Pteroformer: dinosaur

Showing posts with label dinosaur. Show all posts

Saturday, 19 May 2018

#FordVNaish Cartoon Follow-Up

#FordVNaish cartoon follow-up

So the talk was talked, the tweet-storm rained itself out and the write-ups were written (see here, here and here). Several people produced some nice memes and cartoons commenting on, and parodying, the aquatic dinosaur theory, which will hopefully continue to circulate for as long as the book does. I knocked out a few single-framers which are dumped here for the sake of posterity.

Wednesday, 16 May 2018

Ford vs. Naish - 'Too Big To Walk'

Too Big To Walk

Tuesday night saw the much anticipated head-to-head between aquatic dinosaur proponent, Brian J Ford, and British palaeo sense speaker, Darren Naish.

To get you up to speed, Ford has a written a pretty hefty book, published by HarperCollins, which outlines his theory that ALL non-avian dinosaurs were necessarily aquatic, as demonstrated by numerous anatomical details across the whole non-avian group. To promote his book, Ford has embarked on an informal lecture tour, giving talks at institutions and on cruises.

#FordVNaish: a well-attended event. (Photo: G. Monger.)

Ford is very much a lone wolf in respect of this theory, and one might wonder what harm there is in an individual pushing his ideas against the immense weight of established palaeontology. He’s one guy and if his ideas are bat shit crazy, what’s the problem?

Fringe Theory

The problem is basically two-fold:

First of all, Ford is taking his theory directly to his audience, which most of the time won't comprise individuals with any kind of working knowledge of biological or palaeontological principles. A critical and enquiring mind will almost certainly enable an audience member to identify some sweeping and unsubstantiated claims, but many people will take Ford’s claims at face value. After all, palaeontology is not that new a science, and it sounds reasonable that Ford has the benefit of all that available knowledge. In short, there must be something already in the myriad studies to support his claims.

Secondly, Ford’s theory is legitimised by the mainstream coverage it receives. HarperCollins gave him a book deal, fergawdsake! They’re not some loony creationist publishing outfit that only ever publishes anti-science. They’re a big deal. They have standards.

Even the BBC provided him with a platform, much to the consternation of many scientists. Whack-job pseudoscientists touting fringe theories don’t seem so oddball to the general public when an organisation like the BBC helps increase their audience size – or when a publishing house like HarperCollins is happy to associate with them.

#FordVNaish

So Ford came to London to plug his book at a new regular event dubbed New Lands, held at Conway Hall. In the interest of maintaining some semblance of balance (and, presumably, integrity) the organisers pushed for another speaker to attend in order to defend the ‘dinosaurs are not obligate water dwellers’ position of modern palaeontology. The format was simple and digestible. Ford made his claims and then Dr Darren Naish answered those claims. After a few minutes’ break, the audience and speakers reconvened, and a Q&A session was held.

Thanks in part to Darren Naish’s prevalence on social media, the event was well-publicised, especially among palaeontology workers and enthusiasts, and it seemed (to me, anyway) that it was those people who comprised the majority of the audience. Indeed, many of those in attendance knew each other, and as @scyrene tweeted, it resembled a mini TetZooCon.

Brian J Ford's Presentation

So after Scott Wood's introduction, Ford opened straight away with what boiled down to, “All modern palaeoart is wrong and silly, and palaeontologists hate me and are petty and small-minded, and also wrong.” A more-gentle approach might have helped his cause – and would have been more friendly! – since it’s impossible to denigrate scientific consensus on so basic a level without also seeming to have a pop those people, however informal their interest, who subscribe to those theories. It’s probably fair to say that Ford put a lot of backs up with his opening comments, and it said as much about his attitude towards the scientific community as it did about what he thought of the model for dinosaurian lifestyles.

Ford adheres to the Greek pronunciation for Triceratops, pronouncing it with a hard ‘c’ throughout. His dedication to classical Greek fell short of dressing like Theophrastus and stalking up and down the lecture theatre making pronouncements from a scroll. (Er, what? - Ed) Ford proceeded to argue that dinosaurs were not dynamic, and the ideas perpetuated in modern palaeoart were ridiculous. Examples were provided, but all I got from that was that he's never seen a large mammal, like a rhino or a hippo, throwing its weight around. Also used as examples were numerous video clips of CG dinosaurs and their relatives, generally used as poor examples of palaeo restoration, in support of Ford's position. However, many of these, such as the WWD clips, are pushing twenty years old. There was a lot of cherry-picking going on, but picking holes in old, or even new, palaeoart is not the same as scientifically disproving a theory.

Edmontosaurus was selected as an animal which definitely lived an aquatic lifestyle, on account of its footprints' proximity to water, and the recovery of its fossils from petrified swamp beds. Also, sauropods didn’t need tails to balance; tails are dead weights, don't you know?! And gigantism always favours an aquatic lifestyle, never mind that sauropod skeletons are nothing like extant giant aquatic vertebrates' skeletons.

