Happy Birthday, Joseph Leidy

Statue of Joseph Leidy at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. Photo by Kerrins Giraffe, via Flickr.

Thanks to the always dependable Palaeoblog for reminding me that today is 19th century naturalist Joseph Leidy's birthday. I've been meaning for a long time to talk about him here, so I think I'll do a bit of that today.

Leidy, a central figure in the history of American paleontology, is sadly overshadowed by the outrageous stunts of Cope and Marsh in their bitter, public feud over the newly discovered fossil fields of the American west. Certainly, Leidy had an interest in dinosaurs; he was the first American scientist to describe a relatively complete skeleton, Hadrosaurus foulkii. A diligent scientist and by all accounts a reasonable, fair-minded man, Leidy seems to have been exhausted by his colleagues' antics. The obituary of Leidy in the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences demurely mentions the bone wars without naming the names its readers would have easily recognized. "Great rivalry and many acrimonious disputes regarding priority and nomenclature arose so that rather than become entangled in controversy, Dr. Leidy gave up this work in which he had achieved such success and devoted himself to other fields of scientific work..."


A portrait of Leidy as a young man. Handsome devil, ain't he?

In her biography of Cope, Jane P. Davidson notes that the decision to yield to Cope and Marsh likely had to do as much with practical concerns as with personal distaste for the rivalry: they simply hogged the bone beds and the resources necessary to access them. Whatever the ultimate reason for backing off of paleontology in the 1870's, Leidy's interest in the natural world was such that choosing a single field to focus on must have been nearly impossible. A wide-ranging naturalist in the truest sense of the term, Leidy collected over 1500 specimens for the herbarium at the University of Pennsylvania. His mineralogical work led him to amass an impressive collection for the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences which later was purchased by the Smithsonian. He's a huge figure in the history of parasitology as well, a proponent in the burgeoning use of the microscope in scientific research. There is no way I can do him justice in this space.

Cope and Marsh were talented scientists in their own right, of course. But the fact that Leidy didn't take part in their drama (nor in any other drama, from what I can tell) elevates him above the both of them, in my mind at least. Does he have as many named taxa under his belt as Marsh? Nope. But he also didn't have the advantages of The Great Dismal Swamp's* family fortune and political clout. Maybe it would have been advantageous to have Marsh on your side if you were a Gilded Age scientist. Maybe it would have been a kick to scheme and curse the scientific establishment with Cope. But Joseph Leidy's the guy I would have wanted as a mentor and a friend.

The Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, of which he was president, has a great online exhibit of Leidy's life and work, which you ought to visit. The introduction page closes with this quote from Leidy, which perfectly demonstrates why I hold him in such high regard.

"The study of natural history in the leisure of my life, since I was 14 years of age, has been to me a constant source of happiness; and my experience of it is such that independently of its higher merits, I warmly recommend it as a pastime, than which, I believe, no other can excel it."

* With a nickname like that, who wouldn't want to knock back a few brews with O.C. Marsh?

Extant Theropod Appreciation #1: The Turkey Vulture

I've been meaning to feature birds more often here - as they are the living descendants of theropod dinosaurs - and I've decided to start a new series called Extant Theropod Appreciation. First up: one of my favorites, Cathartes aura. The Turkey Vulture.

Vultures get a bad rap. If I mention that I've paused in my travels to watch a couple of them eat a possum that lost a fight with the Michelin man, I get an odd look. If I express my favorable attitude to one taking up residence in my yard, I receive a shifty glance. They're gnarly, ugly, cowardly eaters of stinky carcasses, after all. Think of how they're portrayed in the media. In westerns, they're harbingers of doom, hanging back and waiting for the hero to slough off the burden of life so they can pick the flesh from his bones. In Looney Tunes cartoons, they're just dopey (and erroneously saddled with the name buzzard).


Photo by Mike Baird, via Flickr.

For me, there are few nobler winged beasts. They provide a vital service, ridding the environment of dead flesh, limiting the spread of disease. And for that task, they are finely honed: heads free of feathers that would get funky when shoved into the guts of bloated carrion; a keen sense of smell; a soaring flight that conserves energy while looking for a meal; and strongly acidic urine used to cool the legs and kill bacteria on them. Sure, you can list any animal's adaptations and hold them up as evidence of its virtue. But in the case of the Turkey Vulture, they also demonstrate that it's not merely "settling" for a diminished profession in comparison to the eagles and hawks we celebrate so often. Vultures are perfectly specialized for their role.

I'm so glad I'm not alone in this.

The Boneyard 2.1

Welcome one and all to the rebooted Boneyard, a blog carnival dedicated to the multitudinous wonders of paleontology. I hope that the Boneyard can really take root and become a proud member of the science blog carnival community (which you can follow more easily thanks to the efforts of the good folks at ScienceBlogging).

