Palaeoblog's 2008 Christmas Shopping Guide

Once again the Palaeoblog presents some gift suggestions for those last minute shoppers. This is by no means meant to be comprehensive, and in many cases I’ve posted about the items below at some time in the past.

It's a shorter list than last year, but many of those suggestions are still valid, so check that list out too. And now, in no particular order:

For the serious dinosaur enthusiast who has good grasp of anatomical terminology, the second edition of The Dinosauria is the book for them. No colour pictures but it is the definitive word on the subject as of a few years ago. Bright, young, hope-to-be palaeontologists might like to have if on their shelf as well.

by Don Prothero. Like This? Then you’ll need to buy one of these.

St. John is still considered to be the quintessential painter for the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Prehistoric critters turn up in many of his paintings.Like This? Then you’ll like this.

For the anatomy student.

A good book made great by Doug Henderson's drawings. Like This? Then you’ll like this.

Encyclopedia Prehistorica By Robert Sabuda and Matthew Reinhart. These three pop-up books are now available in a designer ‘shipping box’. If you’ve not picked them up yet this will make a great gift for yourself.

By John Long and Peter Schouten

Don’t let the 1950’s cover homage throw you off. This new book focus’s on Bill’s most recent museum mural paintings. Like this? Then you’ll like this.

By John Pattona and Lita Judge. Lita is a former Centrosaurus bone bed volunteer who has made quite a name for herself as an artist.

By Alan Turner and Mauricio Anton. Like This? Then you’ll like this.


By Dennis Nolan – for all the kids

Is it just me or are there fewer good science documentaries made each year? So, why not go with the perennial favourites? This special edition of The Lost world gives you both the silent (1925) and Michael Rennie/Pat Boone (1960) versions of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic story, all for a cheap price. Like This? Then you’ll like this.

Papo dinosaurs. This toy company from France has a small, but well done, line of dinosaurs. Most better museums and toy stores have them in stock. I bought mine at the ROM in Toronto. Like This? Then you’ll like this.

Movie Poster.com and EBay are good places to pick up both original and reproduction movie posters. Like This? Then you’ll like this.

By Neil Shubin. Perhaps the best reviewed science book of the year. Definitely worth a read, but this book by Carl Zimmer still holds up.

Probably my favourite book of the year - at least the one I've been waiting the longest for! I'll have a review of it up soon. Like This? Then you’ll like this.

Mark Schultz returns to Xenozoic Tales with this fine print from Flesk Publications. Get it Here

Remember that Mark has a new colour dinosaur print available exclusively from the Palaeoblog. For more info go to this previous posting.

Why not pick up an out of print classic for the palaeo-historian on your list? If you don't have a bricks and mortar store nearby then an on-line dealer like ABE.com can help you out.

Thomas Huxley, 'nuff said. One of the four people from the past that I'd have at my imaginary dinner party. Like This? Then you’ll like this.

Written by Robert Kanigher, Art by Ross Andru & Mike Esposito.

Over 500 pages of classic adventures are included in this value-priced volume collecting one of the most unusual series ever from DC Comics. Soldiers vs. dinosaurs -- what's not to love? Like This? Then you’ll like this.

Take your family to your local museum. Better yet, buy them a membership.

One of the first and still the best recounting of the history of the Earth in cartoon format. Still relevant and fun after all these years. Like This? Then you’ll like this.

Join A Professional Society


Such as:

-- the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (publishes the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology quarterly)

- The Palaeontological Society (US) (publishes the Journal of Paleontology monthly)

- The Palaeontological Association (UK) (publishes Palaeontology monthly)

Each membership includes a one year subscription to the society’s professional journal. It’s a great gift for a young professional who might not have the money in hand to sign themselves up, or for a high school student looking to study palaeontology at university.

GO ON A DINOSAUR DIG!

Finally, (I’m allowed one plug for myself), join me for two weeks digging up dinosaurs in the Gobi Desert next August. Details at Nomadic Expeditions

Died This Day: Louis Agassiz

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May 28, 1807 - Dec. 14, 1873

(Jean) Louis (Rodolphe) Agassiz was a Swiss-born U.S. naturalist, geologist, and teacher who made revolutionary contributions to the study of natural science with landmark work on glacier activity and extinct fishes. Agassiz began his work in Europe, having studied at the University of Munich and then as chair in natural history in Neuchatel in Switzerland. While there he published his landmark multi-volume description and classification of fossil fish.

