Christmas Miracles!

"And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of Chester a Saviour, which is Draco the lizard. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the egg wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in an incubator."
"And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward dragons."

It has been recently reported that two female komodo dragons at seperate european zoos have reproduced asexually (parthenogenisis). When I first heard that dragons had laid eggs without a male's input, I immediately thought that it could have been a case of sperm storage, whereby a female can lay fertile eggs using sperm from a male mated with even years ago. Genetic testing though has shown that this is not the case. In fact, one of the dragons had never even been kept in an encloser with a male in her life. The process of asexual reproduction is a bit more common than the average person might expect, occuring in several lizards, fish, and a bird. In fact, the whiptail lizard (Cnemidophorus sp.) reproduces exclusively through parthenogenisis. So far, the komodo dragon is the largest animal to undergo parthenogenisis.

link to a good article on the subject

Paleo News

I haven't updated in a while, so I thouht that I would do the public service of providing links to recent news articles related to paleontology.

The miocene fossil remains of a small land mammal have been found on the south island of New Zealand. This disproves the view that the landmass has been without indiginous mammals since it split from the rest of Gondwanaland during the Cretaceous. This means that there was either a lineage that survived on the island from the original split, or that there was some sort of contact (maybe a land bridge) with other land masses that allowed the imigration of the mammals to the island at some point in the intervening period. The article implies that discovery means that New Zealand's flightless birds such as the kiwi and the kakapo (possibly too cute to live) would have lost their ability to fly in the presence of indiginous mammals. I think that it is possible that the kiwi lost flight in the presence of mammals, but that is because it is part of the paleornithine clade (including ostriches, emus, rheas, moas) that are almost all flightless (tinamous aren't). I suspect that the relative defenselessness of New Zealand birds would have been a novelty that arose in the pleistocene or late pliocene. link

The Joggins fossil cliffs, a deposit that has revealed some of the earliest and most primitive amniote fossils in the world, is going to get a gift shop. The province of Nova Scotia and the Canadian government are puting up $7 million for an interpretive center at the site in hopes of getting it classified as a world heritage site (something that I assumed it already was). I don't really see this as the blessing that others might. On the one hand, it will bring attention to the site and hopefully a means of generating funding for further research on fossils from it. However, it has been my experience that the best way to preserve a site is to keep the general public as far away from it as possible. It isn't as though scientists won't think to explore the cliffs for fossils if it doesn't get advertising or a place on a tourist map. Among people who know vertebrate paleontology, it's already one of the most famous sites in the world. Bringing in the public is just an invitation to loose fossils to day trippers and amature collectors. I'll grant that other fossil based world heritage sites have interpritive centers (the burgess shale comes to mind) but they are usually hard to get to, and as far as I know, haven't really generated new research. link

An insectivorous mammal has been recovered from the lower Cretaceous of Mongolia with a preserved gliding membrane between it's limbs. The discovery, reportedly a member of a newly designated order, represents the earliest airborn mammals, greatly surpassing the earliest bats from the eocene. Several articles also mistakenly report that this mammal predates the birds in it's aerial exploits. Archaeopteryx, from the Kimmeridgian stage of the Jurassic, predates the new mammal by about 30 million years. Furthermore, fossil birds from Lioaoning are about the same age as the gliding mammal. link

In more news from Mongolia, more Tarbosaurus remains have been found in an international effort (including University of Alberta proffessor Phil Currie), thereby bulsturing my claim made nearly a year ago to a fossil dealer in Tucson that for $100,000 I could find my own Tarbosaur. link

Botanize!

While searching for nurseries that cary primitive plants, I came across an excellent gallery of x-radiographs of various plants. The artist is Judith McMillan. This isn't particularly palaeontological in nature, but at least it has a magnolia (around since the Cretaceous).

I doubt that anything new would be contributed to science by examining flowers via x-ray, but I'd still classify this as a melding of art and science rather than pure art.

By a Factor of 10

My parents brought to my attention that some fossils would be going up for auction in Los Angeles on Friday. This sort of thing always amuses me since I can get just about anything that would be going up for auction at a price significantly lower than would be paid at the auction house. Most things were too expensive by only one order of magnitude, although some were estimated to sell for close to 100 times what I thought it was actually worth on the fair market. I was astonished when I saw that the estimate for a well preserved uncoiled ammonite was less than $3,000, since it is the only thing that I think could be sold for significantly more. Admitidly, there are a few things that I think belong more in a museum than in someone's private collection, but nothing especially new to science is up for sale. I'm tempted to go to the auction if only to offer my services as an aprasor and proffessional shopper for people who have more money than experience with natural history.

