide in opinion over this, though, in my experience, it’s not strictly a generational divide. Many academics I’ve spoken to about open-source journals recognise their undeniable utility and future role in science, but these opinions aren’t shared by folks that are trying to ensure that their university or museum is recognised as a world-leading research institute. Some open-access journals are not counted towards university research league tables, so the folks worried about the academic brownie points of their establishment would prefer to
see research to be published in classic, recognised journals that will gain kudos with those rating the university. As such, my personal experience of this divide reflects the weight of The System bearing down on specific scientists, and I can understand it to an extent. Institutions need money for research and more money will go to places with good research records. Until things change, the folks snubbing open-access journals people are merely doing their jobs by ensuring their institutions are highly thought of. I’m sure that this divide will close eventually as the big open-access journals are given the recognition they deserve as important scientific organs, though. The increasing number of high-profile papers being published in open-access publications will help this, so I’m optimistic we won’t have to endure it for long.

Similarly, I’ve not seen a generational divide over the opinions on blogging despite the strongly differing opinions of academics over whether data published on personally moderated sites should be recognised in scientific literature. I know some academics that would happily publish data or pictures they’ve seen online, whereas other folks stand resolutely by peer-reviewed literature and will cite little else in their work. Personally, while I think the supplementary data placed on personal websites or blogs to support scientific papers is a good idea, I’m firmly sided with the crowd that says peer-review is essential to the scientific process: it’s the primary agent in maintaining the integrity of scientific literature and we need to stand by it. Don’t get me wrong: some non-reviewed information on the ‘Net is provided by well-informed, reliable individuals that clearly reference their sources and provide accurate information, but plenty of it isn’t.

How do you police which sites can be cited and which ones can’t? The obvious way to keep such dubious facts out of scientific literature is a blanket ban on citing personal opinions expressed on the internet, but of course, this creates a confusing situation area where academics happily cite non-peer reviewed scientific books and articles, but not things they see on the Web. Why cite these but ignore internet postings? There’s no easy answer to these questions, but I think the core of any solution has to ensure that we don’t lose the integrity of scientific publishing. After all, without the vetoing of ideas surrounding scientific publication, there really is no point to having distinct scientific literature at all.


Tupuxuara and an unfortunate frog

Many of the animals you draw seem to have "personality" without being overly anthropomorphized. Almost as if it sets aside the strangeness of pterosaurs and emphasizes the way they interacted with their environments, and how their adaptations made sense for the way they lived. Is this a conscious balance you try to strike?

Of course, maybe it's in my head...

Yup. All in your head.

Well, that’s not strictly true. When looking at pterosaur skeletons I find it hard not to imagine the animals moving around with their own characteristics: rightly or wrongly, the stumpy little wings but massive hindlimbs and head of Dimorphodon make me imagine it like a little yappy
pterosaurian dog, the sort of thing that would squawk at the postman, rip the upholstery off your sofa by climbing all over it and then sit in the mess of fabric, wagging its tail and looking innocently at you when you came in front work. Anuroganthids look like nervous little critters that would have a heart attack when handled but, by the same token, try to stroke a male Pteranodon and he’d tear at your clothes, chase you around the room, snap at your arms and then stab you with his overbite before he got really mad. Giant azhdarchids, by contrast, are the wise old beings of the pterosaur world: at that size, they move relatively slowly compared to other pterosaurs and are unconcerned with the matters of animals scampering around their feet or beneath their enormous wings. They did, after all, have a lot to think about: as virtually the only pterosaurs left at the end Cretaceous, they were trying to figure out how to carry on the pterosaur mantle through the impending KT extinction event. That’s a lot to think about.

Er… where were before we ventured into Mark’s Plastic Fantastic Fantasy Pterosaur Theatre? Ah yes: it’s worth noting that many characteristics of expression are universal across animals - cocking the head to the side and looking closely at an object can suggest inquisitiveness; large, exaggerated movements of the limbs but a rigidly held head and neck can suggest uncoordinated, panicked movement – and these can be applied to pterosaurs as much as anything else. Thing is, they very often aren’t because, nine times out of ten, pterosaurs are drawn lazily flying over oceans or clifftops: that doesn’t leave much room for expression. I make efforts to show that pterosaurs were diverse, existing in a variety of environments and interacting with their surroundings and other animals. Hence, if my pterosaurs do have any personality, it’s probably because I depict them engaging in rarely shown activities that give them more dramatic scope. I don’t think there’s much more to it than that, but it’s very nice of you to comment on it!