In 1846 Agassiz came to the U.S. to lecture before Boston's Lowell Institute. Offered a professorship of Zoology and Geology at Harvard in 1848, he decided to stay, becoming a citizen in 1861. His innovative teaching methods altered the character of natural science education in the U.S. Link

More info HERE

Sexual Selection in Tusked Whales

Phylogeny of the Beaked Whale Genus Mesoplodon (Ziphiidae: Cetacea) Revealed by Nuclear Introns: Implications for the Evolution of Male Tusks. 2008. M. L. Dalebout, et al. Systematic Biology 57: 857–875.

Kamandi #23 © DC Comics

The tusks of the rarely seen beaked whales are known to be used in competition between males - another purpose seems to be to attract female beaked whales and to avoid mistakes in choosing a mate.

From the press release

The evolutionary origin of these distinctive “tusks” is one of the first examples of “sexual selection” implicated in the radiation of a group of mammals outside ungulates (deer, elk and antelope).

“It turns out that tusks are largely an ornamental trait that became a driver in species separation,” Baker added. “The tusks help females identify males within their species, which could otherwise be difficult as these species are quite similar to each other in shape and coloration.”

The two modified teeth or tusks of the male 'dense-beaked' whale appear to be fierce weapons (see photo of skull) but are only partly erupted during life, causing only minor scarring during male-male competition (see parallel scars in photo of living whale). Photos: Nan Hauser, The Center for Cetacean Research and Conservation.

Many animal species develop traits that allow the males to compete with each other physically, such as antlers used for sparring by adult bull elk. Some of these have other purposes, such as the tusks of walruses that can be used for foraging as well as fighting. And some species display ornamental traits to attract mates – the coloration of the peacock, or the songs of birds.

The beaked whale is unusual in that its tusks have no obvious functional purpose other than to distinguish it from similar looking species of beaked whales.

Baker says speciation occurs in many terrestrial species through geographic isolation, such as separation by canyons, major river systems, or islands. In the ocean, however, these geographical barriers are largely absent. Different species of beaked whales occupy the same trophic level and can look remarkably similar – to the point where scientists can only differentiate them through DNA testing.

“Interestingly,” he said, “the species of beaked whales that are in the same ocean regions – even ‘sister’ species – are the most different in the shape of the tusks. Those that are closely related genetically but live in different oceans are the most alike.”

It would have been nice if the lead author of the study, Merel Dalebout, the former Ph.D. student of Baker, had actually got at least one quote in the press release.

Born This Day: Erasmus Darwin

Dec. 12, 1731 – April 18, 1802.

Erasmus was a prominent English physician, poet, philosopher, botanist, naturalist and the grandfather of naturalist Charles Darwin and the biologist Francis Galton. Erasmus Darwin was one of the leading intellectuals of 18th century England.

As a naturalist, he formulated one of the first formal theories on evolution in Zoonomia, or, The Laws of Organic Life (1794-1796). Although he did not come up with natural selection, he did discuss ideas that his grandson elaborated on sixty years later, such as how life evolved from a single common ancestor, forming "one living filament".

Although some of his ideas on how evolution might occur are quite close to those of Lamarck, Erasmus Darwin also talked about how competition and sexual selection could cause changes in species. link

Download Zoonomia HERE

Life in a Temperate Polar Sea

Life in a temperate Polar sea: a unique taphonomic window on the structure of a Late Cretaceous Arctic marine ecosystem. 2008. K. Chin et al. Proc. Royal Soc. B 275: 2675-2685

Star-Spangled War Stories #144 (1964)

Abstract: As the earth faces a warming climate, the rock record reminds us that comparable climatic scenarios have occurred before. In the Late Cretaceous, Arctic marine organisms were not subject to frigid temperatures but still contended with seasonal extremes in photoperiod.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Here, we describe an unusual fossil assemblage from Devon Island, Arctic Canada, that offers a snapshot of a ca 75Myr ago marine palaeoecosystem adapted to such conditions. Thick siliceous biogenic sediments and glaucony sands reveal remarkably persistent high primary productivity along a high-latitude Late Cretaceous coastline.



