El Diablo in Color

Well this took awhile, but I'm pretty happy with the results. Took about two hours, to be honest, but it was worth it. I hope Marcus appreciates this, because it took some freakin' work.

Pigs Have Flown

Well, the end of the world is neigh. I have spoken with God about the Endtimes, and He told me that, actually, armageddon is right around the corner. I asked for some sort of sign that would tell me when I should start building my subterranian city to avoid Satan's 1,000 years of rule, and God pointed me in this direction.

Among the more bizarre claims made by this institution of ignorance is that Tyrannosaurus rex, which has traditionally been interpreted as being a ferocious carnivore (or, perhaps, man-eater), was actually a gentle herbivore before the Fall of Man, at which point it started eating flesh. And, you know, one asks if Ken Ham and his cohorts are smoking crack. But no, no, there's a perfectly reasonable explaination: tyrannosaur teeth are vaguely similar to bear teeth, and bears eat plants. Sometimes. You know, they also tend to eat fish, deer, moose, goats, and people, but the Creation Museum tends to focus on the berries and vegetables.

But tyrannosaur teeth are really in no way similar to bear teeth. Superficially, a bear's canines are the same basic shape the average tyrannosaur tooth*, but otherwise bears have molars, premolars, and incizors. Teeth made for tearing and grinding. Tyrannosaurs only tore, and then just swallowed. There was no grinding. All of Tyrannosaurus' teeth were basically the same**.

*Even this isn't true. Tyrannosaur teeth are serrated and D-shaped in cross-section while a bear's canines are smooth and round in cross-section. Also, tyrannosaur teeth (and reptile teeth in general) are fairly brittle and broke easily. Dinosaur kill sites are often littered with shed teeth. Thankfully, dinosaurs continually regrew their teeth. Bears, however, have strongly-rooted, thick teeth and they only get two sets: a baby set, and an adult set (like us).

**Technically, tyrannosaurs have smaller, more tightly-packed teeth in the premaxilla and larger, more spaced out teeth in the maxilla. However, both "types" were the same overall shape. It's just that tyrannosaurs pulled meat away from bone with the premaxillary teeth and crushed bone with the maxillary teeth. This is not true heterodonty.

So at that very basic level of not being able to accept Tyrannosaurus rex's diet, the Creation Museum simply fails. Seems like they're just making stuff up as they go along (nowhere in the Bible to I remember it mentioning either Tyrannosaurus rex or that Tyrannosaurus rex was an herbivore), and so cannot possibly taken seriously. What really insults me, though, is that people are going to go to this museum and be educated. Educated incorrectly, of course, but educated nonetheless. And that's why Ken Ham is a bad, dangerous man. He knows better, yet he's peddling this lie in a glossy coat with a scientific label and big sign that says "museum." The Creation Museum is an affront to everything science and museums stand for, and I would like nothing more than to see it burn to the ground.

Actually, seeing a flood wash it away would be somehow more awesome.

More Rockin' News

More revealed Guitar Hero Encore: Rock the 80's songs. Keep in mind that all of the following songs are covers. The game now has a release date of July 17, so that's...awesome.

18 & Life (Skid Row)
Bathroom Wall (Faster Pussycat)
Lonely is the Night (Billy Squier)
Nothing but a Good Time (Poison)
Play With Me (Extreme)
Shaken (Eddie Money)
Synchronicity II (Police)

But, perhaps, even better news is of Guitar Hero 3, which will release simultaneously on all three next-gen systems as well as the PS2. All of the new guitar controllers will be wireless. The PS3, 360, and Wii systems get a Gibson Les Paul, while the PS2 gets a Gibson Kramer. How awesome is that? The game is set to release this fall (awfully quick), and here's a rundown of the currently revealed songs:

Rock & Roll All Night (KISS)
School's Out (Alice Cooper)
Slow Ride (Foghat)
Barracuda (Heart)

But wait, there's more. Those songs are covers. Here are the currently revealed actual tracks sung in studio by their actual bands. Guitar Hero 2 had Primus and Alice in Chains. Guitar Hero 3 puts that to shame:

Cult of Personality (Living Colour)
Paint it Black (Rolling Stones)
Cherub Rock (Smashing Pumpkins)
Sabotage (Beastie Boys)
The Metal (Tenacious D)
My Name is Jonas (Weezer)
Knights of Cydonia (Muse)

Yeah. All of those bands are singing their own songs. These are not bonus unlockable indie songs, these are actual freakin' tracks. You will be playing "Paint it Black" with Mick freaking Jagger. I am rock hard right now.

