Summer 2005 Field Photos: #6

The Sock Tree.

After a hard day of prospecting the badlands along the Milk River these antlers provided the perfect way to dry out a pair of soggy socks.

Best Wishes To Chasmosaur

Now that I'm back in Cleveland (for a four days -- I head off to the Gobi on Saturday) I wanted to take the time to wish our own "Chasmosaur" aka Toni Hudzina best wishes. Just after Toni started with the palaeoblog she became ill and will need more than a little time to get back on her feet. Once she's got everything in order hopefully she'll drop back in with some of her own unique postings.

Summer 2005 Field Photos: #5

This is a picture that will be of interest to ceratopsid researchers. It's the quarry for the holotype of Monoclonius lowei in the upper Dinosaur Park Formation SE of Manyberries, Alberta, with Clive Luckwell for scale. I relocated it a few years back and we were back in the same area looking for the quarry for the holotype of Lambeosaurus lambei. Alas, the latter quarry was originally no more than a shallow depression and no trace of it could be located 80+ years later. On the plus side, we did find the weathered remains of an associated hadrosaur a few dozen meters from the M. lowei quarry -- it must have been in pretty good shape when the ceratopsid was collected way back when.

And while I'm thinkng about it, I should mention that the term "Belly River Group" is now officially being used rather than "Judith River Group", so all of you researchers writing up papers on material from the late Campanian of Alberta should take note.

Summer 2005 Field Photos: #4

This photo was taken the same day as the previous post. David Evans points to a hadrosaur skeleton in the Oldman Formation that had been previously found a few years ago by Palaeo-Prospector Supreme, Wendy Sloboda. The specimen includes at least part of the postcrania and is on our list of potential excavations for 2006.

Summer 2005 Field Photos: #3

On July 3, 2005, the Southern Alberta Dinosaur Project team included (from left to right): University of Calgary Ph.D. student Eric Snively; palaeontologist Wendy Sloboda, Dr. Darla Zelenizky (U. of Calgary), and David Evans (U. of Toronto)shown here at a locality where Dr. Wann Langston Jr. collected embryonic hadrosaur elements back in the 1950's. Not shown in the photo is Clive Luckwell from Portsmith University in the UK and the palaeoblogger.

Earliest dinosaur embryos & sauropod evolution

In an article published in the July 29 issue of Science, a team led by Canadian paleontologists from the University of Toronto (including lead author Robert Reisz and the palaeoblogger’s good friend David Evans (see previous post)) report on the discovery of the oldest known dinosaur embryos, and the rare glimpse into the life history of the sauropodomorph dinosaurs that they provide. The Early Jurassic aged embryos are identified as Massospondylus, a ‘prosauropod’ dinosaur that grew to 5m in length and was relatively common in South Africa.



The exceptional growth series of Massospondylus was analyzed from embryo to adult using articulated skeletons. Body proportions of the embryos indicate that the hatchlings were born four-legged (quadruped). As the animal matured, the neck grew faster than the rest of the body but the forelimb and head grew more slowly. The end result was a two-legged animal that looked very different from the four-legged embryo.

The researchers suggest that the later four-legged gait of the giant sauropods may have evolved through a developmental phenomenon called paedomorphosis, the retention of juvenile features in the adult, and may have preceded their giant size. In addition, the embryonic skeletons lack teeth, leading the researchers to hypothesize that the young may have required parental care.

Read the story at National Geographic News by clicking HERE.

Read the UT press release HERE

Summer 2005 Field Photos: #2

Ph.D. candidate, David Evans (above left in his "Sam Roberts" mode), joined the palaeoblogger for the first season of his Southern Alberta Dinosaur Project looking at the palaeoecology and systematics of the dinosaurs from the Late Cretaceous outcrops of southern Alberta. Evans is pictured here with the T. rex statue at the Milk River Vistor Center that was built by Brian Coolee of Calgary. Together with Evans and an ever shifting crew of volunteers, we found a number of exciting specimens -- more photos to follow!

Cho T. rex

Click on the image above for a larger view of Frank Cho's great T. rex.

