Dinosaurology pt 3

%There are several methods of directly dating some types of rock.

Radiometric dating
Measures the degree of decay of various isotopes (different forms of the same chemical element) that are contained in particular minerals in the rock.

Paleomagnetic dating
Scientists measure the magnetism left within a rock.

Fission track dating
Scientists examine the effects of uranium breakdown in zircon crystals.

More on Radiometric dating
Two pairs of elements are compared. The most widely used pair is potassium 40 and argon 40.

Potassium is a common element in minerals such as feldspars, which are frequently present in basalt and other igneous (vcolcanic) rocks. A small proportion of naturally occurring potassium includes potassium 40, which decays at a steady, and known, rate to produce argon 40 (a gas).

When a rock is molten, any accumulated argon gas can escape, and the "rock clock" is reset. Once the rock solidifies, the argon gas starts to build up again, trapped inside the rock. The longer the time since the rock solidified, the greater the amount of argon gas relative to the amount of potassium 40 in a rock gives an accurate measure of how much time has elapsed since the rock solidified from its molten state.

Other pairs are rubidium/strontium, uranium/lead, and samarium/neodymium.

Carbon 14 dating is perhaps the most famous dating term.

When an organism is alive, it takes in carbon 14, along with the rest of the carbon it needs from the environment in order to live. When that organism dies, it stops taking in carbon and the C14 that has accumulated inside begins to decay.

As in other radiometric techniques, getting a C14 date involves measuring how much of the isotope is left in an organism. However, carbon 14 decays fairly rapidly and is only useful for dating once-living material less than 50,000 years old. It is oif no use in dating dinosaur fossils.

Dinosaurology, pt 2

The world has existed for at least 4,600 million years, and fossils have been found dating back 3,800 million years.

Evidence for complex life forms does not appear until about 600 million years ago.

Dinosaue fossils have, to date, only been found in rocks of the Mesozoic era, which extends from 245 to 65 million years ago.

Unfortunately, dinosaur fossils are rather rare. Shelly fossils , such as those of clams and snails, are more abunfant and wide spread.

Anything that was once alive can leave fossil traces, but some organisms are better candidates for fossilization than others. Usually, only the hard parts - such as bones - end up as fossils. Muscles, skin and internal organs are rarely preserved.

The shells of animals such as clams and snails an dthe bones of vertebrates are much more likely to be prserved than are the bodies of soft animals such as worms and jellyfish.

There are a number of ways fossils can form.

1. Most fossils involve watery environments and result from the burial of an organism's remains in the sediments of a river, lake or sea. Once the soft tissues have rotted away, the bones or shell become encased in the surrounding muds and silts. As time passes, these sediments harden into rocks, and the bones or shells that are trapped within create an impression of their once-living form.Sometimes the actual remains are totally replaced, cell by cell, with minerals that wash through the enveloping rock. This is called PETRIFICATION.

In other cases, the whole bone is dissolved, leaving behind a hole-a natural mold in the rock that can later fill up with minerals.

2. Other fossils are created in less usual ways. Insects and small animals can become trapped in tree sap that eventually hardens into the semiprecious stone amber and seals in a perfect copy of the entombed animal.

Sometimes, the mineral silica can fill the impressions in the rock left behind by an animal, resulting in a fossil shell or skeleton that glitters with the fire of precious opal.

On rare occasions, the scalding ashes from a volcano can encase a creature. The resulting fossil is a cavity in the shape of the creature.

By far the greatest number of fossils are the remains of shelled creatures that lived in shallow seas. Corals, clams, snails and a host of other invertebrate (lacking backbone) animals make up the bulk of the world's fossil collection.

Paleontology in Art: Charles Wilson Peale

Exhumation of the Mastadon

The Artist in his Museum

Charles Wilson Peale (from Wikipedia)
Charles Willson Peale (April 15, 1741 – February 22, 1827) was an American painter, soldier and naturalist. He is best remembered for his portrait paintings of leading figures of the American Revolution, as well as establishing one of the first museums.

Early life
Peale was born in Chester, Queen Anne's County, Maryland, the son of Charles Peale and his wife Margaret. In 1749 his brother James Peale (1749–1831) was born. Charles became an apprentice to a saddle maker when he was thirteen years old. Upon reaching maturity, he opened his own saddle shop; however, when his Loyalist creditors discovered he had joined the Sons of Liberty, they conspired to bankrupt his business.

Career as painter
Finding that he had a talent for painting, especially portraiture, Peale studied for a time under John Hesselius and John Singleton Copley. John Beale Bordley and friends eventually raised enough money for him to travel to England to take instruction from Benjamin West. Peale studied with West for three years beginning in 1767, afterward returning to America and settling in Annapolis, Maryland. There, he taught painting to his younger brother, James Peale, who in time also became a noted artist.

Peale's enthusiasm for the nascent national government brought him to the capital, Philadelphia, in 1776, where he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas. His estate, which is on the campus of La Salle University in Philadelphia, can still be visited. He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1777, having participated in several battles. While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army. He produced enlarged versions of these in later years. He served in the Pennsylvania state assembly in 1779–1780, after which he returned to painting full-time.

Peale was quite prolific as an artist. While he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as James Varnum, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton), he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington. The first time Washington ever sat for a portrait was with Peale in 1772, and there would be six other sittings; using these seven as models, Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington. In January 2005, a full length portrait of "Washington at Princeton" from 1779 sold for $21.3 million dollars, setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait.

One of his most celebrated paintings is The Staircase Group (1795), a double portrait of his sons Raphaelle and Titian [named after famous classical artists) painted in the trompe l'oeil style. It is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Peale's Museum
Peale had a great interest in natural history, and organized the first U.S. scientific expedition in 1801. These two major interests combined in his founding of what became the Philadelphia Museum, and was later renamed the Peale Museum.

This museum is considered the first. It housed a diverse collection of botanical, biological, and archaeological specimens. Most notably, the museum contained a large variety of birds which Peale himself acquired, and it was the first to display North American mastodon bones (which in Peale's time were referred to as mammoth bones; these common names were amended by Georges Cuvier in 1800, and his proposed usage is that employed today).

The display of the "mammoth" bones entered Peale into a long standing debate between Thomas Jefferson and Comte de Buffon. Buffon argued that Europe was superior to the Americas biologically, which was illustrated through the size of animals found there. Jefferson referenced the existence of these "mammoths" (which he believed still roamed northern regions of the continent) as evidence for a greater biodiversity in America. Peale's display of these bones drew attention from Europe, as did his method of re-assembling large skeletal specimens in three dimensions.

The museum was among the first to adopt Linnaean taxonomy. This system drew a stark contrast between Peale's museum and his competitors who presented their artifacts as mysterious oddities of the natural world.

The museum underwent several moves during its existence. At various times it was located in several prominent buildings including Independence Hall and the original home of the American Philosophical Society.

The museum would eventually fail, in large part because Peale was unsuccessful at obtaining government funding. After his death, the museum was sold to, and split up by, showmen P. T. Barnum and Moses Kimball.

Personal
In 1762, Peale married Rachel Brewer (1744–1790), who bore him ten children. The sons included Raphaelle Peale (1774–1825), Rembrandt Peale (1778–1860), and Rubens Peale (1784–1865). Among the daughters: Angelica Kauffman Peale married Alexander Robinson, Priscilla Peale wed Dr. Henry Boteler, and Sophonisba Peale became the wife of Coleman Sellers.

In 1791, he married Elizabeth de Peyster (d. 1804), his second wife, with whom he had another six children. One son, Franklin Peale, born on October 15, 1795, became the Chief Coiner at the Philadelphia Mint. His last son, Titian Ramsay Peale (1799–1885), became an important naturalist and pioneer in photography. Their daughter, Elizabeth De Peyster Peale (1802–57), married William Augustus Patterson (1792–1833) in 1820.

Hannah More, a Quaker from Philadelphia, became Peale's third wife in 1804. She helped raise the children from his previous two marriages.

In 1810, Peale purchased a farm in Germantown where he intended to retire. Peale named this estate 'Belfield', and cultivated extensive gardens there. After Hannah's death in 1821, Peale lived with his son Rubens and sold Belfield in 1826.

Expertise
Peale could accurately be described as a "Renaissance man", having expertise not only in painting, but also in other diverse fields, such as carpentry, dentistry, optometry, shoemaking, and taxidermy. In 1802, John Isaac Hawkins patented the second official physiognotrace, a mechanical drawing device, and partnered with Peale to market it to prospective buyers. Peale sent a watercolor sketch of the physiognotrace, along with a detailed explanation, to Thomas Jefferson. The drawing now sits with the Jefferson Papers in the Library of Congress.

Around 1804, Peale obtained the American patent rights to the polygraph from its inventor John Isaac Hawkins, about the same time as the purchase of one by Thomas Jefferson. Peale and Jefferson collaborated on refinements to this device, which enabled a copy of a handwritten letter to be produced simultaneously with the original.

Peale wrote several books, among which were An Essay on Building Wooden Bridges (1797) and An Epistle to a Friend on the Means of Preserving Health (1803). Peale named all of his sons for artists or scientists, and taught them to paint. Three of them, Rembrandt, Raphaelle, and Titian, became noted artists in their own right.

He was the brother-in-law of Nathaniel Ramsey, a delegate to the Congress of the Confederation. The World War II Liberty Ship SS Charles Willson Peale was named in his honor.

