Mesozoic Miscellany 44

At his other bloggin' gig, our very own Marc Vincent picks some nits off of the recent Papo "Ankylosaurus."

The SV-Pow crew expounds further on how misleading it can be to try to infer internal structure from the neck's outer appearance. With great visual aids, as usual.

At the Open Source Paleontologist, Andy Farke reflects on the maturation process of a scientist coming to terms with how to judge the veracity of the literature and its authors.

That pesky devil Raptorex rears its head at Archosaur Musings, with Dave Hone's photos of a mount in China.

Mark Wildman raises our awareness of a threatened nature preserve in the UK, the geology of which bears record of "coral reefs within a tropical sea with a diverse marine community that includes crinoids, brachiopods, trilobites and many other animals. Their fossils are found in the limestone exposures and are often well preserved." A familiar geology to the one I live upon here in Indiana. Read more.

For more British geology, check out a post from the Lyme Regis Museum blog, detailing the history of the limestone in the area.

Nobu introduced us to a new mosasaur, including his restoration, naturally.

Anthony Maltese is still benefiting from fossil sites unwittingly prepped for him by poachers.

Some joker named Brian Switek was on the Little Atoms podcast, speaking about his book, Written in Stone...

Finally, tip o' the cap to Dinosaur Tracking for sharing this cute little tribute to Sam Neill's scary raptor speech in Jurassic Park, with plastic dinosaurs and hand-drawn infographics.

Raptor from Tal Moskovich on Vimeo.

How should dinosaurs revolt?

Rudolf Zallinger's famous T. rex. Photo by DJNick66, shared via flickr.

The lead up to Dinosaur Revolution has brought to the fore a certain message we've all heard before:

"Sunday Sunday Sunday! Prepare to have your vision of dinosaurs as sluggish, stupid reptiles destroyed!"

In Tom Conroy's review of Dinosaur Revolution at Media Life Magazine, he writes "Even if viewers haven’t read in scientific journals that dinosaurs weren’t stupid, sluggish creatures, they’ve probably gleaned that information from 'Jurassic Park.'" It's something that's bugged me as I've written here over the last two years. After all, in the Vintage Dinosaur Art series, Marc and I frequently discuss the transition from the sluggish reptiles of yesteryear to dynamic, diverse dinosaurs we know today. Don't people get it by now?

If asked to picture the world of the Mesozoic, does the average person on the street see the vision of Zallinger or Spielberg? We're now almost twenty years into the Jurassic Park era, and the idea of the "raptor" has ascended to a level of popularity arguably equal to Tyrannosaurus rex. As Matt Martyniuk points out in a recent post, Dinosaur Train is creating a new generation of dinosaur lovers who don't have that old baggage to deal with.

Are we beating a dead horse when we boldly claim to be killing obsolete ideas about dinosaur life? If so, what does this demand of future dinosaur edutainment? I'd argue that we need to focus less on dinosaur-specific lessons and more on broad concepts about evolution. Use the proven appeal of dinosaurs to teach about niche partitioning, convergent evolution, and other mechanisms of evolution. Be openly speculative and hypothetical. Work dinosaurs into the great tapestry of life on earth - all four billion or so years of it. These documentaries can be more than travelogues through time and showcases for weird, dead monsters. How to get there? I'm not sure. That's why I'm opening it up to you. What would you like to see future dinosaur projects do?

The Planet Dinosaur launch trailer is here

So it is. Looking good too.



Highlights in the trailer: maniraptors with proper plumage! A Spinosaurus with a suitable head*! It's a little hard to critique the finer details when they're flashing past in a trailer montage (and yes, the use of the word 'pterodactyl' and a stock raptor sound effect is very lame), but it's looking like an improvement over many CG docus from the last decade or so. Here's hoping!

*Or not quite, as I've just seen these stills, which show that the mandible is a little off (not to mention certain other aspects of the anatomy, notably the forelimbs). Could be worse...I'm still happy about the feathered dinosaurs.

Sleestak Game Night

Just one bit of dinosaur ephemera on display at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis.



