Awesome New Fossil

My man David Hone is many things: extremely smart, educational, occasionally bitter, and sometimes hilarious. He reports on a new fossil taxon here that is, thus far, the funniest blog post I've read in 2010. I found myself laughing out loud at work--a rarity--that merely accentuates the brilliance of THIS post.

Upcoming Purchases

Not sure if you're all aware that I "collect" comic and gaming superheroine figures. Most recently, I found a deal on a wonderful statue of DoAX2's Kokoro on Amazon. Of course, the thing was over a year old by then, but still, $60 instead of $90 is pretty nice. Here's a picture of my figure shelf...


"Collect" is in quotes because...my gosh...these things are expensive. I buy maybe one a year, or if it's a good year, one every six months. Seriously, they're ridiculous. See Brandy down there, in yellow? She's from my favorite comic, Liberty Meadows, and she cost me $180. I got a talking-to from the wife because of that. I was in Seattle at the time. She was not fun to drag back home on a plane, either. Totally worth it! Otherwise, from left to right, top to bottom, we have the top shelf: Black Widow (Marvel), Tifa Lockheart (FFVII), Jessica (DQ8), Kasumi (DoA2), and Rogue (Marvel); middle shelf: Batgirl, Power Girl, and Wonder Woman (all DC); bottom shelf: Kokoro (DoAX2), and Brandy Carter (Liberty Meadows).

Anyway, only two figures (that I'm aware of) have caught my eye in the upcoming year. The first to release, supposedly this month is Kasumi from DoAX2, from the same company that did Kokoro:


I don't know if I'm totally sold on her. The face just seems off to me, like her features are too small. I'm gonna have to see the figure in person before I make a decision. Also, and this is important, she's reportedly $100, which is a tough pill to swallow, so I'll probably end up waiting until the price drops on Amazon like I did with Kokoro. The second figure is a bit more reasonable, though: $50 for Psylocke, from the same people who brought me Rogue and Black Widow:


I don't think she releases until June. For both figures, I'd probably have to special-order through one of the local comic shops. I've consistently had better luck getting the figures sooner from A-1 Comics & Collectibles than Bosco's, which is disappointing, because A-1 is like a half hour away, whereas Bosco's is ten minutes away. The Marvel girls people are also coming out with a version of Phoenix that I like a lot except for the crazy hair. This is another figure I'll have to see before I buy...if somebody in town accidentally orders it and I stumble into the store at the right time. That's not gonna happen, so I'll probably rely primarily on figure reviews on blogs when she comes out.

Now, onto my figure wishlist*: Jill Valentine, Mai Shiranui, Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, Big Sister (Bioshock), and Samus Aran...in her Zero Suit, not her Varia Suit. One of these things is not like the other...one of these things just doesn't belong...

*In many cases, there are already figures of some of these characters. Mai Shiranui, for example, has countless figures. However, exactly NONE of them appeal to me. Ame-Comi just released a version of Poison Ivy, but she looks like a friggin' wood nymph.

King of Fighters XIII

In theory, I should've loved the hell out of King of Fighters XII. I'm not going to say that KoF is my favorite fighting franchise (that'd be Soul Calibur), but it's probably my favorite 2D fighting series. It's one of the last really arcadey brawlers that sticks with an old-school formula and is pretty simple to pick up and have fun with. I can't get that with Street Fighter IV, a game that virtually requires an arcade stick to be good at. I guess I like Capcom's Vs. series (most recently Tatsunoko vs. Capcom), too.

Anyway, last year's King of Fighters XII revised the series by going back to 2D, but high-res, detailed, sprite-based 2D. It was a stunningly beautiful game, but very bare-bones and obviously a work in progress. It also didn't have Mai Shiranui, a staple of the series. Frankly, I'm not going to buy a King of Fighters game that doesn't have Mai in it. Am I a bad person? Of course, that's not debatable. Well, King of Fighters XIII IS going to feature Mai Shiranui. And I'll probably buy it because of that.

Also, on Wednesday, Dead or Alive: Paradise is coming to the PSP. Can't turn that one down. Not if I wanted to.

Ceratopsian Volume: Continuing Trends

I'm not even gonna bother posting that same picture. New Perspectives on Horned Dinosaurs, a book we've all been waiting for since 2008, has been pushed back again from April 5th to June 2nd. Yeah, we'll see if THAT'S the magic date. You know, Indiana University Press has a big sauropod book coming out in August. Perhaps we should say August 2012? Just sayin'!

