Alioramus altai

Say hello to the new tyrannosaurid in town: Alioramus altai, the new sister species of A. remotus. Steve Brusatte discussed, with enthusiasm*, this critter at SVP, and now he's published for all to see. I'm not going to link to the article, because you probably can't get it, because PNAS is too good for open-access. Screw you, PNAS! If anyone here wants a copy of the paper, I am all too happy to email it to them. Just leave your email address in the comments or email me, personally. Anyway, this is an exciting find because A. remotus is known from very scrappy remains, and this new species allows us to figure out where the genus sits in the Tyrannosauroidea--turns out it's not basal at all, but between Albertosaurines and Daspletosaurus + (Tyrannosaurus + Tarbosaurus), making it a member of the exclusive Tyrannosaurini. Steve made a big deal at SVP, at Archosaur Musings, and in the paper about how Alioramus deviates from the traditional tyrannosaur body plan, but I don't really see it. It looks like an albertosaurine to me.

As for the picture, it's just a little something I whipped up during Tobi (one of my meds) last night. I'm not at all happy with the snout texturing, but...eh. Too late to change it now, it's just meant to be a quick sketch anyway.

*Enthusiasm here being the key word. Steve gave two talks (that I know of) at SVP, and he seemed genuinely excited about both. This is at complete odds with about 95% of the other speakers, who sounded like they'd either been up all night or just weren't that enthusatic about their talk in the first place. Honestly, there were times where I suspected the latter (crown length and denticle variation in Coelophysis? Excuse me while I grab a power nap). The only speaker who rose to challenge Steve's bruhaha was a fellow whose name I cannot recall, but he gave a rousing talk about the M. caudofemoralis muscle in Tyrannosaurus with great zeal. His presentation included the phrase "junk in the trunk," so he may have to win some kind of award for that one. Aside from being entertaining, the talk was informative as well, especially for paleo-artists like moi.

How to Get to SVP From My Hotel

Here's the quick 'n' dirty version: Go to my Facebook page, where I've uploaded all the relevant photos. I hope to have more tomorrow. But here's Mike Taylor, Matt Wedel, and Darren Naish presenting their teeth in what's clearly a combined threat display. Terror!!!

An American Paleoartist in...Bristol: Day 1 & 2

Because it's a PDF and I don't have a scanner that can make JPEG's, I can't actually show you the map of the meeting this year. You can find this map at the SVP website. I encourage you to look! Look and laugh and point and chuckle. It looks like such a short trip! Well, it's not. For the confused, SVP this year was held at the University of Bristol, but unlike SVP in Cleveland last year, it's not being held in one gigantic building. Last year, it was difficult enough running upstairs and downstairs between presentations. This year, you must run from one end of the campus to the other. Also--look hard for this--there's a building toward the upper-left corner of the map called the "Victoria Room." This is where the poster sessions are. What that unhelpful map does not include is topology. Bristol is not, as you might expect, flat, but rather mountainous. To further illustrate this point, I will encourage a certain analogy.

Imagine that my hotel, the Broad Quay, is at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. The university is at the top of the Matterhorn. To switch to a different analogy, imagine the university is in New Jersey, and the Victoria Room in Seattle. Thus, every morn I rise at the goddamn crack of dawn, put on my climbing gear, and begin scaling the peak that is Mt. Bristol. And because I don't drink coffee (and they don't have hot chocolate), I stuff my throat with horrible, horrible water in an attempt to re-hydrate. The secret is this: let's say you have a presentation in the Chemistry Building of 10:00 a.m. You also have one, in the other building (across campus), at 10:30. You basically miss the 10:15 presentation because you're spending that time hiking madly toward the Mills Building. That's how it works, and there ain't no gettin' around it. Also, and this is the best part, the lecture "halls" are the size of the average living room. At that size, every talk, including those dealing with the phylogeny of the Procolophonidae, become standing-room only. The distance between your seatback and the back of the seat in front of you is far less than an American airline coach seat.

And then you get to walk further uphill, and much farther away, for the poster sessions. Even these are horribly "organized:" A series of posters will occupy a very small space, arranged rows about two feet wide. All sense of personal space is lost, and shuffling is inevitable. Actually reading the posters themselves becomes secondary to avoiding bumping into other people. And poor authors have basically no room to talk to anybody, because there's a constant stream of other people trying to get by. I spoke with Bill Parker and...another guy...for a little while about two Silesaurus posters, and we were constantly shuffling around to let people through. There are three such poster rooms, all separated by hundreds of feet of hallway.

