Mesozoic Miscellany 89: Conference-palooza Edition

Autumn is a huge time in paleontology happenings and October 2016 was no exception, with the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting, TetZooCon, and the Dinosaur Society conference and Dinosaur Days festival all occurring within the month. So let's take a look at some of the news coverage and blogging that has resulted from this celestial alignment in the paleo-cosmos.

In the News

Tree-down? Ground-up? Michael Habib presented new research into this long-standing debate on how the first feathered dinosaurs took to the air, finding that as long as they weren't too heavy, early birds and bird-like critters could manage just fine with a leap from terra firma. Read more at ScienceNews.

Lee Hall of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History presented a poster at SVP about Dunkleosteus intra-specific combat. Read more at Earth Touch News.

One of the big splashes coming out of SVP over social media was a presentation on a new fossilized Iguanodon brain. Read more at Fernanda Castano's blog, from Michael Greshko at NatGeo, and from Sarah Kaplan for the Washington Post.

Tetrapodophis is back in the news. Last year, it was announced to the public as being a crucial early member of the snake family tree - a "snake with legs." New research, which analyzed the counterpart slab to the original fossil, has come to a different conclusion - it's a marine reptile, a dolichosaur. While such disagreements are hardly rare in paleontology, this controversy is complicated by the fact that the original Tetrapodophis fossil was merely on loan to Solnhofen's Bürgermeister-Müller Museum, and now is back in private hands and may not be accessible for further research - especially research that may knock it down a few pegs. Read more from Carolyn Gramling for Science and Michael Greshko for NatGeo.

Around the Dinoblogosphere

LITC's newest contributor, Victoria Arbour, has written an important post about the gender disparity of talks at the SVP meeting, and the reasons behind it. It's got a great comment thread going, as well!

At the SVP blog, Andy Farke provides reflects on this year's SVP meeting.

Luis Rey was nonplussed by Howgate's BANDit talk at Dinosaur Days, who used Rey's artwork in support of pseudoscience.

Mentioned last time around, but should be included in this roundup: Darren Naish provides a summary of the events at TetZooCon, including his own presentation, the wonderfully titled "Dinosaur Sex Wars."

The crew of A Dinosaur A Day shared the results of their readership survey, seeking to parse out the demographics of the paleo community on Tumblr. They presented it as a poster at SVP, too.

If you missed it, check out our own coverage of these events - Asher traveled to SVP and Marc headed to TetZooCon.

Albertonykus made his second trip to SVP this year, and has his own breakdown up at Raptormaniacs, including presenting his own poster. And he also made his way across the Atlantic to attend TetZooCon.

The PLOS online community voted on the top ten open access vertebrate fossil descriptions of 2016, which was announced at SVP. Read the full list at PLOS.

Tristan Stock wrote extensive notes on all of the SVP talks he was able to attend, and you can check them out at Notions of a Most Peculiar Dinosaur Nerd.

At SV-POW, Matt Wedel shared photos from his SVP book signing with legendary paleoartist Mark Hallett for their new book, The Sauropod Dinosaurs: Life in the Age of Giants.

Arguably, no paleoartist harnesses the power of the web better than Mark Witton, and in his latest post he's created a fascinating inner dialogue exploring the arguments for and against putting filamentous integument on sauropodomorphs. Also, a look at the terrific cover slide for his talk at Dinosaur Days!

Crowdfunding Pick

If you're looking for some nifty new prehistorically-themed attire, check out the Permia Kickstarter, which was launched in conjunction with SVP, where they had a booth in the exhibition hall. This new fashion and art brand has been working with graphic artist Diana Hlevnjak, who is working from skeletal diagrams by Scott Hartman. Perks include tees as well as art prints.

Paleoart Pick

Man of Principle Brian Engh could not pass up the chance to paint a prehistoric shark tearing into the carcass of a giant monster fish. So watch his process video, in which he takes us from beginning to end on his new Xiphactinus illustration, commissioned by Rebecca Hunt-Foster to accompany her new research on a specimen of the implacable ichthyodectid. She presented a poster on her research at SVP this year.