Thanks mate

I hope that my readers will forgive the lack of proper accents in the following post since the current version of blogger currently lacks the appropriate symbols for putting them in place. Therefore, where-ever one sees mate, please read it as though there were an accent over the e, therefore transforming it into a hard A sound and reverting the actual A in the word to a soft one. And they say that spanish is spelt the way it sounds.
In his book Attending Marvels: a patagonian journal George Gaylord Simpson (nevermind the middle name) has a recurring gastronomic theme, a large part of which is devoted to mate. Mate is what we would referr to as an herbal tea, which is made from the dried (sometimes roasted) and ground leaves of the yerba tree (a close relative of Holly). As Simpson putts it," it is a cup that cheers but not enebriates. . . Happy are the patagonians to have their mate! They have so little else." As for the cheering qualities of the drink, Simpson was under the impression that mate contained mateine as the primary psychoeffective compound. Upon further inspection however, I've found that it is indeed our old friend caffeine that is responsible for mate's uplifting affects. Mate is even aesthetically pleasing and novel since it is traditionally served in a gourd and drunk through a metal straw.
After such superlative descriptions of mate from Simpson and from others who have gone to Patagonia in search of fossils, I decided to see if I could get a cup here in Southern California. No success did I have at Starbucks, nor at the Coffee bean and tea Leaf (the latter figures, they don't call it the coffee bean and yerba leaf after all). Henry's market carried nothing of the sort that I was looking for, but final I was rewarded at Cost Plus: world Market with what claimed to be a close faximile of the South American beverage. Mate however is only the second ingredient in the product, the first being Rooibos (whatever that is). I am a fan of bitter drinks, so I find this mate substitute to be rather pleasing, even without sugar. I'd someday like to try an authentic gourd of the drink, but then this is just one more reason for me to travel to central Argentina. Someday, someday.

Cute but annoying

Since I'm still without a job to go to every day I've started working on some pet projects. Today I've started working on disproving my hypothesis that herbivores can evolve from carnivorous taxa but not the other way around. The one group of mammals that has so far presented the biggest threat to the validity of this hypothesis is the diprotodonia, the group of marsupials that includes most famously the kangaroos, koalas, walabees and wambats. With the exception of two families, the entire order is herbivorous. The exceptions are the Thylacoleonidae (the fossil marsupial lion) and the Burramyidae, which are pygmy possums. As one might expect, the marsupial lion is currently believed to be a carnivore. The pygmie possum is more of an omnivore, feeding on insects, tree sap and sometimes very small lizards (though how one of these little things could tackle even the smallest gecko is beyond me). the reason that these creatures are so bothersome is that their exact relationship to other members of the order is still up in the air. We simply don't know how they fit in. Kirsch et al. (1997) lumped the pygmie possum in with the phalangeridae, but I suspect that this may be the result of a shared tree climbing habit rather than a true relationship between these creatures. The shrew-like or possum like morphology seems to me to be the basal (see also primitive) condition for most marsupials, so I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that the phylangeridae was a polyphyletic clade. If it were well known how these animals were all interrelated, I might be able to either go on with added confidence or be able stop right away and just admit that my hypothesis was wrong. I can take dissappointment, it's uncertainty that's a killer.

Spineless Cretons

Having installed a pond in my backyard and stocked it with goldfish, I've decided a little while ago that it would be an interesting experiment to see if I could replicate the clear water of the pond in the much larger pool. For some time now, the pool has been bright green, and quite uninviting to swimmers. This has been largely oweing to a deficiency of maintenance on my part and that of my housemates. Thus, if a small filter and a few fish can keep a little pond clean, then a big filter and a great number of fish should keep a much larger pond swimmable, completely sans chlorine. So far, this has not worked.
I have put in close to 30 goldfish and over 50 minnows (of which I know not how many survive since they are hard to count) with little noticeable affect on water clarity. As someone thuroughly trained in biology, it occurs to me that the water is still green because the fish only eat algae that is stuck to the side of the pool and not that which floats in the water column. Ergo, I need something that is a filter feeder. Now for the invertebrates!
I ordered cultures of freshwater sponges, copepods and daphnia (tiny crustaceans) and introduced them to the little pond. If they do well there, some will be transfered to the pool where they will hopefully improve water clarity. The problem however is that the invertebrates are so small that I can't see if any of them are even still alive in the pond now that I've introduced them. They could all be stuck in the filter for all that I know. Oh well. It is early yet and I suppose that after a few months, simply transfering water from one body of water to the other will be sufficient to introduce any of the invertebrates should they have survived that long.

