One Last Meme, For the Road...

What? No paleo posts? No, dear reader, Brian Switek has again tagged to for a meme. This one is interesting, though (aren't they all?). It's animal-related, and it gives me an excuse to post pictures of all my pets! We'll start with Sable, our Heinz-57 mutt of a dog. Everybody has an opinion on what breed(s) she is, and German Shepard is always one of the possibilities. Gina (my wife) is convinced that she has some Alaskan Malamute in her, but who knows. She never barks or whines, but she loves getting into the trash and taking walks. She's very submissive, though, and likes ear scratches. We've had Sable for three years, I think.

What is the most interesting animal you've had?

My cute little leopard geckos! Despite being a tad blurry, this picture is better than the "top-down" view of the alternative, because it shows their bulk better. Solid is trying crawl out, Liquid is heading in his direction, and Mr. Fat still hasn't figured out that I put him in a tubberware. Mr. Fat is ten years old, and his original companion, Little Gecko, died at the tender age of five (he had backwards elbows). After I graduated from college and my wife and I moved into a two-bedroom apartment, Mr. Fat left my parent's house, and I got him a colleague, Baby. Baby turned out to be defective, as he grew scale over his eyes and never grew. Also, Catsby (see below) got ahold of him, so he didn't last long.

Luckily, leopard geckos went on sale a few weeks later at PetCo, and I hand-picked Solid and Liquid, who are just a year old and have already gotten as large as Mr. Fat. The two youngsters haven't become fat enough to become as lethargic as Mr. Fat, so they're a bit more difficult to handle. Still, all three of them are endlessly entertaining, and they all have very distinct personalities. Leopards can live 20+ years, too, so they'll be with me for awhile!

An interesting animal I ate:

Well, like Julia, I've eaten frog legs. That's about as adventurous I get, though. She's right--they taste like chicken legs. I guess I ate crawfish one time, by accident, because they were in a very yummy batch of gumbo. Crawfish taste like shrimp, really, but they're bigger. Generally, if something doesn't look mouth-wateringly delicious to me, I don't remember it later. The picture above, however, is my pet Jackson Chameleon, Eldridge. It's difficult to get a clear photo of such a small beastie, but don't let his miniscule looks fool you--the little bugger's strong! He will grab onto my finger with such determination that even being upside-down will not intimidate him. While charming, this can also be frustrating, especially when trying to put Eldridge back in his terrarium. He's very picky about his footholds, and it takes him several minutes to determine whether his new landing spot is sufficient or not. He is apparently a small breed of Jackson, so he'll double in size in the next year and that'll be it.

I had another Jackson, a full-size big old adult named Darwin (see now where "Eldridge" comes from?) who was irritable and fussy. I got him when he was an adult, and he lived with me for two or so years. I like chameleons--they are endlessly fascinating!

An interesting animal in a museum:

Haven't been to Tyrrell in several years--otherwise I'd name something off that list. I guess I'll go with the Herrerasaurus mount at the Chicago Field Museum. I like it more than Sue, because I've seen Sue three times and, frankly, I don't like the mount. But the Herrerasaurus mount is great because it meets you at the front of the dinosaur hall. There's the skeleton, and then a life model behind it. I didn't realize until I saw the skeleton first-hand how large Herrerasaurus was, so that was neat. I also like their new Buitreraptor skeleton, although it's quite fragmentary. It's standing under a big Deinonychus mount which looks a lot different, now that I think about it, from the picture Brian posted awhile back. It's an older cast, with a more sloped forehead. Old-school Deinonychus. Okay, there was also an awesome Majungatholus skull, and I didn't realize how small that abelisaur is. So that's my overly-long answer.

Above, we have Catsby, our first cat. Her name stems not immediately from The Great Gatsby, but instead from Penny Arcade where, once a year, Gabe draws a Twisp & Catsby cartoon which is devilishly abstract and funny. Catsby in Penny Arcade is named after Gatsby, so it works itself out. Catsby is the most laid-back cat I've ever known. Whereas most cats try to claw at you when you pet their bellies, Catsby could care less. She likes pets anywhere, and she also likes licking you to death. She's obnoxiously vocal, especially when she knows it's dinnertime, and she has this wierd tail twitch when she's anxious about something.