Brian Engh's "Resurrecting Xiphactinus" video, featured on his new Youtube page, Dinosaurs Reanimated.

Also of note, congrats to Danielle Dufault for her Lanzendorf Award in the scientific illustration category!

HUGE congrats to our very own @MesozoicMuse on her @SVP_vertpaleo Lanzendorf award for scientific illustration-very well deserved!!! pic.twitter.com/KpzB1aikFA

— ROM Palaeontology (@ROMPalaeo) October 30, 2016

The other winners this year were Tim Quady of Blue Rhino Studio in the 3D category and Franco Tempesta for his Dakotaraptor vs. Tyrannosaurus in the 2D category. April Neander won the National Geographic Digital Modeling and Animation award. Congrats to all of the winners!

SVP 2016 report (with Bonus VDA from Bill Berry!)

Hello, folks! I'm coming to you at the tail end of an immensely busy and interesting month. In the past four weeks I've been in Montreal, Ottawa, New York and Washington, visiting a mix of family, friends, and professional contacts. I sold my first story to the Smithsonian, did a quick piece about possibly-carnivorous ankylosaurs for the Atlantic (co-starring LITC contributor Victoria Arbour) and have generally been running around like a small theropod with its head cut off. The culmination of the month was a visit to scenic Salt Lake City for the 2016 meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Mesozoic Miscellany 88

It's been a while! For various personal and professional reasons, the last few months have been a roller coaster. I've been working on this roundup for a while and decided it was time to put a bow on it. I hope to have another one put together soon to cover the blogging and news coming out of the recent SVP conference and the Dinosaur Society's Dinosaur Days. Let's get to it!

In the News

Sometimes, research is splashy enough on its own to attract mainstream coverage. "The Biggest Whatzit!" "The First Whatchamacallit!" Unfortunately, the majority of discoveries don't have an obvious hook - no matter how excited those of us who follow paleontology may be. Luckily, there's paleoart to save the day! Case in point: a stunning reconstruction of Psittacosaurus by Bob Nicholls, demonstrating the counter-shading apparent in a beautiful fossil specimen. Read more from Bristol University, Pop Sci, and Nat Geo.

Around the Dinoblogosphere

Alton Dooley shares his views on how to effectively work those popular "sandbox" approximations of dig sites into museum exhibits.

At Extinct Monsters, Ben wrote about the new natural history arm of the Google Cultural Learning Institute, providing helpful criticism for a project that doesn't hit a home run every time, but seems to be a good start in making important natural history collections and exhibits available online.

Lisa Buckley takes a deep dive into fossil collectiong laws in Alberta, in response to an article at the Inverse,Exploring Canada's Socialist Dinosaur Paradise.

Paleoaerie devoted a week to prehistoric sharks in August. Start here!.

The big Hell Creek hadrosaur in Saurian has stirred up some taxonomic controversy, and Matt Martyniuk is here to sort it out.

Mark Witton pays tribute to the wonderfully big-headed erythrosuchids.

Speaking of heads, Zach at Waxing Paleontological takes on the heads of titanosaurs.

Listen to Cara Santa Maria interview Mike Habib on the Talk Nerdy podcast!

TetZooCon 2016 has come and gone, and Darren has a write-up at the TetZoo blog, as does Albertonykus. Marc and Niroot attended, and I'm hoping that one day when I'm not bound by the school year, I'll be able to pop over the pond to attend. The event looks like so much fun.

Crowdfunding Pick

Over the years, paleontology enthusiasts have been hearing about an incredible discovery in Utah: a collection of well-preserved Utahraptor specimens that had been trapped in quicksand. Well, it's finally being prepped, but it's a huge job: the block of sandstone trapping the fossils weighs 9 tons, and there's an awful lot of work needed to free the dinosaurs within. That's where we come in. A funding campaign has been launched to help bring these charismatic raptors to light once more. Utah State Paleontologist Jim Kirkland has all the details.

Paleoart Pick

Francisco Riolobos Bianco AKA Franxurio has paid tribute to the dinosaurs of his homeland with a series of anachronistic scenes depicting various species of Mesozoic dinosaur in Seville. The series is called Paleopureza, and it is delightful.