Abundant fossil faeces demonstrate that this planktonic bounty supported benthic invertebrates and large, possibly seasonal, vertebrates in short food chains. These ancient organisms filled trophic roles comparable to those of extant Arctic species, but there were fundamental differences in resource dynamics. Whereas most of the modern Arctic is oligotrophic and structured by resources from melting sea ice, we suggest that forested terrestrial landscapes helped support the ancient marine community through high levels of terrigenous organic input.

Police Escort Colossal Squid to Museum Exhibit

The Palaeoblog loves giant squid stories. This one gives me a chance to plug Discovery Channel reporter Jennifer Viega's "Born Animal" blog. Go check it out.

New VonShollywood Blog

Our friend Pete Von Sholly has a new blog that you should check out frequently.

I'm under the weather AND busy so postings will probably be light for the next few days...

If I can rally I'll try to get to Dr. David Evans Xmas bash in TO on Saturday night. I'm sure you're all invited!

Why Did Life Emerge?

Why did life emerge?. 2008. A. & E. Annila. Journal of Astrobiology 7 : 293-300


Supernatural Thillers #1 © Marvel Comics. “It!” © Theodore Sturgeon. Art by Steranko

Abstract [edit]: The fundamental driving force that propelled chemical evolution and led to life has remained obscure. The second law of thermodynamics, written as an equation of motion, reveals that elemental abiotic matter evolves from the equilibrium via chemical reactions that couple to external energy towards complex biotic non-equilibrium systems. Each time a new mechanism of energy transduction emerges, e.g., by random variation in syntheses, evolution prompts by punctuation and settles to a stasis when the accessed free energy has been consumed. The evolutionary course towards an increasingly larger energy transduction system accumulates a diversity of energy transduction mechanisms, i.e. species. The rate of entropy increase is identified as the fitness criterion among the diverse mechanisms, which places the theory of evolution by natural selection on the fundamental thermodynamic principle with no demarcation line between inanimate and animate.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

From PhysOrg News:

Although the researchers don’t speculate on the specific chemical reactions that created life, they explain that the molecules involved most likely underwent a series of more and more complex reactions to minimize mutual energy differences between matter on Earth and with respect to high-energy radiation from Sun. The process eventually advanced so far that it cumulated into such sophisticated functional structures that could be called living.



And because thermodynamics recognizes no specific moment, particular place, compound or reaction that would distinguish animate from inanimate, a search for ‘the birth of life’ seems like an ill-posed project, Arto Annila explained.


Adapted by Roy Thomas. Art by Marie Severin & Frank Giacoia

“Indeed, the quest for the origin of life seems a futile endeavor because life in its entirety is a natural process that has, according to the second law of thermodynamics, no definite beginning,” he said. “To ask how life started would be the same as to ask when and where did the first wind blow that quivered the surface of a warm pond.”

Died This Day: Mary Leakey

Feb. 6, 1913 – Dec. 9, 1996

From the Minnesota State University site:

Mary Douglas Nicol Leakey was in London, England. She meet her future husband, Louis Leakey, when he asked her to illustrate his book, 'Adam’s Ancestors'. Mary and Louis spent from 1935 to 1959 at Olduvai Gorge in the Serengeti Plains of northern Tanzania where they worked to reconstruct many Stone Age cultures dating as far back as 100,000 to two million years ago. They documented stone tools from primitive stone-chopping instruments to multi-purpose hand axes.

In October of 1947, while on Rusinga Island, Mary unearthed a Proconsul africanus skull, the first skull of a fossil ape ever to be found. It was dated to be twenty million years old. An Australopithecus boisei skull was uncovered in 1959. Not long afterwards, a less robust Homo habilis was found. In 1965 the duo uncovered a Homo erectus cranium.

After her husband died in 1972, Mary continued her work at Olduvai and Laetoli. She discovered Homo fossils at Laetoli which were more than 3.75 million years old, fifteen new species and one new genus. From 1978-81 Mary and her staff worked to uncover the Laetoli hominid footprint trail which was left in volcanic ashes 3.6 million years ago.

Image from HERE where you will also find a slightly more colourful account of her life with Louis.