I've seen neither the 70's TV program Land of the Lost, nor its "remake" from a couple years ago. But Michael May's reviews from earlier this year make me think I'll need to get around to it sometime.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaurs - British Museum (Natural History)

Allow me to admit the following from the start: this entry should probably be entitled 'Vintage Dinosaur Art: Neave Parker', for it is Parker's monochromatic art that is used to liven up this rather unassuming little book dating from 1974. However, this museum-sanctioned book - note that the Natural History Museum was still officially a department of the British Museum at the time - offers plenty of fascinating tidbits in the text, including some commentary on the creatures as depicted in Parker's work, which makes it very interesting in itself.



The 'frontispiece' is Parker's Triceratops, standing alone, drinking from a puddle. Parker's work is technically pretty impressive, even if he was obviously heavily influenced by Zdenek Burian. These days, however, his name inevitably conjures up images of hopelessly obsolete restorations, a good few of which are included here. The first edition of this book was published in 1962, a year after Parker's death. By the time this edition was published the 'Dinosaur Renaissance' was already well underway, and yet you wouldn't know it from reading this book. (One could almost see today's displaying of scaly, bunny-handed dromaeosaurs at the museum as a continuation of this tradition.)



Prof Swinton of the University of Toronto - the author - espouses a lot of pre-Dino Renaissance thinking. Perhaps most peculiarly to modern audiences, he's pretty damn sure that 'the Dinosauria' is a paraphyletic group, that is it unites animals (in the Saurischia and Ornithischia) that do not share a common ancestor. This was actually a commonly held belief for some decades. There's the usual sauropod weirdness too, with the animals described as being simply too large to possibly be terrestrial, instead sticking to water bodies of a convenient depth (as in the above Parker painting). Quite why so many people failed to notice the columnar, graviportal legs and scream "THIS IS TOTALLY BONKERS!" for so long, I don't know.



Parker's theropods are an interesting bunch. Generally they follow the pattern of being ponderous and bloated - his Tyrannosaurus is particularly Godzilla-like - but some, like his Megalosaurus, are shown taking long strides with horizontal backs and elevated tails. Still, Parker would had to have been pretty wild to match the oddness present in the text here, particularly when it comes to the author's ideas of what toothlessness meant for theropod groups like the ornithomimosaurs. What, you thought it was just because they evolved to enjoy a varied diet? Foolishness! Being all gummy is actually "a symptom of an aged and worn-out stock, already ripe for extinction."



While Swinton acknowledges that theropods would have walked with their tails aloft (for balance), he also imagines them having to have lengthy resting periods like lizards, and sniffily dismisses the "remarkable agility" that the animals display in some of those new-fangled restorations. Parker's man-in-a-suit, leathery Tyrannosaurus is presumably just recuperating after sluggishly plodding along in pursuit of some hadrosaur meat. Nevertheless, Prof Swinton envisages Iguanodon moving bipedally "at some speed" when not in a tripod resting position (as depicted by Parker, below, no doubt strongly influenced by Burian). He also refutes the idea, brought to memorable life by Parker (below), that Hypsilophodon was arboreal - envisaging it too as being fast-moving and terrestrial. Parker's perching Hypsilophodon seems like an odd inclusion, then, and nowadays it's viewed as one of the classic wacky, misguided restorations of the pre-Dino Renaissance era.





In the end, though, in spite of a few modern ideas breaking through, this remains a book solidly pre-Dino Renaissance in outlook. I've already mentioned that Swinton thought the ornithomimosaurs' toothlessness was down to 'bad genetic stock'. At a time before the 'asteroid theory' became widespread and accepted, Swinton evokes 'phylogeronty' (supposedly, the decline of clades through old age) as a possible explanation for the K/Pg extinction - not just for dinosaurs, but for pterosaurs and marine reptiles too, citing the examples of Pteranodon and, utterly bafflingly given its age, Ophthalmosaurus. When it comes to the ceratopsians, Swinton attributes their decorative frills and horns to "hormone superfluity", noting that "it is significant that the Ceratopsia were among the last of the dinosaurs" (in spite of the fact that the clade lasted tens of millions of years). These ideas seem laughable now, but in 1974 were deemed worthy enough to appear in a museum-endorsed publication.