'Familia de Protoceratops en el cruce de Marco Sancho con Santa Rufina' by Francisco Riolobos Bianco, used with the artist's permission.

It must be noted that Francisco is a champ at #DrawDinovember, twisting it to feature animals that aren't dinosaurs. Follow Franxurio at Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

The Little Corner of Weirdness

Tim "the Toolman" Taylor, fighting dinosaurs. It was a thing that happened.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: How to Draw Dinosaurs

How to Draw Dinosaurs (by John Raymond, who appears to have been both author and illustrator; first published in 1977 and my copy from 1985) is an intriguing book that I picked up at a thrift shop several years ago. Part of “The Working Artist Series”, it’s a fairly large-format learn-to-draw book with the typical step-by-step instructions for how to replicate the finished drawing, although the steps are at times somewhat inscrutable to my eye. A major bonus, though, is the inclusion several sheets of tracing paper bound in front of the ‘finished’ drawings. The first part of the book also includes about 30 pages of drawing instruction and tips, including notes about materials, shading, lines, perspective, and how to break down complex forms into simple shapes. It’s a great start and I had high hopes for what I’d find inside, especially given the attractive (if retro) Stegosaurus on the cover.

Wacky Hole

Imagine you've acquired a long-standing scenic tourist attraction, consisting of a series of impressive show caves at the end of a lush limestone valley with a gentle river running through it, the water feeding a Victorian paper mill. What might you do to draw even more visitors in? Some extra scenic gardens, maybe? A water feature or two? Or do you haphazardly slap in a truckload of enormous, garishly coloured, hilariously dated dinosaur models and a pirate-themed crazy golf course? If you're 'circus entrepreneur' Gerry Cottle, there can only be one choice.

Dinosaurs: How They Lived and Evolved - Marc's review

As anyone who's been there will attest, the NHM (London) doesn't seem to care a jot what hideous CG imagery it slaps on the merchandise in its tack-o-rama dinosaur shop. Notably, the same few hideous stock images appear again and again; there's a Triceratops with human molars, a bunny-handed, gorilla suit Velociraptor, a T. rex with a skull that's been through a mangle and retro JP dangly-arms, and a boringly generic wide-mouth Giganotosaurus with teeth that go all the way back. Sadly, it's the latter that's found its way onto the cover of their latest dinosaur publication - Dinosaurs: How they Lived and Evolved, by Darren Naish and Paul Barrett. Thank you, marketing twonks. Fear not though, dear reader, for this is a book that one certainly shouldn't judge by its cover.

This reminds me of something from a long time ago.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Inside Dinosaurs

Hello LITC readers - Victoria Arbour signing in! After several years of enjoying vintage dinosaur art posts as a reader myself, I’m very excited to be jumping in with my own contributions here from time to time! I thought I’d start with one of my very favourite dinosaur books given to me when I was 10 years old: 1993’s Inside Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Creatures, written by Steve Parker and illustrated by Ted Dewan, and published by Scholastic Canada. Although I’ve kept this book on my shelf through grad school and now into my postdoc, I hadn’t cracked it open in many years. What a treat to revisit this book – a lushly illustrated, information-dense, modern take on dinosaurs that is utterly unique in its approach. I hope you’ll enjoy this sample!

Inside Dinosaurs is a book about dinosaur palaeobiology and covers topics that are still receiving a lot of research interest today. Most of the book features two-page spreads on specific topics with amazing cutaway diagrams that let you peer under the skin of dinosaurs. But first, we start with a great primer on the kinds of data that palaeontologists work with: skeletal anatomy, looking at gross anatomy and fine details, comparisons with modern animals, and dealing with missing data. And leading the charge is good old Iguanodon, a classic ‘intro to dinosaurs’ taxon if there ever was one. You’ll note throughout the book a couple of charming and quirky approaches to the presentation: many pages feature human-engineered structures as comparisons with biological structures, small green globular dinosaurs clamber all over everything, and our human-dinosaur size silhouettes are all musicians.