Forrest J Ackerman 1916-2008

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Forrest J Ackerman passed away on Dec. 4. Readers of a certain age will recognize his name. The rest of you should read this short article about Forry by Mark Evanier.

Revealed! Dinos Are Airheads

The Paranasal Air Sinuses of Predatory and Armored Dinosaurs (Archosauria: Theropoda and Ankylosauria) and Their Contribution to Cephalic Structure. 2008. L. M. Witme and R. C. Ridgely. The Anatomical Record 291: 1362-1388. Download the pdf.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

From the press release

A new study by Lawrence Witmer and Ryan Ridgely found that dinosaurs had more air cavities in their heads than expected. By using CT scans, the scientists were able to develop 3-D images of the dinosaur skulls that show a clearer picture of the physiology of the airways.

Theropods:
The analysis of the predatory dinosaurs revealed large olfactory areas, much greater than the brain cavity.

The CT scans also allowed them to calculate the volume of the bone, air space, muscle and other soft tissues to make an accurate estimate of how much these heads weighed when the animals were alive. A fully fleshed-out T. rex head (above), for example, weighed more than 1,100 pounds.

The air spaces helped lighten the load of the head, making it about 18 percent lighter than it would have been without all the air. That savings in weight could have allowed the predators to put on more bone-crushing muscle or even to take larger prey.

These sinus cavities also may have played a biomechanical role by making the bones hollow, similar to the hollow beams used in construction — both are incredibly strong but don’t weigh as much their solid counterparts. A light but strong skull enabled these predators to move their heads more quickly and helped them hold their large heads up on cantilevered necks.

Ankylosaurs:
The nasal passages in armored dinosaurs were found to be convoluted and complex, and didn’t funnel directly to the lungs or air pockets.

“Not only do these guys have nasal cavities like crazy straws, they also have highly vascular snouts. The nasal passages run right next to large blood vessels, and so there’s the potential for heat transfer. As the animal breathes in, the air passed over the moist surfaces and cooled the blood, and the blood simultaneously warmed the inspired air,” said Witmer. “These are the same kinds of physiological mechanisms we find all the time in warm-blooded animals today.”

These twisty nasal passages also acted as resonating chambers that affected how the ankylosaurs vocalized. The complex airways would have been somewhat different in each animal and might have given the dinosaurs subtle differences in their voices.

Though few similarities were found between the dinosaur and human sinuses—our brain cavities take up much more space relative to our sinuses— the scientists did find a resemblance between the air spaces of the crocodiles and ostriches and the ancient beasts under study.

“Extra air space turns out to be a family characteristic,” he said, “but the sinuses may be performing different roles in different species. Scientists have tended to focus on things such as bones and muscle, and ignored these air spaces. If we’re going to decipher the mysteries of these extinct animals, maybe we need to figure out just why it is that these guys were such airheads.”

Lacusovagus: New Pterosaur From Brazil

A new azhdarchoid pterosaur from the Crato Formation (Lower Cretaceous, Aptian?) of Brazil. 2008. M. P. Witton. Palaeontology 51: 1289-1300.


From the press release:

Lacusovagus magnificens, a new species of the toothless pterosaur family Chaoyangopteridae from Brazil is the only example of this group to be found outside China and is the largest one ever discovered.

Mark Witton identified the creature from a partial skull fossil from which he was able to estimate that it would have had a five-metre wingspan - bigger than a family car - and would stand over one metre tall at the shoulder.

He said: “Some of the previous examples we have from this family in China are just 60 centimetres long - as big as the skull of the new species. Put simply, it dwarfs any chaoyangopterid we’ve seen before by miles.”



Lacusovagus means ‘lake wanderer’and was named after the large body of water in which the remains were buried.

He was asked to examine the specimen which had lain in a German museum for several years after its discovery in the Crato Formation of the Araripe Basin in North East Brazil, an area well known for the its fossils and their excellent state of preservation. However, he said that this fossil was preserved in an unusual way, making its interpretation difficult.

“Usually fossils like this are found lying on their sides but this one was lying on the roof of its mouth and had been rather squashed which made even figuring out whether it had teeth difficult. Still, it’s clear to see that Lacusovagus had an unusually wide skull which has implications for its feeding habits - maybe it liked particularly large prey. The remains are very fragmentary, however, so we need more specimens before we can draw any conclusions.”