Seriously, do you smell that?

Since my last project ended in Chino Hills, I've been put temporarily on a new project in Newport Beach. This one is currently in the Capistrano formation, which is a mire of thick, organic rich shale, siltstone and infrequent sand. It's an okay locality for fossils, though not super. Most of the fossils are small and fragile and the rock doesn't split readily along its bedding plane. The most distracting thing however is the abundance of hydrogen sulfide gas that is seeping out of the ground. For those of you who don't know, hydrogen sulfide is the compound responsible for "rotten egg" smell. It is also lethal in the parts per billion. Consiquently, I wear an alarm that warns me if there is more than 10 parts per billion of the poisonous gas. On the plus side though, the site is directly next to Hoag Hospital, so I aught to be well taken care of if something happens.

Do You Smell That?

It's the smell of civic responsibility, it smells like duty!
I voted today, just a few minutes ago as a matter of fact. For the most part, if i didn't care who won because I didn't know the candidate, I just left it blank. This was the case for the majority of the judicial positions. However, I decided that for major state rolls, I'd throw my vote away in a different manner. I voted for people who couldn't possibly win as a symbolic way of showing that I think that both of the two major parties have done a bum job over the last few years and that I think that they will continue to "stay the course" in this respect. The one section of the ballot that I genuinly cared about was the various initiatives up for the vote. I'll admit that I voted in a rather leftist manner, but I was constrained on a couple of initiatives because provisions had been built in which I thought aught to be on a seperate measure or just shouldn't be regulated at the state level. Besides, on issues that were contentious such as new property taxes for education and eminant domain, the people that I voted for for city government appear likely to vote my way on a case by case basis, obviating the need for the state control.
That's my political rant, one of millions being posted today.

When you got it. . .

Anybody'd be willing to give it to you. Inuendo aside, this means in my case that I can't get a lone from a reporting credit agency until I can sufficiently prove that I absolutely don't need it. This is one of the truisms that has plagued the young go-getter for generations but I feel that it warrents re-iterating here.
Today I spent much of my time in the library, pouring over consumer reports; thuroughly analysing just how poorly made American cars are these days and determining just the vehicle that would best suit my needs and means and then I went to two financial institutions to see if I could borrow the money. As it turns out, given my short credit history and brief time at my current job, I won't be able to get a lone until such a time as I'll have already saved up enough that I'll have no need of it. Heck, at that point I might just get the lone and pay it back the next day just to spite the crediting agency.
Naturally though, publically traded financial institutions aren't the only option. I can still go to my family for a very reasonable rate on an auto loan, but I'm the sort who would only go to relatives for help if and only if I absolutely couldn't do it myself. Call me stubbourn I guess. In the end, this turn of luck just means that I'll need to fix the astro van before getting a permanent replacement rather than after. I intended all along to fix it so that I could get a much higher resale value for it, but I guess that I'll just have to make that investment sooner than later.

Excellent Atavism

Japanese fishermen recently netted a dolphin that posesses atavistic rear fins. This means that it has an extra set of hand sized fins in front of its fluke. These appear to likely be a result of a mutation that has turned back on the genes that produced the back legs of the dolphin's terrestrial ancestors. Since the front and back legs are serially homologous structures, if the gene is turned on, the other genes that regulate shape and structure of the limb will produce a fin shape even if ancient whales lost their rear legs before they got to look like functional fins.

Mysterious ways

Anyone who declares themselves an enemy of the theory of evolution, I declare an enemy of mine. That said, it makes me glad to see my enemies get terrible news. The particular case that brings this all up is that of "Dr. Dino" an evangelist in Florida who makes it his life's work to try to debunk evolution. He just found out that he's been found guilty of 58 counts of tax evasion and fraud, meaning that he and his wife could face upto 200 years in prison between them. Apparently he thought that because his organization is religiously based, that it received tax exempt status. Evidently, he didn't actually consult a tax advisor in the matter. The lord may work in mysterious ways, but the IRS is only concerned with the mysterious nature of his payroll and tax returns.
link to the news article
link to boingboing article

the picture at the side is Richard Dawkins

SVP 2006

I've survived yet another meeting of the society of vertebrate paleontology; replete with "team Canada dinner," auction, after hours parties and actual scientific lectures. I'll provide more details in an upcoming post, but suffice it for now to say that it was one of the funnest meetings that I've been to and that I am too tired to really go into things now, as the only sleep I've gotten in a while were a few stolen winks on the flight back.