Curiously, Ford ignored the vastly disparate nature of the various dinosaur groups. Sure, it must help him make his point if he can ignore as many uncomfortable truths as possible, but ten year olds watching his talk on some Cunard cruise are going to wonder if he really knows his stuff. Some of Ford's anti-terrestriality arguments were based on out-dated reconstruction of Spinosaurus. He then moved to the newer Ibrahim et al reconstruction to point out that he was right all along, but then trashed it when it didn't agree with him.

Take-home: Non-Avian dinosaurs were too big to live on land, and inhabited bodies of water sufficiently deep to support their bodies. And suggestion to the contrary is absurd, and all palaeontologists are silly and small-minded.

Darren Naish's Presentation

Darren's main line of attack was to go through Ford's arguments, and offer some science – which had been sorely lacking for the previous thirty-or-so minutes. He started by giving a very brief overview of the main dinosaur groups and pointing out that the aquatic dinosaur theory is misinformation; the aquatic dinosaur claim is old, familiar, and robustly discredited. Ford cherrypicks his data. (He does; we all sat through him doing it!)

Contrary to Ford's assertions, Tyrannosaurus fossils, their trace fossils, coprolites, and fossils found in association with them, all support terrestriality. Darren pointed out that non-bird dinosaurs lacked aquatic specialisation, with the exception of a couple of weirdo theropods such as Spinosaurus and Halszkaraptor, and we were shown slides showing the evolutionary changes seen in animals which are aquatic.

Despite Ford's claims, aquatic animals do not want pneumatised bodies. They want dense bones. Also, buoyancy studies of dinosaurs support terrestriality. As mentioned, Darren acknowledged that some dinosaurs were likely semi-aquatic. Ford frequently referred to Spinosaurus's sail as a fin, but Darren pointed out that its sail is unlike those in fish. Despite the presence of a sail in chameleons, they're not aquatic either.

Are sauropods too heavy to walk? No - bones and soft tissue support life on land. Were those tails too big for living on land? Their anatomy says no; the tail is not a dead counterweight. it anchors the caudofemoralis muscles for pulling the femur back and powering locomotion.

In order to support his claims, Ford is dismissive of geology - like creationists! The Mesozoic was not a hothouse environment full of deep, warm swamps. The vast majority of dinosaur footprints were made on land and those thought to be made in water are highly questionable.

Critically, the isotopic signature in dinosaur bones supports a terrestrial lifestyle – but not for Spinosaurus.

Take-home: Decades of evidence and studies support a terrestrial lifestyle for non-avian dinosaurs, although a couple of known species show evidence for being semi-aquatic. Aside from those exceptions, no non-avian dinosaurs show any specialisation towards an aquatic lifestyle.

Q&A/Who Won?

The bar was shut during the break, which resulted in the sort of wailing and gnashing of teeth that you would expect from a bunch of scientists. People started sweating and panicking, but then John Conway remembered he’d seen a pub only a hundred yards away, and everybody pulled themselves together.

After the break, a Q&A session provided the speakers with the opportunity to address some of their differences through answering questions from the audience, and New Lands’ organiser, Scott Wood, refereed the responses and kept things on track. Among the many excellent questions were, “Would dinosaurs with heavy bone structures, such as Triceratops and Ankylosaurus, sink in water?” and “If Darren was more outrageous and sweary, would he have a HarperCollins publishing deal?”

Darren Naish and Brian J Ford (Photograph: G. Monger.)

Unfortunately I was still busy live-tweeting, and the faster pace of the Q&A session meant that I didn’t manage to tweet all of the questions, and I didn’t record any of the replies. But it’s fair to say that the speakers’ answers were in line with their presentations, and there were no surprises. That said, there was a fraction of what felt like ‘rolling back’ by Ford, where he made it clear that he wasn’t saying that even the biggest sauropods didn’t migrate to land in order to carry out certain activities, such as egg-laying. This was certainly at odds with his overall tone regarding the preposterousness of dinosaurs living out of water. He worked hard to convince us that these animals simply couldn’t do it, and then, almost flippantly, remarked, “Well, I’m not saying they couldn’t come out to lay their eggs!”

For me, this rather summed up Ford’s theory – and maybe Ford himself. Despite the Boris-eque bluster and theatrics, Ford simply didn’t speak with conviction. Certainly not the conviction of a scientist who has put his ideas to the test. Not even the conviction of the weirdo in the pub who genuinely, genuinely believes that David Icke is right about the Royal Family. Unlike the weirdo in the pub who can quote his subject chapter and verse, Ford cannot. There’s nothing to quote. We were provided with a string of barely-relevant anecdotes, insults and easily-refutable observations.

On that point, I’m not suggesting that all Darren had to do was turn up and list the studies that refuted Ford’s claims whilst trying not be rude, but in many ways, that was all that was required. Ford hadn’t undone any accepted principles. There was no palaeontology-shattering peer-reviewed paper which Ford could roll up and bop Darren on the nose with and say, “Toddle off home, Naish – you’re finished!” We were just subjected to his unsubstantiated ideas, punctuated with playground-style verbal attacks on palaeo workers. Saying somebody else's theory is silly does not substantiate your own.