It's the worst SVP setup possible, really. This is the kind of thing somebody would have to actively work at to fuck up this badly. Tomorrow, I will have pictures of the daily trek(s) so that you can get a better sense as to what we're all going through on a daily basis. I've been told by a source who will remain nameless who was in charge of this year's horrendous layout, but I don't feel comfortable screaming it to the internets. What's worse, the talks this year aren't all that great (nothing mind-blowing), although I'm told that the always-reliable Jerry Harris had a hilarious "smashy-bird, melty-bone" talk involving a life restoration of a headless duck. I understand it generated insane amounts of laughter. I missed it, though: I was hiking back to the Chemistry building.

SVP '09: Yikes

SVP is in Brisol, England next year! Yahoo! I can go to London and see the natural history museum and Darwin's grave (and house), and various other things!

Wait, how much are plane tickets? $1350 for the cheap seats? And that doesn't include a week spent in London before the conference itself--hotel room plus food would probably eat up some more moolah. And then it would be off to Bristol, where more hotel costs and food would further set me back. Add to that the cost of whatever swag I would inevitably buy at SVP and the natural history museum, and we're talking...hmm...carry the five...a shitload of money.

I can't afford that right now, though it's almost a year out. Right now, I think the most parsimonious thing to do would be to commit to conferences held in the United States. Even going to Cleveland (halfway across the country) was a hard pill to swallow, financially speaking. Just throwin' that out there.

Warning! Warning!

People have been telling me that I might be in violation of the SVP embargo on presentations and poster sessions (although I didn't blog about any poster sessions). I may have to take the post down, so keep that in mind if it disappears in the next day or two.

Update: Notice that the post is gone. Sorry, folks, but I'm erring on the side of caution. I don't want to step on any toes. Dave Hone informed me that at least one topic I discussed was currently in review, so it's probably best to take the post down. This leaves me asking an irritating question, though: What's SVP for? Dibs? If the topics can't be discussed in a public venue (like the Interwebs), it seems like the presentations were for telling people, "I found this, you didn't, just lettin' you know. You can't talk about it until my paper is in print." That seems selfish and counterintitive. Remember Julia's rule of thumb? "Don't be a dick!" Is claim-jumping that big of a problem? As long as you cite the author(s) and make sure you don't make it sound like YOU made a particular discovery, what's the big deal?

Anyway, it's annoying. I was going to write several blog posts on particular talks, but now I can't. I had drawings and everything! :-(

Pictures from SVP

A barely-viewable picture of Matt Celesky and his wonderful drawing of a pack (herd? flock?) of Coelophysis running around New Mexico while a monkey-lizard looks on.

Amanda, the Self-Designed Student. Maybe I should start using my flash...

ReBecca, from ReBecca's blog. The flash seems to work okay! If only I'd taken MORE PICTURES OF PEOPLE. Instead, I have three more pictures of fossil mounts from the museum.

My Return from SVP

Whoo! I just flew in from Cleveland, and boy are my arms tired! But seriously, I've never had more fun on a vacation, even if it was woefully short. I'll talk about the experience in another blog post, but I wanted to get this picture up, which I totally stole from Julia's webpage, because I was a fucking moron and didn't bring my camera to the luncheon. I think Scott brought one, so if Paul took a picture with Scott's camera, then I'm sure he'll send it my way.

At any rate, this picture is from the Blogger Luncheon that Julia organized, and I thank her for it. We all had a great time! From left to right, top to bottom, here are the attendees:

Thomas Holtz, Jr.
Matt Wedel
Patty
Andrew Farke
Nick Gardner
Alton Dooley
J & Amanda
Julia Heathcote
Jerry Harris
Matt Celesky
Zachary Miller
Scott Elyard
Neil Kelley

Fun times had by all! During the course of the four days I was there, I spent the most time with Scott (duh), Nick, Amanda & J, Matt Celesky, and Julia. I was not able to get as much chatting in as I might have liked with Neil, Andrew, Jerry, or Dr. Holtz, but hey, there's always next year! All of the people above are genuinely nice people. And while I didn't introduce myself to everyone I wanted to at SVP (I should've said hi to Phil Currie), there's always next year. And yes, I fully intend to go again next year, even though the meeting is across the pond.

I was also lucky enough to spend time with two of Scott's friends, Tony and his wife Alicia. Both of them are wonderful people, and I hope to see more of them when the snow melts. And I have to shout out a special thanks to Julia, who more or less acted as my guide for the meeting, and offered me a wonderful opportunity for next year--and she might regret it! Now then, on to the meeting itself!