Just My Luck

I am a man of extreme luck; it is always extremely good or extremely bad, but always extreme. Today, Friday the thirteenth, cleche day of bad luck, turned out to be quite misfortunate for me. By way of exposition, it is important to know that I was planning on going on a company camping trip to Sequoia national forest today after work. I have been looking forward to this for over a month. From here it follows that it would be somewhat annoying to find that the socks which I had placed in the dryer the previous night were still damp this morning. Furthermore, because I had so much to get into the car in preperation for the trip, I forgot my watch on the coffee table; bothersome but not infuriating. Once I got to work, it just sucked. It was by far one of the most frustratingly boring seven hours of my life. After said time, I had one keep-worthy fossil compared to usually ten or so in an equivalent span. I've had other jobs (ie Disneyland) where I had to stand around doing nothing for long stretches, and long stretches of fossil hunting in the past that bore no fruit, but in both those cases I could still at least make an effort. If I had tried today to get to the spot where I knew there to be fossils, then in all likelyhood, I would have been reduced to a thin red smear in the dirt. Consiquentially, I just had to stand there, watching giant yellow caterpillars chew through some exceptionally rich fossil beds.
On Fridays, I always leave the site early so that I can drop off my week's worth of fossils at the office in Pasadena before 5pm. So, there I am, on the 210 freeway, just entering the city of Pasadena, when I hear a loud pop and sputter from my engine compartment. After maneuvering through 5 lanes of traffic and limping off the highway, I parked in a residential area and discovered that at least one head gasket has completely blown, the engine coolant has been shot out and so has one of the spark plugs. My car is now good for parts, that is all. AAA wanted $9 per mile to tow my van back to Fullerton, but given that that was close to 40 miles away I opted not to get the tow that evening. So here I am, on the raggedy edge as they say. At least I didn't break down near the camp site (where I am confident that cell phones would be usefull only as an object to throw at someone). My dad also offered to let me take his car up to the forest, but I declined. I need to get the van back to Fullerton this weekend and I need to make up my mind whether I spend the money to get it fixed or get it replaced.

Update

Not much to say here; I just thought that I'd update the blog just for its own sake.
anyway, here are a couple of pictures of the two gems that I've found at work. They are (in case you can't tell) a bird and a crab. The bird is especially rare and only a handfull of articulated specimens have been found from this age. The crab deserves note just because its the only arthropod that I've found in the six months at this site.



















By the way, I'm going to the SVP conference in Ottowa this year but don't have a place to stay since the host hotel was all booked up. If anyone reading this, out there in the blogosphere is going to SVP and has space in their hotel room, please let me know.

Norton Simon

The Norton Simon Museum of Art houses one of the largest collections of fine art (as opposed to modern art) outside of Europe, and yet, I haden't heard of it until last week when I visited the museum with my Grandparents. Interestingly, the museum is only a few miles, if that, from the office in Pasadena where I drop of my paperwork and fossils every week. When I asked other people about it and they, even the art student that I asked, hadn't heard of it. But there it is, holding some of the most valuable paintings and sculptures in the world. If you are ever in the LA area and have a sence of class, go see the collections of the Norton Simon Museum. It is well worth the trip. Not only that, but unlike the Luvre or the Metrapolitin museum of art, the Norton Simon museum wont be crowded.

Work

Life is pretty decent for me here in So. Cal. First of all, I get paid to do what I love. Second of all, heavy equipment does the majority of the actual work for me. The down side however is that for every one fossil that I find, another 99 are likely destroyed by the machines without my ever knowing of their existance. Another disadvantage is that just about everything that I find has been run over by a bulldozer once prior to discovery. Other items, still in situ (their original place in the rock) are impossible to remove from their resting places intact and consiquentially need to be glued back together.
These days, all I work with is fish from the Yorba member of the Puente formation. I practically eat, sleep and breath the light tan shale.


For scale ; The orange dot in the lower left hand corner is a person, the white line is a drain pipe.

Title Change

I'm changing the title of the blog since I'm no longer a Califorian far from home. I've been back in California long enough and I intend to stay here long enough to warant a title change. That said, I think "The Hermit Crab" is a good title. It's just a working one for now, until I come up with something more fitting. After all, I'm not nearly as much of a hermit as I could be or as I was when I was living in a van down by the arroyo. That, and I'm not as craby as I Could be. I'd appreciate sugestions. It will let me know at least that I still have the occassional reader.