Say, whatever did happen to Fred from “Scooby Doo”? Isn’t that him as the scale model in the above diagram?

New Mark Schultz Book: The Stuff of Life

This is pretty cool.

A few years ago Mark Schultz took on a big project – writing a graphic ‘novel’ about genetics that can be used as a 1st year university text book. When Mark told me he was contemplating taking on this assignment I tried to warn him off. I’ve got a Ph.D. in zoology and I wouldn’t want to do this! But Mark persevered and –voila! – in collaboration with artists Zander and Kevin Cannon, the book will be out almost just in time (Dec. 23) to be too late to buy it for Christmas. But I urge you to do so because it’s also a fun and entertaining book. Don’t believe me? Well, watch this fun video promo for the book. Mark did a lot of design work for the project including the starfish-faced alien narrator who has the job of trying to explain the ‘why’ of human beings.



You can order “The Stuff of Life” HERE

Set Sail Today: H.M.S. Challenger

The Challenger at St. Paul's Rocks

From Today In Science History:

In 1872, the H.M.S. Challenger embarked from Portsmouth, England on the world's first scientific voyage around the world. Physicists, chemists, and biologists collaborated with expert navigators to map the sea. The Challenger was a corvette class ship, a military vessel that traveled under sail but had auxiliary steam power. The ship was fitted with a natural history laboratory where specimens were examined, identified, dissected and drawn; a chemistry laboratory; and scientific equipment.

During the 4 year journey, ending on 24 May 1876, the voyage zig-zagged around the globe to visit every continent, sounded the ocean bottom to a depth of 26,850-ft, found many new species, and provided collections for scores of biologists.

The expedition catalogued 4,000 previously unknown species. John Murray, who supervised the publication, described the report as "the greatest advance in the knowledge of our planet since the celebrated discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries".

The Voyage of the H.M.S. Challenger

Report Of The Scientific Results of the Exploring Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger during the years 1873-76

Born This Day: Louis Dollo

Dec. 7, 1857 – April 19, 1931

From Today In Science History

Louis Antoine Marie Joseph Dollo was a French vertebrate paleontologist who stated Dollo's Law of Irreversibility whereby in evolution an organism never returns exactly to its former state such that complex structures, once lost, are not regained in their original form. (While generally true, some exceptions are known.)

He began as an assistant (1882), became keeper of mammals (1891) at the Royal Museum of Natural History in Brussels where he stayed most of his life. He was a specialist in fossil fishes, reptiles, birds, and their palaeoecology. He supervised the excavation of the famous, multiple Iguanodons found in 1878 by miners deep underground, at Bernissart, Belgium. image

I Fought The Tyrannosaurus

Atomic Surgery presents a tale from 1959 illustrated by Steve Ditko.

Panderichthys & The Origin of Digits

The pectoral fin of Panderichthys and the origin of digits. 2008. C. A. Boisvert et al. Nature 456: 636-638.

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Abstract: One of the identifying characteristics of tetrapods (limbed vertebrates) is the presence of fingers and toes. Whereas the proximal part of the tetrapod limb skeleton can easily be homologized with the paired fin skeletons of sarcopterygian (lobe-finned) fish, there has been much debate about the origin of digits.

Early hypotheses interpreted digits as derivatives of fin radials, but during the 1990s the idea gained acceptance that digits are evolutionary novelties without direct equivalents in fish fin skeletons. This was partly based on developmental genetic data, but also substantially on the pectoral fin skeleton of the elpistostegid (transitional fish/tetrapod) Panderichthys, which appeared to lack distal digit-like radials.

Here we present a CT scan study of an undisturbed pectoral fin of Panderichthys demonstrating that the plate-like 'ulnare' of previous reconstructions is an artefact and that distal radials are in fact present. This distal portion is more tetrapod-like than that found in Tiktaalik and, in combination with new data about fin development in basal actinopterygians, sharks and lungfish, makes a strong case for fingers not being a novelty of tetrapods but derived from pre-existing distal radials present in all sarcopterygian fish.


Click HERE to go to the Nature page hosting QT movies of the CT scans.