I love this rad Deinonychus, caught in a supremely dynamic leap that is marred only by the absence of feathers (forgiveable given it’s 1993 publication date). This is a great example of the kind of illustrations found throughout the book, where dinosaurs are shown in various stages of unraveling in order to showcase aspects of anatomy fitting the theme of that page. I particularly like the inclusion of the mechanical toe, and the fish-eating Baryonyx making a cameo at the bottom of the page.

Each two-page spread features at least one large dinosaur in full view, and it’s easy to overlook the smaller diagrams that highlight interesting aspects of dinosaur anatomy. It’s one of the things that makes the book so rewarding to come back to and pore over – it’s hard not to dislike this little diagram of a Protoceratops egg and embryo.

As a person who spends a lot of time thinking about ankylosaurs and animal weapons, I have to wonder if some of my interest and ideas can be traced to this particular spread. I’m pleased to note that the ankylosaurid’s tail anatomy is accurately presented: tail clubs are like mallets! I have some different ideas about how the tail muscles were arranged on the pelvis, but it’s still really cool to see this kind of detail presented in an illustrated dinosaur book for kids. We’ll come back to that sauropod tail later.

Long before CT scanners let us peer inside hadrosaur heads, artists tried their hands at reconstructing just what was going on inside those crazy nasal crests. This Corythosaurus holds up pretty well, and I like the comparison with musical instrument sounds. (Corythosaurus is a French horn, Edmontosaurus is a trumpet, and Parasaurolophus is a clarinet!)

The dinosaur that most shows its age in the book is Spinosaurus, shown here in full “carnosaur” garb with Allosaurus-like head, four-fingered hand, and a relatively short, stocky body. Whether or not you agree with the aquatic Spinosaurus hypothesis, this one is definitely wrong. The book also prefers the idea of ectothermic dinosaurs but notes that this idea was not universally accepted - overall, the book does a great job of exploring alternate hypotheses for all kinds of things, and also emphasizes that structures often have multiple functions that aren't mutually exclusive.

True to it’s title, “Other Prehistoric Animals” that are not dinosaurs make an appearance towards the end of the book: pages about marine reptiles, pterosaurs, ancient invertebrates, and this excellent Probelesodon, a Mesozoic mammal that doesn’t exactly pop up in dinosaur books every day.

One of the most fun things in the book is the Diplodocus cutaway, with bleeds across six pages and three different topics (click to embiggen for full sauropodan glory)! We first meet Dippy in a discussion about necks, move on to a page about quadrupedality in sauropods, and finish at the tip of the tail on that page all about, well, tails!

This is just a small sample of what's inside Inside Dinosaurs. It's a great book that holds up really well given its publication date, and I’d love to see an updated version done by the same author and artist and in the same style, but featuring all the new information we know today: a feathered Deinonychus, an updated Spinosaurus, all the new things we know about how dinosaurs grew, pages about dinosaur pathologies, you name it! It remains one of my favourites, and I hope you’ll check it out in person if you can. Until next time!

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!!!

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaurs of Canada

Five years ago (wait...what?!), I wrote a VDA post on W.E. Swinton's book on dinosaurs for London's Natural History Museum, which featured a number of artworks by Neave Parker. Professor William Elgin Swinton (for it was he) moved to Canada after his stint at (what is now) the NHM, and in 1965 he wrote the book we're looking at here - Dinosaurs of Canada. Neave Parker had, unfortunately, died a few years prior, but his influence is keenly felt in the illustrations by Paul Geraghty, which are as wonderfully stylised as they are (very) obviously dated. I don't half love a slightly concerned-looking tyrannosaur.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Book of Big Beasts

After my thinly disguised plea for new material from readers in the previous post, I've been lucky to receive a cavalcade of scanned and photographed Vintage Dinosaur Art from a number of lovely Chasmoheads. Thank you, all! I'll be featuring said submissions over the next few weeks, starting with this - Book of Big Beasts, published in 1954 in the US and written/illustrated by Bettina L Kramer and Harold V Kramer. (I'm not entirely sure who did what; do fill me in if you know.) The BBB comes courtesy of reader David Landis.