It's inspired by a photo taken by Dan Ripplinger, who has been a constant source of delight on my Flickr contacts stream. Thanks for the inspiration, Dan!
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
The Tight-Rope Walker
Here's my tribute to the unforgettable frontal view of what is, in my opinion, one of the coolest extant theropods: the Bateleur Eagle, Terathopius ecaudatus.
It's inspired by a photo taken by Dan Ripplinger, who has been a constant source of delight on my Flickr contacts stream. Thanks for the inspiration, Dan!
It's inspired by a photo taken by Dan Ripplinger, who has been a constant source of delight on my Flickr contacts stream. Thanks for the inspiration, Dan!
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Interview with artist Glendon Mellow
Parasaurolophus skull, illustrated by Glendon Mellow
Artist, blogger, and new papa Glendon Mellow is well known in the science blogosphere for his intriguing, often surreal visions of scientific concepts. I had the great pleasure of participating in the Science-Art discussion with him at ScienceOnline in January. He's insightful, principled, and all around excellent company, as you may have gleaned from his popular blog, The Flying Trilobite. If not, you'll figure it out by reading this interview, in which we discussed his ideas about how science and art come together, his goals as an artist, and, of course, the awe-inspiring beasts of prehistory.
Please visit Glendon's portfolio, keep up with him at his blog, and support him at his online store. In addition to these outlets, he is one of the founders of the paleoart blog ART Evolved and the webmaster for Southern Ontario Nature and Science Illustrators. In December, he wrote a popular post at the Scientific American Guest Blog about science and art, and that shared interest is where we began our interview.
***
Now that you've done panels at ScienceOnline three times, where do you think the exploration of the relationship between art and science needs to go?
Each year, we try to cover a lot of topics, and there are many more left untouched, by the ways the group discussion may go. One of the issues I've raised each year, is that visual art seldom leads directly to new areas of scientific research. It vexes portions of the scientifically literate crowd, but I've only ever had a couple of examples brought up. Literature, movies and other forms of self-expression seem somehow more inspiring or conducive to catalyzing research. So now I am wondering; why is this the case? Is it due to the art vs science divide most of us grow up with? Is there something inherent in the use of metaphor that prevents us from posing a useful hypothesis?
I think it would also be useful to consider visual art's role in seducing people into being interested in science and discovery. Are there ways we artists can do a more effective job with that? Or is all science-art a type of fanfic? The role of extreme-niche art about specific scientific disciplines almost seems to be pushing away from popular understanding. Art for a few people in a field who get it.
So, is science-art simply the visual artist's version of science fiction? Do you think that part of your unease about a parasitic relationship is rooted in the fact that science fiction is generally seen as contributing so much to science? And has that idea of artistic "seduction" into science remedied that unease?
There's certainly a science fiction glaze on some science-art, even in the fine art world. If you consider work like Wim Delvoye's Cloaca (an installation art piece of a machine that eats, digests and excretes) or the Genpets installation and website by Adam Brandejs, you can see that they do operate by showing us a distorted mirror of where we could be headed, as much of science fiction does. And yes, I do think some of my unease comes from that. If written and filmed science fiction can anticipate and inform research and technology, why not visual art?
Perhaps artists need to become more conscious of that seduction. It's possible that some in the science community feel intimidated by becoming schooled in visual art and some of its conventions, especially fine art conventions. After all, as has been debated in the science blogosphere that scientists are already expected to do outreach and behave like journalists - adding "art critic" to their c.v. is indeed an overwhelming thought!
It need not be though. find some art about your field, or another field, see what pleases you aesthetically. Then start asking questions about it, let that inquisitive scientific nature take over, and enjoy.
Glendon's new "Trilobite Boy" character
I've been writing my blog for less than two years, and didn't really become aware of the blogosphere until I began working in a cubicle all day, less than four years ago. In this short amount of time, it's changed me in a lot of ways. It's hard to remember what life was like before this, so it's easy to forget that web is in its infancy. Have you had a similar experience? What are your wildest hopes for where the web is going to take us in a few decades?
The Flying Trilobite is about 4 years old now, and I had been reading blogs for a couple of years before that. I remember waiting at the airport on the way home from ScienceOnline09 and speaking with Henry Gee. He asked me if I felt blogs had changed my life; I replied they had. And you see, even that question was one I had not entertained before. Blogging continues to change my life profoundly. I spent years angry and disappointed with my artwork languishing in my apartment. One day, out of frustration, I decided to start some kind, any kind of website. I went to Blogger, started typing and off I went. The people I've met, the friends I've made and the reception my artwork has had in the scientific and artistic communities has shown me that you can put on a very public face, mistakes and all and people will engage with you, and learn with you.
Where is the web going? I don't know. It certainly isn't filled with traditional storefronts and companies. It has it's own culture and subcultures, and it moves very quickly. I expect we will continue to see change, though I think blogs in one form or another are here to stay. There's something powerful about individuals having a voice that can reach the world.