I'll be honest - response has been light so far. Networking has never been my strongest suit, but as a guy who hopes to eventually make his way in the world by freelancing, that's something that has to change. I intend to improve the Boneyard by improving my networking skills. Of course, I'd be silly to not acknowledge that networking comes down to investing time, and time is a precious commodity for me right now. But I hope that by putting a bit more into spreading the word about the Boneyard, it will snowball. I guess I'm asking for some help. If you dig the Boneyard, I want you to be a part of it. Submit, host, spread the word. Repeat.

Enough of that. Let's get down to the meat of it.

We'll kick off Boneyard 2.1 with Julia of Bioluminescence. Last November, she mused about paleontology and the important role imagination plays in the process in her post entitled Fragments, Figments, and Visionaries.

For more in this vein, you should also take a look at the ART Evolved series called Philosofossilizing - What is Palaeo-Art? The contribution of artists to paleontology stretches back to the earliest days of the science, and it's always nice to read about the unique challenges they face in their work.

For even more in this vein, Dave Hone's Archosaur Musings recently posted an interviews with Brett Booth, Julia Molnar, and Luis Rey.

The Flugsaurier meeting in Beijing recently wrapped up, and Mark Witton was kind enough to summarize what the rest of us missed at the Pterosaur.net blog. Witton fanciers will also be pleased to learn of his upcoming book, I'd wager.

Maniraptor. For the benefit of the layman, Albertonykus sums up what exactly the word means at his blog, Raptormaniacs. Check out this post for a detailed rundown of the members of the clade maniraptora.

At her blog Chronicles from Hurricane Country, Elissa Malcohn wrote a four part series about her experience volunteering with the University of Florida's Tapir Challenge team. It's a great look at what a volunteer might have to look forward to at a dig. Part one, two, three, and four.

I always appreciate hearing the reasons that others find themselves invested in natural history. David Tana's recent post at Superoceras, Earth, Life, and Time: A Lasting Legacy, is evidence that outreach from paleontologists to young students can make huge impacts in their lives.

One of the biggest stories of the summer was the Torosaurus/ Triceratops paper published by John Scannella and Jack Horner. Zach Miller delved into it more deeply than any other blogger, offering his views on the claims of Scannella and Horner. A spirited debate arose, and it's great reading! It all started with this post.

Ever since coming across his History of Geology blog, I've found myself tweeting David Bressan's posts fairly often. His submission to Boneyard 2.1 concerns the history of ichnology. One of the aspects of paleontology I find most fascinating is how curious people came to grips with the nature of fossils over time, and David offers wonderful insights into this process.

Brontosaurus? Apatosaurus? One of the perennial topics in dinosaur paleontology is the unfortunate case of Brontosaurus. Brian Switek's Dinosaur Tracking post about the issue provides a fantastic, succinct breakdown of the issue, a fine place to point folks who need their heads put right.

Traumador the Tyrannosaur is always having some kind of outlandish adventure, and for this Boneyard, he wanted to share a few of them. Last year, he posted a series of videos about his expedition to search for microfossils. More recently, he's been reporting on the Dinosaur Winter Olympics, fulfilling a vital role that ESPN and Sports Illustrated seem to be shirking. Never send a man to do a dinosaur's job...

Louisville Fossils is another blog I find myself tweeting often. I was intoxicated by the surreal feel of this video of the "trilobite beetle," and this photo of the crinoid Scytalocrinus robustus blew me away.

Speaking of crinoids, my personal submission to Boneyard 2.1 is a post I wrote earlier this year about the geology of Southern Indiana, and how learning about the Carboniferous fossils I've been finding since relocating here several years ago redeemed the state in my eyes.

* * *

That just about does it for Boneyard 2.1. In order to help get the Boneyard out of the nest, I'm going to go ahead and host 2.2 here at LITC (I've had some offers to host, so if you have made such an offer, I'll just be bumping everyone a month back). I'm also working on finalizing the graphics, so look for a new banner and some spiffy badges very soon.

IMPORTANT: Keep following updates about the carnival at its official site, and encourage other bloggers to contribute to future editions! Cliché it may be, but "the more the merrier" is absolutely true when it comes to blog carnivals.

Latest Skeptic's Guide Goes Mesozoic

The September 4 episode of The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe features discussion of a few topics relevant to this here blog. In their news segment, the rogues - as the panel of skeptics likes to refer to themselves - cover two recent studies about extinction. First, they discuss the new study looking at the Boltysh crater, located in the Ukraine. Reporting in the newest issue of the journal Geology, David Jolley and his co-authors suggest that the impact happened only a few thousand years before the famous Chixculub event, as evidenced by the regrowth and subsequent wiping out of ferns at the site. The rogues then turn their attention to the new study which refutes the hypothesis that a comet is to blame for the extinction of ice age North American megafauna 13,000 years ago.