But Darren did provide as much information as the time and format would allow and was very well prepared, which is to be expected from someone who is an expert in their subject and has already challenged Ford's claims on several occasions. Who won the debate is largely moot, since Ford is promoting a book, the release of which is imminent, and HarperCollins is hardly going to pull it on the strength of Ford's thrashing at the hands of Darren. A win for Darren would be to see the buzz surrounding the debate help inform people before they accept Ford's theories wholesale. Tuesday was about countering Ford in the hope that it will go some way to mitigating the damage that Ford and his book will do to the public's understanding of palaeontology. Hopefully Ford's book will simply be remembered as one of those weird little blips, like Hoyle's and Wickramasinghe's Archaeopteryx, the Primordial Bird: A Case of Fossil Forgery. They enjoy their fifteen minutes but ultimately, no one takes the seriously.

When all is said and done, Ford’s negativity towards the science community is telling. If he isn’t interested in winning over scientists, he’s trying to win over the public. And if he isn’t doing it for science, he’s doing it for money. Too Big To Walk is Brian J Ford’s snake oil.

(Illustration: Gareth Monger.)

After the event, Darren Naish posted supplemental information here. The opening paragraph: "This document corrects various additional claims made by Brian J. Ford and is intended as a supplement to my talk given at Conway Hall on Tuesday 15th May 2018. Needless to say, there was insufficient time in the talk to fit in all of these additional corrections and comments."

For those who couldn't attend, I filmed the event with my co-author, Andy Brain, from my other blog, Beware! The Zine. TetZoo now has the files, and barring a couple of minutes clipped from the end of the Q&A, we hope we got some usable video/audio.

(The details recorded throughout this write-up were hastily posted to Twitter during the event itself, before being presented here. Although I've taken care to post accurately, there remains the possibility that paraphrasing and abbreviating for the live tweeting has introduced slight errors.)

Monday, 28 August 2017

Prehistoric Life, As Rendered In Lego

Lego: The Building Blocks Of Simulated Life

An introduction to Lego might seem totally unnecessary, but in the event that this blog outlives the famous brick system, here's a tweet's worth of description for future readers:

@Lego is a line of plastic construction #toys consisting of colourful interlocking plastic bricks, gears, figurines and various other parts.

There you go. A description so concise, even a world leader couldn't fail to stick with it to the end. But Lego is more than that. Lego is manufactured by real Vikings and for a good few years it barely sported any English on its packaging. Even so, it's taken a surprisingly strong hold in English-speaking countries, eventually shedding the remnants of its continental look, and making every third set a Disney-controlled-Hollywood-movie tie-in (and then there's all the DC stuff). Old duffers like me yearn for a time when there were fewer unique pieces, but you can't fight evolution, and Lego doesn't fight market changes.

Luckily, Lego whizz, Warren Elsmore, was on hand to remind us that Lego can still be more than just Star Wars and lazy, gender-specific faux pas.

Dinosaurs: The Universal Language For Cool

Before a chance visit to Preston's Harris Museum & Art Gallery last week, I'd not heard of Warren Elsmore (he tweets here). Everything I now know has been gleaned from the web, and it's clear that he's not built (BUILT!) his Lego career just so he can fill the world with dinosaurs. And that's okay. Dinosaurs aren't everybody's cup of stuff, and making a living out of them is hard work. Warren has turned his engineery talents to several disparate areas, which are all incredible and covered in detail at his site, but what got my palaeosenses tingling is his current touring exhibition, 'Brick Dinos'.

The Dinosaurs Take Preston

Now, it's almost a given that something with dinosaur in the title, and intended for general consumption, will actually feature a fairly broad array of dinosaur and non-dinosaur palaeontological critters. Practically nothing else rolls off the tongue, and as any marketing consultant will tell you, buzz words work (even if they make experts twitch).

Warren's 'palaeoLego' displays themselves were placed within a couple of decent-sized galleries, and could be divided, broadly, into two types. A dozen or more glass cases held dioramas and replica specimens, such as plant and ammonite fossils. The dioramas resembled regular kits in terms of scale. I could almost have imagined that these were off-the-shelf Lego kits - and that's not to suggest that there was anything run-of-the-mill about them, simply that were very-well conceived and honestly looked as if Lego's designers had signed them off. And that should come as no surprise, since Lego bricks is what Warren's famous for.

Naturally, there's a resolution issue here. There's a bottom end to the scale, and the only real way to introduce palaeontologist-pleasing detail is to go big. You don't really get to include integumentary structures such as feathers when you're working in Lego. That doesn't mean Warren doesn't try. His ornithomimid - I think it was Struthiomimus - certainly had some attractive downy fluff cascading down its sides.