Dinosaurs, a background

Although a number of dinosaurs, including some of the best known, were huge, most were not. The average size of a dinosaur was little bigger than that of a modern sheep.

To date, about 860 different types of dinosaurs have been named.

Because fossils form only under certain conditions, and because many dinosaurs probably lived in environments where these conditions did not apply, no fossils have been found as clues to the existence of these dinosaurs - and no one knows how many of these "missing" dinosaurs there might be.

The Stratigraphic Column
This is a register, or diagram, of the relative ages of different types of rocks.

The stratigraphic column spans almost the full 4,600-million year history of the world.

In order to make it easier to understand, geologists have divided the column into a number of different sections: eras, periods and epochs.

Times are calculated by looking at the degree of decay that is displayed by particular elememys found in certain tyypes of rocks. The longer the rock has been in existence, the greater the decay that will have taken place.

From the OLDEST to the Youngest

Early Paleozoic
Cambrian
Ordovician
Silurian

Late Paleozoic
Devonian
Carboniferous
Permian

Mesozoic - the age of dinosaurs
Triassic
Jurassic
Cretaceous

Cenozoic - Ascendancy of mammals and mankind
Paleocene
Eocene
Oligocene
Miocene
Pliocene
Pleistocene
Holicene - Now

_____________
Bibliography
A Guide to Dinosaurs, edited by Michael K. Brett-Surman, Fog City Press, 1997

Lynn, UK: Stone of the dinosaurs found in hall grounds

From Lynn News: Stone of the dinosaurs found in hall grounds
IF you go to Oxburgh Hall this weekend, the oldest object on display will not be the 15th century manor house.

For academics have discovered that an unusual stone found in its grounds dates back to the age of the dinosaurs.

And geologists believe the rock, which has been known locally as the Roman oyster stone, may have ended up in the shadow of the house near Swaffham because of ice movements almost half a million years ago.

The findings have emerged from research by scientists from the University of East Anglia for the National Trust, who own the property.

Property manager Teresa Squires said the revelations made “fascinating reading”.

She said: “Not only does it dispel the myth that the stone is of Roman origin from the local river. It opens up a whole new geographical and geological story which we never suspected.

“It is now officially the oldest artefact at Oxburgh and we hope it will be of great interest to our visitors.”

They believe the stone, which has been dated through studies of the oyster fossil species found within it, is actually around 165 million years old and far older than the local bedrock.

Professor Julian Andrews, of the UEA’s school of environmental studies, said the boulder could be more accurately described as a “roamin” stone, as the nearest similar stones were found more than 60 miles away in southern Lincolnshire.

There are known oyster-bearing beds in the Grantham and Sleaford areas, which lie on a line of rocks between Northampton and Lincoln.

And Mr Andrews said: “It is highly likely the boulder originated from here and this tells geologists it was moved by ice flowing broadly south-east, crossing modern day Fenland in the Spalding-Wisbech area.”

He said the stone was most likely to have been moved during a period known as the Anglian Glaciation around 450,000 years ago, when an ice sheet spread across East Anglia and occupied the whole of Norfolk.

He added that glaciers often picked up pieces of the bedrock as they moved across land, which could include large boulders.

However, debates have continued for decades over the exact nature of ice movements in the Wash and Fenland areas.

Exhibit at the AMNH (NY): The World's Largest Dinosaurs

There is an exhibit of "The World's Largest Dinosaurs" at the American Museum of Natural History. It's been running from April 2011 and will end on January 2, 2012.

Hopefully the museum will survive Hurricane Katrina which is expected to hit this weekend!

Address
Central Park West at 79th Street
NY, NY 10024-5192

From the website:

The huge dinosaurs called sauropods astound us. So massive! So tall! Such long necks and tiny heads! But more astounding is this: these strange giants rank among Earth’s great success stories, roaming the planet for 140 million years.

Today, scientists from many fields have joined in an effort to figure out how they did it. Paleontologists, biologists, botanists, animal nutritionists and engineers all agree: the world’s largest dinosaurs were extraordinary creatures. The challenge is to discover what made them tick.

The exciting exhibition features cutting-edge research on super-sized sauropods—including the giant Mamenchisaurus, one of the largest animals to ever walk the Earth—and offers new insights into how their colossal bodies functioned. Visitors will have a chance to examine life-sized bones, muscles, internal organs, and more to discover the amazing anatomy of The World's Largest Dinosaurs.

The dinosaurs didn’t notice either

From Idaho Mountain Express: The dinosaurs didn’t notice either
Scientists, those folks whose world is reality-based, report that Arctic ice is melting fast. It's melting faster, in fact, than they had previously thought.

Climate change—the more accurate name for global warming—may be about to take a disturbing turn.

Nature is quite capable of capricious climate movements all on its own. We see this kind of movement every few years with the arrival of El Niño or La Niña ocean currents. We humans can mostly adapt to change on this scale.

According to a 2010 survey from the National Academy of Sciences, 97 percent of climate scientists agree that humans are changing the climate. But there's change, and then there's change.

For example, humans built the giant Three Gorges Dam in China without knowing exactly what climate effects it might produce. Still, humans can either adapt to those effects or take the dam down and reverse them.

Then there's the prospect of all the ice in the Arctic melting, once and for all. Although we cannot absolutely measure human impact on the climate and may not be sure of all the consequences of burning fossil fuels or clear-cutting rain forests, we can be certain that disappearing Arctic ice is an event both massive and irreversible.

It's the irreversible part of disappearing Arctic ice that's terrifying.

When a 100-year-old lobster dies, another could take its place in two human generations. When an ancient cedar is cut down, another could tower toward the sky in about two millennia. Somewhere in time, we can imagine another lobster, another giant tree.

The ice cap, however, was built over a period of millions of years. In less than a century, the ice will be gone. What has been there for as long a time as humans can comprehend as the concept of "long" will just not be there anymore. All the life that humans can even imagine has been in relation to that Arctic ice being there. Soon, if something doesn't change, it won't be, and there is absolutely nothing that will put that ice back again.

Maybe we humans can invent something that will replace the ice. Maybe our technology will save us.

Or, maybe, the changes will be irreversible and we won't be able to adapt in time. Maybe, like the dinosaurs, we just won't be able to get out of the way.

Or, maybe, because we do see it coming, we should stop pretending that it's not our fault and begin to change behaviors that contribute to climate change.

Twentieth Century Dinosaurs Return to Tallahassee Museum

From WCTV.tv: Twentieth Century Dinosaurs Return to Tallahassee Museum
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – August 26, 2011 –

In 1993, a unique, widely-acclaimed large-scale traveling exhibit made its Southeastern U.S. debut amid fanfare and the amazement of families, children, scores of dinosaur fanatics and auto enthusiasts at the Tallahassee Museum -- a living museum offering engaging experiences focused on North Florida’s natural environment, native wildlife and cultural history. 18 Years later, Jim Gary’s Twentieth Century Dinosaurs is returning to the Tallahassee Museum in October as a long-term attraction after traveling the world for years. Some of the 21 exhibit pieces span as much as 43 feet in length and weigh up to 4,000 pounds. Gary, a renowned artist and creator, crafted hundreds of other abstract metal works for more than three decades before passing away in 2006.

“The special bond formed between Tallahassee Museum and Jim Gary began when the exhibit made its first stop here in 1993,” said Russell S. Daws, executive director/chief executive officer at the Museum. “Jim and I began our working relationship during his first museum show at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia in 1979. When I relocated to Tallahassee, I knew we needed to bring his amazing show to town, and we kept in touch up until his passing. We always knew we wanted to bring Jim Gary’s Twentieth Century Dinosaurs back to Tallahassee, where it is a natural fit for our outdoor environment. Now, with his passing and the establishment of the Jim Gary Foundation, we are honored to serve as the long-term home of his work. We look forward to caring for the collection with care and the respect it deserves while keeping Jim’s legacy alive by educating and entertaining Tallahassee residents and visitors for years to come.”

Gary himself, who fashioned each work using thousands of parts reclaimed from junked automobiles of the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s, created every piece featured in the exhibit. A completely self-taught artist, he scoured junkyards across the country and welded each piece by hand with painstaking precision and accuracy before painting his creations in shockingly bright and beautiful colors. Often noted as saying, “Old Chryslers make the finest dinosaurs,” his remarkable intricate creations continue to inspire and entertain audiences.

According to Arlene Berg, Gary’s longtime friend, former business manager and current president of the Jim Gary Foundation, “He created hundreds of works throughout the years, ranging from huge to tabletop size, and his larger pieces sold for more than $150,000. While not on tour, traveling the world on flat-bed trucks {also custom-made by Gary}, his works often found a place in his front yard, where he welcomed guests and admirers throughout the years. When the artwork was on the move, his sculpture mesmerized motorists and pedestrians, effectively becoming mobile museums.”

Jim Gary’s Twentieth Century Dinosaurs has garnered innumerable attention from national broadcast media throughout the years including features on the Discovery Channel, The Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN News and Ripley’s Believe it or Not in addition to print feature articles in The New York Times, The Boston Herald, The New Yorker, Smithsonian and The Los Angeles Times. International acclaim has come from sources such as the Tokyo Asahi, Paris Herald Tribune and German Lebens Art, and the exhibit has also graced the covers of publications such as National Geographic World. When arranged in a large outdoor pre-historic trail at the Tallahassee Museum, the long-term exhibit will create a perfect model for blending history, creativity, art and recycling in a unique, educational and entertaining way, which is easily-accessible to Tallahassee residents and visitors.