To conclude then - blimey, a lot's changed in 40 years. Here's a Parker painting of the obscure nodosaur Acanthopolis. Enjoy.

What's Wrong with this Picture?

I'd driven by this theropod, leering over a fence at passing motorists (and an unfortunate bullock), so many times that eventually I just had to stop and have a closer look. It's located at SK Camping and Leisure near South Godstone, Surrey (South East England), a shop that sells tents and camping equipment, garden furniture and, er, a menagerie of resin and fibreglass animals (including the two pictured above). The bigger ones - including the lunging theropod pictured below - have eye-watering price tags, but one of the dinkier brachiosaurs is a snip at a mere £199.99. Bargain.

The Dinosaur Petting Zoo

Photo by Diana House, shared via Flickr.

Erth Visual and Physical, an Australian company that creates all sorts of cool visual physical theater shows and events, has been touring with their "Dinosaur Petting Zoo" for the last couple of years. Having built their business mainly in Australia, they've also been branching out globally, having performed for the Sue 10 year anniversary at the Field Museum in Chicago as well as a visiting Ireland this summer. Being Australian, they prominently feature Laellynasaura and Minmi, part of the island continent's Mesozoic fauna. You can't thrill the kids on diminutive ornithischians alone, of course, so a "dwarf allosaur" and a tyrannosaur are featured as well, more heavily stylized than their small co-stars.


Photo by Mike Riversdale, shared via Flickr.


Photo by Merrigong Theater Co., shared via Flickr.

It's hard to predict what the rocks will produce, and I'm sure that had Erth had psychic powers, or developed the petting zoo just a year later, they would have loved to include a few more Aussie natives - namely, Wintonotitan, Australovenator, and Diamantinasaurus, three dinosaurs described in 2009 who would make for showy additions to the program. It seems that it's done well, so maybe they're developing new puppets as I type. The company's calendar doesn't indicate if there are more dates scheduled for the rest of the year, but here are some more photos of what to expect if you get the chance to see the show. Find out more at Erth's website and Youtube channel.

Mesozoic Miscellany 43

Sorry for the lapse between roundups! They may come more sporadically now that school's in session, but I aim to keep sharing sweet links regularly. Onward!

Dave Hone invokes the Prime Directive, in a way: Is it best for scientists to engage directly with a curious public in web forums, or to let enthusiastic budding scientists mature and come to the literature on their own?

Are calls for accuracy in paleoart and animation attempts to shackle artists to one's own narrow view of what ancient life was like? How much leeway should enthusiasts give artists who have to do their work under prohibitive budgetary constraints? A vigorous discussion is occuring at ART Evolved. Start here, then check out the subsequent posts under the Philosofossilising header.

Speaking of which, Pete Von Sholly says "lighten up! Dinosaur Revolution is going to rock socks!" (that's a rather liberal paraphrase) at VonShollywood.

Glendon Mellow conjured up this splendid take on Avimimus, showing off an impressive headdress.

Need more feathered theropods? Check out Eric Scales' 'toon raptor.

Call it sacrilege, but I think I'll take Andrey Atuchin's ceratopsians over just about anyone else's. He revealed a stunning Nasutuceratops WIP this week. I hadn't even heard of this beast until seeing Andrey's work. Apparently, Nasutuceratops hailed from Campanian Utah, and was described in a thesis by Eric Karl Lund last year. Therefore, it is, in my limited knowledge of the ICZN, a nomen nudum until published in the peer-reviewed literature.

At Chinleana, Bill Parker shared the last two pages of Susan Drymala's field notebook from this summer. See his "rules of the field," as well as indispensible advice for aspiring scientists. Emulate Kirk. Hang out in the crapper. Pack granola bars. It's a life!

Trish has been writing about The Humongous Book of Dinosaurs, which she reports is billed as "''more fun than a barrel full of velociraptors!' though I would think most things are."