As this was a flying visit and I didn't know the exhibition was happening, I didn't take many notes, so I honestly don't recall whether this was Struthiomimus or Gallimimus. And that illustrates the resolution issue. The level of detail attainable at this size is limited, so this could be any ornithomimid. On the other hand, this isn't an exercise in scientific accuracy, so who cares? And it is nice to see a non-avian theropod, as part of a pop culture exhibit, adorned with feathers.

(Speaking of feathers, there was also an Archaeopteryx, but it wasn't very convincing, even bearing in mind it was made in Lego - so I didn't bother to photograph it. Again, it's a resolution issue. Bricks are just too, well, bricky to convincingly depict an animal famous for its avian-esque qualities. Also, it seemed to have a short tail.)

It would be weird if there wasn't a hulking great Tyrannosaurus in this display, so it was no great surprise to find one skulking around in the Lego scrubland of one of the glass cases. This one raised smiles with its bloodied kill's remains strewn across the ground. Oh, and look those manus! No bunny hands here! Hats off to them for getting that right.

It's worth drawing attention to the landscapes in Warren's sets. There's no Cretaceous hothouse tropiness going on. No baked deserts with an obligatory backdrop of lava-spewing volcanoes. The leaflet boasts that Warren worked closely with a palaeontologist, and that's evident. These are Lego renderings of living animals and it shows. These are not '60s caricatures of cold-blooded, tail-dragging lizards, smashing their heads into rocks and fighting each other because they don't know how to do anything else. I walked in vaguely curious, but ultimately not expecting much, and I came out wanting to blog about it.

The Big Stuff

The second type of display, after the dioramas, is the full-scale sculpture. Understandably, there weren't as many of these, and how do you decide which dinosaur to tackle? And, importantly, where do you draw the line when it comes to size? Cleverly, a large diorama into which one places a medium-sized dinosaur is still an imposing sculpture! Masiakasaurus is an interesting theropod from Madagascar with weird, sticky-outy teeth which suggest that it may have gone after fish and other small animals.

Most palaeo workers agree that too small a selection of palaeontological animals get too big a share of the attention. That most of those animals are dinosaurs is also a massive bugbear for palaeo workers. Dinosaurs are the 1%. If you asked a hundred different palaeontologists to nominate an extinct animal to feature in this diorama, you'd receive a thousand different nominations - and you might get a dinosaur among the mammal teeth. But this isn't SVPCA, it's the Harris in Preston, and its target audience includes an enormous number of kids, all desperate to rattle off every dinosaur name they know in front of proud parents.

Despite this, it's still fun to see something a little more 'out there' than the usual 'T-REX', or mis-scaled Velociraptor, even if it is another theropod. Masiakasaurus isn't your usual theropod, at least not at the sharp end, and it's nice to see that extra effort went into avoiding a dinosaurian cliche.

Given that this was the only full-size Lego model of a theropod in the display, I would have loved to have seen an attempt to add some sort of feathery coat, perhaps not fully-veined feathers given its position on the theropod family tree relative to those more closely related to birds, but some hint. Or maybe, given that Warren clearly isn't adverse to the idea of feathered dinosaurs, his consultant nudged him away from that headache.

Another "pterosaur", presumably a female Pteranodon. Seriously, why don't the pterosaurs get to use their generic names? That happened in the WWD movie, too. (Copyright © Warren Elsmore; photo: Gareth Monger.)

Again, I feel like I'm nitpicking. An important aspect to displaying dinosaurs is conveying their size - especially the larger examples - and this is something you don't necessarily get from their skeletons, since they are reduced to hollow, lightweight frameworks, with museum lighting reaching through a complex of negative space. A solid, fleshed reconstruction takes us that bit further, and we can appreciate the mass of an animal, even if it is demonstrated in Lego, minus a bit of fluff.

During my short visit, I saw children awed, and occasionally scared, by Warren's incredible models. Interactive displays and activities enabled visitors to fully engage, and an art competition will extend the enjoyment that bit longer for one lucky visitor. If you're in the Northwest, you've got 'til September 17th (2017) to see this exhibition, after which it goes extinct, though perhaps not forever. For more information, go here or here.

Saturday, 21 May 2016

Blackpool's Place In Illustration History, The Passing Of Wildlife Artist David Johnston And Grabbing Your Reference When You Can

The seaside town they forgot to close down...

BA (Hons) Scientific and Natural History Illustration was a successful degree course with an international reputation and was run at Blackpool and the Fylde College of Art and Design until only a few years ago, when short-sighted management decided to turn an important college with students from all over the world into a very average one which tends only to the needs of the local populace. People hardly need a reason to avoid Blackpool; after all, it's an end-of-the-line seaside town with no pre-tourism industry to speak of (and precious little pre-tourism history), and a local government which has no firm long-term plans. It also finds itself high up in national rankings for deprivation, suicide and low life expectancy.

Two shoppers wait for Primark to open against the stunning backdrop of Blackpool Tower and the Fylde coast. (© Twentieth Century Fox.)