Notably, exhibitions of his works have taken place in every region of the United States in prestigious collections such as the National Academy of Design in New York City, Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, Field Museum in Chicago as well as the Smithsonian Institution and

National Museum of Natural History. Major museums in locations such as Boston, Denver, Los Angeles and others have displayed his sculpture stateside, while museums in Australia, China and Japan have spread his influence across the world.

On a more personal level, Gary’s sculptures have made an impact upon thousands of young people throughout the years, as he routinely made guest appearances on popular children’s television shows, gave lectures in schools throughout the country and inspired young minds at scores of children’s museums and other events. Gary felt that it was very important for him to work with young people, especially children, to stimulate their creativity and to help them recognize that they can achieve great things regardless of their backgrounds as long as they put their mind to it and worked hard.

Other items crafted by Gary included furniture, lamps, extensive stained glass works, abstract art and the famous Universal Woman, a sculpture of the female form composed entirely of metal washers, which received acclaim as part of numerous art exhibitions. He was also commissioned to create art in many public spaces throughout the country including the Sept. 11 Memorial in his longtime city of residence, Colts Neck, N.J. Gary moved to New Jersey with his family shortly after his birth in Florida.

Following an extensive refurbishment, Jim Gary’s Twentieth Century Dinosaurs will make its Tallahassee return debut at the 19th annual Zoobilee, a fundraising event held at the Tallahassee Museum on Friday, Oct. 14, 2011. The exhibit will open to the public the following day on Saturday, Oct. 15, 2011 and will be included in the regular admission price to the museum.

First geological boundary of dinosaur extinction found in China

People's Daily Online: First geological boundary of dinosaur extinction found in China
Edited and Translated by People's Daily Online

The continental facies Cretaceouson-Paleogene stratigraphic boundary with International comparison standard had been found in Jiayin County, Heilongjiang province, scientists from 15 countries announced on Aug. 24.

That is to say, a geologic record can be found there that can perfectly pinpoint the extinction of organisms like dinosaurs, which happened 65.5 million years ago in today’s northeastern Asia.

"The continental facies Cretaceouson-Paleogene stratigraphic boundary found in Jiayin is also known as K-Pg boundary, with a thickness of 5 centimeters, and it's not only the first international point verified with accurate scientific evidence in China but also an achievement of important research about China’s international cooperation in geosciences," said Sun Ge, the vice chairman of the Palaeontological Society of China.

The Cretaceouson-Paleogene stratigraphic boundary is a stratum of evidence of a mass extinction that happened about 65.5 million years ago, which was represented by dinosaurs on land and ammonoids in the ocean.

During the eventful period, the earth and lives on it underwent a great change and left a record in the stratum. More than 70 percent of the organisms like dinosaurs, which controlled the earth and lived in the polar regions, underwent a mass extinction and a revival in new look and so did human beings.

For years, scientists searched for the Cretaceouson-Paleogene stratigraphic boundary all over the world. Up to now, 105 continental facies boundaries candidate points have been found, while there was no reliable K-Pg boundary point in China.

From 2002, taking Sun Ge as a representative, the scientists from China, the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, Germany, Japan, Korea and Belgium, including D.L.Dilcher from the United States National Academy of Sciences, M.A.Akhmetiev from Russia Academy of Science and Dong Zhiming, a Chinese paleontologists, started to search for the continental facies strata interface of K-Pg in China by studying the paleobiology, geochemistry, paleomagnetism, chronostratigraphy and implementation drilling. They finally found the stratigraphic boundary beside a river in Jiayin County in Heilongjiang with the support from National Natural Science Foundation of China.

"In this region, we found the divide of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic of 5 centimeters in thickness in a stratum 200 meters in thickness. It perfectly recorded the reason why dinosaurs and other large numbers of paleontology species became extinct, and how, afterward, part of them revived as well as the environment on earth during that period," Dong said.

It has been said that during the past nine years, scientists found a lot of dinosaur fossils that were near the layer marking the eve of the sudden extinction and Wuyun Flora fossils appeared just after the extinction. Those fossils of ancient biota are not only relevant to other biota in which the K-Pg boundary was found but also have their own characteristics in organization and type.

D.L.Dilcher, a member of United States National Academy of Sciences said," for years, all of the scientists in the world focused on the small area in China, and now they can make a conclusion that this is a K-Pg boundary with reliable evidence, and it will be the standard in northeast Asia approved by the whole world.”

Jia Yin County is located in central Lesser Khingan Mountains in the northeast of Heilongjiang province. It has a long geologic history, and the earliest geologic record can be dated back to the Cambrian period at least 500 million years ago.

In 1902, "Mandschurosaurus" was first found in Jia Yin, and Jia yin became the earliest region where dinosaurs were discovered in China. According to the research of the paleontologist, this is also the place in which Chinese dinosaurs died out at the latest time period.

"Volcanic eruptions, the dropping sea level and the climate becoming cold are the main reasons of the dinosaurs' extinction in Jia Yin area, which is different from the extinctions that happened in North America and other regions. The confirmation of this boundary will play an important role in the study of the K-Pg in northeast Asia and even the whole world," said M.A.Akhmetiev from the Russian Academy of Science and a member of the discussion group.

It has been said that Jia Yin in China was recognized as the 95th candidate point among the105 international candidate points for the continental facies K-Pg boundary. This time is the formal international verification of the K-Pg boundary in Jia Yin.

Badlands and Dinosaurs

From the New York Times: Badlands and Dinosaurs

By BRUCE WEBER
GLENDIVE, Mont. — One rejected idea for the title of this blog was “The Wind Is My Enemy”; a bit too arch, I think. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t so. I’d had a long stretch of good fortune, wind-wise (and weather-wise, generally), but Sunday my run of luck ended.

That day, I turned off eastbound U.S. 2, the conventional cycling path through the northern states, because the oil boom around Williston, N.D., has created dangerous, or at least unpleasant, cycling conditions through the area; instead, I forged a path of my own, south from Wolf Point, Mont., to the tiny crossroads town of Circle (where the sign over the local newspaper office reads: “Today’s News — Next Thursday.”)

My reward for creativity and intrepidness? Hills and headwinds for 50 miles. It was, perhaps, the toughest day of my trip (I can think of one or two other contenders), which is now slightly more than a month old and slightly less than 1,500 miles long. The good news is that I’m getting in shape; it’s a day’s ride I couldn’t have finished four weeks ago.

Traffic has been light, and with the exception of the occasional farmer hewing wheat fields in a combine, actual people have been few. Lazily grazing horses have been noting my progress, but mostly my company has been entomological. The region had a very wet spring, and insects are everywhere. For the last 300 miles, grasshoppers have been leaping from the roadside and bouncing off my ankles, pinging off my spokes. Black flies (I think they’re black flies) and mosquitoes have lain in wait for me to stop for a swig of Gatorade. Moths and butterflies flutter in the weeds. The sound of millions of what? — crickets? — has been following me everywhere, a lighthearted white noise that sounds almost like jingling bells. I feel somewhat lost in America here, a feeling at once spooky and titillating. Part of this, I suspect, is a New Yorker’s provincialism, an astonishment at being so isolated, so vulnerable to forces of nature like the wind. Funny, but I never feel that way walking through Washington Square Park.
For a New Yorker, eastern Montana may be the most alien environment in the country. Starkly beautiful, vast and empty, horizontal in the extreme (the horizon is everywhere you look, a 360 degree circle), it is known for the size of the sky, Indian reservations and dinosaur bones.

I made a couple of brief off-route cultural stops (both in an automobile driven by a photographer who followed me for a couple of days). One was a powwow in Poplar (just east of where I turned south) on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, home to Assiniboine and Sioux tribes. The weekend-long event, a celebration of tradition that amounted to a rather wild, yet rather wholesome dance party, attracted hundreds of people, many from far enough away to surround the grounds with a temporary tent city. During the evening I spent there, the dancers, most clad in startlingly colorful costumes and many wearing bells around their ankles, ranged from preschoolers to tribal elders, and they were accompanied by several men seated around a single drum, furiously beating out a rhythm and singing, in the Cree language, a mesmerizing, warble-like call to the dance. I’d never seen — or heard — anything like it.

A couple of day later, I visited Makoshika State Park, a gorgeously stratified series of hills, a kind of badlands environment just outside of Glendive that has been a font of dinosaur fossils and that looks like a science-fiction movie set — “Planet of the Apes” maybe (not the new one). Eastern Montana is rife with famous dinosaur finds — the first T. rex ever discovered (in 1902) was found near Jordan, about 100 miles west of here — and many of its small towns boast museums. (Even those that don’t, like Circle, tend to promote the string of tourist attractions, known as the Montana Dinosaur Trail, with prominently displayed dinosaur statues.) There are two museums in Glendive. Alas, both are closed on Mondays, the day I was there, though the Makoshika visitor center has a small but instructive display of fossils that includes an impressive and angry-looking skull of a triceratops, a three-horned beast from something like 65 million years ago.

The name Makoshika, by the way, is a variation on a Lakota phrase that means land of bad spirits (i.e., badlands). The park itself is strange and beautiful, with vistas that let you look out over the hills, imagine prehistory and still see the town. In fact, the entrance to the park is just beyond a Glendive neighborhood; you drive out of a school zone and into the Cretaceous period. Nope, not much about eastern Montana reminds me of home.