I think it is still possible for individuals to shake some branches of the internet-tree. Like you David, and a few others online, I advocate for artists to at least be given credit for their artwork. Lack of credit is one reason I generally dislike the culture of Tumblr. There may be a general feeling that images online are free, but dammit, the creators need some credit! And after writing about it, and retweeting others who were writing about it in the last 6 months, there has already been some movement in the science blogosphere at least to rectify proper image use.
Art is one of those areas in which you're bound to come meet many people who don't have a scientific worldview, or might actually oppose it actively. As someone representing this loose science-art movement, have you run into any resistance from other artists, or confusion about just what the heck you're up to?
Yes. When I was in university, I was repeatedly asked by my peers what drugs I was taking to come up with ideas. Coffee is as far as I go into substance-use. It became annoying: people around me in the arts had such a mistrust of science that they assumed the ideas were the result of hallucinogens. It was rampant, even from professors, when I started my degree in '97. We would be given an assignment to paint something about our personal experience - I produced Symbiosis (full here) and was told "but you don't experience microbes". Science was evil: it gave us pollution and bombs.
I left school for many years and returned to complete my degree in 2010. And things had largely changed. Granted, this is anecdotal evidence, but I could see the way students approached an issue for their paintings seems to have been influence by a 'Wikipedia-effect'. Instead of some off-the-cuff commentary about pro-choice or fair-trade issues culled from the media zeitgeist, now my peers are producing comprehensive works. They incorporate history, science, culture, economics and emotion all into these collaged-style paintings. So I think a fascination with science is increasing. The explosion of science-art aggregating and reporting sites the last couple of years is showing there's an interest.
What were your favorite paleo-critters when you were a kid? Do you remember when your interest "graduated" to a desire to really understand the science of paleontology?
As a kid, it was really dinosaurs, like most children. The Royal Ontario Museum here in Toronto has had the holotype Parasaurolophus mount since I was a child, and I remember having a toy of that. The idea of sounds beyond a roar from a dinosaur struck me as interesting at a young age.
Actually, I gave up on paleontology for some years. When I was a child, and into my teens going into paleontology was something I was determined to do. Then high school biology burned it out of me. I believe it had more to do with the curriculum then the teachers. Rote memorization of the Krebs Cycle without any worry over whether we understood it, and endless Punnett Squares killed it for me. I know that a lot of laboratory science involves repetition, but this seemed to be just rushing us through it.
I decided to become a writer, and then an artist. I was at university for Fine Art, and my mother wanted me to keep an interest in science, for fun at least, ad bought me a number of books. One of them was Richard Dawkins River Out of Eden. I was hooked. Mitochondrial Eve, armchair experiments on ancestry, the Digital River...I was drawing and painting microbes and fossils throughout university.
As a fine artist, do you feel that you have something unique to bring to criticism of paleoart and other scientific illustrations?
Being a fine artist can be less technical than being a scientific illustrator. If I take on the role of critic as you suggest, whether for paleoart or other types of scientific illustration, I think the fine artist in me looks for certain things in an image. Is there a sense of time passing? A poetic metaphor or some ambiguity that causes me to ask questions, and thereby be sucked into the image's world? These things are not necessarily desirable in a scientific illustration when that illustration is being used for clarity and instruction. Those sorts of questions are not the point.
However, more and more scientific illustrations are finding their way onto blogs and mainstream media as enhancements to stories about scientific discoveries meant for popular consumption, or at least consumption by more people than the handful of experts in a particular field. And that's when those questions come into play for me. Look at the images from stories about the Large Hadron Collider. It's clear from the images that a massive amount of industrial undertaking has taken place, using big shiny machines. But do those images that appear in the news help public understanding? A "just the facts" approach to imagery often does little to arouse curiosity or inspire understanding in lay people. I think that's where being a fine artist looking at these images can lead to useful criticism.
I've been fascinated by that idea of time passing since conversing with you and attending ScienceOnline. I think that Julius Csotonyi's Lanzendorf-winning piece from 2010 achieves it masterfully. How do you work that into your own work? How early in the process do you start to work it in?
Agreed, Csotonyi's painting achieves that really well. A sense of time passing in a still image isn't always easy, and I admire that Csotonyi is able to do that with a dinosaur carcass. This painting has a lot of motion: wind on the water, and by extension the grassy plants moving. Expressing decay can also give us a sense of time's passage, and it resonates even more in paleo art like this, which hints at future fossilization.
I think we as modern viewers looking at art appreciate time passing in a still image more than previous generations may have. It's almost essential. With YouTube, graphics on our phones, the artistry of video games, a still image that doesn't hint at motion or the passage of time is fading from fashion.
That said, I'm not sure how much of my work centers on time. Maybe I need to! I usually look for an interesting composition between my negative space and object, and try to keep things simple. I've been guilty in the past of including everything I can think of in a painting, and the past few years I've tried to make each one a little quieter: still-lifes and portraits of things that don't exist except as metaphors.
How much straight scientific illustration have you done, and what are your personal feelings on it?