A marriage of science and art

The degree, which we used to refer to as 'Sci Ill', was initially taught by a former Technical Illustration student, Dave Johnston, who would become a world-renowned wildlife artist. Although he left the college the year before I started, I would get to know him at the print shop where I work, printing for him hundreds of reference images of myriad extant dinosaurs, but mainly corvids, larids and sternids. Though in his sixties, Dave still valued fresh reference material, though I was always a little surprised that, given his insatiable appetite for photography, there was still any photographic reference left for him to collect.

Die-hard Dougal Dixon fans may remember Dave as one of the two illustrators (the other being Andrew Robinson) who provided images for Dixon's The Illustrated Dinosaur Encyclopedia which was published by Hamlyn in the late '80s. Although I doubt the artwork blew anybody away, the treatment of many of the dinosaurs, especially the ceratopsians, did make them look 'fuzzy', albeit unintentionally, a long time before most palaeoartists were feathering anything other than Archaeopteryx and the odd segnosaur.

The Illustrated Dinosaur Encyclopedia by Dougal Dixon, illustrated by Dave Johnston and Andrew Robinson. (Not to be confused with The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Dinosaurs, by David Norman). Section of stolen blue pallet for scale.

Dave Johnston died unexpectedly last month, which ended one chapter in Blackpool's part in the story of British wildlife art - and it was quite a colourful chapter. His humanist service certainly had a 'rock star' vibe and many of those in attendance had that 'lived in' look. Blackpool has its characters; I think most of them were at Dave's funeral.

Sci Ill was set apart from similar courses in that it employed a full-time biologist (Mike Clapham) who was on-hand to tutor students in biological processes, but his main role was to level the playing field by teaching everybody how to effectively research their subject matter. This was combined with photography tuition; the theory went that your illustrations could only be as good as your reference.

This was a time when digital photography hadn't quite kicked film of its perch, so the entire class went out and purchased a tonne of 35mm camera gear. Every photoshoot ended with a trip to the local film developer, and if you didn't get it right, you had to do it all over again. Not really a problem if you're making clay dinosaurs, but if you're shooting something that's more time and location-sensitive, like the annual Fen tiger migration, it can be a real pain in the wallet. You kids don't know how good you've got it.

Cameras, cameras everywhere...

...and still no convincing thylacines or yetis. In 2016, of course, many of us don't go anywhere without at least a basic camera. Most mobile phones come with cameras as standard, and the quality of these has increased dramatically since they became commonplace some time in the '00s. Better lenses, better resolution and camera apps have between them provided people with the digital equivalent of the Instamatic. You don't really need a dedicated point-and-click camera if you own a mobile.

For artists, mobile phone cameras are pretty handy in that should you come across a scene or plant or something else not so easily or ethically brought back into the studio, you can photograph it with minimal fuss and add it to your reference library. You can record compositions and colours, organisms which you may wish to identify later, and, as was suggested to us during a field trip, evidence of illegal poaching and landscape destruction.

Whilst out on the school run, I noticed this unfortunate infant theropod in the middle of the pavement, tens of metres away from any obvious nest sites. We can only speculate about how this animal found its way here. It certainly didn't fly itself there. But whilst I did have my trusty phone with me, I didn't have any means to transport the corpse back to my ~~lab~~ open-plan kitchen/lounge where I could take a better set of reference photos, and maybe ID it. From now on I carry a few plastic sandwich bags - just in case.

(I was going to offer a paragraph or two on the possible reasons for the liberal scattering of dead baby birds upon pavements, parks and gardens, but of course the second I searched the net, I see Darren Naish has already done it! - see here.)

Sunday, 29 November 2015

Stuck For A Palaeo Gift? Decision-Making Just Got Easier...

Picky Palaeo People

This is shameless self-promotion whereby I suggest you buy my art on t-shirts, mugs, hoodies, and whatever else Redbubble keeps in stock, and as such, I'll not be spamming the Facebook groups (just the Twitter hashtags). If you're one of those people who is lucky enough to count a palaeontologist amongst the inhabitants of your Christmas gift list, then you could do far worse (I think!) than take a look at my Redbubble gallery and peruse the palaeo-themed graphics and doodles which populate its pages.

Is there an ichthyosaur nerd in your life? Sorted! Do you know of a plesiosaur fancier out there who's still wearing the shoddy transfer t-shirt they made at college in 1990? Upgrade them! Are you sick to death of hearing your neighbours argue because one of them is perpetually frustrated by the lack of Yi qi apparel in the palaeoverse? This might be the fly-remover for their ointment!

(L-R) The Palaeoplushies Queen, Rebecca Groom, wearing the Haida ichthyosaur; 'How Train Your Velociraptor'; a road sign we'd all like to see more of; 'tyrant teen', Tristan Stock, looking buff whilst wearing 'The Membraned Crusader'.