Marcus Garcia: El Diablo

As you are all such loyal readers, I'm sure you've seen my ancient attempts at the original blog to draw Erik as a cowboy and Dan as the Penetrator. Both drawings have ended up on their respective look-alike's Myspace pages. And now, I give you Marcus Garcia as El Diablo, the wireless Gibson player. It's obviously a draft, as I'm not a huge fan of how long the guitar's neck is--it looks more like a bass guitar. I'm not saying that a bass guitar will never make its way to a rhythm game (actually, that would kick so much ass), but I don't see El Diablo being a bassist. No, El Diablo is that lone, statutory guitarist, standing to the side or perhaps beside the lead singer, exeuding pure, unbridled narcisicsm.

So I'm workin' on this. I'd like to make his Keith Richards-esque headband a little more obvious, hidden as it currently is by Marcus' trademark tower of hair. I'm also going to change his beard, which was basically taken right from El Penetrato. Anyway, I'd like comments. If convinced to do so, I might actually color this should I find the time.

Birds--Fliers Not All

I probably should have blogged about this last year, but I honestly forgot about it until I was leafing through my papers and found Phil Senter's 2006 discussion about primitive birds and their flying abilities. Basically, Senter looks at the orientation of the scapula in relation to the ribcage in the fossil animals, kind of like in this story, and discovered that fossilization pretty well demonstrates real-life scapular orientation. In crown-group and enantiornithine fossils, the scapula sits atop the ribcage. This position, of course, lifts the glenoid up and out, so that the bird's arms "face" outward--thus allowing a flight stroke. However, fossils like Archaeopteryx, Jeholornis, and Confuciusornis have scapular blades that lie against the ribcage, angled upward, like the case in every other theropod dinosaur, including (sniff) the deinonychosaurs. The possibility of post-mortem skeletal movement is real, but it's interesting that in obviously avian fossils the scapulae are oriented in the modern manner consistently. Why would non-avian dinosaurs be more inclined to have loose scapulae?

This is fairly important, because all previous discussions of how Archaeopteryx are now moot (assuming that Senter is right). Instead, we're forced to confront the idea that Archaeopteryx, the first bird, could not actually fly. Rather, because it could not life its arms above the horizontal, it could not complete a recovery stroke and could not generate lift. Senter says that in the Ornithothoraces clade, which includes enantiornithines and neornithes, the scapula migrated up the ribcage to lay at the top of the ribs, on either side of the spinal column, allowing birds to complete a flight stroke.

Senter posits that Archaeopteryx, Confuciusornis, and Jeholornis were all gliders. And gliding does not equal flying. And yet all three of these "birds" were blessed with asymmetrical flight feathers. In a previous blog, I correlated asymmetrical feathers with flight, and flight with Aves. In this way, I was able to show that Microraptor is a bird, given its asymmetrical feathers which apparently equate flying ability. According to Phil Senter, this is not the case, and Aves may need to be rethought once again. If our definition of Aves includes the ability to achieve a recovery stroke, then a bunch of primitive forms have been kicked out. Apparently, asymmetrical feathers predated flight.

Of course, it asymmetrical feathers constitute the golden rule for defining Aves, than Archaeopteryx, Confuciusornis, Jeholornis, and the deinonychosaurs are still in the club.

P.S. I suppose the possibility exists that Archaeopteryx, Confuciusornis, Jeholornis, and deinonychosaurs constitute a sister group to the Ornithothoraces, whereupon the common ancestor of this largest group is defined as having asymmetrical feathers, but one branch (Archaeopteryx & Co.) were content to glide while the ornithothoraces developed powered flight. Exactly how close Archaeopteryx and Confusiusornis are is a matter of some debate.

Guitar Hero 80's Edition

This may be the most exciting news of the month: Activision and RedOctane are publishing their first "specialized" edition of the Guitar Hero franchise: Guitar Hero: Rock the 80's. While a full track list has yet to be released, here are the songs that have been confirmed:

Dio - "Holy Diver"

Bow Wow Wow - "I Want Candy"

Quiet Riot - "Metal Health"

Asia - "Heat of the Moment"

Ratt - "Round and Round"

Those songs will, of course, be "as made famous by" songs. However, perhaps the two best songs in the game (thus far) will be recorded by their original artists. Are you ready for this?