Earliest Human Ancestor Was Shrew-Sized, Lived Among Dinosaurs

From International Business Times: Earliest Human Ancestor Was Shrew-Sized, Lived Among Dinosaurs
A tiny mammal that weighed less than a chipmunk and coexisted with dinosaurs may have been an ancient forerunner to mammals and eventually humans, according to a new study.

Scientists working in Northeast China discovered the fossil of the diminutive Juramaia sinensis, which means the "Jurassic mother from China," and dated the remains to about 160 million years ago, some 35 million years before the previous find for earliest mammalian ancestor.

"The great evolutionary lineage that includes us had a very humble beginning, in terms of body mass," Zhe-Xi Luo, a paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh who led the team that discovered the fossil, told National Geographic.

The find offers a clue to when mammals split into placental mammals -- animals, like humans, that give birth to relatively developed young which are nurtured in the womb through nutrient-rich placenta -- and marsupial mammals, animals like kangaroos that spend less time pregnant and produce less mature babies.

The fossil includes a preserved set of teeth and forepaw bones that scientists believed were closer to the anatomy of placental mammals than marsupials. Luo said that it likely used its claws to scurry up trees and its teeth to eat insects, an existence that would have allowed it to endure and elude larger predators.

"Once you get out on a tree, you have all the different ecological opportunities that weren't available for the terrestrial animals," he said.

The finding corroborates DNA studies, conducted using molecular evidence, which also suggested that the evolutionary split occured about 160 million years ago.

North Branford: A Jurassic Celebration

Okay, this article is two days late - the event happened on Saturday. Well, it sounds like it was a lot of fun so mark your calendars for next year!

From North Branford Patch: A Jurassic Celebration

Prehistoric creatures will once again rule Rocky Hill during Dinosaur State Park Day this Saturday, Aug. 20.

The event, which is hosted by the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and Friends of Dinosaur Park and Arboretum, marks the 45th anniversary of the discovery of dinosaur tracks in Rocky Hill. In 1966, a bulldozer operator discovered the footprints of about 2,000 Jurassic era dinosaurs, according to the release.

Dinosaur lovers will be treated to a wide variety of free activities outside the museum including:

•Arts and Crafts
•Costumed Characters
•Games
•Guided Nature Walks
•Face painting
•Live Animal Demonstrations (“Snakes Alive!” and the “Live Bird Program”)
•Musical Entertainment
Visitors can enjoy the outdoor events from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and walk the hiking trails from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Children will also be able to mine for gems and fossils for a small fee.

People can make their own footprint cast and take it home with them. The casting area will be open from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Inside the museum, there are 600 footprints, exhibits, science films and discussions. Parents and children can enjoy the coloring area, bookmark making station, live animals, interactive fossil boxes and geology displays inside the discovery room.

The price of admission to the museum is $6 for ages 13 years old and older, $2 for children between the ages of 6 and 12 and free for children five and under.

Guests can purchase food and beverage at the museum or they can bring their own and have a picnic in the shaded area of the park.

Cedar Point to build $1M dinosaur exhibit

From The Toledo Blade: Cedar Point to build $1M dinosaur exhibit
BY LARRY P. VELLEQUETTE

SANDUSKY -- Cedar Point will build a $1 million animatronic dinosaur exhibit on a four-acre wooded island at the back of the venue next year, the amusement park announced Friday. Park officials also said a mat-racer slide complex will be added to its adjacent water park.

However, tickets for the walk-through journey back in time to visit about 50 life-sized moving dinosaurs in the planned "Dinosaurs Alive!" attraction will extract an extra $5 bite from park-goers' wallets, Cedar Point officials said -- the first time an exhibit inside the park will require an additional fee. Cedar Point is the premier park of Cedar Fair LP of Sandusky.

The dinosaurs in the exhibit will roar and move, and each will be handcrafted and covered with skinlike materials that will replicate their external features, park officials said. In addition, four of the dinosaurs will have interactive consoles to allow guests to guide their movements and create an up-close look at how these dinosaurs moved their arms, tails, eyes, and mouths.

The approximately three dozen types of dinosaurs on exhibit will range in size and height from a Ruyangosaurus that will stand nearly 40 feet tall and 72 feet long to an Angustinaripterus that will be only two feet tall and eight feet long. The interactive exhibit, which will replace the pioneer-themed Paddlewheel Excursion, will include a Tyrannosaurus Rex, Irratator, Baryonyx, and Spinosaurus, the largest of all known carnivorous dinosaurs.

A plated Stegosaurus and three-horned Triceratops will also inhabit the island along a half-mile-long path that will allow guests to explore underneath several of the larger dinosaurs, providing what the park called "a very intimate encounter with the prehistoric beasts."

"I think it's a good move, and I think it will be fine," said Gary Slade, publisher of industry newsletter Amusement Today. Customers will probably accept the additional fee for the attraction, which is becoming standard in the industry, he said.

"Cedar Point is really just catching up to what everyone else has been doing. And $5 is really pretty small, about the cost of a food item."

However, fan reaction to the announcement made Friday was as swift as it was severe on Cedar Point-centric Web sites such as Pointbuzz.com. Fans of the amusement park attacked not only the additional cost, but also that similar -- if not identical -- attractions are available at Kings Island and other regional facilities.

"I know that they will not be getting $20 out of me [for a family of four] to walk through Dinosaurs," said J.W. Addington. "Just keep eliminating all the rides the [entire] family can ride, see where that gets you."

One prolific poster to the site who identifies himself as "Chief Wahoo" and said he now lives in Florida, called the announcement a "completely uninspired decision" that he hoped wasn't an early indication of the direction of the park under what will be its new management team next year.

"Forget about firing up your customer base. I'm a loyal fan, past employee and current unitholder and this is about as exciting as CSPAN … but you've got to pay extra," the poster wrote Friday.

Cedar Point spokesman Robin Innes said the decision to build the dinosaur exhibit was made because of the early success the attraction has had in southwestern Ohio.

"Our sister park, Kings Island, opened a 'Dinosaurs Alive' in May, they got a lot of good feedback. It's gone very well for them, so we thought it was good for us," Mr. Innes said. "Overall, I think it will just be a very popular addition to the park. Once our explorers complete their journey through Dinosaurs Alive, because of the details and the size of the attraction, I don't think they will be disappointed."

Next to Cedar Point, the Soak City water park will add a new mat-racer complex that will offer racers a speedy ride through a series of dips and plateaus, park officials said

Only one article in 1904

I'm beginning to wonder if there was very little dinosaur activity during this time, or if the Newspaper Archive folks have just been falling down on the job...

Restoring a Reptile of SEven Million Years Ago
New York Times - Sep 18, 1904
IT is one thing to find the skeleton, of a giant dinosaur in the Bone Cabin Quarry on the plains of Central Wyoming, and quite another thing to ship the colossal bones to New York and mount them in a museum for an admiring and wondering world to look at. It takes as long to articulate the massive fram of a brontosaurus as it does to build a battleship.

In the summer of 1900 an expedition sent out by the American Museum of Natural History, in New York, found in Wyoming the largest and most complete specimen of the herbivorous dinosaur that has so far come under the observation of an explorer. The bones of this ponderous long-limbed fossil were received at the Museum in the fall of the same year. Professor Henry F. Osborn, Curator of the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology; Adam Hermann, the Chief Preparator of the museum, and a staff of experts have been at work ever since putting them together...

Dinosaurs in the News, 1903

Only 1 article in this year

EDUCATION IN PHILIPPINES; Problems Which Have to be Met by...
New York Times - Feb 1, 1903
IT IS very generally agreed among scientists that if any unthinking '"person had approached the duck-billed dinosaur, skull is the most recent addition to ...

Dinosaurs in the News, 1902

Doing a Google search, I found 3 news articles on dinosars from 1902. (these are from American papers. Doubtless papers in other countries would have more.)

PARTS OF DINOSAUR FOUND.; Result of Princeton Summer...New York Times - Sep 28, 1902
The most important discovery was made in the Fort Plerre shales, where the hind legs and feet of a dinosaur were found. The tail of this animal, ...

NATURAL HISTORY FINDS; Three Rare Specimens for the...
New York Times - Dec 14, 1902
The first is the complete skeleton of a small dinosaur which has been ... Ksr- ecially valuable finds of remains of the giant herbivorous Dinosaur were made. ...

TRIUMPH FOR PROF. WOOD
Pay-Per-View - The Sun - Nov 13, 1902
... Molossus' Cope," "A New Small Dinosaur from the Jurassic or Como Beds of Wyoming" and "New and Little - Known Elephants and Mastodons of Noith America. ...

Dinosaurs in the News, 1900-1901

In a google search rom 1/1/1900 to 12/31/1901, I found 8 results.

Dinosaur Skeleton Found.‎
New York Times - Aug 14, 1900
DENVER, Aug. 13.-Prof. Riggs of the Field Museum of Chicago recently made an Important scientific discovery on the banks of the Gunnison River near Grand ...

DINOSAUR LEG BONE NOW AT FIELD MUSEUM.‎
Pay-Per-View - Chicago Tribune - Oct 5, 1900
The bones of the dinosaur found in the Rocky Mountains by Professor Riggs and his assistant, AMr. Menke. have arrived at the Field Columbian Museum, ...