It's a good question. I suppose sometimes there are elements of straight, non-fictional scientific illustration in my work; I think of the Red Knot in the Migrations blog banner or the rabbit skeleton in Haldane's Precambrian Puzzle A could count. Interestingly though, it's not what most people hire me to do. It's not expected. Outside of a couple of my Art Evolved cohorts, most people haven't asked me to do a straight-up scientific illustration. Usually the interest lies in seeing what my imagination can come up with, what disparate associations or compositional manipulations I can create to spark interest in the idea.
It's telling that most of my commissions are seeking something with a metaphorical flair, and most of that work comes from bloggers; they are looking for their subject to be rendered personal, and imbued with poetic meaning.
That reminds me a little of your recent Guest Blog post, in which you ditch "way of knowing" for "way of exploring" - a huge improvement, in my opinion. Since that post, how have your feelings about that distinction evolved?
I've thought about that phrasing a lot too. In the humanities, I absolutely think there are times when jargon is invented to be precise about a certain artifact of culture, but there are many more times when jargon is used through a combination of maintaining an ivory tower, and times when it is there through a sort of general science-envy.
Having a "way of knowing" phrase thrown around is a way to try to put (in this case) art on equal footing with science. The scientific method is the best way we have to really try to know or understand the world. The arts explore the world by tapping into human experience; emotions and associations we have. Visual art can do that in a powerful way. For most humans, our visual sense is the primary one, and the most direct one that will provoke a response.
Each year, we try to cover a lot of topics, and there are many more left untouched, by the ways the group discussion may go. One of the issues I've raised each year, is that visual art seldom leads directly to new areas of scientific research. It vexes portions of the scientifically literate crowd, but I've only ever had a couple of examples brought up. Literature, movies and other forms of self-expression seem somehow more inspiring or conducive to catalyzing research. So now I am wondering; why is this the case? Is it due to the art vs science divide most of us grow up with? Is there something inherent in the use of metaphor that prevents us from posing a useful hypothesis?
I think it would also be useful to consider visual art's role in seducing people into being interested in science and discovery. Are there ways we artists can do a more effective job with that? Or is all science-art a type of fanfic? The role of extreme-niche art about specific scientific disciplines almost seems to be pushing away from popular understanding. Art for a few people in a field who get it.
So, is science-art simply the visual artist's version of science fiction? Do you think that part of your unease about a parasitic relationship is rooted in the fact that science fiction is generally seen as contributing so much to science? And has that idea of artistic "seduction" into science remedied that unease?
There's certainly a science fiction glaze on some science-art, even in the fine art world. If you consider work like Wim Delvoye's Cloaca (an installation art piece of a machine that eats, digests and excretes) or the Genpets installation and website by Adam Brandejs, you can see that they do operate by showing us a distorted mirror of where we could be headed, as much of science fiction does. And yes, I do think some of my unease comes from that. If written and filmed science fiction can anticipate and inform research and technology, why not visual art?
Perhaps artists need to become more conscious of that seduction. It's possible that some in the science community feel intimidated by becoming schooled in visual art and some of its conventions, especially fine art conventions. After all, as has been debated in the science blogosphere that scientists are already expected to do outreach and behave like journalists - adding "art critic" to their c.v. is indeed an overwhelming thought!
It need not be though. find some art about your field, or another field, see what pleases you aesthetically. Then start asking questions about it, let that inquisitive scientific nature take over, and enjoy.
Glendon's new "Trilobite Boy" character
I've been writing my blog for less than two years, and didn't really become aware of the blogosphere until I began working in a cubicle all day, less than four years ago. In this short amount of time, it's changed me in a lot of ways. It's hard to remember what life was like before this, so it's easy to forget that web is in its infancy. Have you had a similar experience? What are your wildest hopes for where the web is going to take us in a few decades?
The Flying Trilobite is about 4 years old now, and I had been reading blogs for a couple of years before that. I remember waiting at the airport on the way home from ScienceOnline09 and speaking with Henry Gee. He asked me if I felt blogs had changed my life; I replied they had. And you see, even that question was one I had not entertained before. Blogging continues to change my life profoundly. I spent years angry and disappointed with my artwork languishing in my apartment. One day, out of frustration, I decided to start some kind, any kind of website. I went to Blogger, started typing and off I went. The people I've met, the friends I've made and the reception my artwork has had in the scientific and artistic communities has shown me that you can put on a very public face, mistakes and all and people will engage with you, and learn with you.
Where is the web going? I don't know. It certainly isn't filled with traditional storefronts and companies. It has it's own culture and subcultures, and it moves very quickly. I expect we will continue to see change, though I think blogs in one form or another are here to stay. There's something powerful about individuals having a voice that can reach the world.
I think it is still possible for individuals to shake some branches of the internet-tree. Like you David, and a few others online, I advocate for artists to at least be given credit for their artwork. Lack of credit is one reason I generally dislike the culture of Tumblr. There may be a general feeling that images online are free, but dammit, the creators need some credit! And after writing about it, and retweeting others who were writing about it in the last 6 months, there has already been some movement in the science blogosphere at least to rectify proper image use.