Summer 2005 Field Photos #1

As promised! The first in a series of photos from my last seven weeks of field work. This little guy is a horned lizard. We found him in the Natural Area on the north side of Milk River in Alberta early in August. Not quite a dinosaur but a good start!

ROM Feathered Theropod Confusion?

Stephan Strauss of The Globe and Mail has this intersting article on the Feathered Dinosaur Show on now at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

It has been widely believed that birds are the direct descendents of dinosaurs. And this view was in part based on fossils, which people interpreted to be birdlike dinosaurs that were birds' forebears. But the new research suggests, says Stephen Czerkas, the Utah paleontologist and dinosaur sculpturer who mounted the exhibit, that "what people saw as ground dwelling dinosaurs, but which were still bird-like, were in fact actually birds.

Then one goes to the second part of the exhibit – you know it's mounted by the ROM itself because it's bilingual – where a whole bunch of evidence shows the similarities between dinosaurs and birds. Hard eggs, feathers, walking on two legs etc., leading to the last poster's final sentences: "This much is certain. No matter how far back you place the first bird. All dinosaurs are birds."

Hmmm, but didn't the first part opening argue that birds weren't the descendent of dinosaurs? Mark Engstrom, vice-president for collections and research at the ROM, justifies his exhibit by saying, "we often mount our own exhibits in conjunction with travelling shows." He brushes aside the disagreements between the first and second interpretations by suggesting it is really an academic dispute."

Read the full article to see if Mr. Strauss can clear up the confusion!

Thanks to Jumpin' Judy Horan for the head's up on this!

Hong Kong Dinosaurs

The Palaeoblogger is now at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller after six successful weeks in the field. Hopefully, I'll get a chance to start posting some of the many photos I took over that period of time starting in a few days before I return to Cleveland. In the meantime here are some photos from a new display of dinosaurs set up at City Plaza, Tai Koo Shing in Hong Kong. Many of the skeletons are apparently original fossil bone.

Thanks to Mike Marcynuk for passing on these photos taken by his friend, Nelson Chau, in HK.

Various Drawings Out Now

All art (c) Mark Schultz.

The new book, "Mark Schultz: Various Drawings", is out now from www.fleskpublications.com. It's also available through comic shops, Bud Plant Comic Art, and Amazon Books.

If you want to order through your local bookshop the ISBNs are:

Softbound Edition ISBN: 0-9723758-6-4
Limited Signed and Numbered Edition ISBN: 0-9723758-7-2

I’d recommend ordering or picking up a copy ASAP as word from Mark is that Flesk underestimated the demand for the book, and preorder sales of the book have been heavy.

Creatceous Theropod Probably Breathed Like Modern Birds

In an article published in the July 13 edition of Nature, Patrick O'Connor, of Ohio University in Athens, and Leon Claessens, of Harvard University, compared the air sacs of a Madagascar theropod to over 200 species of extant birds. The results show that the dinosaur - the late Cretaceous Majungatholus atopus - had the similar hollow-boned structure with air sacs that modern birds exhibit today.

The study focused on features found in the post-cranial skeleton around the neck, chest and hips; these regions generally contain air sacs that surround the lungs. Their comparative analysis showed that the vertebral column was similar to modern birds, and that "neotheropods possessed the anatomical potential for flow-through ventilation of the pulmonary system."

Read the abstract of the Nature Letter.

Read the summary of the letter in Nature News.

Read the popular article at Discovery.com.

Mastodon & Mammoth Fossils in California

In the past two weeks, there have been two fossil finds in California.

The first discovery was in San Jose. A local resident was walking along a canal along the Guadalupe River, and discovered several large bones that he thought were "too large to be a cow." He called local museums and the water authority (who maintains the canal) about his discovery, which apparently also called the local media.

When the story hit the news wires, several local residents showed up with shovels and pails in hand to "help" uncover more of the animal. Local volunteers stayed with the fossil to protect it from such enterprising individuals, until David Goodwin of the UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology came to examine the bones and confirm that they did, in fact, belong to a Mastodon.