We've had Catsby for probably two years, and she's the perfect cat for us. She and Sable have an understanding--if Catsby must, for some reason, pass in front of Sable, Sable will look away or else get hissed at. It is wonderfully funny how submissive Sable is to little Catsby, especially considering that our big 80-pound dog could eat Catsby if she so chose. Catsby now has an arch-enemy, however.

An interesting thing you did with or to an animal:

Alright, this is easy: I dissected a magpie with dental tools. Magpies are of the corvid family and are very pretty birds. They are mostly a blackish blue with a white underbelly. They're real squackers, and they get their name from their distinctive three-beat call: "Mag-mag-mag." Magpies are also quite intelligent and make food caches and torture my parent's golden retriever (oooh, so close, you dumb dog! Ha-ha-ha!). Anyway, one time my mom found a dead magpie in the backyard, and asked if I wanted it. HELL YES! I planned on gutting it, cleaning the bones, and mounting the tiny little skeleton for a bird exhibit at the Alaska Museum of Natural History. I took the corpse back to my first apartment along with some dental tools from my dad's workshop and began a-pluckin'.

Dissecting a magpie is not easy. The bones are very thin and brittle, and if you pull a piece of meat away too hard or at the wrong angle, you'll snap the bone. After I've succeeded in getting the majority of the meat and feathers off of one side of the bird, and all the internal organs out, I noticed the next day that grubs were writhing in the creature's ribcage. I washed the thing out with a dental pick and elected to take the dead magpie to my parent's backyard, where carnivorous insects would surely pick the bones clean for me.

Well, they did, but the midday sun ruined the experience. The next day, the sunny-side up half of the magpie was cracked and dried. It was like magpie beef jerky. The grass-down side, though, was goopy and rotting. So much for that plan--the magpie went in the trash can that day. However, before this project, I had successfully taken a meaty timber wolf head and baked pig cranium and make them both into museum-quality skulls. It took some work (water picks work great for getting rid of brains!), but I'm very proud of those two skulls.

Catsby's nemesis is Gizmo, above. We've had Gizmo for a week now, and the two simply don't get along. This is funny, because Gizmo could care less about Sable, but Catsby makes her back stand straight up. Both cats are very aggressive toward one another, and you can always tell when they're in the same room because Gizmo will start growling and Catsby will be whipping her tail around, ready to strike. Today, while at work, Gizmo somehow managed to knock down the child-proof (but not cat-proof) gate which was quarentining her in the office, but somehow she and Catsby hadn't killed each other. I suppose this is a good thing. I love Gizmo, and she's a very different cat--she doesn't meow (or even mew), she doesn't like belly rubs, and she headbutts things. Like, seriously, she comes toward you head-first like some kind of pachycephalocat.

An interesting animal in its natural habitat:

I could sit and watch moose all day. We have giant, McLarge-Huge moose up here, and in fact an enormous bull with a huge rack of antlers was wandering our streets two nights ago. Moose who frequent neighborhoods are generally used to people and dogs, but you don't want to provoke them, so I find it best to take a different route when faced with a moose near the road. I also love watching bears, but seeing a bear is incredibly rare in Anchorage. You have to go to Kodiak for that. But my favorite? I guess I like watching waterbirds the best. We get lots of ducks and geese up here, and grebes. The way they all interact is very funny, and they're just so pretty. I'll say waterbirds.

I'll take...um...Will, Sarda, Matt, and Ann-Marie from here.

Wish Me Luck!

Apparently, one cannot simply start up a ScienceBlog. Rather, one must appeal to an unseen committee, who will review your current blog and get back to you at a later date. This is a positive process, I am convinced, as it effectively screens potential zealots and other crazy people. I have sent that mysterious panel a pleading, so wish me luck, dear readers!

