Although Paul Olsen is running the CPCP project, someone decided that Spencer Lucas should host the CPCP meeting at the NMMNHS, an interesting choice to be sure. To his credit, Spencer was extremely personable. During the talks, he made frequent comments and interjections (I think he even asked a couple questions), which were always calmly and politely stated. Although there was much disagreement at various stages of the conference regarding his opinions, his responses were extremely civil. He did not ask any questions regarding my presentation cutting up his lithostratigraphic correlations within the park, although he did energetically scribble down notes.
I had not really planned to directly interact with Lucas on any level during the course of the meeting. However, he came up to me as people were just arriving on the first day, said hello, and stuck out his hand. I had heard much of Lucas’ legendary charm but had never experienced its full blast first-hand. I was duly impressed. Raw niceness radiated off of him as though from a living ray of sunshine. It is impossible to refuse to shake hands under such conditions without creating a rift in the fabric of space-time. He asked me kindly how things were going, and I answered; still at the park, job-hunting, etc…
What an affable guy! I was immediately self-conscious about seeming rude. Had I written anything particularly nasty about Spencer recently? Think! Think! No, I realized; my last blog was on the federal deficit, which I likened to a rabid dog which acts friendly to people’s faces while planning to bite them in the back. I felt relieved. Lucas forgot to say hello to Bill, which was probably just an oversight.
He was super nice, honestly.
Next: Why We Need Core
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Three Days In New Mexico, Part 1: I Wonder Who Reviewed The Typothorax Paper?
Bill and I were in Albuquerque this weekend for the second meeting of the Colorado Plateau Coring Project. The CPCP is a project spearheaded by Paul Olsen to drill for cores from the Colorado Plateau (the current focus is early Mesozoic strata). Amongst other opportunities, this trip also afforded to opportunity to get a peek at a couple Typothorax specimens on display in the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.
The aetosaur Typothorax coccinarum is of obvious personal interest to me, having been the subject of my master’s thesis (Martz, 2002). I described the material collected by Charles Camp from Canjilon Quarry in the Petrified Forest Member of northern New Mexico, which consisted of disarticulated but associated skeletal material (mostly osteoderms). I figured out, as best I could, which regions of the body particular osteoderms came from by using patterns of variation in articulated carapaces of other aetosaur taxa. Bill and I refer to this as “positional analysis," which Rob Long and Karen Ballew began in their landmark 1985 paper, but which I fleshed out a bit for Typothorax.
The New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science has excavated TWO articulated Typothorax skeletons from the Bull Canyon Formation of New Mexico. The first (which was briefly described by Hunt et al. in the 1993 Global Triassic volume) was accidently destroyed while being molded, but they were able to get one good pull off the mold which was used to make the bronze on display in the Triassic hall at the NMMNHS.
The second specimen was recovered more recently. Although not as complete as the first specimen, it was highlighted in a recent newspaper article in which peculiar spikey osteoderms on the underside of the tail were speculated to represent “claspers.” This specimen is currently on display in the NMMNHS, and a description is allegedly in press. Neither Bill nor I remember being asked to review the manuscript, which is a little odd since we are sometimes considered “experts” on the subject of aetosaurs.
Anyway, it is a fairly impressive specimen. I’m not going to discuss the specimen as it is still unpublished, but I retract my suggestion on Bill’s blog that the spiky osteoderms are misplaced caudal lateral osteoderms; these are clearly right where they ought to be, and the “claspers” are clearly osteoderms on the ventral side of the tail, as alleged by the authors quoted in the article. I look forward to seeing the description, since it will be a while yet before I get around to publishing a detailed description of the Canjilon material. Both NMMNHS specimens will prove invaluable for testing my positioning of osteoderms, and for clarifying the position of weird osteoderms whose positions I could only speculate upon.
Since Bill has been delinquent on posting my life reconstructions of the Chinle fauna, here is Typothorax. It took me about three tries to do a life reconstruction that worked, for reasons I’ll discuss when the paper on the NMMNHS paper comes out.
Naturally, I fully expect that any observations I made in my thesis which were not previously published will be credited to ME, and I can get extremely unpleasant when this expectation is not met.
Next: Spencer Was Like An Angel
The aetosaur Typothorax coccinarum is of obvious personal interest to me, having been the subject of my master’s thesis (Martz, 2002). I described the material collected by Charles Camp from Canjilon Quarry in the Petrified Forest Member of northern New Mexico, which consisted of disarticulated but associated skeletal material (mostly osteoderms). I figured out, as best I could, which regions of the body particular osteoderms came from by using patterns of variation in articulated carapaces of other aetosaur taxa. Bill and I refer to this as “positional analysis," which Rob Long and Karen Ballew began in their landmark 1985 paper, but which I fleshed out a bit for Typothorax.
The New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science has excavated TWO articulated Typothorax skeletons from the Bull Canyon Formation of New Mexico. The first (which was briefly described by Hunt et al. in the 1993 Global Triassic volume) was accidently destroyed while being molded, but they were able to get one good pull off the mold which was used to make the bronze on display in the Triassic hall at the NMMNHS.