Yale Restoring Giant Dinosaur.
New York Times - Mar 18, 1900
An attempt is being made to restore one of the giant dinosaurs which the late Prof. CC Marsh gave to Tale. The remains of the huge animal came to Yale in ...

NOTES OF THE FOREIGN STAGE.
New York Times - Jun 10, 1900
Another case shows the great forelegs of a dinosaur. ... The dinosaur is what they consider at the museum an excellent show animal. ...

WHEN REPTILES RULED EARTH.; Prof. Fairchild Describes Awful...New York Times - Jun 10, 1900
The habits of the hideous dinosaur, 20 feet In height, 40 feet in length, the ich", the , the iguanadon, and other slimy monsters, with their frightful ...

Remains of a Great DinosaurBoston Evening Transcript - Jun 20, 1901
ten miles below this city on the other side of the Grand River, has discovered the remains of an Immense specimen of the dinosaur, the prehistoric monster ...
PROF. RIGGS FINDS A DINOSAUR.; Chicagoan...‎ New York Times

A DINOSAUR RESTORED.; Yale Now Possesses One of the Only...New York Times - Apr 23, 1901
The giant dinosaur, which has been two years in restoration, is now completed and installed in the' Peabody Museum beside the restored skeletons of' ...


‎New Recorder Sworn In
Pay-Per-View - The Sun - Nov 26, 1901
E. Borclier and his assistnnts at the Peabody Museum of Yale have begun the restoration of an immense dinosaur, three or four times as largo as the ...

Did Dinosaurs Hibernate? Melting History's Mysteries at South Pole

From FoxNews: Did Dinosaurs Hibernate? Melting History's Mysteries at South Pole

by Loren Grush
Dinosaurs living in the intense cold and months-long darkness of the South Pole were once thought to hibernate during the winter months just to survive.

That old theory has been put on ice.

Montana State University graduate student Holly Woodward found that the physiology of dinosaurs living in Australia over 160 million years ago was practically the same as dinosaurs living everywhere else on Earth. During this period, Australia was located in the Antarctic Circle, meaning the dinosaurs that populated the region lived in complete darkness and extreme cold for up to six months at a time.

Now Woodward has opened the door to find out how these dinosaurs made it through the extreme cold.

“This is basically just the first study, there’s so much more to say,” Woodward told FoxNews.com. There have been few studies done on polar dinosaurs, she explained: "People have a hard time getting to Australia to do these studies. The next step for me is to look at the bones more in depth.”

The journey started for Woodward after hearing a lecture from Dr. Thomas Rich, the author of a study regarding polar dinosaurs done in 1998. Rich’s paper discussed the possible ways in which dinosaurs living in Australia survived; he came up with the idea that dinosaurs near the southern pole hibernated during the dark winter months.

The concept peaked Woodward’s curiosity.

“I wanted to see if that hypothesis held true,” Woodward told FoxNews.com. “Because there wasn’t as much dinosaur material back then, I wanted to see if it held up. I spoke with [Dr. Rich] after his presentation, and he told me if I could find a way to get to Australia, I could look at more specimens.”

After applying to the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institute through the National Science Foundation, Woodward received the money she needed to travel to the land down under. While in Australia, she sampled bones from 18 different dinosaurs that lived in the Antarctic circle during the Early Cretaceous Period. The original study had only two bones as samples.

The two studies all hinged on the bones’ “Lines of Arrested Growth” (LAGs) or rings formed inside the bone tissue.

“These rings are formed when the bone stops growing,” Woodward told FoxNews.com. The original authors of the study found LAGs in some dinosaur bones and not in others. Since bones don’t grow when an animal hibernates, the absence of rings led them to their original theory. But Woodward’s more extensive sample size showed much different results.

“I found that there were these rings in every specimen except for the smallest. So it actually didn’t have anything to do with hibernating.”

Since the hibernation theory had been the primary theory for how these dinosaurs lived, Woodward inadvertently opened the door for new theories to take its place. She already has a few of her own.

“Maybe these dinosaurs were already adapted from their ancestors to be able to survive in all kinds of conditions. Maybe they had insulation covering them, but you really can’t tell. All we can tell is that their physiology was basically the same as any other dinosaur,” Woodward told FoxNews.com.

Dr. Rich, Anusuya Chinsamy at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, and Patricia Vickers-Rich at Monash Univerty all helped co-author Woodward’s research. Woodward was pleasantly surprised with the ease of the collaboration process -- since these three scientists were the ones who wrote the original study she proved false.

“I just appreciate the openness with which my co-authors have dealt with this,” Woodward told FoxNews.com. “They thought it was cool rather than being upset about it. It’s really easy to get attached to a hypothesis of your own.”

“The fact that they were able to change their world view about these dinosaurs was really great.”

Woodward's paper was published in the journal PLoS ONE on August 3.

Dinosaurs for Experts, or for Everyone?

From Smithsonian.com Dinosaur Tracking blog: Dinosaurs for Experts, or for Everyone?

by Brian Switek
Dinosaurs are everywhere. They’ve got more lasting star power than any Hollywood celebrity you care to name, and artists are constantly crafting images of what they might have looked like when alive. (Some efforts are better than others, and paleo bloggers Marc Vincent and Trish have had a lot of fun ripping apart sorry looking ‘saurs.) Back when Allosaurus, Stegosaurus, Triceratops and Apatosaurus were new to science, though, some paleontologists were not so enthusiastic about seeing illustrators resurrect prehistoric creatures.

In 1940, Yale paleontologist Charles Schuchert co-authored a biography of the celebrated bone-hunter O.C. Marsh with research assistant Clara Mae LeVene. The focus is obviously on Marsh, but Schuchert peppered the manuscript with a few of his own experiences and observations from a career researching fossils. This included a rather disappointing debate about how fossils should be appreciated.

Even though paintings, reconstructions and restorations of dinosaurs and other prehistoric organisms are museum centerpieces today, this started to become the case only after this episode from 1891. Before that, many paleontologists preferred to leave the bones alone. (There were some notable exceptions—such as the work of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins—but restored and reconstructed dinosaurs were nowhere near as common as today.) Even Marsh, who oversaw the illustration of intricately detailed dinosaur skeletons, didn’t want to actually mount a full dinosaur skeleton. Such efforts had more to do with art and architecture than with science, as Schuchert himself was told.

After viewing the a beautifully sculpted head of a prehistoric mammal called a brontothere created by artist Adam Hermann for the American Museum of Natural History, Schuchert decided that the United States National Museum—now the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History—needed similar restorations. How better to instill an appreciation of prehistory than to put flesh on old bones? Writing in the third person, Schuchert explained:

On his return to Washington, he laid the matter before his chief, Director G. Brown Goode, describing in glowing terms the marvel he had seen and all that it had taught him. Director Goode listened patiently, and then smilingly replied: “Mr. Schuchert, I admire your enthusiasm, but what you have seen is not Fine Paleontology, but Fine Art.” He suggested that the same story be told to Dr. Theodore Gill of the Museum, to see what his reaction would be. Gill agreed, crushingly, that such restorations were indeed Nothing But Fine Art; furthermore, he held that fossil skeletons were not for the understanding of the general public, but that the bones should be left inarticulated in museum drawers or on shelves for the edification of paleontologists alone!

Needless to say, I am thrilled that things have changed since the early days of Schuchert’s career! Fossils form part of everyone’s story, and it would be a downright shame if they were simply locked up in boxes in dusty cabinets. After all, much of the point of paleontology is to try to figure out how long-extinct creatures lived, and how can we do that if we never allow our imaginations to take hold of the fossils we find? We need “Fine Art” to bring aspects of “Fine Paleontology” to life.

Gigantic Birds Walked the Earth During Dinosaur Age

From Fox News: Gigantic Birds Walked the Earth During Dinosaur Age
An enormous bird, taller than an adult human, walked the Earth (and maybe flew above it) more than 80 million years ago, according a newly discovered fossilized jaw. The finding suggests oversize birds were more common during the Age of Dinosaurs than scientists thought.

Scientists have long known that birds, or avian dinosaurs, lived during the Mesozoic, the era when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. Although researchers have discovered numerous Mesozoic bird species, these were virtually all the size of crows or smaller.

The ostrich-size Gargantuavis philoinos, was known from France, dating back from the Late Cretaceous near the end of the Age of Dinosaurs. However, it was uncertain whether or not it was the lone exception among its puny relatives. Now another has popped up in Central Asia, revealing giant birds were no flukes.

"Big birds were living alongside Cretaceous non-avian dinosaurs," researcher Darren Naish, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Portsmouth in England, told LiveScience. "In fact, these big birds fit into the idea that the Cretaceous wasn't a 'non-avian-dinosaurs-only theme park' — sure, non-avian dinosaurs were important and big in ecological terms, but there was at least some 'space' for other land animals."

Naish added, "Badger-sized mammals, big, diverse land-living crocs and, we now know, really big birds all lived alongside non-avian dinosaurs in parts of the Cretaceous world." He and his colleagues named the bird Samrukia nessovi — "Samrukia" after the samruk, the mythological Kazakh phoenix, and "nessovi" after Russian paleontologist Lev Nessov.

The toothless lower jaw came from a dry, hot, hilly site in Kazakhstan, though when this creature was alive — about 80 million to 83 million years ago — the area was a floodplain crisscrossed by big meandering rivers.

The size of the fossil suggests the bird's skull was about 12 inches (30 centimeters) long.