Art is one of those areas in which you're bound to come meet many people who don't have a scientific worldview, or might actually oppose it actively. As someone representing this loose science-art movement, have you run into any resistance from other artists, or confusion about just what the heck you're up to?
Yes. When I was in university, I was repeatedly asked by my peers what drugs I was taking to come up with ideas. Coffee is as far as I go into substance-use. It became annoying: people around me in the arts had such a mistrust of science that they assumed the ideas were the result of hallucinogens. It was rampant, even from professors, when I started my degree in '97. We would be given an assignment to paint something about our personal experience - I produced Symbiosis (full here) and was told "but you don't experience microbes". Science was evil: it gave us pollution and bombs.
I left school for many years and returned to complete my degree in 2010. And things had largely changed. Granted, this is anecdotal evidence, but I could see the way students approached an issue for their paintings seems to have been influence by a 'Wikipedia-effect'. Instead of some off-the-cuff commentary about pro-choice or fair-trade issues culled from the media zeitgeist, now my peers are producing comprehensive works. They incorporate history, science, culture, economics and emotion all into these collaged-style paintings. So I think a fascination with science is increasing. The explosion of science-art aggregating and reporting sites the last couple of years is showing there's an interest.
What were your favorite paleo-critters when you were a kid? Do you remember when your interest "graduated" to a desire to really understand the science of paleontology?
As a kid, it was really dinosaurs, like most children. The Royal Ontario Museum here in Toronto has had the holotype Parasaurolophus mount since I was a child, and I remember having a toy of that. The idea of sounds beyond a roar from a dinosaur struck me as interesting at a young age.
Actually, I gave up on paleontology for some years. When I was a child, and into my teens going into paleontology was something I was determined to do. Then high school biology burned it out of me. I believe it had more to do with the curriculum then the teachers. Rote memorization of the Krebs Cycle without any worry over whether we understood it, and endless Punnett Squares killed it for me. I know that a lot of laboratory science involves repetition, but this seemed to be just rushing us through it.
I decided to become a writer, and then an artist. I was at university for Fine Art, and my mother wanted me to keep an interest in science, for fun at least, ad bought me a number of books. One of them was Richard Dawkins River Out of Eden. I was hooked. Mitochondrial Eve, armchair experiments on ancestry, the Digital River...I was drawing and painting microbes and fossils throughout university.
As a fine artist, do you feel that you have something unique to bring to criticism of paleoart and other scientific illustrations?
Being a fine artist can be less technical than being a scientific illustrator. If I take on the role of critic as you suggest, whether for paleoart or other types of scientific illustration, I think the fine artist in me looks for certain things in an image. Is there a sense of time passing? A poetic metaphor or some ambiguity that causes me to ask questions, and thereby be sucked into the image's world? These things are not necessarily desirable in a scientific illustration when that illustration is being used for clarity and instruction. Those sorts of questions are not the point.
However, more and more scientific illustrations are finding their way onto blogs and mainstream media as enhancements to stories about scientific discoveries meant for popular consumption, or at least consumption by more people than the handful of experts in a particular field. And that's when those questions come into play for me. Look at the images from stories about the Large Hadron Collider. It's clear from the images that a massive amount of industrial undertaking has taken place, using big shiny machines. But do those images that appear in the news help public understanding? A "just the facts" approach to imagery often does little to arouse curiosity or inspire understanding in lay people. I think that's where being a fine artist looking at these images can lead to useful criticism.
I've been fascinated by that idea of time passing since conversing with you and attending ScienceOnline. I think that Julius Csotonyi's Lanzendorf-winning piece from 2010 achieves it masterfully. How do you work that into your own work? How early in the process do you start to work it in?
Agreed, Csotonyi's painting achieves that really well. A sense of time passing in a still image isn't always easy, and I admire that Csotonyi is able to do that with a dinosaur carcass. This painting has a lot of motion: wind on the water, and by extension the grassy plants moving. Expressing decay can also give us a sense of time's passage, and it resonates even more in paleo art like this, which hints at future fossilization.
I think we as modern viewers looking at art appreciate time passing in a still image more than previous generations may have. It's almost essential. With YouTube, graphics on our phones, the artistry of video games, a still image that doesn't hint at motion or the passage of time is fading from fashion.
That said, I'm not sure how much of my work centers on time. Maybe I need to! I usually look for an interesting composition between my negative space and object, and try to keep things simple. I've been guilty in the past of including everything I can think of in a painting, and the past few years I've tried to make each one a little quieter: still-lifes and portraits of things that don't exist except as metaphors.
How much straight scientific illustration have you done, and what are your personal feelings on it?
It's a good question. I suppose sometimes there are elements of straight, non-fictional scientific illustration in my work; I think of the Red Knot in the Migrations blog banner or the rabbit skeleton in Haldane's Precambrian Puzzle A could count. Interestingly though, it's not what most people hire me to do. It's not expected. Outside of a couple of my Art Evolved cohorts, most people haven't asked me to do a straight-up scientific illustration. Usually the interest lies in seeing what my imagination can come up with, what disparate associations or compositional manipulations I can create to spark interest in the idea.