Sting ray deprives reptiles of just deserts

Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter, is dead. He was not eaten by a crocodile, bitten by a snake or mauled by a goana. Instead, he was stung by a sting ray off the Australian coast. This is not the way that he should have gone. It just goes to show that there are old nature guys and bold nature guys but no old, bold nature guys.

Why are there so many mf snakes on this mf plane?

I'm bored, so I've decided to acquiesce to Sparks' request for people to make a list of great movie quotes. I however have decided that a good twist would be to imagine Samuel L. Jackson saying each line with his own unique inflection. This just goes to show that Mr. Jackson really could be in any movie, ever.
1. "We're gonna explode? I don't wanna explode!" - Serenity
2. "We represent the lollipop guilde." - Wizard of Oz
3. " I am your father." - Star Wars
4. "I am Sparticus!" - Sparticus
5. "Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?" - Pinky and the Brain
6. "I think so Brain, but where are we going to find a duck and a hose at this hour?" -Pinky and the Brain
7. "You shall not pass!" - The Lord of the Rings
8. "And the snozberries taste like snozberries" - Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
9. "I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti." - Silence of the Lambs
10. "It belongs in a Museum!" - Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Jeepers!

Some days, life gives you little treats. The figure at the left appeared in the most recent issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology in an article on binocular vision in theropods.
I'm not going to say that this picture didn't belong in a scientific paper. Quite the contrary, I believe that more scientists should have a little sense of humor about their work. I'm sure that these guys and, no doubt, the journal's editors have a sense of humor because they would otherwise not have pictured the skull with it's jaws open; they would have just cropped it at the snout as in figure A.

example of the law

Mel Gibson's arresting officer, the one who wrote the report that included Gibson's alleged anti-semetic ranting, is himself jewish. Normal irony or maximum irony?

NO means Maybe

At work, I find a fair number of crummy fossils that I don't even bother to collect, or collect and later decide that it wasn't worth it and consiquentially discard. Withouth knowing this though, a few of the machine opperators have been asking for fossils for their kids or girlfriends and others. So far, I've made it clear that I can't give them anything that is scientifically significant (i.e. worth keeping) but that I can give them other pieces, which I have. One fellow though seems oddly persistant. He asks for stuff everyday, even badgers me for fossils, goads me into giving them to him; and if success is an indicator of skill, then he's good at it too. Frankly, his tactics are cheesey. "Oh man, ya know, I like getting these things from the person who finds them because I learn so much more, and I've seen you work harder and find more than all the other palea . . . paleontologixsts at any site, and you find the most . . ." It's not that stroking my ego is effective, it's just that I give him stuff to shut him up and make him go away. What iritates me most however is that he's taking my kindness for granted. Even recently, now that they're moving earth in an area that doesn't have as many fossils, the guy still asks for pieces of what I'm finding (currently re-sedimented petrified wood) and I have to politely tell him no, but I might end up giving him a small piece just to get rid of him for the time being.

a bad influence

Lately, a tremendous amount of my megalomaniacal tendencies have been boiling to the surface. Really, I haven't talked as much about laying waste to vast stretches of citiscape since I lived with Hydrass and Bento. I just guess that when I'm on my own I sort of mellow out, but in the company of others I develope the strong urge to domineer over them. And I don't mean domineer in the way that Bush controls republicans, I mean it more as in the way that Chaney does it; with a shotgun intermediary and an overdose of fear and oppression. Beware world, giant robots are on their way. All I need is a few million dollars for parts, research and developement.

Prepare for the Worst

Yesterday (friday) was an awesome day. One so good that something freakishly horrible, if not widely fatal must surely happen to ballance things out. What made it so great was what I found at work. Everyday, the construction workers ask me if I've found any dinosaurs yet. The fact that the rocks that I'm digging in are much too young for dinosaurs means that I usually have to answer in the negative. Yesterday I was finally able to answer "yes." In fact, I found a fossil bird (descendant of the dinosaurs). For those of you who don't know, this sort of thing is rare, extremely rare, rare enough that many paleontologists working in rocks of the right age go their whole careers without finding one. The specimen isn't anywhere near perfect. In fact, it's only about half complete. The specimen includes one leg, the hip, most of the spinal column, most of the ribs, but is missing the skull, wings and pectoral girdle. In life, it would have been about the size of a sparrow or smallish jay.
I only wish that I could provide a picture as proof of my discovery, but sadly, the company issue camera has stopped working this week, thereby inhibiting me from photo documenting any specimens.
The bird is now in the Pasadena office of SWCA where it will wait until donated to a museum. If you're wondering why it's there and not now in my personal collection, believe me when I say that I was tempted to keep it and tell nobody. However, if I did, I would never again be able to aquire a fossil and justify the expense or unethical chanel through which it came by saying that the fossil stood a better chance of being studied with me than some other collector.