On this second story, host Steve Novella complains that too often, news outlets report each study in an ongoing scientific argument as "fact." A comet killed the mammoths! A comet did not kill the mammoths! No, a comet did kill the mammoths! My favorite example of this is the debate over which is healthier, margarine or butter. You know, first one is preferable, then the other, then back to the first, and so on. I'd bet that it's a big cause of the public's weariness with science: "Those knuckleheaded science-types can't make up their minds!" Novella raises a good point that this sort of reporting does a disservice to the people it's supposed to educate.

Then, the episode features an interview with Donald Prothero, who has written a whole bunch on dinosaurs, evolution, and paleontology.

In other podcasting news, NPR's Science Friday touched on Balaur bondoc last week, featuring the new dromaeosaur on their video pick of the week. For your convenience:

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Neave Parker

Neave Parker's path to an artistic career almost sounds like an episode of Michael Palin's post-Monty Python's Flying Circus series, Ripping Yarns. The Natural History Museum's page on Parker says that after his father forbade his pursuit of the arts, "he took up employment in a bank but, after just one disastrous week, he was firmly but kindly advised to seek another profession. Parker commented: 'each day there was an error in the books, and the whole staff had to stay behind until the error was found. It always ended with me.'" He would try his hand at surveying and serve in the RAF in World War II before finally going for his dream.

Parker went on to collaborate with writers E.H. Colbert and W.E. Swinton; here's one of his books with the latter, Animals before Adam.



Here's a Triassic scene in which the prosauropod Plateosaurus scares off the near-dinosaur Saltopus.


Being a British artist, he wasn't going to escape the allure of Iguanodon.


Contrast this Triceratops with the one featured at the beginning of the post. This guy's frill almost looks like a cape tied around his neck, it's so long and swept back.



Another book he did with Swinton also features a biblical reference. I'm not sure if Parker did the cover - probably not - but I couldn't help posting it.


I also love this painting, a mix of Cretaceous beasts hanging out by the old watering hole. It looks like the T. rex is about to give Gorgosaurus the business. You also have to look really closely to see that the Trachodon in the background isn't straddling his buddy's tail.


Thanks again to Norman Felchle for sharing these with the world. As always, feel free to join in by uploading old illustrations of dinosaurs to the Vintage Dinosaur Art flickr pool. I really need to hook up my new scanner - I've got a stack of books just itching to be digitized.

The Mesozoic Statuary of Wood's Golf Center

Flickr user Graham, aka Tourist Trap, has shared some photos taken at Wood's Golf Center in Norristown, PA. Their mini golf course is inhabited by some of the coolest statues I've seen in one - the official site says that their "award winning miniature golf courses are themed around 'The Adventures of Sinbad' and 'The Land of Dinosaurs.'"





There are a couple photos that aren't available to embed, including a T. rex that looks like he might be buddies with Whoopi Goldberg and some bizarre quasi-dinosaur that defies easy categorization. I've played at a few pirate or jungle themed courses, but I'd really love to whack a few balls alongside the citizens of the Mesozoic.

It's On!

Tricia Arnold frequently delights me with her illustrations. When I first learned of her stuff last year, I thought it had a timeless quality and a charm that harkened back to the cartoons I grew up watching. Sure enough, she's just wrapped up "Don Bluth Month" at her blog. Makes sense!

Here's her tribute to Charles R. Knight's Leaping Laelaps, featuring a couple of icons of the Children's Television Workshop.



A sneak peak at Art Evolved's pop culture gallery, which should be hitting the web today? Follow her Flickr photostream already, you sorry so and so.

Jurassic Parq: The Broadway Musical

Yesterday at Superoceras, David Tana posted about something incredible: a stage musical based on Jurassic Park.

Here's a plot summary for Jurassic Parq: The Broadway Musical from StageBuzz.com:

To say that the musical tells the story of "Jurassic Park" is a bit of an overstatement. In fact, it takes a small plot point from the movie, the fact that some of the dinosaurs were able to turn male thanks to the addition of frog DNA to fill in the blanks in the dinosaur DNA, and expands that into a meta-musical that touches on faith vs. science, gender roles, love, betrayal, finding a home, and the enduring, almost mythic appeal of Morgan Freeman.