It's telling that most of my commissions are seeking something with a metaphorical flair, and most of that work comes from bloggers; they are looking for their subject to be rendered personal, and imbued with poetic meaning.
That reminds me a little of your recent Guest Blog post, in which you ditch "way of knowing" for "way of exploring" - a huge improvement, in my opinion. Since that post, how have your feelings about that distinction evolved?
I've thought about that phrasing a lot too. In the humanities, I absolutely think there are times when jargon is invented to be precise about a certain artifact of culture, but there are many more times when jargon is used through a combination of maintaining an ivory tower, and times when it is there through a sort of general science-envy.
Having a "way of knowing" phrase thrown around is a way to try to put (in this case) art on equal footing with science. The scientific method is the best way we have to really try to know or understand the world. The arts explore the world by tapping into human experience; emotions and associations we have. Visual art can do that in a powerful way. For most humans, our visual sense is the primary one, and the most direct one that will provoke a response.
"The Last Refuge," commissioned by Kevin Zelnio of Deep Sea News.
***
Monday, March 7, 2011
Vintage Dinosaur Art: Scaphognathus Hangs Out
Illustration of the restored Scaphognathus crassirostris holotype. From Hugh Miller's The Testimony of the Rocks, 1857.
It's fair to say that Scaphognathus crassirostris is not the most celebrated of the pterosaurs. But the evolution of its popular representations is pretty interesting, and has popped up in a few cool places. The 1857 engraving above is a perfect example of the typical pose that recurred throughout the 19th century.
An engraving of the holotype fossil, described by Goldfuss in 1831.
Scaphognathus was originally described in 1831 by the German paleontologist August Goldfuss, who at the time determined it to be a species of the first described pterosaur, Pterodactylus. During the 1800's, it was shuffled around taxonomically until a second, probably juvenile, specimen was found and Johann Wagner erected its current name in 1858. In January, Dave Hone featured Scaphognathus at Archosaur Musings, writing about pterosaur taxonomy in the years after that first Pterodactylus was discovered. Though Scaphognathus and other early pterosaurs had marked differences from Pterodactylus, they
were put into Pterodactylus based on their even more obvious similarities – these were, after all, obviously pterosaurs. However, once it became clear that there were some important differences, as well and the similarities, then thinks like Dimorphodon and Scaphognathus were separated out into their own genera. This is an extreme example, but the principle is the same and constantly resurfaces.
The "restored version" of Scaphognathus, here reproduced by Buckland in 1836, seems to have cast a spell over early reconstructions of the animal. This pose became the default one used over and over throughout the 19th century, often modified so the wing is in a more extended position.
This 1888 version, redrawn and mirrored horizontally, is from the German natural history text Naturgeschichte Geologie und Paläontologie that was the subject of a Vintage Dinosaur Art post last month.
This 1888 version, redrawn and mirrored horizontally, is from the German natural history text Naturgeschichte Geologie und Paläontologie that was the subject of a Vintage Dinosaur Art post last month.
In this 1836 reconstruction (at right), also from Buckland's Bridgewater Treatises, you can see what I suppose this pose is meant to represent - the animal clinging to a rock face.
The only early depiction that I could find that strayed from this trend was the one above, from Albert Gaudry's Les enchaînements du monde animal dans les temps géologiques, published in 1890. But it's not too different.
I recently wrote about a collection of paleontology-themed trading cards by the French company Chocolat D'Aiguebelle, and one of them featured a cartoonified illustration of the restored Scaphognathus holotype, though labeled with the generic "Pterodactyle."
My favorite version of this meme, edging out the D'Aigubelle chocolate wrapper, was used for the bookplate of a Dr. Tillfried Cernajsek. Thank you to Matt Celeskey of the Hairy Museum of Natural History website for passing it on to me; I love the woodcut look of it, and it's my favorite of the admittedly small collection of paleo bookplates I've begun.
I've collected these images of Scaphognathus crassirostris, along with others, at Flickr. It's also a fun game of spot-the-mistakes (hint: you can count them on your fingers). I'll be adding more to it as I can, and if you have any other variations of his meme, I'll happily add them to the set.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Science Visualization on Brontomerus
Ferdinand Gascó's sensational Brontomerus is the subject of a new blog post written by the folks at the Science in the Media blog of Science Visualization, LLC.
Another problem facing artists on a deadline is that they can be rushed. Take a close look at this dinosaur art. It struck me as a little odd at first glance. The lighting on the dinosaur was nice, but there was something wrong. On closer look I realized that Gascó had created, textured, and lit a 3D model of the dinosaurs and then plopped a rendering of them onto a photo. That’s why it seemed a little strange. It is very difficult to make a combination of a 3D model rendering and a background work, even though Hollywood does it all the time. But they have zillion dollar budgets.Science Visualization's Christopher Sloan, the probable author of the post, is the chairperson of the Lanzendorf Prize, the annual award given to exceptional paleoart at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting. So his constructive criticism holds a lot of weight. He also brings up the issue of financial considerations for paleoartists, and bemoans the poor job the media does in properly crediting the art that accompanies their news stories. "The worst example," he writes, "is AP, which adds themselves to the credit! For what?!" It's a bizarre lapse, as after all, news outlets probably wouldn't care to run these stories if they hadn't seen the artwork in the first place.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Mesozoic Miscellany #22
The Big Stories
Boneyard 2.7! David Tana of Superoceras did a helluva job this month.
