The Boneyard XI

The Boneyard? It's back! Laelaps' premier blog carnival makes its second appearance on my humble blog, and more than a month has passed since its last iteration. Here now, dear readers, are this edition's submissions!

The big news this last month was Indohyus, a new basal artidactyl that forms a sister group to whales. Several bloggers put their thoughts to keyboard. Of course, Brian starts thing off nicely as he shakes the cetacean family tree. The Hairy Museum of Natural History also chimed in, as did Pondering Pikaia, The Loom, Greg Laden's Blog, and of course, When Pigs Fly Returns.

Amanda from Self-Designed Student has some excellent offerings this time around, including a beautiful Triceratops painting and a cautionary tale about the Irish Elk, which is neither Irish or an elk.

Julia, that most Ethical of Palaeontologists, has some fine posts up this month. There's the funny, but also sad question about Carcharodontosaurus, some humorous dinosaur misconceptions, and a "Merry Christmas" via giant freaking rat.

My buddy Darren Naish has taken a break from anurans lately to focus on...well, salamanders. I sense a new series! There were also those those two posts about caecilians, the strangest living amphibians of all. He also dissects claims that pterosaurs are alive and kicking. Rubbish, I know. But perhaps his most entertaining posts have been the castration of a terrible book, How (not) to Keep Dinosaurs, and then, perhaps, how to really keep dinosaurs.

Speaking of pterosaurs, you'd all do well to check out David Hone's entertaining pterosaur-related blog, in which Dave does a whole lot of good-natured ribbing, but you'll learn more than you care to about pterosaur, archosaurs, and the world of paleo publication that you ever did before! And ask questions, because he eagerly answers them!

If paleo isn't your thing, Christopher Taylor has blessed us with Circus of the Spineless a blog carnival dedicated to invertebrates in all their glory. He also has a great post about the perils of modern taxonomy.

Will Baird gives us the low-down on Cretaceous glaciation. There's also a teaser for a post that will never come to fruition! Politics are great, Will, but get back to the paleo!

Manabu Sakamoto guides us through the process of drawing a gorgeous Allosaurus fragilis. Nicely done, Manabu. Wish I had those mad skillz.

Phew. If I type target=_blank>one more time I'm going to kill somebody! But I must press on!

My own offerings are quite meager this month. I was stuck in Kansas for two weeks without access to a scanner, so I wasn't very motivated to do some big uber-post. But I do have one or two posts of note. Mike Skrepnick and I had a discussion about restoring dinosaurs. I offered my opinion on the Stygimoloch, Pachycephalosaurus, Dracorex debate, and I wrote about what I do and do not want to see in the inevitable Jurassic Park 4: Dinosaurmaggedon.

And then we get to the Boneyard's founder. The man has way too much time on his hands, because he makes all of us paleo-bloggers look like lazy bums ever week! Despite this, his writing style is sharp, entertaining, often witty, and always enlightening. It's difficult to pick just a few key posts from all of Brian Switek's lovely prose, but I'll give it a shot.

We all like spinosaurs, right? Well, is that crocodile analogue worth its weight in fish? turns out, it might be! Brian offers an excellent rebuttal to a recent axe-grinding author who claimed that, obvously, Psitacosaurus' quills are not analogous to protofeathers. Although, after reading the paper itself, the reason is not exactly clear. He also discusses evolution's arrow, or lack thereof.

There it be, folks. Enjoy the Boneyard, and if I get any more submissions today or tomorrow, I shall add them, just because I care.