Dang!

I'm glat that this happens to other people too.
A great little comic strip

Ghoti = Fish

As perhaps I've mentioned previously, at the site that I'm working, I find a fairly large number of fossil fish. I find fish every day; I'm dissappointed if I don't find one before lunch. Perhaps as a consiquence of this, my brother asked me last week if I'd like to go fishing with him on a 3/4 day boat out of San Pedro. Yesterday I woke up at 4:00 am and we drove other to my parents' place to pick up my Dad and after breakfast we got to the pier at about 5:15. It was at this point that my brother informs us that tickets for the boat don't go on sale unil 6. That was fine since we had no idea how crowded it might be and wanted to get a place. At 7:00 the boat left the dock, and we started fishing for baracuda at about 9:00. People were pulling in fish all around us, but neither my brother, my Dad or I ever got more than a bit from a fish that subsiquently let go of the bait.
Later, we went to an area and started fishing for sculpin. It almost seemed that my dad and I were having some sort of sick competition to see who could bring up the smallest fish, since every other fish that we brought up was smaller and smaller than previous ones. And so, things went on fairly well until about 11 when, despite calmer seas than anyone would have right to ask for, I succumbed to sea sickness and lost my breakfast. I even had to hand my pole (with a fish on the line) to my dad so that I could spend a few minutes in dry heaves. It was only then that I remembered being sick the last time that the three of us went fishing.
Ultimately, I lost all heart for fishing and just focussed on not inverting my esophagus amid dry heaves. Yes, this is real quality time. At the end of the day, we brought home 15 sculpin and 1 baracuda. Once filleted, it amounted to a somewhat pathetic quantity of meat, of which I got half; my brother abdicated his share since he never actually cought any fish of legal size. We could have gotten more fish if we bought salmon for $18 per pound at Ralph's. But then, I wouldn't have anything to write about and I wouldn't be able to say that I've now been hit in the head with two fish in one day.

When Harriet Met Charlie

I'm sad to comment that Harriet, the Galapogos tortoise brought back by Charles Darwin 173 years ago, has died of acute heart failure. It has been popularly suggested for a long time that these animals could live for over 200 years, but no specimen has been kept long enough to actually be sure. One thing that interests me is that some people are reporting that Darwin brought back the tortoise as a baby, while others contend that she was already mature when collected. If the later is true, then it is certainly possible that she was over 200 when she died. The question seems to be now "what do we do with the 330 lb corpse?" Some might argue that burial would be the most respectful thing to do, but I think that a large amount of information can be extracted from this incredibly ancient animal. For instance, tissue samples should be taken for genetic analysis, which would be useful for studies of genetic drift among galapogos tortoises, or useful for studies of aging. Furthermore, each of the organs would tell talented researchers a bit about aging and reptile health. The massive skeleton should be deposited in a museum; either in Brisbane or London.

Never trust the people at Home Depot

I was at a plant sale last weekend, and noticed there was a single large, columnar cactus cutting for sale. Intrigued, I inquired as to its origin. The salesperson told me they were from South America, and could be propagated by simply planting the cutting in some sandy soil. It sounded like a fun project, an a good one for a hermit who likes to take off for weeks on end (when they are not slave to a work-a-day lifestyle), so I picked up one and was on my way.
When I got home, I began scouring guidebooks and the internet for more information on cactus care and growth. I found one webpage on the succulents that were spiritually important to South American indigenous cultures, with a picture that looked a lot like what I had just brought home. Excited to begin propagating this thing, I took a picture of it, planning to take more pictures as it grew and budded off into different sections. It was a rather innocuous cactus, and I wondered why it was so important to the cultures of the lands from whence it came.
Finally, I found another webpage that matched the description of this cactus. The picture was identical to my newly purchased cutting. The cactus, either Lophophora williamsii or Anhalonium lewinii, was said to contain large quantities of mescaline.