Terror Bird Gallery! ART Evolved is back with a new batch of paleoartistic pandemonium.
The supposed "dinosaur petroglyph" of Kachina Bridge was revealed definitively to be an illusion in a new study published in Palaeontologia Electronica. Read about it at the PE blog and Dinosaur Tracking, as well as my own post.
A bunch of interesting Triassic research has come out, including a redescription of the Postosuchus holotype skull, a paper on the anatomy of hilariously named basal sauropodomorph Pantydraco, and new tanystropheids (Chinleana, Pterosauria). As always, Chinleana is the ultimate way to keep up with new research into the Mesozoic's first act.
Victoria Arbour is the lead author of a new paper examining the pelvic shields of ankylosaurian dinosaurs in Journal of Paleaontology. Looking at the shields across the whole family, she has done the work of separating them into different categories and analyzing the differences between taxa and through time.
Around the Dinoblogosphere
Jack Horner is giving a TED speech today about his chickenasaurus quest. Read an interview at Wired.
Dave Hone waxed imaginative and shared his time travel wish list.
Saurian chronicles the winding-down of fossil hunting at Quarry 4, and a rainy spell reveals some new pieces of a lost Mesozoic ecosystem.
Paleontologist Scott Sampson continues his musings on biophilia at Whirlpool of Life, this time writing about human love. "I predict that future research will reveal solid evidence of a human bond with (nonhuman) nature—what people have referred to as 'biophilia' (see my previous post)—and that this bond will be facilitated by none other than our hormonal friend oxytocin."
Brian Switek shared fond remembrances of a formative documentary about dinosaurs, entitled... Dinosaur!
Everything Dinosaur reveals details about the Planet Dinosaur project.
Whales, Camps, and Trails shows off the new identify design for Beloit, Wisconsin's new tourism campaign, focusing on native son Roy Chapman Andrews.
Trish Arnold gets straight-up cruel all up in here, sharing dinosaur illos you can't un-see.
SV-POW goes into deep detail about the process of the raptor-kicking Brontomerus.
Along the same lines, Paleo Illustrata featured a post about the 3D modeling of extinct beasts.
Twit Picks
Stuff I've linked to at Twitter in the last week or so.
I Effing Love Dinosaurs notified us of a life-size T. rex model that can be yours for the princely sum of £32,999.99. It's butt ugly, though.
Also, another uncredited piece is pretty cool. Lookie.
Paleoart of the Week
Patrick Redman's Lancian scene is complete, with a moody, drizzly, misty look. I love his oviraptorids. Click the image to give him feedback - he's wondering about whether he should include individual raindrops.
Outrageously Off-Topic Indulgence
For @tomhouslay:
Boneyard 2.7! David Tana of Superoceras did a helluva job this month.
Terror Bird Gallery! ART Evolved is back with a new batch of paleoartistic pandemonium.
The supposed "dinosaur petroglyph" of Kachina Bridge was revealed definitively to be an illusion in a new study published in Palaeontologia Electronica. Read about it at the PE blog and Dinosaur Tracking, as well as my own post.
A bunch of interesting Triassic research has come out, including a redescription of the Postosuchus holotype skull, a paper on the anatomy of hilariously named basal sauropodomorph Pantydraco, and new tanystropheids (Chinleana, Pterosauria). As always, Chinleana is the ultimate way to keep up with new research into the Mesozoic's first act.
Victoria Arbour is the lead author of a new paper examining the pelvic shields of ankylosaurian dinosaurs in Journal of Paleaontology. Looking at the shields across the whole family, she has done the work of separating them into different categories and analyzing the differences between taxa and through time.
Around the Dinoblogosphere
Jack Horner is giving a TED speech today about his chickenasaurus quest. Read an interview at Wired.
Dave Hone waxed imaginative and shared his time travel wish list.
Saurian chronicles the winding-down of fossil hunting at Quarry 4, and a rainy spell reveals some new pieces of a lost Mesozoic ecosystem.
Paleontologist Scott Sampson continues his musings on biophilia at Whirlpool of Life, this time writing about human love. "I predict that future research will reveal solid evidence of a human bond with (nonhuman) nature—what people have referred to as 'biophilia' (see my previous post)—and that this bond will be facilitated by none other than our hormonal friend oxytocin."
Brian Switek shared fond remembrances of a formative documentary about dinosaurs, entitled... Dinosaur!
Everything Dinosaur reveals details about the Planet Dinosaur project.
Whales, Camps, and Trails shows off the new identify design for Beloit, Wisconsin's new tourism campaign, focusing on native son Roy Chapman Andrews.