There is no way to tell from the fossil's structure or thickness whether the bird could fly. Based on its estimated size, the researchers calculate that if the creature was flightless, it probably stood 6 to 10 feet (1.8 to 3 meters) tall, about as big as its counterpart Gargantuavis philoinos; if it flew, it probably had a more than 13-foot (4 meter) wingspan.

"We can now be really confident that Mesozoic terrestrial birds weren't all thrush-sized or crow-sized animals — giant size definitely evolved in these animals, and giant forms were living in at least two distinct regions," Naish said. "This fits into a larger, emerging picture — Mesozoic birds were ecologically diverse, with lots of overlap between them and modern groups."

The area has yielded a diverse assemblage of other fossils, and "Samrukia was conceivably in danger from tyrannosaurs, dromaeosaurs and other predatory dinosaurs of the region," Naish said. Other creatures in the area included armored dinosaurs, duckbilled dinosaurs, other birds, turtles, salamanders and freshwater and brackish-water sharks.

It remains uncertain whether Samrukia was predatory, herbivorous or omnivorous. "The lower jaws don't reveal any obvious specializations for, say, dedicated plant-eating, or feeding on aquatic prey — if I had to guess, I'd say it was a generalist, but this is just a guess," Naish said. "The main thing we can hope for is new material that will provide more information on this bird — it would be great to know what role they were playing in these Cretaceous ecosystems."

The scientists detailed their findings online Aug. 10 in the journal Biology Letters.

Dinosaur project moving slowly

From the Edmonton Journal: Dinosaur project moving slowly

It's too bad the slow pace of fundraising has delayed until 2013 plans to open a dinosaur museum in Grande Prairie. Let's hope a reluctance to be associated with once-lumbering, now-extinct animals is not keeping an overly image-conscious Conservative government from chipping in.

The new facility will showcase the Pipestone Creek bone bed, the world's densest deposit of horned dinosaurs, as well as providing an attraction that could draw visitors from around the globe.

But organizers have only collected one-third of the $27 million needed to build the museum, to be named for University of Alberta biology professor Phil Currie, who did the first major excavation at the site, and his wife Eva Koppelhus.

The museum society directors are waiting partly for Conservatives to choose a new premier who might funnel an extra $5 million into the project. Candidates Doug Horner, Gary Mar and Alison Redford attended a recent fundraising gala for it. Backers must be hoping the other hopefuls will move faster than a herd of the plant-eating animals to support the project.

Would it be fair to say, at the risk of metaphor overkill, that to do otherwise could be considered fossilized thinking?

Polar dinosaur trackways found in Victoria

Australian Geographic: Polar dinosaur trackways found in Victoria
EACH AROUND THE SIZE of a human handprint, several dozen steps recorded in the sand 100 million years ago make up the largest collection of the dinosaur footprints ever found In Victoria. Discovered in two sandstone blocks at Melanesia Beach near Cape Otway, this is only the fourth time dinosaur footprints have been found in the state.

One block is of particular interest, as it contains the first known dinosaur trackway (sequence of steps) ever found in Victoria: three footprints made by a small carnivorous dinosaur about 105 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous period.

"This is the most significant dinosaur track discovery in Victoria," says Dr Tom Rich, a palaeontologist at Museum Victoria in Melbourne, and co-author of a paper detailing the find. "There are at least 24 dinosaur tracks [here], made by a variety of dinosaurs."

Creating a good impression

"What is significant about dinosaur footprints - as opposed to dinosaur bones or teeth - is the evidence of the presence of dinosaurs," says Tom. "The trace fossils tell us how the dinosaurs were living in the area at the time."

"Fossil footprints in Australia are quite rare and can reveal new information about the types of dinosaurs there were in the area," adds Dr Aaron Camens, a marsupial trackways expert at the University of Adelaide. "Well preserved prints can tell us what the fleshed foot of the animal looked like. They can be used to examine how the animal walked, and trackways can even yield information about speed, movement and behaviour."

Tom and his coworkers believe the footprints were made by ornithomimosaurs or 'bird-mimic' dinosaurs that ranged in size from a rooster to a cassowary. "We can estimate the speed - somewhere between 7 and 9 km/h - based on the spacing of the tracks and the size of the tracks," says Tom. "We also can estimate the height of the animal, probably about four times the maximum length of the tracks."

The prints were left by animals that were likely to have been different ages and were walking over swampy ground created as snow melted across floodplains in the spring. At this time Victoria would have been within the Antarctic Circle, and would have been cold and completely dark for much of the year.

"These prints differ from others found in the region as they are made by [carnivorous] theropod dinosaurs instead of [herbivorous] ornithopods," says Dr Steve Salisbury, a palaeontologist at the University of Queensland who was not involved in the research. "It's hard to put these footprints into context. It may be that the prints were made at a similar time, but even that's hard to confirm, given how they were found on the beach."

Get in on the act
One of the sandstone slabs was first spotted by local landowner Greg Denney. Professor Pat Vickers-Rich a palaeontologist at Monash University and co-author of the paper describes Greg as "one of the world's best dino trackers."

Both Pat and Steve encourage interested members of the public to look for these types of fossils. "If footprints have already been found in a certain spot, that's always a good place to look for more," Steve says. "But in a lot of cases it can be hard for the untrained eye to tell if a footprint is dinosaurian."

The key is to have any potential find verified but leave it undisturbed, Steve says. "Taking photos is a great way to find out if you have something of interest, but unless you know the law for the area you are in, it is always best not to disturb a new find. I was just in the Kimberley, where there are many footprints and tracksites that are very important to the local aboriginal culture." he says. "To take any of those fossils would be a serious offence."

The discovery was published this week in Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology.

Plesiosaur dinosaur fossil solves breeding puzzle

From SFGate: Plesiosaur dinosaur fossil solves breeding puzzle

The fossil bones of a giant, long-necked swimming reptile from the age of the dinosaurs have resolved a long-held mystery about the animals and how they reproduced.

Those denizens of ancient seas - like modern whales and dolphins - apparently gave birth to their infants beneath the water one at a time, and could have cared for them much as modern whales do, scientists say.

The unique water-living animal, known as a plesiosaur, lived about 78 million years ago, and while fossils of many other creatures in the marine reptile world of that era show they gave birth to a dozen or more young at a time, this one is the first to show evidence of a single birth and only in the water, according to the paleontologists.

It also resolves a puzzle about the animal by showing that the tribe were uniquely sea creatures and never laid eggs on land, according to Luis Chiappe of the Dinosaur Institute at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum, and F. Robin O'Keefe of Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va.

They report their findings today in the journal Science.

The scientists say they discovered that the bones they assembled were those of a mother who was clearly pregnant.

The huge bones of the plesiosaur were first unearthed nearly 25 years ago on a Kansas ranch. The plesiosaurs were viviparous, meaning that instead of producing and hatching eggs, they gave birth to a single offspring that had developed within the mother's body. A few other ancient reptiles were also viviparous, but their fossils have shown that they produced as many as 18 or 19 babies at a time, according to Chiappe and O'Keefe.

"They've made a strong case," Glenn W. Storrs, a noted specialist on the plesiosaur animals at the Cincinnati Museum Center, said in an interview. "It's very clear that they have shown a fetus inside a mother ... and it was certainly not made for coming up on land where its body would have been crushed to death."

Chiappe and O'Keefe calculated that at the time of the animal's pregnancy she would have been about 15 feet long, and her fetus about five feet long - meaning it was probably two-thirds of the way toward birth.

Chiappe and O'Keefe likened the plesiosaurs to modern-day land reptiles like California's western skinks that "exhibit mammal-like social behaviors." The reproductive strategy of the plesiosaurs, they said, is a fine example of how evolution has led to the emergence of big animals that breed slowly.

This new evidence for the evolution of live birth in plesiosaurs, like so many other marine reptiles of the dinosaur era "leaves me nothing but spell-bound," said Michael Caldwell, a specialist at the University of Alberta. "Absolutely amazing stuff!" he said in an e-mail.

The skeleton of the ancient animal is now on exhibit at the Los Angeles museum's Dinosaur Institute where Chiappe is the director.

Funding shortfall delays Alberta dinosaur museum

Actor Dan Aykroyd peers at bone fragments at a dinosaur excavation site near Grande Prairie, Alta
From CBCNews: Funding shortfall delays Alberta dinosaur museum
The opening of a state-of-the-art dinosaur museum near Grande Prairie, Alta., has been delayed until July 2013 because of a shortfall of funds.

The effort to construct the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum, named after an eminent University of Alberta paleontologist, raised nearly half a million dollars at a celebrity-studded fundraiser in July, but still doesn't have enough money to break ground on its new building.

The project needs $27 million and is hoping to get one-third from the provincial government, one-third from Ottawa and the remainder from private fundraising. So far fundraising has been the most fruitful, bringing in $5 million — more than the province and federal government have contributed combined.

Instead of opening in December 2012 as initially planned, the LEED-certified, 41,000-square-foot edifice will open in July 2013 on its four-hectare site 22 kilometres west of Grande Prairie, its board of directors announced Monday.

The building, designed by Teeple Architects of Toronto, will house specimens from the fossil-rich region, as well as research and educational facilities.