The show was part of the New York International Fringe Festival, wrapped up its run on August 27. It seems to have received plenty of good reviews, and won the festival's Overall Excellence Award for a Musical Production. There are detractors, however, such as an outraged Jurassic Park fan who writes "Don't turn the one franchise I hold sacred into a vehicle for some annoying political agenda. Hell, I'm gay, but I don't expect my dinosaurs to be." Honestly, I'm nonplussed by the high dudgeon of this JP fanboy. He needs to chill out. The way a Barbasol can stocked with dinosaur embryos chills out.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Jurassic Parq: The Broadway Musical performed again. Theater, like life, always finds a way.

Wackity schmackity doo...

Bună ziua, Balaur bondoc

Balaur bondoc, by Mick Ellison. From the PNAS paper.

I love the smell of lifted embargos in the morning. Yesterday, the web exploded to life with news of a new dromaeosaur from the Haţeg Basin in Romania, newly described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Remember the fuss Dr. Grant made over the Velociraptor's single sickle-claw at the beginning of Jurassic Park? Well, Balaur bondoc (the "stocky dragon") had two of them. Suck on those, Telmatosaurus and Magyarosaurus.

This is a significant discovery, helping paleontologists flesh out the menagerie of strange island dinosaurs from the European archipelago during the late Cretaceous. Balaur is the first good fossil of a predatory dinosaur from the time, and provides additional insight into the unique ways animals evolve on islands, where they are isolated from their mainland brethren and have to compete for food in different ways.

Because of limits on space, and therefore food, islands often cause populations of large herbivores to reduce in size over time. About a century ago, Franz Baron Nopsca believed this to be the explanation for the herbivorous dinosaurs discovered in Transylvania, an hypothesis that took a while to gain traction, but which is now widely accepted (I wrote about the Baron and his island dwarf ideas last spring). What was eating those smaller sauropods and dantier ornithopods? One of their harrassers would have been Balaur, a scaled-up relative of Velociraptor.

One part of the island rule holds that as herbivores reduce in size to better manage scarce food sources, predators grow to take advantage of the easier prey. Balaur is only a bit larger than Velociraptor (which in reality was a fraction of the size othe JP version, leading Dan Telfer to joke that he'd punt one out of the way if it tried anything with him). But it's a lot more robust than the lithe Mongolian dromaeosaur.

Its unique features don't end with its stockiness: Balaur possessed the above-mentioned twin sickle-claws, four functional toes on its feet as opposed to the typical three for theropods, and a two-fingered hand. This was clearly a predator adapted for a unique lifestyle. Those two claws on its feet have been proposed as its main weapons - as coauthor Steven Brussatte says, "Compared to Velociraptor, Balaur was probably more of a kickboxer than a sprinter, and it might have been able to take down larger animals than itself, as many carnivores do today." The skull of Balaur has yet to be found. I'd love to see if it had additional unique features which may have been of use in taking down prey.

The authors, led by Zoltán Csiki of Bucharest University, write that Balaur's close kinship to the Mongolian Velociraptor suggests that there must have been some connection between the islands and the mainland, an idea that has been hard to state firmly until now. Those herbivorous dwarf dinosaurs of Haţeg are more primitive than their late Cretaceous relatives, suggesting that they had been isolated from their mainland families since the Jurassic. Not so with Balaur. This is an animal descended from advanced dromaeosaurs of the late Cretaceous, so it must have arrived later.

This leads to my big, possibly stupid question, which I'll nonetheless pose here. What if Balaur isn't an example of the island rule after all? Dromaeosaurs are (for the most part) small, nimble predators who may have been able to travel between the island and the mainland more easily than the herbivores. Its unique features may have been of use on the mainland, and it may have been able to access the islands by swimming. Hoping for more skeletons of an interesting new dinosaur like Balaur is a lot to ask, but I'll be interested to see where else they might turn up. Preferably with a nice, complete skull. Csiki promises functional analyses to come in this interview, which will help shed light on how this two-finger, four-toed, robustly built dude hunted.

This is the kind of new species that's easy to get excited about. It represents new and interesting variations on the classic dromaeosaur body plan. It's in a geographically interesting place. Its relation to other dromaeosaurs is significant. And it's got one heck of a cool sounding name, conjuring a positively Tolkienian mood. Balaur bondoc sounds like some dark memory from the depths of elvenlore. Anytime you're compelled to say both the genus and species name, you know you've got a keeper.

More coverage of Balaur bondoc:

Not Exactly Rocket Science
Discovery
More From Discovery: Jennifer Viegas interviews Zoltán Csiki
Nat Geo
Science Daily
DinoGoss
Dinosaur Tracking
Wired (including very cool illo of Velociraptor)
HuffPo
BBC
The Dragon's Tales
Everything Dinosaur

PS. Bună ziua = "Good day" in Romanian.

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.