New artwork for Fall 2010

Hey Folks,

I'll have some more on taphonomy in the next few days, but before I get to that, I've got some new artwork to post instead. As I've previously alluded to, this has been an absolute heinous semester, even though I've only taken 1 credit in courses. I've spent the entire semester working on several manuscript projects (at least one of which is about to come to fruition; more on that in the coming weeks). Just over this weekend alone, I've received page proofs for my first paper, received final acceptance for another paper, and submitted the revisions for a third paper. Life is good.From left to right: Agujaceratops, Pentaceratops, Anchiceratops, Arrhinoceratops, and adult Triceratops (="Torosaurus").

In addition to all these, I've been busy with several art projects. The longest project (and still incomplete) is a series of cranial drawings of chasmosaurine dinosaurs for Denver Fowler, for his research he presented earlier this month at SVP for his Romer prize presentation.

Agujaceratops mariscalensis for Denver Fowler's Romer presentation.Subadult Triceratops for John Scannella's Romer presentation.

John Scannella, another Ph.D. student here at MSU/MOR, has recently earned some time in the limelight for killing "Torosaurus" (now known to be just the adult form of Triceratops) - although many people over the summer misinterpreted his study as somehow killing Triceratops instead. John asked me back in September to redraw one of Hatcher's beautiful plates of Triceratops for his Romer presentation. Unfortunately, the skull that Hatcher figured lacked a nasal horn, and he needed it to have one... so I drew it with one, and I can only hope that my drawing doesn't make Hatcher roll over in his grave.

Here's the paleontological 800-lb gorilla in the room: formerly Torosaurus, but what has convincingly shown by Scannella and Horner (2010) to simply the adult form of Triceratops, although many unfortunately still cling to the olde wayes of palaeontological research. This was actually for Denver Fowler's talk rather than John's, and is based on a rather complete "Torosaurus" skull here at Museum of the Rockies.
This I just did for fun over the summer - I actually did this up at Lake Tahoe (and only took about 3 hours, even though it's about two feet wide) while I was on vacation there over the summer. This I believe is some kind of Diplodocus. Some dinosaurs are pretty, although in many cases I could care less which one it actually is. Drawing sauropod dinosaurs is OK, because they're almost as big and almost as cool as a baleen whale. Sorry dinosaur fans, they just never quite made it, but they get an A for effort.Lastly, this is one of my most recent drawings - this is part of a big bird bone. But that's all I'll say for now; I only put this up here because its a good example of a specimen drawing I've done. This one only took about 4 hours.

Anyway, time for shameless self promotion: I auctioned a bunch of prints off at the SVP benefit auction earlier this month, and made a total of ~350$ for the auction, which, according to Denver F., is something like 1.7% of the entire proceeds from the auction. That feels pretty damn good on multiple levels- for one, just knowing that I helped raise that much money (and it only cost me about six bucks to print all that stuff out, including the plastic sleeves) and two, that it was because people liked my artwork and were willing to bid anywhere from 30-80 bucks for prints. Unframed, unmatted prints in a plastic bag.

Anyway, due to the overwhelmingly positive reaction I got for my artwork at the auction, I recently started an account on ETSY.com so that I can try and sell some prints of this stuff, and be able to afford food, and gas, and things that are usually denied to graduate students. I'm just kidding about that, but being able to make a few bucks off doing what I love would be pretty fulfilling. Anyway, if you're interested, go ahead and take a look at my Etsy account.

News flash - Pachycephalosaurus=Stygimoloch=Dracorex

This doesn't really have anything to do with marine vertebrates, but this is a neat study that was conducted in part here at MSU, and I think it is one of Horner's neater studies. This Monday saw the publication of Horner and Goodwin, 2009: Extreme cranial ontogeny in the Upper Cretaceous Dinosaur Pachycephalosaurus, in the journal PLoS One (which is viewable free here).