The Antiquity of Pachyrhinosaurus

For those of you relatively unfamiliar with ceratopsian dinosaurs, Pachyrhinosaurus may be an unfamiliar name. It's one of my favorite dinosaurs, partially because it's one of Alaska's Mesozoic saurians. It's also just plain wierd--instead of horns, Pachyrhinosaurus has a bony boss, like that of a musk ox or bison, except over its nose instead of its forehead. There are two known species: Pachyrhinosaurus lakustai is the better-known of the two and is represented by hundreds of bones and dozens of individuals. It was only recently named and described, in 2008. This is what it looks like, more or less:


Notice the spikes and bosses. This was a strange-looking ceratopsian, fo' reel, yo. But it's the second species named. The first species--and the genus--was named back in 1950 by Charles Sternberg. It is Pachyrhinosaurus canadensis, and our man Charles named a whole new family based on the holotype skull, since as he could not easily fit it into the Chasmosaurinae or Centrosaurinae,* so he erected the Pachyrhinosauridae for his new critter. P. canadensis actually doesn't look too horribly different from P. lakustai, but Sternberg was working with a partial skull and didn't really know what to make of this hornless wonder. So he crafted a 1/6th scale clay model for all to see, shown below:


It looks like a Protoceratops with a handy plate to put your drink on its nose. It's also smiling. Still, this is important: here we have the first life restoration--crude though it may be--of this most bizarre ceratopsid dinosaur. I very much like Sternberg's description of the beast:

"The specialized development, the large massive head and the great thickness of bone is suggestive of the freakish development that took place among some of the dinosaurs near the very close of the Cretaceous, about Lance time."

Well put, Charles, well put. You didn't know the half of it....

*Back then, the Ceratopsia was a sub-order, divided into two familiest: Chasmosauridae and Centrosauridae, so Sternberg erected a third family. Today, we recognize the Ceratopsidae as a family, with the Chasmosaurinae and Centrosaurinae as sub-families. Sternberg's Pachyrhinosaurus-centric group still exists, however, as the Pachyrhinosaurini, which includes both species of Pachyrhinosaurus and Achelousaurus.

Texas is a Christian Nation

Funny stuff. We touch on this a bit in the first episode of the podcast. As seen earlier today on Pharyngula.

Welcome to Dinorama

Have you ever been sitting at iTunes wondering, "why aren't there any paleontology-themed podcasts out there?" Well buckle up, kids, because no there ARE. Scott Elyard, Raven Amos, and myself recorded the first episode of "Dinorama," and Scott spent the next two or three weeks editing it and continuously promising that it would be up the next day. Hilarity!

At any rate, as a first episode, you'll note that we're having tech problems that will need to be ironed out. There are also a number of factual errors! Indeed, we may begin the next episode (and subsequent episodes) with a list of things we got wrong last time. This will be a monthly podcast, and we would love love LOVE to have guest hosts. The magic of Skype and Audacity Beta will hopefully make that dream come true.

However, it's a wonderful show, Scott did an excellent job stitching it together. I encourage you all to give it a listen, then run back here and write why you did (or did not) like it in the comments. If you have ideas about how to make the process easier or features you'd like to see, let us know!

At any rate, Dinorama Season 1, Episode 1 is right here: Dinorama! The webpage will be spiffied up in good time.

New Dromaeosaur on the Block

Meet Linhuraptor exquisitus, a new dromaeosaur from the Djadokhta Formation in Mongolia. Other dromaeosaurs in the area include Velociraptor mongolensis, V. osmolskae, Tsaagan mangas, and Mahakala omnogovae. I'm warry about the validity of the second taxon, and that last one might be a basal paravian, but hey, that's quite a crop of vicious little raptor dinosaurs. Linhuraptor is most closely related to Tsaagan and shares many unique characters with it, so the two likely form a monophyletic group. Additionally, the skeletal details of Linhuraptor place it nicely between the Chinese "microraptors" and the more advanced dromaeosaurids like Velociraptor and Deinonychus. Even individual taxonomic families have their own "transitional forms." There's a nice progression of skeletal features from Gondwanan unenlagiines up through microraptors and these new "Tsaaganines" (my own term) toward familiar dromaeosaurines.

The holotype is incredibly beautiful (hence the specific epithat) and complete. This picture is NOT the holotype, but a CAST of the holotype.


The most interesting part of the paper, for me, anyway, is buried in a wall of text on page 5. The authors write:

"On the basis of positional homologies, we identify the manual digits of Linheraptor as corresponding to the middle three digits of ancestral archosaurs, as is currently hypothesized for all maniraptorans (Xu et al. 2009)."

This is somewhat misleading. The authors have taken the rather bold step in implying that the Limusaurus argument--that a frame-shift occured in finger development to switch manual digits I-III to II-IV--is generally accepted. This is not true. Andrea Cau, Darren Naish, myself, and others have pointed out that Limusaurus' shrunken hands and stubby fingers are more a consequence of its lineage (ceratosaurs) than some grand frame-shift at the base of the Neotheropoda. Furthermore, based on the photos I'm looking at, the arms and hands of Linheraptor are incompletely preserved and not fully prepared. Without a complete, well-preserved hand in hand (HA!), the authors are making a big assumption about not just the manual development of Linheraptor, but all maniraptorans and, in citing Limusaurus specifically, all neotheropods. I think that's irresponsible at best, and axe-grinding at worst.

Anyway, the fossil itself is beautiful, it adds to the diversity of both Dromaeosauridae and Mongolia's raptor family, and it speaks to the evolutionary history of the group. I just wish that the authors had left that rather unneccesary remark about finger development out. It's not especially relevant, and comes off as chest-puffing.

Awesome "New" Blog

I don't understand how I missed this blog for so long. Brett Booth, a longtime favorite paleoartist of mine, has his own art blog. GAH! Check it out, folks!

TEH_AWESOME!!!