Flock of Seagulls - "I Ran"

Twisted Sister - "I Wanna Rock"

OH MY FREAKING GOD, MAN!

The game is on a fast-track release for sometime this summer, and will include 30 new songs, new venues, and maybe a few new characters if we're lucky. It's being penned as a PS2 exclusive, perhaps to offset the irritation that PS2 owners have toward the downloadable content for the 360. However, I wouldn't completely disregard the notion that 360 owners will get downloadable song bundles from Rock the 80's at some point. Get ready to get your rock on once again, folks!

Guanlong wucaii = Monolophosaurus jiangi?

In paleontology, ontogeny sucks. It's not always obvious whether the animal you just dug up is a valid taxon or a juvenile of previously known animal, or the reverse--what if we find an adult Scipionyx someday? Because the type material is basically a baby, how will we know what the growth curve is for that species? For all we know, the adult is already in a museum somewhere! But I digress. Usually, knowing whether something is a juvenile or not is a straightforward process. Unfused bones, a large orbit, and, in some cases, parental dependance are good markers. But what if you find a creature that seems to be a perfectly good adult? I am talking, of course, about Guanlong wucaii, currently regarded (widely) as the most primitive known tyrannosauroid. Yes, even older than Dilong paradoxus. Anyway, I read an abstract on the PDF list of last year's Society of Vertebrate Paleontology papers, and I came across one little gem that supposed that Guanlong is a juvenile of a known species: Monolophosaurus jiangi! I apologize for not remembering who the authors of this particular abstract were, however, and I haven't read anything else about the subject since. However, after studying the skulls of the two beasties, I am finding myself agreeing with their findings.

I've reproduced, as best I can, the skulls of the animals here. Atop is Guanlong, of course, and to the right is Monolophosaurus. First, a little bit of information on the latter: Monolophosaurus is generally considered an early tetanurine, though closer to allosaurs than spinosauroids. It is a Middle Jurassic carnosaur from China whose most obvious feature is the enormous crest that runs down the length of the skull, from the orbits to the premaxilla. The crest itself is made up of the premaxilla, nasals, and a little bit of lacrimal for good measure. Two accessory fenestrae penetrate the crest above the antorbital fenestrae. There is a "rosette" of teeth at the front of the dentary, kind of like the case in spinosauroids and coelophysids. It's a big-mouthed, showy predatory dinosaur that was at the top of the food chain in its time. It probably hunted Chinese sauropods (like Mamechiosaurus) and stegosaurs (Huayangosaurus) and may have had the occassional spat with Gasosaurus, a rival Chinese theropod.

Given the great disparity between skull forms in juvenile tyrannosaurs versus old adults, it's not hard to believe that Guanlong is a juvenile form of Monolophosaurus. If we consider that Jane, once considered to be Nanotyrannus, is merely a subadult tyrannosaur, then it's not surprising that we should find juvenile animals with features that, on their own, would suggest physical maturity. Guanlong's crest is made up almost entirely by the nasals. This seems unlike Monolophosaurus until you consider that perhaps the juvenile animal grew into its large crest. I find it important that, in both animals, the prefrontal bones are incredibly small and almost form an accessory to the lacrimal, which in both animals is vaguely L-shaped, and in Monolophosaurus it extends upward to meet the crest. In both animals, the naris is extremely large and moves into the crest. The squamosal is very similar in both animals, especially in how it dips inward at the base of the lacrimal to form a small hole in Monlophosaurus. Guanlong and Monolophosaurus both have a small accessory antorbital fenestrae in roughly the same position.

It's also quite telling that both animals come from the exact same geologic age and location. Indeed, they were contemporaries in life. Also, some features of Guanlong's skull may be unknown due to the fairly crushed state of the skull, while Monolophosaurus's cranium is exquisitely preserved.

So I'm fairly convinced of this unknown author's contention. I wonder if my buddy Scott could do what he did with the Psittacosaurus to Protoceratops transitional morph and do one for these two animals, just for my own curiosity.