The Museum will be excavating the bones and removing them to the museum for further study.

Read the full news article.


The second find was in Tulare County (south central section of California, east of Monterey County); a single Mammoth tusk was found by a dairyman on his farm in Pixley.

The farmer was urged by neighbors to keep his find to himself; however his college-aged daughter brought a piece of the fossil in to her anthropology professor, who immediately recognized it as fossil material.

Read the AP newswire article.

Dinosaur Dig Daily Broadcast

The Independent Record / helenair.com website has posted an article about Discovery Channel creating a new documentary with updates from a Montana dinosaur dig for two weeks this summer.

"What they're trying to do is bring paleontology discoveries to their viewers as they happen," said Jamie Cornish, marketing director of the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman. "For two weeks solid they'll bring that day's updates to their viewers."

Cornish said the updates will be posted on the channel's Website. The segments will also be aired on the Discovery Channel weekdays at 6 p.m. between July 25 and Aug. 7.

Excavation teams from the Museum of the Rockies will dig at several locations throughout Montana this summer. Crews will continue working the Hell Creek site near Fort Peck as well as the Egg Mountain site near Choteau, which was recently christened the Beatrice Taylor Paleontology Research Site.

The Discovery Channel, however, will focus on a new dig in north-central Montana, where a team of paleontologists will excavate three duck-billed dinosaurs.

"They're approximately 75 million years old," Cornish said. "What's important about that is that it's a period in which we have found very few dinosaurs. It will be interesting to see what those dinosaurs tell us."

More information can be found at the article link above.

Turok: Dinosaur Hunter Coming Back

Since Acclaim Studios, the developers of the previous Turok games, has ceased operations, it was only a matter of time before another video game developer picked up the torch to guide the Native American hero Turok back from extinction. Buena Vista's Propaganda Games development arm, based in Vancouver, B.C., has been announced as the studio responsible for new Turok: Dinosaur Hunter adventures.

The GlobeandMail.com website features an interview conducted in Los Angeles at the recent E3 Entertainment Expo with Josh Holmes, Studio General Manager, Jorge Freitas, Director of Technology, and Howard Donaldson, Vice-President of Studio Operations.

Q: Turok was with Acclaim for the longest time, and Acclaim is no longer with us. It's been a rough ride for Turok fans, and they're probably a little worried. What would you like to say to the fans to reassure them?

Josh Holmes: "I think if you look at the history of the Turok franchise, when it first came out on the N64 it was an amazing game. It was the first game to really get it right as a console first-person shooter, which is something a lot of people forgot with the advent of GoldenEye. Turok was there first and really nailed it."

"From there, the franchise kind of lost its way and I think we all know where it's been. We're looking at it from a fresh new perspective. We want to totally reinvent, reinvigorate the franchise. We're wiping the slate clean and starting again anew. We think there's a lot of opportunity to incorporate some of the signature elements of the Turok games, but presented in a way we think is going to surprise a lot of people."

Jorge Freitas: "I think [gamers] should be excited about a new developer having it. We've been all been working in the industry for a really long time, we are fans of the series, so we're going to be sensitive to what other fans are going to be expecting. So don't worry. Be excited."

Sounds like Turok is aligned with some great creative talent. Read the article for more insight on the direction of the franchise. Also stay tuned for a special edition of the Paleo-Path articles where I'll discuss the history of dinosaurs in video games!

Turok is © its current copyright holder. Turok: Dinosaur Hunter image courtesy of The Grand Comics Database Project.

Gorgosaurus Ate Squid?

Well, it did if you're "Gorgo" and are drawn by the legendary Steve Ditko!

Dinosaur Footprint Found in Alaska

A 70 million year old track from a three-toed carnivorous dinosaur has been found under a ledge in Denali National Park by a University of Alaska Fairbanks student.

Anthony Fiorillo, curator of earth sciences at the Dallas Museum of Natural History said the find was important because of its location in Interior Alaska, far from any coastlines.

"An Interior dinosaur at a higher elevation likely would experience more seasonal climate variation than creatures to the north or south closer to coasts, Fiorillo said."