Trish Arnold gets straight-up cruel all up in here, sharing dinosaur illos you can't un-see.
SV-POW goes into deep detail about the process of the raptor-kicking Brontomerus.
Along the same lines, Paleo Illustrata featured a post about the 3D modeling of extinct beasts.
Twit Picks
Stuff I've linked to at Twitter in the last week or so.
- Check out the podClast with @yorrike, @rschott, @allocthonous, and @hypocentre, about the Feb 22 NZ earthquake
- Coming issues of Palaeontologia Electronica to feature commentaries on "fossil collecting in the new legal environment"
- This dude loves his crystal.
- SV-POW's Mike Taylor profiled at NYTimes.com
- Iapetus Adventures: a frigid camping trip on a Carboniferous beach
- Louisville Fossils has featured very cool brachiopods lately, including this Orthospirifer with coral growing on it.
I Effing Love Dinosaurs notified us of a life-size T. rex model that can be yours for the princely sum of £32,999.99. It's butt ugly, though.
Also, another uncredited piece is pretty cool. Lookie.
Paleoart of the Week
Patrick Redman's Lancian scene is complete, with a moody, drizzly, misty look. I love his oviraptorids. Click the image to give him feedback - he's wondering about whether he should include individual raindrops.
Outrageously Off-Topic Indulgence
For @tomhouslay:
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Radical Taxonomic Act by the Airfix Model Company
In 1979, the Airfix model company made a bold statement by rechristening the early Permian pelycosaur Dimetrodon as a dinosaur. What we now call the "Airfix Wars" raged throughout the eighties, resulting in rancorous disputes at toy fairs and SVP meetings alike which occasionally descended into fisticuffs.
Shared by combomphotos at Flickr.
I post this today not to reopen old wounds, but to remind the world of past mistakes so they might never happen again. Let's keep our toymakers out of taxonomy.
Shared by combomphotos at Flickr.
I post this today not to reopen old wounds, but to remind the world of past mistakes so they might never happen again. Let's keep our toymakers out of taxonomy.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Herpetology
This XKCD comic has been a hit with the online paleo community, and is was well worth sharing here.
The reason that XKCD is tremendously popular is that it deserves to be. Because it is pure excellence. Peer-ee-odd.
The reason that XKCD is tremendously popular is that it deserves to be. Because it is pure excellence. Peer-ee-odd.
Pareidoliasaurus, a new sauropodomorph of Utah
"Until now that claim has gone unchallenged."
So write Phil Senter and Sally J. Cole, coauthors of a newly published paper in Palaeontologia Electronica examining the purported dinosaur petroglyphs of Kachina Bridge, a rock formation in Utah's Natural Bridges National Monument. While folks have criticized the attempts of Young Earth Creationists to use these and other ancient markings of indigenous people as evidence of humanity's coexistence with dinosaurs - visit Stupid Dinosaur Lies to see a comparison of different images they've used in this particular case - it's now been addressed in the scientific literature. Analyzing the markings under a variety of lighting conditions, Senter and Cole were able to discern that what seemed to be superficially resemble a generic sauropod was actually an amalgam of deliberate ancient markings and natural variations in color on the rock.
From Senter and Cole's "Dinosaur" petroglyphs at Kachina Bridge site, Natural Bridges National Monument, southeastern Utah: not dinosaurs after all.
In their discussion section, Senter and Cole write of pareidolia, "the psychological phenomenon of perceiving significance in vague or random stimuli, e.g., seeing animals in clouds or the face of a religious figure in a food item. The results of this investigation indicate that the dinosaurs of Kachina Bridge are examples of this phenomenon and exist only as pareidolic illusions." This is one of the great perceptual hurdles we must leap in our attempt to accurately perceive our world. It happens to all of us. It's happened to me. In the latest episode of Point of Inquiry, Neil DeGrasse Tyson makes the point that science is essentially a tool to protect our observations from the biases and failings of our brains. One of these failings is our zeal for pattern-recognizing. Drop the Mentos candy of pareidolia into the Diet Coke of ideology and stand back.
While this study could be seen as just a bit of housecleaning to dispense with yet another creationist claim, it perfectly illustrates the power of science to allow us to observe that which fools the eye. It demonstrates that science is about the willingness to admit our physical limitations, to go beyond the superficial and rigorously analyze that which seems obvious. Creationists don't do this. They don't attempt to test and strengthen their arguments by poking holes in them. Any creationist proclaiming Kachina Bridge as evidence for a young Earth could have done exactly what Senter and Cole did; their methods were not beyond the capabilities of anyone with the time and will to try. But none did, because the truth of the claim wasn't their concern. And that says everything.