the rest of the story in fullpost

Wanting confirmation of this identification, I decided to take the cutting over to my botanist friend’s house. I thought it strange that a mescaline-filled cactus would end up at a plant sale at the storefront of a chain hardware store. I wrapped it up in tissue paper that evening, and set out. As I walked, I rounded a corner and noticed several police officers standing on the corner by the donut shop I was approaching. Nervous, as I suspected my new purchase contained enough illegal drugs to put me away for a long, long time, I quickened my pace. They were eying me quizzically.
There was nowhere to turn. My instincts told me to get off the street as quickly as possible; however, that would have likely aroused their suspicions, as they had seen me see them eying the package under my arm. Having had a previous encounter with the LA County Police Department, I was not eager to incite their wrath. As I approached, one officer spoke to me.
“OK, we just gotta know, what is that package you’re carrying under your arm?”
Mescaline, I replied in my head, and looked at him blankly, trying to appear as though I wasn’t sure I was being addressed. He stepped in front of me, making it obvious that I was the target of his inquiry.
“You, see, my buddies here have a bet going. One thinks it’s a bottle of wine, and the other thinks it’s a sub sandwich.”
I decided to go for it.
“It’s a gardening cactus!” I replied, and unwrapped the oblong cutting and handed it to him.
“Hey guys, come check this out! You were both wrong! It’s a cactus!” I watched in horror as the three officers passed around the cutting, laughing at their mistake, and I mumbled something about my aunt giving me a cutting. After an eternity, satisfied, they handed it back to me.
I fumbled it. The cutting smashed open on the sidewalk. The officers apologized, and said they hoped my aunt’s plant was big enough to handle having another cutting taken. I walked off in the direction of my botanist friend’s house until I was out of sight, then looped around and went back home, as I had nothing to show him.
Then I remembered the photo I had taken, taken back when I dreamed of an illustrated cactus-growing project how-to, since my “How to Deflesh a Magpie” photographic tutorial received such rave reviews. I emailed it to my botany pal. The next day I got a reply.
Indeed, it was a cactus full of mescaline, and probably could have sold it to some dirty patchouli-scented hippie for a ridiculous amount of money. Oh well.
Incidentally- phenethalamine, the "love drug" in chocolate and Root Beer is only about three methyl groups away from being mescaline.

Readers? What readers?

Sorry for not posting anything lately, but life hasn't really presented me with anything that has enough energy to motivate me to write. In response to this work a day lifestyle I ask for you, my friends and readers, to do one of two things. Please either suggest something for me to write about or write a post as though you were me and submit it for me to post. Submissions may be made to wgelnaw@gmail.com. I'll call it guest post week or something, but as long as people submit stuff, I'll likely post it, no matter how asinine. The funnier or more exciting the better. For those of you who actually know me, this is a good chance for you to practice roasting a colleague.

Everyone's Blind But Me!

Does being able to see things that others don't mean that you're crazy or that you just have good eyes. If it's a dark grey fish on medium grey shale - good eyes, if it's UFO's - crazy. Things are kind of weird at work. I'm the only one there who doesn't actually contribute to effictive developement of the land, I'm the lone conserver. As such, nobody ever asks me anything besides "did you find any dinosaurs today." I've given up telling them that they're digging in the completely wrong rocks to find dinosaurs and that only a small handful of dinosaur bones have even ever been found in California. Mostly the foreman and the grade checker just sort of stare at me as they go by and as I walk around in a seemingly aimless pattern with my head down like I'm some sort of doped up mental patient who's wondering why the doctors ordered his shoe laces be taken away. That kind of person doesn't belong in a construction zone, but I do though. So the looks are kind of weird and the fact that conversation has degraded to one guy telling me about telling me about running marathons and another guy telling me how stupid Stalin was for ordering his air force to shoot down any UFO that they encountered because alian ships would be impervious to human weapons.
Other than that, I'm getting pretty good at dodging the machinary (not that I was failing to do so before). One might be surprized to discover that a bulldozer can actually sneak up on you, at least when you've got the roar of the two engines of each of 6 scrapers in your ears. Fear's a hell of a motivator though. When I realized that I was about 15 feet and three seconds away from being a greasy smear int the dirt I managed to climb up the trench wall pretty fast. I dare say that a coked up spider monkey couldn't have done it any faster.