So pop along to the 'GaffaMondo' gallery at Redbubble and take a peek. There you will find a good chunk of the supporting graphics, doodles and cartoons which I generated over the last twelve months, which is, coincidently, Pteroformer's first year online. With luck, I'll be able to add to this collection over the next twelve months, perhaps producing images to commemorate further new discoveries, as I did for Yi qi. Needless to say, Pteroformer isn't a commercial site (in the sense that I'm not paid to write it) so any money made on the back of it is very gratefully received - plus it means I can keep it ad-free. And don't forget, you'll be supporting original palaeoart, which means that you're joining the good fight against shitty broken-wristed raptors clad in ill-fitting snakeskin pyjamas. Not so good if you have a feather allergy, but it's a small price to pay to get away from 1990s shrink-wrap hell.

Support Original Palaeoart

You'll notice the Support Original Palaeoart graphic - it doesn't mean I'm endorsed, just that I'm one of many supporting the movement, spearheaded by Mark Witton, John Conway and Darren Naish. You can read all about it over at Mark's blog, here.

Late Announcement!

David Orr has just published an article at Love In The Time Of Chasmosaurs, giving a brief run-down of some of the palaeontology-themed artwork, books and other bits you can buy, including work by Ricardo Delgado, Fred Wierum, Levi Hastings, Jon Davies, Juan Carlos Alonso, Matt Martyniuk, Brynn Metheney and Angela Connor. Happily, I got a mention too - as did David's, and his wife Jennie's, great early learner's book, Mammoth Is Mopey. I've got a copy; one day I might let my kids look at it.

Next up: Celebrating 20,000 page views with pterosaur papercraft!

Wednesday, 24 June 2015

National Geographic's Antidote To Terminal Monster Saturation

The palaeontology community's members are all in therapy, thanks to Jurassic World's insistence on filling a(n ENORMOUS) fictional theme park with some of the worst reconstructions of Mesozoic reptiles known to man. The TetZoo guys didn't even make it to the end of their own review*, with Darren Naish weeping uncontrollably after only fifteen minutes, and transmission being cut seconds after what can only be described as a muffled thud. Listeners were left to make up their own minds as to what had transpired, with many speculating that they'd just heard Naish's mercy killing at the hands of John Conway. The Love In The Time Of Chasmosaurs blog clearly comprises a masochistic crew, who offered up not one but two reviews on JW. (And they just added a third about an hour ago.)

The point is, you don't have to look too far to find a palaeo community review for this year's main Summer blockbuster. Jurassic World has attracted much attention since people began speculating as to how they might depict some of the film's key creatures. It's nearly two decades since John Hammond demonstrated how you should NEVER EVER run a zoo and, in that time, dinosaur reconstruction has evolved at an unimaginable rate. Would Jurassic World reflect this? Would we get feathered 'raptors'? Would they possess the correct wrists described by Dr Alan Grant RIGHT AT THE BEGINNING OF THE FIRST MOVIE? And, most importantly, would their T. rex still move around the park, one earthquake-causing footstep at a time, taken every thirty seconds? ("T. rex doesn't want to be fed, it wants to hunt!" Not gonna happen. Not when everything within a couple of miles knows you're coming.)

By now you already know the answers. You've either seen the film or read the reviews, so in the interest of avoiding repetition, I'll spare you a long and damning run-through of how bad they got it. Jurassic World was, for me, an enjoyable monster romp - a worthy sequel to Jurassic Park. I got giddy sat at home, waiting to leave for the cinema. I got chills hearing the music. And I nearly wet myself during the tag-team end battle. But it's not a film about dinosaurs. It is, however, a love letter to the first film, as demonstrated by numerous references and nods to Jurassic Park. It also flicks the Vs at the less-well-loved Jurassic Park III, if only by having the first film's T. rex smash through a mounted Spinosaurus skeleton during the final reel. And remember how the JP3 promo art made use of a triple claw-gash to form the III? The only reason I could see for ~~Improbable~~ Indominus rex having four manual digits was so that Universal could use the same trick for this fourth instalment. Pfft. Yes, it's daft, overblown, and it makes scientists cry. But it's fun and noisy and holds children's attention for the duration.

These are the take-home points of the Jurassic Park series:

Revived Mesozoic animals will, upon their release, always, ALWAYS go bat-shit crazy and attack every human in sight, irrespective of their general temperament when confined, or whether they're piscivorous, carnivorous or veggie-saurus, Lex, veggie-saurus!
Large theropods will announce their approach with impact-tremor footsteps. They will then stand and roar, I guess because they're sporting types, and think it fair to offer their intended prey a chance of escape.
A hunting dinosaur has no concern for its own wellbeing. It will happily smash through buildings, walls, perimeter fences and steel doors in order to catch prey. It will go to any and all lengths to catch a person, inconvenience be damned. It has no concept of 'too much effort'. (Extinction hypothesis?)
Indominus rex was originally engineered as a means to retrieve broken-down gyrospheres, hence its enormous gape. Probably.
Jurassic Park films would all end after only ten minutes if ANYBODY had conducted a decent risk assessment analysis. Ergo, in the JP universe, people are really, really stupid.

So will the Summer of 2015 go down in history as the moment when film & television decided that palaeontology ≠ sexy? Not quite.