8 Random Facts About Me

I blame Laelaps for this one. Curse you, Switek, and your infectious memes!

1) My favorite comic artist is Frank Cho, who is best known for his Liberty Meadows and University Squared comics. Cho has recently been hired by Marvel, and is now probably the best artist they have. He's doing an Avengers run right now, overseeing Jungle Girl, and capped off a seven-issue miniseries of Shanna: The She-Devil last year. The man is amazingly talented and brings together my two passions: Dinosaurs and pin-up style women. Except for Shanna, I don't buy any of his Marvel work because I don't support Marvel (or DC) for reasons I won't go into here.

2) Speaking of comics, I am of the opinion that newspaper dailies are wastes of time. After Bloom County, Calvin & Hobbes and The Far Side left, there's just been this enormous chasm where intelligent, thought-provoking commentary no longer lives. Instead, we have jokey drama in For Better or For Worse, lack of effort in Garfield, LuAnn, and FoxTrot, and comics that shouldn't be running anymore, like Beetle Baily, Peanuts, and B.C. And they're all bad. And another thing--I hate Peanuts. It's not funny, and all the characters are depressing. Maybe it was funny back in the 1940's, but it's just not relevant today. And yet, despite the death of its author, Peanuts still runs via syndication in many, many newspapers, including mine. Makes me sick, and I haven't read the funnies in almost a year.

3) Although I'm a paleo-artist by trade, I still attempt, from time to time, to draw what I really want to draw: people. Humans are devilishly difficult to get right no thanks to our expressive faces and bizarre anatomy. Once you've dedicated yourself to quadrapeds, humans become hopelessly contrary to what you're used to. Scott Elyard (of Coherent Lighthouse fame) keeps telling me I need to draw from life, and I really should, because I have plenty of figurines around my house. The ultimate goal would be to write and draw my own comic book. Not publish or anything--just print it on nice paper to have, to say I did it. But life continually gets in the way.

4) I am in the process of writing a book. After two years, I am still in the brainstorming stage. It's going to be about dinosaurs, of course, but I'm having trouble identifying my audience and the goal of the hypothetical book. I'd love to do something about feathered dinosaurs and the transition from paravian to bird, seeing as that's my specialty, but I'm having trouble getting started. I'd also be illustrating the thing myself. Hmm...perhaps an edited volume. All of my paleo-blogger friends could contribute a chapter. Whadda ya say? :-D

5) I am a fairly hardcore gamer, and I am perfectly willing to admit that gaming often gets in the way of perhaps more useful things, like book-writing and comic-drawing. But dammit, I just get so much enjoyment out of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption that I'm nowhere near ready to give up that hobby. I am proud to say that I have a PS2, Wii, SNES, and Dreamcast hooked up to my 37" flatscreen, while a Nintendo DS Lite and PSP Slim are in a tupperware nearby. I sold my NES SP (a GBA model) a few weeks ago because the lithium ion battery was beginning to die, and I'll have to get another one of those if I want to play Kirby's Pinball Land and Link's Awakening again. See, it wouldn't be so bad if the DS played old Game Boy games, but that's not the case--it only plays GBA games, and I've kept a lot of old Game Boy games because they're so damn fun. So I'll have to get another GBA someday. In fact, now that I think about it, I'm gonna have to get a new compartmentalized shelving unit for my systems, because there are cords everywhere, which bugs me, and I'll need an input switcher because I'm running low on console input ports on the TV.

6) I like watching TV on DVD more than on TV. Part of this is because I hate watching commercials and I can't afford TiVo, but also it helps the continuity. Heroes is much more enjoyable when you can watch it episode-to-episode instead of week-to-week. My wife and I have gone through many a TV show on DVD including Sopranos, 30 Rock, Heroes, Desperate Housewives (well, she watched that one), Girls Next Door, and The Office. I very rarely buy TV shows on DVD, though, although because I'm such a huge Seinfeld fan (I have an autographed original script), I have to buy all the seasons of that show.