What aspects of pterosaur evolution do you think have the most potential to add to our general knowledge of evolution?

Broadly speaking, the pterosaur fossil record is probably too poor to tell us much about evolutionary processes. I mean, there’s Darwinopterus, the pterosaur that shows us that pterodactyloid evolution was a very modular process – and this is, in itself, an important demonstration that evolution can work in this way - but we don’t really know many specifics about its evolution. How quickly did its pterodactyloid features occur? How many genetic modules are represented by different body parts? These sort of questions are very difficult to answer with the patchy pterosaur fossil record. Studies have shown that we really know bugger all about trends in pterosaur evolution: current pterosaur diversity curves correlate precisely with the abundance and richness of pterosaur localities for a given geological level, so our diversity curves are entirely artificial. Our relatively recent discovery of azhdarchoids, a major clade of Cretaceous toothless pterosaurs, is a great example of how little we know about pterosaur evolution. Pterosaurs were first unearthed in the latest 1700s but, prior to the late 1980s we knew of something like three genera that would eventually be termed ‘azhdarchoids’. However, in the last few decades, we’ve amassed more than 20 new genera that can slip into this group. Who knows what other pterosaurs await discovery? There are plenty of scrappy remains that don’t fit neatly into any existing groups, so I’m sure some surprises are still to come. With such an incomplete record, we’re hard pushed to even talk about pterosaur evolution let alone what light they can shed on evolution itself.


A Dimorphodon steals his meal.

What questions about pterosaurs are the most compelling to you right now?

I really, really want to get to grips with basal pterosaur terrestrial locomotion. There’s three reasons for this: 1) since Kevin Padian’s ideas of bipedal pterosaurs were dismissed in the late 1980s, no-one has looked at basal pterosaur terrestrial locomotion despite plenty of research focusing on the terrestrial competence of pterodactyloids; 2)there’s a lot of diversity in basal pterosaur limb bone structure, phalangeal development and pelvic girdle morphology, suggesting they weren’t all moving around the ground in the same way and, 3) there really is no current consensus on how basal pterosaurs stood or walked – all people will tell you is that they were a bit rubbish at walking, and that’s it. I’m sure we can work out a little more than that!

That aside, there are lots of other things I’d like to do. I’d like to follow up my work on pterosaur mass estimation with a more precise method of estimating pterosaur skeletal mass, which can then be used to work out overall body mass. There’s buckets of work to be done on non-flight related aspects of pterosaur functional morphology: analysis of stress distribution across their skulls when biting, suitability of their pterodactyloid anatomy for climbing and so fourth. In addition to the quandary of basal pterosaur locomotion, there’s clearly lots of diversity in locomotory styles across pterodactyloids: there’s good evidence that azhdarchids were columnar limbed ultra-efficient walking machines, but what about the fingerless, limb-disproportioned nyctosaurs? How did they get about? Actually, the more I think about it, the more projects I can think of starting. I’m busy enough as it is: best stop this train of thought here.

Besides the Mesozoic, which era or eras of the Earth's history most interest you?

The Cainozoic (known to Americans as the Cenozoic - ed.) is undeniably interesting because you can really trace the development of modern ecologies and environments across the fossil record. You can watch mammal lineages bed-hop between different ecological niches – different feliformes vying for the hypercarnivory niche, hyena-like dogs, hippo- and horse-like like rhinos, tapir-like elephants, giraffe-like camels, that sort of thing. Cainozoic fossils haven’t had so long to be chewed up by destructive geological processes and this means we have a much greater insight into what was going on and this allows surprising glimpses into even epochs of 20 million years ago. Plus, mammal teeth are very identifiable, hardy and abundant anyway, so we can get a really good idea which groups were around in different places and times. As such, while the familiarity of some fossil mammals means that they may be somewhat less spectacular or intriguing than the more outlandish Mesozoic and Palaeozoic forms that preceded them, the depth of information available about them makes them equally compelling critters to learn about. The Cainozoic is, therefore, a particularly detailed chapter in Earth’s history and it’s hard not to be really sucked into learning about it once you start digging around.