Good to be me

It's good to be me, especially since I've got some seriously cool hookups. Matt Vavreck is currently in Lebanon doing some research for Dr. Chatterton. While there, he's doing a little shoping for me. I'm not quite sure what I'm getting, but its between several varieties of Cretaceous age fossil fish. Apparently, I could get some small ones for $5 each or bigger ones for more. I might even get a cretaceous ray (now if only I could remember the name of the Alberta variety so I could do some comparison, beggins with an M,I think).
Meanwhile elsewhere in the Middle East (Morocco) Stacey Gibb (also doing research for Dr. Chatterton) has money from me specifically for some dinosaur material and an enormous Trilobite.
I'd personally rather be doing this shopping my self but it's nice to be able to get the local price discount on otherwise expensive fossils. A great example of just such a discount is something I happened upon just the other day. I was walking around town (window shopping without the intention to buy) when I spied a couple of fossil turtles from the White River formation. A smaller one (about 10 inches long and 6 inches wide) was missing the majority of the carapase (showing just the endocast) and the plastron was obscured by matrix. The larger one (12 inches by 7 inches) still has about half of its carapase (also showing an endocast where shell is missing) and the plastron is once again obscured by matrix. Normally, If I were to buy this from a retailer in California who knows anything about fossils, I would be charge about $100-$150 for the better one. I bought it from a shop that had a couple of fossils (but mostly used books) for a grand total of $35, plus tax. Now I have a project in cleaning it up. I particularly like it because if reminds me of when I was a kid and I preped the same Oreodon skull (from the same formation) for 5 years (I'm alot faster now).

DinoData

Once again I would like to sing the praises of Dinodata. It's been a while since I've visited the site but I'm glad that I did. Apparently an oviraptor called Ingenia (one who's photo has long eluded me)has been shown to gave numerous impressions of blood vessels on the inside of its brain case, indicating that at least in that group, the brain was snuggly fitting within the skull, much like modern birds and mammals. As for what this evidence indicates in terms of phylogeny its pretty inconclusive if you ask me. The camp that says that oviraptors are within the crown group birds would argue that they inherited their larger brains from their birdy ancestors, where as the group that puts oviraptors in an outgroup relation to birds would argue that birds and oviraptors inherited the larger brain from a common ancestor. I personally like the idea that an ancestor with either a much lower body mass or a dramatic change in bite mechanics (reduces shock transmission to the brain) facilitated the transition to a more closely fitting brain. Still this hypothesis could go either way in terms of phylogeny.