Basically, the rundown is this: Dracorex, Stygimoloch, and Pachycephalosaurus are all postulated to be very closely related. As most of you already know, these are bone headed dinosaurs. The smallest (Dracorex) has no dome, and big squamosal spikes. Pachycephalosaurus (the largest) has a huge dome, with blunt spikes. And Stygimoloch , well, is sort of in the middle. Unfortunately, pachycephalosaurid fossils are extremely rare, and the record typically consists of fairly crappy material, including a lot of isolated, reworked fronto-parietal domes. Stygimoloch is the least known, originally named by Galton and Sues (1983) off of a squamosal.

Ontogeny of Pachycephalosaurus wyomingensis: juvenile, upper left ("Dracorex"), subadult, upper right ("Stygimoloch"), and adult (Pachycephalosaurus).

Histological analysis indicated that the smallest (Dracorex) was a 'juvenile', and that Stygimoloch and Pachycephalosaurus are 'subadult' and 'adult' (or, are at least in that relative ontogenetic order). The histology shows that in Stygimoloch and Pachycephalosaurus, the ornamental horns are undergoing resorption, and actually shrinking in size through ontogeny, and the dome is growing. Previously these features were intepreted to represent apomorphic conditions, should each fossil be mistaken (or assumed) for adults of different taxa.



Jack gave the talk version of this at the SVP meeting in 2007, and it wasn't very well received (which made it all the more entertaining). Unfortunately, there wasn't any time for questions. However, this year Jack gave a talk on metaplastic bone in dinosaurs, and he again described the histological evidence for the synonymy, and there was time for several questions. Inane questions like "why would these animals go through all the trouble of changing their head during growth - its expensive!", which received the answer "well, I don't know - but the histology shows that the dome was growing bigger, and the horns were getting littler." A brief comment here - besides the obvious option for intraspecific display (i.e. being able to tell another individuals age within a population), modern mammals do something far stranger - cervids (deer) grow out huge, heavy antlers every year, and then shed them. Just imagine a ten year old animal, and how much bone (by volume) that is, and how many calories that took to produce, in bulk.

I personally think this is a really neat paper; not everyone may agree with Horner on a lot of issues, but he constantly hounds graduate students at MSU to think in a transformational context, and not a typological context. Typologists either haven't trained themselves to think in terms of transformations (be they ontogenetic or phylogenetic), or are busy naming new taxa when they shouldn't be, and won't allow anyone to kill their 'baby'. Often in the world of dinosaur paleontology typology goes hand-in-hand with neo-nazi cladism. Fossil organisms change through time in two ways - ontogenetically in a single individual, and on evolutionary timescales - the full examination of both ranges of variation can lead to additional synonymization, and a more accurate (and hence, better) understanding of the fossil record and evolution. And a few pissed off, bitter dinosaur fanboys. You SVP-ers and vertpaleo list subscribers know who I'm talking about.

Anyway, I still need to read the entire paper; much of this post is based on my recollection of various presentations. I also apologize for the 1.5 week hiatus; I've got some good posts planned, and will come out shortly after this.

Galton PM, Sues H-D (1983) New data on pachycephalosaurid dinosaurs (Reptilia: Ornithischia from North America. Can J Earth Sci 20: 462–472.

Horner JR, Goodwin MB (2009) Extreme cranial ontogeny in the Upper Cretaceous Dinosaur Pachycephalosaurus. PLoS One

Horner JR, Goodwin MB (2006) Major cranial changes during Triceratops ontogeny. Proc R Soc Lond Biol 273: 2757–2761.

Horner JR, Goodwin MB, Woodward H (2007) Synonymy consequences of dinosaur cranial ontogeny. J Vert Paleont 27: 92A.

Summer Adventures Part 4: Paleo-themed tourist traps

Towards the tail-end of the summer my girlfriend flew out to California, and we took a road trip through the Pacific Northwest. Of course, we saw the typical roadside attractions in Northern California such as the "Legend of Bigfoot", "Confusion Hill" (home of the "Chipalope" - Oh yes, half chipmunk, half antelope[fixed really stupid typo!]), "One log house", "Tree House", and the big grand daddy of them all, the "Trees of mystery" - home of a 70' tall Paul Bunyan statue.