7) I think that scientific journals should offer free PDF's of all their articles. Scientific discovery is meant for everyone, not just people with fat wallets. Alaska has very few print resources when it comes to science (and especially paleo), and $30+ for an online five-page description of a new sauropod sems a little steep. BioOne is my new nemesis, as they conglomerate several scientific journals under one costly roof. In this instance I must thank all my blogger friends who send me articles when I beg for them. Without you guys, I would not be nearly as up-to-speed as I am today. Special thanks especially to Brian, Julia, Manabu, and Darren, who all feed my obsession on a regular basis.

8) Scott, his friends Brian and Raven, and I are all finishing up a Tyrannosaurus rex skull cast this weekend, and I'm going to take pictures of it. We've been working on the stupid thing for almost a year, volunteering every Saturday at the Alaska Museum of Natural History. The cast was essentially free from Treasures of the Earth--the AMNH just had to pay for shipping. Anyway, when the hollow, fiberglass monster was unpacked, it was a dull grey and displayed what appeared to be a botched casting job, as the seam produced a prominant "lip" along the left maxilla. There was also a problem with foam which I won't go into here, lest I collapse in a fit of tears and fury from the thought of that arduous period. At any rate, a huge portion of the skull was refinished by Brian and Raven, who are wise in the ways of model-making. The base coat (black) was applied last Saturday, and we'll finish up with a brown coat and some multi-color highlights this coming Saturday. And then we'll be done, and it shall be glorious.

The Inevitable Move to ScienceBlogs

It will happen sooner rather than later. I'm really starting to feel actual hatred toward eBlogger, because every freaking time I post something, there are spacing issues. I don't know why. When I'm editing the post itself, I fix all the spacing issues--sometimes many times. But then I click "Publish Post," and the whole thing goes to hell, influenced by some unseen force. Be on lookout for a new ScienceBlogs post (with a new title...I'm open to suggestions) within the next months.

Greg Paul Was Right...AGAIN!

I mean, Predatory Dinosaurs of the World was published in 1988, and back then, Greg Paul was illustrating his raptor dinosaurs with feathers. Extensive feathers. This is just another instance of the man knowing the Theropoda better than most professional paleontologists. Just for fun, here are some more Greg Paul theories put forth in Predatory Dinosaurs that were later proven absolutely freaking correct:
1) Spinosaurus and Baryonyx form a monophyletic clade.
2) Spinosaurus is not a big allosaur, and was not related to Acrocanthosaurus.
3) Archaeopteryx has a hyperextendable second toe.
4) Birds, dromaeosaurs, and troodontids form a monophyletic clade (now known as Paraves).
5) Carnotaurus is a big ceratosaur.
6) Ceratosaurus and Coelophysis shared a recent common ancestor.
7) Some higher theropods were arboreal.
8) Many theropods, including dromaeosaurs, troodontids, and higher tetanurines had feathers.

And, just to balance things out, here are a few things he was wrong about. In 1988.

1) Tyrannosaurs evolved from allosaurs (he still alludes to this in 2003's Dinosaurs of the Air)
2) Deinonychus and Velociraptor are cogeneric.
3) Therizinosaurs were incredibly derived, late-surviving prosauropods.

Pretty good balance in favor of "this guy is right a lot." Anyway, I bring this up because in today's issue of Science, Turner, Makovicky & Norell announced that Velociraptor mongolensis, which is actually one of the smallest core group dromaeosaurs, had feathers. They came to this conclusion after studying a single well-preserved ulnar bone, which retains feather quill knobs. In modern birds, quill knobs line the ulnar bones and serve to attach the large secondary feathers and greater secondary coverts to the ulna itself with the help of follicular ligaments. That is, the quills don't erupt from the bone, but the secondary feather follicles are very deep, ensuring their rigidity. This is actually nothing compared to primary feathers, which grow from the crest of the 2nd finger over the 3rd finger. The entire primary quill is covered by a thick web of skin. You can't pull a bird's primaries off without damaging the manual bones.