"Fiorillo and others have for years explored evidence of polar dinosaurs near the Colville River on Alaska's North Slope about 25 miles from the Arctic Ocean. Evidence of duckbilled, plant-eating dinosaurs and theropods also has been found on the Alaska Peninsula."

See a photo and read more at The Washington Post and Reuters AlertNet.

Lake Powell Monster

From KSL TV5 comes THIS STORY:

Scientists near Lake Powell discovered the fossilized remains of a creature so terrifying that if they'd found it 93 million years ago, it probably would have had them for lunch. And, they're excited because it's a brand new species. Scientists have been exploring the desert near Lake Powell for the last six years. Now they have a fearsome creature to show for it, buried in a bed of shale. They've excavated bones, that when fitted together in a museum will be a nearly complete skeleton of a plesiosaur.

It was a sea-going distant cousin of a dinosaur sporting 100 very nasty teeth. In its day, 93 million years ago, it might have been the toughest thing in the ocean.

David Gillette, Northern Arizona University: "A nasty bugger, yeah. It was an ambush predator. Probably loafed in the water just under the surface or even at depth, waiting for its prey to come by, and then would make a burst as an ambush and take it's prey without their even knowing it was there."

Read the full story HERE.

NB: North Dakota has been a literal washout due to rain. The Palaeoblogger has been holed up for the last few days looking over the fossil collection of ND Geological Survey, hence these occassional posts. I'm off to Alberta in a few hours.

The Paleo-Path (Part 11): Pete Von Sholly

Pete Von Sholly has been a movie storyboard artist for over twenty years and worked on well over one hundred feature films, notably THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, MARS ATTACKS, JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH, THE MASK, DARKMAN and THE GREEN MILE. He has storyboarded Freddy, Jason, Chucky, Pinhead and Pumpkinhead... but the most fun he ever had working on a movie was on his own PREHYSTERIA series and DISNEY'S DINOSAUR because he actually got paid to draw dinosaurs all day... something he'd been doing for free most of his life ever since early exposure to KING KONG, FANTASIA, the legendary WORLD WE LIVE IN books, TUROK SON OF STONE and dinosaurs wherever else he could find them. He has co-created three albums of dinosaur music with fellow musician and paleographer supreme, Don Glut, (DINOSAURS THE ENCYCLOPEDIA and its many invaluable supplements) self published a children's book called DINOSAUR CIRCUS (above & below) and pretty much gets dinosaurs into whatever he works on wherever he can.



His graphic novels of "live action comics" (below) called PETE VON SHOLLY'S MORBID (from Dark Horse -- Vol. 2 is HERE) often feature dinosaurs and prehistoric themes and he even crammed them into his CRAZY HIP GROOVY GO GO WAY OUT MONSTERS mags from TwoMorrows at every turn (a parody of the ancient Monster Mags he grew up on).




His work recently adorned the cover of FOSSIL LEGENDS OF THE FIRST AMERICANS, Adrienne Mayor's fascinating new book and is often seen in the pages and on the covers of PREHISTORIC TIMES magazine. Pete has some new self-published works (a superhero satire with a naughty title; HERE DOESN'T COME THE FLYING F---! and a tongue way in cheek monster war comic called SERGEANSTEIN AND HIS MARUADIN' MONSTERS) and guess what? He managed to get dinosaurs into BOTH of them.



Buy the books from his website www.vonshollywood.com and see how! Limited copies of Dinosaur Circus are also available thru his site. He co-created a prehistoric superhero called TYRANOSTAR KING OF THE DINOSAURS with frequent collaborator Mike Van Cleave which was published as a 3-D comic by Ray Zone (shades of TOR- well two shades anyway- red and blue!)



What else? There will be a 50 card set of his faux TUROK SON OF STONE covers (above) from Dark Horse later this year and many other goodies as well.

Read a short interview with Pete HERE.
Visit the great B-Monster Site and scroll through the July ’04 column for a nice review of some of Pete’s work -- click HERE.


All art and Dinosaur Circus © Pete Von Sholly. Turok is © its current copyright holder.