In Oregon, we stopped at a weird place called "Prehistoric Gardens" - basically, a bunch of outdated extinct reptile sculptures in the forest. Well, let's just say that it was only worth our money because of how funky some of the models looked and how bad/off the wall/totally insane some of the information was.

The tyrant king himself welcomes weary drivers in from the road.

The second weirdest depiction of Triceratops I've ever seen.

Pretty standard Ankylosaurus model.

Oh, no! A killer Elasmosaurus (w/ lens flare!) in the middle of the... forest?

This one really screwed with me. OK, I've heard this (obviously) for Oviraptor, but ornithomimids?

My brave companion facing the evil Pteranodon.

Cold blooded? Cretaceaus?

I don't want to know how an Ichthyosaurus made its way into the forest.

In Newport, Oregon, we found the trashiest tourist souvenir shops I've ever seen, which says a lot because I've been to Disneyland, Pier 39, and Fisherman's Wharf. What's worse, these were built right next to the Oregon Coast Aquarium, and named "Aquarium Square Shops" - completely misleading. Anyway, this was literally the first thing we saw when we made it to Newport - a big blue pliosaur.

They didn't even try with this one. They call it "Nessie", the "Yaquina Bay Sea Monster", and "Kronosaurus" all within 4 feet. What?! First off, Nessie is the Loch Ness Monster. Second, I've never heard of a Yaquina Bay Sea Monster (wouldn't be a bay monster?), and it is obviously a sick marketing ploy just like Tahoe Tessie (rhymes with nessie, but at least they bothered to put a 'T' on the beginning). They didn't even bother coming up with an original name (seriously, it doesn't take more than half a second to think of a name other than one used by an already established fake sea monster), AND they go ahead and call it Kronosaurus at the same time.

The Coastal Paleontologist is back; Field Camp, Part 1

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I'm finally back from my teaching assistantship for MSU's 2009 Geology Field Camp. It was definitely a blast, possibly even more fun than I originally thought it would be. Three flat tires, an engine running on 5 of 8 cylinders, several scrapes and bruises, a sprained ankle, and a case of Giardia and E. coli in tandem (yes, one person, simultaneously), we finally made it through the month of geological and paleontological experiences. Keep posted; I'm going to have a bunch of posts published on the site electronically while I'm on a road trip to California this week.

The first week was spent recording a 200 M measured section at Bozeman Pass, through the Cretaceous Kootenai (=Cloverly Formation), Thermopolis, and Muddy Sandstone Formations.
MSU geology students trenching through the basal sandstones of the Kootenai Formation (roughly equivalent to the infamous KK1 map unit).

MSU geology students still trenching; they've unearthed an ash bed in their trench, which is the yellow sediment.

Intraformational thrust sheets and faults (sometimes called 'horses') within the Kk2 unit of the Kootenai Formation.

Cary Woodruff ambling down a hillside of the late Eocene Renova Formation (Tr) on his crutches. He had sprained his ankle the previous week, and was assigned an alternate project: this is a famous locality of the Renova Formation, first prospected around 1900 by Earl Douglass.

Partial mammal skeleton within the Renova Formation (Tr).

A mammal bone within the Renova Formation (Tr). It is difficult to see in this photo (and it doesn't help that I forgot to add an arrow), but there are rodent gnaw marks on this bone, nearly directly above the '10' on the scalebar, right where the shadow ends on the left hand side of the bone.More intraformational thrusts within the Permian Phosphoria (Pp) Formation.

MSU students taking strike and dip on the Gastropod Limestone, otherwise known as Kk4 or the top of the Kootenai Formation. This is a laterally extensive freshwater limestone loaded with gastropods.More intraformational thrusts within Kk4.

A dinosaur bone (tibia?) within the basal conglomerate of Kk1. This bone is directly on the erosional unconformity between Kk1 and 'Jm'. 'Jm' is the Morrison Formation, famous for gigantic sauropod dinosaurs, Stegosaurus, Ceratosaurus, and Allosaurus. This bone is not likely reworked from the Morrison Fm., as the Morrison doesn't really have any fossils locally. Our professor, Dave Lageson, just calls this unit "Jim", and insists that it was named for Jim Morrison, the 'lizard king'.