Last month's sold-out fundraiser in Grande Prairie featured actor and paleontology enthusiast Dan Aykroyd, Saturday Night Live executive producer Lorne Michaels and crime writer Patricia Cornwell. Guests paid between $5,000 and $25,000 to sponsor a table, and some of them spent the prior two days on a fossil dig west of the city in a rich bone bed known as the River of Death.

What dinosaur eggs reveal about male attractiveness

A puff piece, with lots of logic holes...but, thought I'd share it. (One might also ask, why do women collect things? But the article is written by a woman who apparently doesn't collect anything!)

The Globe and Mail: What dinosaur eggs reveal about male attractiveness

The most recent issue of Journal of Economic Psychology contains an article by Menelaos Apostolou entitled “Why do men collect things? A case study of fossilized dinosaur eggs.”

According to Dr. Apostolou, it’s all about sex. But how does a collection of dinosaur eggs increase a man’s sexual attractiveness?

A man’s collection might not make him more attractive to women. But Dr. Apostolou argues that this is not the point. Historically, women have not chosen their own partners. As Dr. Apostolou puts it, “men have been selecting other men as spouses for their female relatives during most of human evolution.”

What do men look for in a son-in-law? According to Dr. Apostolou, “parents in general, and male parents in particular, consistently prefer as sons-in-law men with traits such as industry and working ability which are directly associated with a man’s ability to provide resources.”

So how can a would-be son-in-law prove that he is would be a good provider? Peacocks prove their reproductive fitness by growing a spectacularly beautiful – but otherwise useless – tail. Dr. Apostolou argues that a man hoping to mate should create the human equivalent of a peacock tail: a collection. Accumulating material goods shows he can obtain resources. Findings goods that are beautiful and hard to obtain shows he is capable of putting an effort into acquiring things for his spouse.

The evidence Dr. Apostolou has to support this far-fetched theory comes from fossilized dinosaur eggs.

Dr. Apostolou argues that his theory predicts: “rare items are valued more than common ones, larger items are valued more than smaller ones, and aesthetically pleasing items are valued more than unattractive ones.” Using eBay data on 177 dinosaur egg sales between May 2006 and May 2007 he finds that this is indeed the case. For example, raptor eggs, which are relatively rare, command a higher price than hadrosaur eggs.

But basic economics dictates that rare eggs will be more expensive than others -- this evidence does not prove that collecting items is motivated by a desire to prove reproductive fitness.

A more interesting prediction of Dr. Apostolou’s theory is that: “intensity of collecting behaviour will peak around the age of 20 when men are looking more vigorously for mates.” (Though Dr. Apotolou adds “the nature of collecting …mandates that the peak of a man’s collection will be when he is in his 50s or 60s.”) Also he argues, collecting behavior will be most intense when a man is looking for a mate. “If mating effort is successful, it is expected that men will reduce the channelling of resources to honest signals [collecting] and divert most of these resources to their children.”

That’s a prediction worth testing: are married men, and older men, less enthusiastic about collecting? That’s not been true in my own personal experience, but perhaps Globe and Mail readers can prove me wrong.

Ogden Utah: Free admission to dinosaur park

From: Blogs at The Tribune: Free admission to dinosaur park

This Saturday, you can get in free to a variety of Ogden-area attractions, including the George S. Eccles Dinosaur Park and the Treehouse Children's Museum. Every Saturday, from June through August, a variety of Ogden area attractions offer free admission

Here's their website: http://www.dinosaurpark.org/

Tiny tooth brings big hopes

From The Short Horn, the University of Texas at Arlington student newspaper: Tiny tooth brings big hopes
The recent discovery of a tooth from a rodent-like mammal at the Arlington Archosaur Site could shed light on an otherwise unknown ancient species of mammals.

Found two weeks ago, the tooth is the first and only physical evidence of mammals’s ancient presence at the site.

“The tooth itself is very rare,” said Geb Bennett, who helped UTA researchers identify the small tooth. “So far, there have only been four of its kind found in Texas. It’s one of only about a dozen found in all of eastern North America.”

Bennett is a microvertebrate specialist, someone who deals with smaller animals.

The tooth came from a Multituberculate, a rodent-like animal that dates back to the Mesozoic era, and is among the oldest mammals on the planet, said Derek Main, geology lecturer and Arlington Archosaur Site director.

“They went extinct in the Cenozoic when they were out-competed by more modern mammals,” Main said. “The largest was maybe the size of a beaver.”

Mammal fossils are rare finds for a dig from the Mesozoic era because few of them lived during that time period. Those mammals that did exist in the Mesozoic were often dominated by the dinosaurs and became extinct, Main said.

“Multituberculates, you could say, lived in the shadows of the dinosaurs,” he said. “These tiny, ratlike animals that couldn’t compete with the dinosaurs.”

Large mammals didn’t evolve until after the dinosaurs’s extinction, Main said.

“Once the dinosaurs went extinct after the asteroid impact, the world stage was cleared for other life forms to adapt to this basically empty world,” Main said. “Mammals took over at that point.

The Mesozoic is the age of reptiles, and the Cenozoic is the age of mammals for that very reason.”

Main also said searching for mammal fossils is very different from digging for dinosaur bones.

“People, like Geb, who work with mammals, have a different skill set from the dinosaurs,” he said. “They’re hard to find because they’re so small.”

While most paleontologists who work in the Cretaceous are looking for big dinosaurs, fewer scientists work with the remains of ancient mammals, Main said.

“You see the massive dinosaur excavations, but this is a different type of work,” he said.

Main said he had previously suspected such mammals existed at the site.

“[The site] was once a peat bed from the ancient swamps of the Cretaceous,” he said. “There should be all the animals you’d expect from a swamp. Not just the crocodiles and dinosaurs.”

Discovering mammal teeth and bones is much more time consuming than finding the remains of larger animals, such as dinosaurs and crocodiles, Main said.

First, sediment is collected and sorted into buckets according to where they were found in the site. Then, they are carried down a steep hill to a nearby creek.

“We bring them down here [to the creek] and pour water in them and let them soak,” Main said.

Then the sediment is screen washed and broken down into smaller particles of sediment. Screen washing is a very important part of the process, Main said.

“We’ve been doing screen washing for the past two years now, and gradually we’ve been putting more emphasis on it,” he said.

While screen washing isn’t necessary to discover larger fossils and teeth, it’s necessary to find remains of ancient mammals, said Bennett, paleontology curator at the Shenandoah Valley Discovery Museum in Winchester, Va.

“Some of the really rare things you don’t find unless you screen wash the sediment,” Bennett said.

Many volunteers, like Melissa Rozakis, help by screen washing sediment.

Last Friday was Rozakis’s first time to screen wash in the creek.

“Honestly, this is so zenlike for me,” Rozakis said. “I’m a Yankee, so this summer heat in Texas has been pretty rough on me. But this is great because it’s in the shade, I get to play in the water and the mud. This is like going to a spa for me.”

Main said even after the sediment has been screen washed, no one can tell whether a fossil or tooth is present.

“To us, what looks like a fleck could be a tooth,” Main said.

After the sediment has been screen washed, it is taken back up the hill and spread out on a blue tarp to dry in the sun.

“We take this back to UTA and spend hours looking at all these little pieces under a microscope,” Main said. Each specimen that Main and his team screen wash can be a tooth or a vertebra, he said.

“We look at that through microscopes in the lab, which can take hours and months,” Main said. “Gradually, we find little fossils that we don’t see when we’re out there digging by hand. It’s a lot of work for one little tooth.”

Usually, all that’s found of these mammals are teeth because teeth are the hardest, most structurally-preserved part of any animal, Main said.

“If the teeth are tumbled around in a stream or eroded, it holds up much better than regular bone,” Bennett said.

Main said he plans to publish a paper on the mammal tooth.

“We just discovered it not too long ago, so we’ve got to study it and figure out exactly what it is,” he said. “If we’ve got a different tooth from a new animal, that in itself is probably one paper, just one little tooth.”

Although mammal bones can prove difficult to find, Main said the discovery of the tooth gives him a reason to search for more.

“We’ve got one tooth and we’re looking for more,” he said. “I think it’s possible to find some of the bones, but it’s a long shot.”

Main said he’s not sure people will realize the impact of one of his most recent finds.

“I don’t know if people will realize how big of a deal it is,” he said. “It’s a big discovery for a very small fossil.”

A herd of pint-sized dinosaurs left behind these 145 million year old footprints

From IO9: A herd of pint-sized dinosaurs left behind these 145 million year old footprints

These rather adorable footprints - with a little chalk enhancement to make them more visible - were left by a group of small dinosaurs, revealing the ancient "road" they traveled all those millions of years ago.

This is a fairly unique find - we do occasionally find dinosaur footprints, but usually just those of a single individual. Here, we have evidence of a herd. Even better, this appears to be a trackway, meaning this was a path along which these dinosaurs frequently traveled. That allows us rare, if limited, insight into the behavior and social life of these ancient creatures. Here we can see evidence of six distinct dinosaurs traveling in the same direction, which is a very good indication that we're looking at a full-fledged herd here, something that's very difficult to find evidence of otherwise.