The second specimen was recovered more recently. Although not as complete as the first specimen, it was highlighted in a recent newspaper article in which peculiar spikey osteoderms on the underside of the tail were speculated to represent “claspers.” This specimen is currently on display in the NMMNHS, and a description is allegedly in press. Neither Bill nor I remember being asked to review the manuscript, which is a little odd since we are sometimes considered “experts” on the subject of aetosaurs.
 |
| From Paleo Errata |
Anyway, it is a fairly impressive specimen. I’m not going to discuss the specimen as it is still unpublished, but I retract my suggestion on Bill’s blog that the spiky osteoderms are misplaced caudal lateral osteoderms; these are clearly right where they ought to be, and the “claspers” are clearly osteoderms on the ventral side of the tail, as alleged by the authors quoted in the article. I look forward to seeing the description, since it will be a while yet before I get around to publishing a detailed description of the Canjilon material. Both NMMNHS specimens will prove invaluable for testing my positioning of osteoderms, and for clarifying the position of weird osteoderms whose positions I could only speculate upon.
Since Bill has been delinquent on posting my life reconstructions of the Chinle fauna, here is Typothorax. It took me about three tries to do a life reconstruction that worked, for reasons I’ll discuss when the paper on the NMMNHS paper comes out.
 |
| From Paleo Errata |
Next: Spencer Was Like An Angel
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
We Like Janet
Rabid stray dogs. They are a problem but not the REAL problem. I was just thinking about this today.
Let's say a stray dog is in the habit of getting out of its owner's yard and running around the neighborhood, biting people and shitting on their lawns. It has been doing this for years. Perhaps as long as you have been living in this neighborhood, fifteen years or so, you have been hearing about this goddamned dog and what a nuisance it is. The worst-kept secret in the neighborhood, and yet somehow, when hearing about what the dog has done lately, people are always...SO SHOCKED!
The dog is friendly enough to people's faces. It runs around, cheerful and playful. It has a certain superficial charm, enough that people who would know better can turn a blind eye when in bites people in the back, really hard. So irascible, ha ha!
Besides, the neighbors are scared of the dog. They want to stay friends with it and its owners so that they can play in its yard. Its really big, not quite perfectly rectangular yard. Lots of good bones buried in there. Who gives a shit if it bites the occasional kid?
If you love this neighborhood, and believe in a strong, safe, and supportive community, you would be upset, I expect. Nonetheless, why waste energy getting angry at the dog? It is just a dog after all, sick and fucked in the head. It does what it in its nature.
However, if the owner of the dog repeatedly allows this to happen, if your fellow neighbors fail to complain to the owner or the police because they are, I don't know, dickless wonders who are afraid of the dog or its owners, or if the police refuse to do anything about the problem, or even admit that the problem exists...THEN you have reason to be consumed by incendiary rage, right? The system is broken.
The dog isn't the fucking problem, but the moral cowardice by the folks who could have made a difference is sickening, and not the sort of thing you forget, ever. You expected better.
And now the neighbors have all gone inside and pulled down the blinds. Stop asking about the dog. Please stop asking about the dog. You raised the subject of the dog at the last community meeting and got a lively discussion out of it. Isn't that enough?
Aetogate? Right, sorry. Unrelated subject.
Yeah, anyway, Janet Stemwedel wrote a really nice blog. We really like her.
LNJ
Let's say a stray dog is in the habit of getting out of its owner's yard and running around the neighborhood, biting people and shitting on their lawns. It has been doing this for years. Perhaps as long as you have been living in this neighborhood, fifteen years or so, you have been hearing about this goddamned dog and what a nuisance it is. The worst-kept secret in the neighborhood, and yet somehow, when hearing about what the dog has done lately, people are always...SO SHOCKED!
The dog is friendly enough to people's faces. It runs around, cheerful and playful. It has a certain superficial charm, enough that people who would know better can turn a blind eye when in bites people in the back, really hard. So irascible, ha ha!
Besides, the neighbors are scared of the dog. They want to stay friends with it and its owners so that they can play in its yard. Its really big, not quite perfectly rectangular yard. Lots of good bones buried in there. Who gives a shit if it bites the occasional kid?
If you love this neighborhood, and believe in a strong, safe, and supportive community, you would be upset, I expect. Nonetheless, why waste energy getting angry at the dog? It is just a dog after all, sick and fucked in the head. It does what it in its nature.
However, if the owner of the dog repeatedly allows this to happen, if your fellow neighbors fail to complain to the owner or the police because they are, I don't know, dickless wonders who are afraid of the dog or its owners, or if the police refuse to do anything about the problem, or even admit that the problem exists...THEN you have reason to be consumed by incendiary rage, right? The system is broken.
The dog isn't the fucking problem, but the moral cowardice by the folks who could have made a difference is sickening, and not the sort of thing you forget, ever. You expected better.
And now the neighbors have all gone inside and pulled down the blinds. Stop asking about the dog. Please stop asking about the dog. You raised the subject of the dog at the last community meeting and got a lively discussion out of it. Isn't that enough?
Aetogate? Right, sorry. Unrelated subject.
Yeah, anyway, Janet Stemwedel wrote a really nice blog. We really like her.
LNJ
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