The Chili's Bodangle

I was recently at Chili's, helping Erik celebrate his last final at UAA. During the ensuing meal, my friend asked for a form to sign up for the Chili's hockey team. Upon asking a fellow named Jorian what the team was to be titled, the server responded with "the Bodanglers." He casually mentioned that somebody has to come up with a mascot for the uniform, and Erik pointed directly to me. I shouldn't be surprised--I was responsible for the kick-ass West High Eagles swim team mascot (a picture I'll get around to posting once I find the original drawing). Erik and I came up with the concept of a "hockey-playing Pokemon" with hockey sticks for arms and skates for feet. The original drawing, which I threw out, looked terrible. The next night, at an event at the Performing Arts Center where one of my favorite humor authors, David Sedaris, read several of his pieces onstage (read his books!), I decided to abandon the hockey-stick arms and go with something a little more massive.

See, when I think of a hockey player, I think about the goalie. What defines the goalie? Padding. So the Chili's Bodangle had to be armored, at least on the arms. And he had to be quick and mean and ready to lay down the smack, because 50% of all hockey games consist of brawls. The name "Bodangle," of course derived from "bojangle," probably inspired the cat-like face (Mr. Bojangles from Austin Powers), but the satyr-like hooves are for getting around quickly on ice. The tail is there because everything has to have a tail. I'm considering adding a Ratchet-esque tuft at the end, but that's up in the air right now. Previous drawing had the Bodangle adopting a far more reserved, regal air, but such an attitude is the antithesis to the typical hockey bravado--hence, the scowl.

And you can't see it in this picture, but the front of the Bodangle's massive arms are covered in largish stoney scutes, all the better to bat pucks away with. People at Chili's have liked the Bodangle so far, but I'm expecting changes to be made (although I love this design) as time goes on. I'll report back with how the Bodangle is accepted, and I'll try and find that West Eagle, which is one of the more awesome things I've drawn.

There's No Such Thing as a "Mammal-Like Reptile"

Remember how people used to throw the word "thecodont" around to describe some generalized archosaurian ancestor of dinosaurs? The problem with the term was that it had no formal definition--it was just a loose amalgamation of archosaur taxa which had vaguely dinosaurian bauplans. The term "Ornithosuchians" was used for a little while until it was decided that ornithosuchids actually fell to the crurotarsian side of the archosaur family tree. Eventually, thanks to cladistics and common freaking sense, the word "thecodont" went out of style and was replaced by the much more accurate and exclusive name, "ornithodiran." "Ornithodira" has a formal diagnosis. You can tell if something is an ornithodir or not, but that was not the case with "thecodont." This is one of the reasons I love cladistics--it has really put the taxonomy of extinct animals into the limelight. Sure, there are times when you have an animal like Silesaurus or Dracorex where cladistics actually impedes forward momentum, but overall it's quite the system.

Anyway, there's another outdated term floating around the discourse right now: "Mammal-like reptile." The term is used to loosely describe the critters that aren't snakes, lizards, crocodiles, or Petrolacosaurus that eventually gave rise to mammals. Dimetrodon grandis (above) is an oft-cited "mammal-like reptile" that was, in truth, neither a mammal nor a reptile.

"Reptilia" is a formal clade name that includes anapsids and diapsids. The group is defined by features of the skull, mainly, and exactly how many holes are in said skull, and how those holes are arranged. After a long evolutionary history, anapsids are only now represented by turtles, which are themselves a very ancient group of anapsids. Diapsids include lizards, snakes, tuataras, crocodiles, plesiosaurs, non-avian dinosaurs, pterosaurs, Arizonasaurus, birds, and a bunch of other groups. The point is that both the small anapsid group and the huge diapsid group are reptiles. "Mammal-like reptiles" have nothing to do with reptiles.

You see, Timmy, when tetrapods conquered the land and abandoned the water, they became amniotes. Amniotes then split into two main factions--the reptiles, which focused on adaptability, and the synapsids, which focused on...um...their teeth. Both groups layed leathery eggs, and both groups had scaly skin. So why wouldn't they both be called reptiles? Because true reptiles modified their skulls in one way, and synapsids modified their skulls in a different way. So we can diagnose a fossil animal as either synapsid or reptile by looking at its skull. It's an ancient division, and it's the whole reason those labels exist in the first place.

So when people say "mammal-like reptile," what they really mean is "lower-tier synapsid." I'm not an expert on synapsid taxonomy, but I know that "reptile" never shows up in the formal clade definitions. Think about it this way: the word "synapsid" is the equivalent of saying "reptile," but on the mammal side of things. Mammals are synapsids, just like archosaurs are reptiles. It's not hard.

Now stop saying "mammal-like reptile."