We can't know from just footprints what sort of dinosaur they belonged to. But Brian Switek over at Dinosaur Tracking breaks down the most likely possibilities:

In this case, sauropods are the best fit for the kidney-shaped tracks left by the front feet and the roughly triangular prints left by the hind feet, especially given their distance from one another. What kind of sauropods left the tracks? That's difficult to say, but Castanera and co-authors propose that small titanosaurs might be the best fit. This widespread sauropod group-which included the gargantuan Argentinosaurus and the dwarf genus Magyarosaurus-was partly characterized by having wide chests, which gave their trackways a "wide gauge"-or a wider gap between the left and right limbs-that matches the pattern seen in the Teruel tracks. The problem is that the bones of titanosaurs are virtually unknown from the appropriate place and time period, so the trackways could have been left by another sort of sauropod which moved in a similar way.

Mosasaur: How a reptile came to dominate the seas

From the Christian Science Monitor: Mosasaur: How a reptile came to dominate the seas

At a time when dinosaurs ruled the land, mosasaurs, a type of swimming reptile related to modern Komodo dragons, came to dominate the seas. Within the span of roughly 27 million years, these predators transformed from an animal with limited swimming ability and limbs still meant for walking into a sleek, fishlike form.

Now, a new study reveals the evolutionary details behind this transformation, which turned the mosasaurs into swimming machines and fearsome predators, the marine equivalent ofTyrannosaurus rex, that may even have decimated the large ginsu sharks of the time.

Since the discovery of the first mosasaur in the late 18th century, they have been generally depicted as slender, serpentine animals with narrow, straight tails, like that of the modern sea snake, said Johan Lindgren, the lead researcher and a paleontologist at Lund University. While mosasaurs appear to have started out this way after their ancestors first arrived in coastal waters, they did not keep this form.

A mosasaur tale

Lindgren and his colleagues charted anatomical changes in fossils from the tails of four types of mosasaurs at different stages of adaptation to their ocean life, from the small Dallasaurus, still largely built for life on land, to Plotosaurus, which had ridges on its small scales to channel water and a dolphin-shaped body, according to Lindgren.

They also looked at modern animals — lizards, sea snakes and sharks. While mosasaur fossils have been found around the world, preserved soft tissue from their tails is virtually unknown, so modern animals helped the researchers fill in the gaps.

In sharks and ichthyosaurs, the backbone extends into one of the tail lobes, and based on what he saw in the fossils and the living animals, Lindgren believes the same structure — a two-lobed, crescent tail — evolved in mosasaurs over time.

His research also documented other changes: The tail became regionalized, with sections of vertebrae adapting to serve a particular purpose, becoming more robust at the base of the tail to anchor it, for example. Other changes, including the shortening of the bodies of the vertebrae, made the tail more powerful and less flexible. In addition, their extremities became less like feet and more like paddles.

The tail would've resembled that on whales, sharks and some ichthyosaurs — another fishlike marine reptile that disappeared from the Cretaceous seas as mosasaurs arrived, according to Lindgren and his colleagues.

Mike Everhart, adjunct curator of paleontology at the Sternberg Museum of Natural History in Hays, Kan., said the study added detail to what was already known about mosasaurs' adaptation, but he did not entirely agree with Lindgren's conclusion.

There is no evidence I have seen for an upper tail lobe that would make them more ichthyosaur-like than we currently envision them to be," Everhart said. "We know they were well adapted to living in the ocean. … They basically took over the ocean."

The rise to the top

The changes in mosasaurs' bodies were crucial to their rise to the top of the late Cretaceous marine food chain, according to Lindgren.

Dallasaurus was small, roughly 5 feet (1.5 meters) long, and swam like an eel or sea snake, its spine curving like a sine wave to either side. This type of swimming works for ambush predators, because it allows them a burst of speed, but it's not useful over sustained periods.

Mosasaurs' anatomical changes added new efficiency to their swimming by allowing them to use just part of their body, the tail, to propel them through the water. This allowed them to chase down their prey.

Mosasaurs' ancestors were most likely similar to marine iguanas of the modern Galapagos Islands, land animals that went into the ocean to feed, according to Everhart. They gave rise to mosasaurs roughly 90 million years ago in waters already dominated by sharks, capable of feeding on whatever they wanted, including mosasaurs.

Within a few million years, mosasaurs got larger, and the roughly 22-foot (6.5- to 7- meter) ginsu shark, Cretoxyrhina mantelli, disappeared. There is no smoking gun, Everhart writes on his website, Oceans of Kansas Paleontology, but based on modern sharks' vulnerability to fishing, it is possible that mosasaurs, which grew as large as 56 feet (17 meters), may have eaten young ginsu sharks, and the population was unable to recover.

Their reign didn't last, however. Mosasaurs died out with the dinosaurs during the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction 65.5 million years ago.

The study appears in the Summer 2011 issue of the journal Paleobiology.

Laelaps: Dinosaur Dreams

From Wired: Laelaps Dinosaur Dreams

by Brian Switek

When I was a six year old dinosaur freak, I was convinced that a beautifully-preserved, fully articulated Triceratops skeleton lay buried in my grandparents backyard. I can’t say why I thought this. It was more of a fantasy than anything else, but I believed that if I just dug down deep enough I would make one of the greatest fossil discoveries of all time. The American Museum of Natural History would no doubt be so thrilled with my find that they would put it in their museum and appoint me as curator of their dinosaur hall. All I had to do was dig the thing up.

I spent a number of sunny summer Saturdays hacking away at a little dirt depression near the tool shed. It was nice to have base camp so close to the excavation. When a little, green maple got in my way I quickly grabbed a hatchet from the shed to remove the obstruction – something which immediately sent my parents running into the backyard to stop me from leaving any of my own body parts at the field site.

The Triceratops never materialized. I thought I was close – I could have sworn that a few big, smooth stones were eggs from a nest – but I had no idea that the closest dinosaurs were much further south in a wide swath of Cretaceous deposits underlying the suburban sprawl stretching from Middlesex to Salem counties. (My family lived in Union County, built over Devonian layers laid down a time long before there were any dinosaurs to speak of.) Even if I were in the right place, though, I was soon in danger of making the pit so deep that I could not easily get out. My requests for a ladder to excavate deeper were denied.

I couldn’t help but think of my early fossil forays as I poked around the strata of Utah and Montana for signs of dinosaurs during the past month. Writing about paleontology and the history of fossil discovery is fun, but it really is no substitute for getting out into the field and puzzling over scraps of petrified bone and strange tracks left by creatures long dead.

The outcrops constantly remind you that finding vestiges of lost worlds is equal parts planning and luck. Identifying the right places to look takes time and careful research, but actually finding anything of interest often relies on little quirks of circumstance as subtle as where your gaze falls. The constant worry is that there is something you’re not seeing. At one Hell Creek Formation microsite littered with tiny bones near Ekalaka, Montana, I found part of a small mammal’s upper jaw studded with two teeth. Another field crew member had walked right over the same spot ten minutes before with no clue the delicate fossil was there. I can’t help but wonder how many similar finds I have missed.

Prospecting for fossils can be as intoxicating and addictive as it is frustrating. Days may go by where you find nothing, only to give way to a rush of excitement when you stumble upon some beautiful clue about the prehistoric past. The feeling reminds me of neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky’s essay “The Pleasure (and Pain) of ‘Maybe’” reprinted in his book Monkeyluv (which I brought along with me during the first leg of my journey). I wouldn’t begin to speculate on the dopamine responses of paleontologists when they find something good, but as I searched for fossils I began to understand what Sapolsky meant when he wrote that “intermittent reinforcements can be … profoundly reinforcing.” Maybe this is idle speculation on my part, though I am amused by the thought of neuroscientists tailing paleontologists in the field to see how us bone hunters respond to finding an intriguing fossil after hours, days, or weeks of bad luck.

Awww yeah... a Deinonychus about to get down with a Tenontosaurus at the Museum of the Rockies. Or is this predation in action? You decide. Photo by author.
But I didn’t spend all of July in the field. Tell me there’s a dinosaur exhibit or goofy roadside monstrosity somewhere nearby and I immediate start moving in that direction.

The misshapen roadside creatures of Dinosaur, Colorado; the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana; and Thermopolis, Wyoming’s Dinosaur Center were all stops on my July dinosaur tour. The dinosaurs of the east coast – the titans of the American Museum of Natural History and the Academy of Natural Sciences – were old friends, but I was glad to make some new acquaintances, such as the MOR’s Wankel Rex and the Thermopolis Archaeopteryx. (I actually turned up to see ol’ Archie on the day headlines proclaimed that the “urvogel” should no longer be considered the first bird. I’ll have more on that at Dinosaur Tracking this week, but, if you have a copy handy, check out pages 117 to 125 of Written in Stone.)

This is just a brief “What I did on my summer field trip” report. I’m saving some of the really juicy stuff for A Date With a Dinosaur, but I must admit that actually participating in paleontology is a hell of a lot more fun than simply writing about it from my desk in Salt Lake City. I’m itching to get back out there. In a few weeks I’ll head out to Ghost Ranch, New Mexico – a place chock-full of Triassic dinosaurs that I have been meaning to visit for quite some time – and in September I’ll be off to Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. There are bones in them thar hills.

And I would be remiss if I did not mention my debts to those who have let me start living out my dreams. Jason Schein at the New Jersey State Museum, Thomas Carr at Carthage College, and Scott Williams at the Burpee Museum of Natural History have all been kind enough to let me join their groups for brief stints, and I am especially grateful to Randall Irmis, Carolyn Levitt, and the rest of the Utah Museum of Natural History field team. The UMNH team has been very kind to me, and, importantly, they helped me renounce my foolhardy ways and finally appreciate beer. Oh Alaskan Amber, where have you been all my life?