Off to SVP Tonight

Well, kiddies, I'm leavin' on a jet plane at 10 p.m., heading for Cleveland, Ohio. If you want to meet up before Julia's luncheon on Friday, shoot me an email at either my Hotmail or Gmail address and I'll give you my cell number. I hope to run into at least a few of my fellow paleobloggers at lectures and poster sessions! I also plan on going to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History while I'm down there, so I hope there's a break in between talks I want to attend for that to happen...

Anyway, see you all down there! I'll be the guy with glasses, a cowboy-like hat, and a heavy laptop bag. SVP '08, whoo!

P.S. Would it be a dick move to make a copy of Dr. Holtz's paper in Tyrannosaurus rex: Tyrant Lizard King about how the obligate scavenger hypothesis is crap and, if I stumble across Mr. Horner at the conference, give it to him? :-)

SVP: Paid For

Hotel: Check
Plane Ticket: Check
Conference Registration: Check
Probability that I'll be doing this on an annual basis: Very low

I spread the cost over about three months to cover my ass, but honestly, it shouldn't be this pricey. Even with the SVP discount, the hotel room is still outrageous, I complained about the registration fee two days ago, and don't get me started on the plane ticket. I might head to SVP in years where I can take a more-or-less direct flight from Alaska (Washington, Chicago, California, etc.) but I don't think I'll be making yearly treks to SVP.

But now that the costs are covered, I'm very excited about October, and I hope to see all of my fellow paleo-bloggers! I might have a surprise in store for the show itself...

SVP is expensive!

Mother of GOD. $415 gets me WHAT, exactly? I essentially get to go to the conference. That's registration for the conference. Every English or rhetoric conference my wife attends has a $200 registeration fee. SVP has a $415 registration fee. Before August 28th. After that, the price skyrockets to $540. It's like buying another plane ticket.

So, here are my questions:

1) What the hell?
2) Does registration also make me a member of the society, and thus, do I get the journal?
3) If NOT, is that a completely separate ridiculous fee?
4) WHAT THE GODDAMN HELL?

I don't want to shell out this kind of moronic sum annually, especially when I don't plan on attending every meeting. Next year, for example, when the conference goes to Bristol, I will certainly not be attending (I hate traveling, especially long distances).

Two steps closer to SVP...

Last night I bought the plane ticket to SVP. I'm getting there around 2 on the 15th, so I might miss some morning panels. Also, I leave on the evening of the 18th, so I hope I don't miss too much! My wife, who has gone to many a conference, assured me that conferences usually cram the good stuff into the "middle days" so that most people can see it. I also booked a room in the hotel. Scott, if you decide you want to stay with me, you can...for a reasonable fee. If Scott cannot attend for whatever reason or decides to stay somewhere else, I certainly would mind a roommate to offset the nightly cost of the room! :-)

I used miles to get the ticket, which resulted in the crappy flight schedule. Airlines have a way of screwing you out of your airline miles. That is, use your miles and get a horrible selection of flights. Otherwise, the ticket costs like $780. I was going to stop over in Chicago, rent a car, and drive to Milwaukee to visit my grandparents, but there's just no way that can happen now. :-(

BUT, it's good to have the ticket bought and the hotel room reserved. Now I just have to register for the conference and I should be golden! And I'm not going to worry about renting a car. I'm only there for a few days, and the conference IS downtown. I'm sure I can walk anywhere I need to. Almost more than the conference itself, I'm excited to meet my fellow paleobloggers!

A Horrifying Realization

SVP, ladies and germs, is expensive. At least, it is for people in Alaska.

Well, a normal plane ticket to Cleaveland costs $670. The hotel (the SVP hotel) costs $138 a night. The taxi ride from the airport to the hotel costs $33. None of these costs include taxes.

It gets better. SVP has some sort of connections with Continental Airlines, and if you take Continental, you can get between 3 and 15% off your ticket price. Well, there's still a hitch. You have to travel from Anchorage to Seattle, then to Houston (or New Jersey), then back to Cleaveland. So you spend essentially a day on a plane (in coach) for maybe 3% off the ticket price.

No thank you.

But it's not like I can skip it this year and go next year, because next year it'll be in Bristol. Flying across the pond will be far more expensive than flying across the country. I really don't know what to do. Is SVP worth what's probably going to end up being $1500?