Thank the flips for National Geographic's 'T. rex Autopsy'. If you've not seen it, the premise is a straight-forward one: make a fully-furnished Tyrannosaurus rex corpse, hire a team of palaeontologists and vets, and set them to work dissecting it. Obviously turning that into a reality was anything but simple, as palaeontologist and adviser-to-the-show Dave Hone explains (here). And they do a brilliant job. The dissection team does not behave as if its members are crawling over a special effect. They do their level best to convince the viewers - and themselves - that the animal is real. For the most part they pull it off, too. Excepting the odd, faked, reflexive cough at smells we know aren't there, their reactions at having been presented with a 'real' non-avian dinosaur are a joy to watch. My seventeen-year-old daughter arrived home partway through the programme; gawping confusedly at the television screen, she enquired as to where on earth the makers got hold of a fully-fleshed dinosaur. That's how good it is. Of course, if you're looking for the tells which betray the animal's synthetic construction, they're there, well hidden. But who cares? Disbelief is easily - and wilfully - suspended. Hats are tipped at those who conceived, designed, and executed this remarkable piece of television. It more than makes up for those well-documented missed opportunities of Jurassic World.

A few weeks ago LITC announced the Jurassic World challenge. In order to try to increase awareness of real palaentology, and perhaps direct some funds back towards it, LITC suggested that if you go to see the film you could spend at least the equivalent amount on something which will benefit palaeontologists, research institutions, palaeoartists and museums. You could buy a book, or a piece of palaeoart, or donate to a museum or crowd-fund someone. There's loads to choose from if you look around.

Since I have bills like everyone else, it would help me enormously if people bought a t-shirt from my Redbubble page. You can show off your pop-culture-savviness with a hyper-daft Guardians-Jurassic-World-How-To-Train-Your-Dragon mash-up, or keep reminding everyone that T. rex Autopsy was the best thing on telly since sliced tyrannosaur.

Juraasic World and T. rex Autopsy fan art t-shirts, available at my Redbubble page, here.

It's good to get that JW stuff off my chest. Normal service will resume soon. There's a stack of stuff sat there in draft, including more wandering sauropod ecosystems, more Yi qi, and more pterosaur quad-launching. Laters!

*Of course TetZoo did the whole interview. Listen to it - its very entertaining.

Friday, 22 May 2015

Standing Tall: Stegosaurus

This blog was never conceived with the intention of filling it with speculative palaeoart, but it's as good a place as any to put it. Stegosaurus has had a fair bit of coverage in recent months, with the NHM's mount being used to estimate the animal's mass, and Saitta 2015 looking at apparent differences in individuals' plates to determine the animals' genders. Padian and Carpenter disagreed, and Theropoda looked at the health implications of stegosaurs dragging their tails (such as constipation).

Superb illustrations by John Conway and Mark Witton got me thinking about those plates. Palaeontologists have put forward various ideas regarding their purpose, the most popular of which being thermoregulatory aids, display structures and defensive structures. In nature, structures often have multiple functions, with secondary functions being unrelated to their primary function. Feathers, for example, probably developed initially for insulation, but could have been easly modified for use in display, either through behavioral means or by changes in pigmentation. Structural modification of the feather - and other key anatomical features - then endowed the owner with an aerodynamic advantage.

That's a long-winded way of suggesting that Stegosaurus's plates probably did not perform one single function. Some of that's already been touched on in this earlier post, but I'm keen on the idea that part of Stegosaurus's display is concerned with how tall an individual looks, i.e., how much vertical space it occupies, especially in the eyes of potential mates, conspecific rivals and would-be predators. With fuzziness now known to be present in (some) ornithischians, I'm happy to speculate that some stegosaurs may have used stiff fur or 'fuzz' as it's often called, to extend the margins of the dorsal plates. Many palaeoartists, palaeoillustrators and palaeontographers already restore those dorsal plates with a sizable ~~soft-tissue~~ (see comments) keratinous extension. An additional growth of stiff hairs as a light-weight projection could, in theory, increase the size of the plates' appearance. Compared to a bone-and-flesh plate, the hair component would be less demanding on the animal, given that once the hair as at the surface, it's a dead structure, and no longer requires a blood supply in order to maintain it. Of course, if it's concerned with sexual display, it may be renewed seasonally, and shed after mating. This would get around the problem of it getting trashed through day-to-day activities, and filling up with dirt, mould and parasites - which nobody wants.

Anyway, it's just a thought. And this post is supposed to be short and sweet, like the Holocene.

Next up: Yi qi (again).

Friday, 1 May 2015

The Fossil Record Throws A Curveball: Yi qi

Those crazy, crazy theropods. If there's one thing palaeontology has showed us about dinosaurs, it's that you shouldn't get used to their popular reconstructions because, sooner or later, something will turn up that'll really screw with your mind. And it's not like these events are necessarily rare; Deinocheirus and Spinosaurus got make-overs in the last couple of years, and they're both pretty high-profile.