Haven't had the chance to see Dino Gangs? Victoria Arbour has a review at Pseudoplocephalus.

You know you want more Aussie ichnology action. Tony Martin's gonna hook you up.

And just because we haven't had enough Star Trek references in this post, let's play a game. Smok: Klingon delicacy or rauisuchian? Maybe you'll figure it out with help from Chinleana and Dinosaur Tracking.

Finally, to celebrate gleeful inaccuracy in dinosaur illustration, I present... Velocirapper, by Jonah Block and Jorge Garcia.



How did this fail to get enough votes to be made into a shirt at Threadless? Priorities be jacked, yo.

Design Exercise: Raptor Red Teaser Poster

Have you read Raptor Red, Bob Bakker's novel of a female Utahraptor's adventures in Cretaceous North America? I have, though it's probably been fifteen years. The tale of Raptor Red and her struggles with survival and family drama, it was another way for Bakker to popularize his views on dinosaur behavior and physiology. Red is intelligent - at one point remembering the presence of off-shore Kronosaurs and luring a big Acrocanthosaurus out to its doom. You could almost substitute primitive people for Red's clan without too much trouble. I'm interested in reading it again to see how it's fared with time.

One thing I was sure of then, and am now: it would make a heck of a movie. When presented with a design exercise at work recently, involving turning a book cover into a movie poster, I chose this one. We had an hour to do it, so I kept it really simple, choosing to highlight that signature sickle-claw on her foot. I based it on my own photo of the Field Museum's Deinonychus .



It wasn't my intention, and the thought hadn't occurred to me, but my friend and coworker Matt said that it reminded him a little of Samurai Jack. I'd love to see a traditionally animated version of Raptor Red directed by Genndy Tartakovsky. If you've not seen any of his work, look up the episode of Samurai Jack called "Three Blind Archers." The ability of Tartakovsky and his team to animate the sounds Jack hears when blindfolded makes me think that they could do some really interesting things with the Utahraptor's sensory experience. Considering the announcement of the Pixar dinosaur film, we may be approaching dinosaur saturation point. So if Raptor Red is to make it to the screen, she may have to wait a while (though the book has been optioned for adaptation, there doesn't seem to have been any movement on it in over a decade).

But what the heck. There are a million ways to do this imaginary project. Who would you like to see adapt Raptor Red? Or is adapting it at all a bad idea?

Interspecies Conflict Wishlist Redux

A short while back, David authored a post commenting on the popularity of dino-on-dino fights in TV shows, with a focus on the current popularity of showing freakishly large coelurosaurs Tarbosaurus and Therizinosaurus smack each other about in all their varyingly inaccurate CG splendour. Of course, David also suggested a few unlikely fights of his own, which inspired a wonderful artwork by Tuomas Koivurinne.

Now Niroot Puttapipat, a professional illustrator living in London (and all-round thoroughly decent fellow), has inked a few of his own, and he said he'd be "thrilled" to have me share them here. So here they are.



A reminder of David's original descriptions: "A hundred Mononykus vs. Carcharodontosaurus: They'd swarm the big brute and crawl into all sorts of uncomfortable places" (Top)
"Four strategically placed Incisivosaurus vs. Giraffatitan: Two words: beaver style." (Left)
"Protoceratops vs. Leptoceratops. The most disgusting display of brutality and gore imaginable." (Bottom right)



"Pot-bellied T. rex vs. the Jurassic Park T. rex. It's a draw, until Stan Winston strides out with a glock and empties a clip into Pot-belly." (Top)
"Citipati vs. Gigantoraptor: I see the little dude running circles around Giganto while making some outrageously stupid shrieking sound. For about ten minutes." (Bottom)

The post also received a comment from a mysterious SV-POWsketeer, who claimed that "a single Giraffatitan individual could effortlessly destroy countless Incisivosaurus by sheer awesomeness alone." Well, Niroot had a go at illustrating that too.



Awesome indeed. To check out more of Niroot's work (including higher-res versions of the above), visit his deviantART page.