Anyway, that's not the point. The authors suppose that, given the amount of quill knobs preserved (6) and the spacing of individual knobs, Velociraptor probably had 14 secondary feathers. Archaeopteryx has around 12, and Microraptor may have had 18. This may seem like a large range in feather count, but feather growth is not set in stone like, say, number of cervical vertebrae (which isn't either, but...you see what I mean). Even within a single species of living bird, there is variation in the number of secondary feathers.

The authors close the short paper by noting that: "An examination of the living families of birds shows a significant correlation between the absence of ulnar papillae and the loss and/or reduction in volancy, even though some strong flyers lack papillae. This raises the possibility that ulnar papillar reduction or absence in large-bodied derived dromaeosaurids reflects loss of aerodynamic capabilities from the clade's ancestral members." What this basically means is that, in extent birds, the reduction and loss of quill knobs is often correlated with a reduced flight performance. The fact that Velociraptor still has quill knobs (and a lot of them) suggests that its immediate ancestors could fly to some degree, although Velociraptor itself was clearly flightless.
So, actually, that means Greg Paul is right about one more thing, from his more recent Dinosaurs of the Air: Deinonychosaurs are secondarily flightless. And thus, we may be able to replace the "Paraves" label with "Aves" and call it good. We can think of Velociraptor, Troodon, and all the little deinonychosaurs in between as the first flightless birds!

Mah-hah-KAH-lah OM-no-GO-vay

Just yesterday, a new primitive dromaeosauroid was announced in that finest of scientific journals, Science. This tiny little terror, Mahakala omnogovae, is a Mongolian addition to the Dromaeosauridae, as well as its basalmost member. It seems to have just as many anatomical features in common with primitive birds and primitive troodontids as dromaeosaurs. It's position among the fearsome raptor dinosaurs is solidified only thanks to its foot morphology, in which the distal (far) end of metatarsal II is composed of an asymmetrical ginglymoid articular surface, and phalanx II-2 (the raptorial toe) has a well-developed proximal (near) heel and hypertrophied ginglymoid trochlea (for movin' that big ol' claw). Had a partial foot not been unearthed, we would know Mahakala omnogovae only as a primitive paravian.

In fact, Mahakala mixes features found in primitive troodontids like Mei and Sinovenator, primitive birds like Yixianornis, Archaeopteryx, and Jeholornis, and both groups of dromaeosauroids, that is, the Eurasian velociraptorines and the Gondwanna unenlagiians. Such a mix of characters speaks to the fact that, not only is Mahakala a step or two away from the original paravian, but also that the three groups (avialans, troodontids, dromaeosaurs) are very closely related. Many of Mahakala's anatomical features, such as lack of antiliac shelf, presence of a large semilunate carpal, and concave calcaneum, are plesiomorphic for Paraves.

The most interesting aspect of Mahakala's anatomy, however, is its miniscule size. At an estimated 70 cm long, the little raptor is about the same size as Mei long and the largest Archaeopteryx specimens. It's smaller even than Microraptor. This means that small body size is ancestral to Paraves. This renders moot any questions of how these big mean theropod dinosaurs shrunk down to reach a size that would facilitate flight. It's actually the other way around: how or why did such small animals (the authors estimate that the "original" members of each family would have been 64-70 cm long and weighed between 600 and 700 grams) reach such large sizes not once but four times?

Four times? Well, it happened once in the Troodontidae. All of the later members of the family, including Troodon, Byronosaurus, and Saurornithoides were huge by comparison to their theoretical ancestor. Among the dromaeosaurs, a significant size increase occurred three more times. Among the unenlagiians, it occurred once, with Unenlagia. Among the velociraptorines, it occurred once, with Deinonychus. Among the dromaeosaurines, it occurred again with Utahraptor and Achillobator. But even those genera are among the giants for their larger families. Even Velociraptor, at a whopping four feet long, could snatch up Mahakala for lunch. Cope's Rule was alive and well even among the paravians.