Less high-profile are the Scansoriopterygidae, small, feathered, theropodan dinosaurs with the long arms you'd expect of an arboreal, aerial-capable dinosaur, but with an immensely-long third digit. A popular notion is that this digit was an adaptation to an arboreal lifestyle, enabling the creature to wrap its arm around tree trunks and branches, like naturalist David Bellamy, just, y' know, sharing the love.

B-b-but - what's this? A new paper by Xu, Zheng, et al, announces the discovery of a new scansoriopterygid, Yi qi, preserving not only the long fingers and feathers, but also a new, hitherto unseen structure. A long bony, or cartilaginous, rod projects backwards from each wrist, and patches of membrane suggest a set-up not totally unlike that of bats or pterosaurs. Or dragons, but I didn't say that. There's still some debate as to how the proximal margins of the wing chord may articulate, i.e., does it merge with the thoraic region or something else. And what is the true arrangement of the manual elements, in particular, the rear-pointing 'prong', referred to in the paper as the styliform element? They offer up a couple of possible arrangements, such as something superficially bat-like, and a set-up where the styliform elements are directed inwards, towards the body, helping to maintain a narrower chord. If this animal did indeed undertake powered flight, it's not too difficult to imagine it 'scooping' the air with its membranous hands, as bats do. Bats' hands' 'palms' form a sort of concave shape as they fly, which looks like a sort of arial butterfly stroke. Their fingers are fully jointed, enabling them to alter the shapes of their manus as required, resulting in a rather effective wing. The paper offers up three potential arrangements for Yi qi's 'wings', the two more plausible (to me) of which are shown here:

Two of three different arrangements proposed in Xu, Zhen, et al (2015), showing a proximally-pointing styliform element running parallel to the forearm (left), and the same feature, free of the forearm, pointing posteriorly and supporting a much-deeper membrane. (Illustrated by Gareth Monger; modified from Xu, Zhen, et al 2015.)

With regards the styliform element, I wonder if, rather than being curved in a horizontal plane (as restored, left) it instead curved ventrally (right), helping to maintain the aerofoil section - and a bat-like scoop. Some time after death, and prior to fossilisation, it has tipped over, rotating approximately 90 degrees, and settling in an unnatural position (left). Compression of the bones and associated remains during preservation could be masking the true shape of this apparently-unique element, but some lateral compression in life would make structural sense in terms of giving it strength during a downstroke. But that's all speculation.

In the paper, the wing reconstructions (shown in dorsal view) show the hind limbs of the animal trailing behind it. Although the main point of the graphic is to demonstrate the possible extent of the membrane, a trailing position for the hind limbs is unlikely; it pushes the centre of gravity back, and increases turbulence. For a volant theropod, it would seem unlikely that it would extend its legs behind it if they're not supporting part of a flight surface, and it also seems unlikely that a volant animal would rely on a narrow wing as suggested in the left-hand diagram. The right-hand diagram shows a deep chord, within which the (estimated) centre of gravity comfortably sits, when the legs are brought up, underneath the body, and out of the airflow.

Speculative illustration showing possible extent of contour feathers on Yi qi, and a possible centre of gravity. Note that the animal brings its legs in under itself, out of the airflow and therefore reduces turbulence. This also maintains a more-central centre of gravity. (Copyright © 2015 Gareth Monger)

Where the trailing edge of the membrane attaches (e.g., the body, or the hind limb) is not clear. Flying dinosaurs which use feathered wings benefit from legs which are independent of the wings. They can run into the airflow to achieve lift-off, or they can jump into the air, with the wings already committed to the flight strokes and not involved in the jump (compare pterosaur quad-launching). Having a skin membrane attached to the leg might be problematic since the legs (if not held out behind) would need to be elevated in order to maintain a level flight surface, and not one which partially faces into the airflow. However, that brings the leg and the membrane attached to it forward, reducing the tautness of membranous wing. Bearing that in mind, one might expect the membrane to attach on the body, somewhere in front of the hip, and not to the leg. The styliform element could work as a means by which the animal adjusts the tautness of the membrane, in a similar way to how a pterosaur is thought to do so with its apparent ankle attachment. Without that extra strut, the animal might enjoy less control and increased flutter in the membranes.

One of the key questions raised by this is why would a theropod go the route of developing a membranous flight surface when so much experimentation with flight (and there seems to be a lot of it!) is concerned with forming a continuous flight surface from elongated feathers? A major difference between scansoriopterygids and other, flighted, theropods is their elongated third digit. As suggested earlier on, it could be that this is an adaptation towards an arboreal lifestyle, enabling the animal to climb trees and other steep surfaces more easily. And it could be that selective pressures favoured the extension of the postpatagium instead of the feathers present on the arms. Whatever the case, feathers for flight persisted, and the theropodan flight membrane proved an evolutionary dead-end. Hopefully, additional specimens will come to light, adding to our understanding of this weirdo dinosaur.

Many thanks go to Mike Boyd for enabling me to write this particular article.

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