It also must be said that if you look at the alleged sauropod, it doesn't quite match our understanding of the real animals' physiology. If the Kachina Bridge petroglyph was the work of an ancient artist who had actually had seen a sauropod, it would have sported a horribly broken tail. On a more basic level, I'd imagine that had any early artists actually shared their environments with dinosaurs, their depictions in petroglyphs would be so widespread that the creationists would have no trouble finding abundant evidence for their claims. Bison and aurochs and horses are really cool animals, but if I was a guy in a cave with a bit of ochre paint, I'd personally be more interested in populating the stone walls with the titanic saurian beasts that dwarfed them. Then again, who am I to make assumptions about the priorities of ancient artists?
So write Phil Senter and Sally J. Cole, coauthors of a newly published paper in Palaeontologia Electronica examining the purported dinosaur petroglyphs of Kachina Bridge, a rock formation in Utah's Natural Bridges National Monument. While folks have criticized the attempts of Young Earth Creationists to use these and other ancient markings of indigenous people as evidence of humanity's coexistence with dinosaurs - visit Stupid Dinosaur Lies to see a comparison of different images they've used in this particular case - it's now been addressed in the scientific literature. Analyzing the markings under a variety of lighting conditions, Senter and Cole were able to discern that what seemed to be superficially resemble a generic sauropod was actually an amalgam of deliberate ancient markings and natural variations in color on the rock.
From Senter and Cole's "Dinosaur" petroglyphs at Kachina Bridge site, Natural Bridges National Monument, southeastern Utah: not dinosaurs after all.
In their discussion section, Senter and Cole write of pareidolia, "the psychological phenomenon of perceiving significance in vague or random stimuli, e.g., seeing animals in clouds or the face of a religious figure in a food item. The results of this investigation indicate that the dinosaurs of Kachina Bridge are examples of this phenomenon and exist only as pareidolic illusions." This is one of the great perceptual hurdles we must leap in our attempt to accurately perceive our world. It happens to all of us. It's happened to me. In the latest episode of Point of Inquiry, Neil DeGrasse Tyson makes the point that science is essentially a tool to protect our observations from the biases and failings of our brains. One of these failings is our zeal for pattern-recognizing. Drop the Mentos candy of pareidolia into the Diet Coke of ideology and stand back.
While this study could be seen as just a bit of housecleaning to dispense with yet another creationist claim, it perfectly illustrates the power of science to allow us to observe that which fools the eye. It demonstrates that science is about the willingness to admit our physical limitations, to go beyond the superficial and rigorously analyze that which seems obvious. Creationists don't do this. They don't attempt to test and strengthen their arguments by poking holes in them. Any creationist proclaiming Kachina Bridge as evidence for a young Earth could have done exactly what Senter and Cole did; their methods were not beyond the capabilities of anyone with the time and will to try. But none did, because the truth of the claim wasn't their concern. And that says everything.
It also must be said that if you look at the alleged sauropod, it doesn't quite match our understanding of the real animals' physiology. If the Kachina Bridge petroglyph was the work of an ancient artist who had actually had seen a sauropod, it would have sported a horribly broken tail. On a more basic level, I'd imagine that had any early artists actually shared their environments with dinosaurs, their depictions in petroglyphs would be so widespread that the creationists would have no trouble finding abundant evidence for their claims. Bison and aurochs and horses are really cool animals, but if I was a guy in a cave with a bit of ochre paint, I'd personally be more interested in populating the stone walls with the titanic saurian beasts that dwarfed them. Then again, who am I to make assumptions about the priorities of ancient artists?
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Boneyard 2.7, Alive and Kicking
March is roaring in like a ferocious lion with the arrival of the seventh edition of the Boneyard 2.o. The world's greatest (and only) paleontology blog carnival is being hosted by David Tana at Superoceras this time around, and he's done a bang-up job of pulling together a disparate bunch of posts and making them all gel into a cohesive whole. It's a perfect model for future hosts, arranged in a sensible way and pulled together by David's personal insights. Reading it is really great. I heartily encourage it.
I've got some ideas to keep the carnival growing, as it's hit a bit of a plateau. Things aren't as dire as they were a few months ago, but this critter needs to keep moving forward. There's no reason it can't have the visibility of Carnival of Evolution, Accretionary Wedge, or Carnal Carnival. Part of my strategy is to talk some of the better known bloggers and scientist bloggers into hosting (yeah, I'm coming for you). Another idea is to ask paleo bloggers to consider hosting some of the other blog carnivals themselves - as David says very well in today's Boneyard, paleontology pulls in such a diversity of scientific disciplines that many carnivals could relate to the usual content of a paleontology blog.
Anyway, scoot on over to Superoceras!
I've got some ideas to keep the carnival growing, as it's hit a bit of a plateau. Things aren't as dire as they were a few months ago, but this critter needs to keep moving forward. There's no reason it can't have the visibility of Carnival of Evolution, Accretionary Wedge, or Carnal Carnival. Part of my strategy is to talk some of the better known bloggers and scientist bloggers into hosting (yeah, I'm coming for you). Another idea is to ask paleo bloggers to consider hosting some of the other blog carnivals themselves - as David says very well in today's Boneyard, paleontology pulls in such a diversity of scientific disciplines that many carnivals could relate to the usual content of a paleontology blog.
Anyway, scoot on over to Superoceras!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)