The authors of Mahakala's description, at the end of the paper, imply that the ancestor of Paraves must have, itself, shrunk from some previous larger ancestor among the maniraptorans. I disagree on this point, and believe that perhaps the Maniraptora is far older than we commonly think. It is entirely possible that the Maniraptora is nearly as old as the Eutheropoda itself, and that theropods diversified incredibly quickly during the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic. Why would a large lineage shrink at all, only to get big again? In my mind, it would make more sense to say that the ancestral theropod was quite small, and that small theropods were diverse throughout the Mesozoic. Now, there is, of course, a strong preservation bias against small animals, especially theropods (what with their excavated bones). But a preservation bias does not mean that these animals did not exist. Just like there are small mammals today, one would think there were small dinosaurs, too.

Turner, A. H., Pol, D., Clarke, J. A., Erickson, G. M & Norell, M. A. (2007). A Basal Dromaeosaurid and Size Evolution Preceding Avian Flight. Science (317): 1378-1381.

P.S. I drew that picture. The short arms are apparently diagnostic of the taxon. Being a 3D fossil, feathers are not know, but the fact that avialans had 'em (Archaeopteryx), troodontids had 'em (Jinfengopteryx), and, of course, other dromaeosaurs had 'em (Microraptor) means that Makahala would have been similarly adorned. The skull is virtually unknown save the braincase, and frontals, which show evidence of large eyes. The tibia/fibula is probably too long but hey--I whipped this drawing out in like 45 minutes just for this blog. It's all you get! :-)

Der Boneyardenhausensteinen

It is with great honor and I bring you The Boneyard #4! Brian Switek's much beloved blog carnival comes to When Pigs Fly Returns, and I aim to please. So without further ado, I give to you...the submissions:

The big paleo news this week was a paper by Sellers & Manning which uses computer models to estimate running speeds for various theropod dinosaurs. The biggest surprise is that Compsognathus, that smallest of Jurassic tetanurines, somehow manages to outpace us all at 40 mph. I'm skeptical, sure, but it's a good read nonetheless!

Sellers, W. I. & Manning, P. L. (2007) Estimating Dinosaur Maximum Running Speeds Using Evolutionary Robotics Proceedings of the Royal Society B: published online.

Julia Heathcote, that most ethical of paleontologists, has a nice little reaction to the article at Faster Dinosaur! Kill! Kill! She also has a fairly tongue-in-cheeck rundown of some famous songs involving everyone's favorite Mesozoic ornithodirs: Songs About Dinosaurs

Julia's husband's uncle has also posted his take on dinosaur running speeds and dinosaur intelligence. They're quite funny and hey, he brings up some good points!

Will Baird promises an excellent post about the little known Late Triassic mass extinction which arguably paved the way for the dinosaurs to take over and wiped therapsids off the planet. They will be missed! Head over to The Dragon's Tales for more.

Laelaps has two excellent posts this week. First he discusses a little known l carnivore with the wierdest dentition I've ever seen. That would be Thylacoleo carnifex, a critter I would not want to mess with. Laelaps also wrote this week about the downright laughable Aquatic Ape Hypothesis. I encourage everyone to check it out, as it's not only entertaining, but I use the term "sizeable swellings" on an almost daily basis now.

Pondering Pikaia has a wonderful, if brief, post about potential problems in sequencing a neanderthal genome. I wasn't even aware of this story, so kudos to Anne-Marie for pointing it out.

Over at Everything Dinosaur, there's a report of the oldest orchid fossils found preserved in amber--on an ancient bumblebee! Now if that's not direct evidence for active pollination by insects, I don't know what is. Head over to Everything Dinosaur for the whole story.

I know his latest post is a month old, but Mark Witton has obviously had pterosaurs on the brain lately. Click that link for some beautiful pictures and more information on some of the stranger species than you ever thought was out there.

Finally, I've prepared my own epic post about pterosaurs and their murky origins. Just scroll down for that giant post, and I apologize for the spacing issues. I'm probably going to add to the post tonight, as I forgot to mention Rupert Wild's theory about pterosaur evolution, which is just as good today as it was in the early 1900's.

Many thanks to Brian (Laelaps) for letting me host the Boneyard this week!