Taxation Without Justification

I received my Canada Revenue Agency tax refund today. It's nice to receive a check, it just blows that it is about one tenth of what it should be. I was supposed to get back all of withheld pay, which amounted to over two thousand dolars. Instead, I got a check for $216. The real problem is that I work during any hours that I might be able to call up the CRA to correct this mess or at least find out why I'm getting the shaft.
In other news, work is going well except that the direct deposit of my pay seems to take a while. I did however get the check re-embursing me for the gasoline used in driving to and from the job site. I'm also slowly increasing the number of snakes in my comparitive collection. It has now gone from 0 to 3; two western pacific rattle snakes and one california king snake. I would have a couple snakes from South Dakota in the collection if it weren't for a little incident involving the snakes and several birds and mammals and the fact that I left them in a freezer that didn't have any electricity going to it for a week. Oh well, c'est la vie I suppose.

Mildly Disappointing

I found a whale today. In California it's not that uncommon to find whales here and there. Ocasionally one even sees one alive. The one that I found was, like so many, quite dead. After flagging off the area where I found it, I called up my supervisor who rushed out from Pasadena to see it. Her first reaction to the fossil was the same "how the hell did you see that? Good eye!" that everyone gives me when I find most of my fossils, but then she continued with "it's a real piece of shit." I'd mentioned to her on the phone that it was in bad shape and only a rib and some unidentafiable stuff (even large unidentifieable things) were exposed. We deemed the specimen unsalvageable, took some pictures, took down the flagging tape and let a scraper plow through it. It was a piece of shit, but it whas the first large mammal, first anything besides a crustacean and a few fish since starting this job. "Sorry" I said to my supervisor; "thanks for not running me over" I said to the site foreman, "I'll find something better next time".

The Important Thing is Not to Die

As of today, I am now a paleontological monitor (not to be confused with a fossil varanid). Today was mostly just filling out of paperwork, but I was taken out to two developements that the company is monitoring for archaeological significance, just so I could see how things work. The big lesson of the day was a no-brainer: stay out of the way of the earth moving machines and make sure that the drivers of said machines can always see you, otherwise there's a chance that you'll die. After all, at a construction site, you don't get injured, you get killed. You'll be lucky if the driver of the 8 ton D10 catapillar even notices the red streak that signifies your only remains. Other than the risk of death, the only downside of the job seems to be the amount of driving that I'll be doing. Today I put about 180 miles on my van. I might have taken the I5 instead of the 57 to the 210, but I would have exchanged distance traveled for time stuck in gridlock. I get paid for mileage to work site though, so it's really more about the agravation of traffic than the actual driving. Other than that, this seems like it's going to be a great job.

So Soon?

It's over, I'm going back to California. This great "see america" trip is over and I never even got past Arizona. The one thing that I hadden't counted on has happened; the one thing that I didn't have some sort of contingency for: I got a job. I am now a paleontological monitor for SWCA Inc., an environmental consulting firm that makes sure that developement plans follow state and federal regulations for the preservation of the environment. My duty will be to dodge bulldozers and look for ancient marine mammals and other fossils in the Monterey formation. This is somehwat bittersweet because I'm not yet going to visit alot of the places or people that I had hoped that I would, but when an opportunity comes along, an ambitious individual doesn't let it go by because of mild personal inconvenience or discomfort.

Lots of Luck

I'd like to preface this post by saying that I am a man with alot of luck. Alot of it is good, and alot of it is bad, but there always seems to be alot of it.
Those of you who know me, likely know that I would much rather be too hot than too cold. There are a number of possible reasons for this, but my current favorite is that I've never been so hot that I couldn't find some way to cool off, but I have been cold and completely unable to warm myself. This last week I was prospecting in a section of the keyenta formation near Willow Spring. As far as I have been able to tell, there is only one ridge in the area that allows access up and down out of the outcrop, and on my third day at this locality I couldn't find it. What follows, as with the previous post, is a brief synopsis of my thoughts throughout one of the worst nights that I've spent in recent memory. Continue

7:00 Okay, that definately wasn't the right ridge to take, now I'm at the base of the cliffs. Okay, maybe I'll be able to get up one of these side canyons. I haven't explored this area, there might be a way up here.
7:20 Dead end, [insert explitive here]! Start climbing, I can see a way up, it's steep but it looks maneagable
7:35 Scrubala! This isn't a way up! [insert lots more explitives here]. I just climbed up this steep god damned slope, scraped myself up and pulled myself to the top of the ridge, and there's a cliff that I didn't even see! It's only 12 feet of smooth sandstone, but it might as well be 200, I can't climb it. Okay, find a way down and try to get back to the good ridge.
7:50 Badlands are a bad place to be running around. Go faster, you're momentum will keep you going forward and hold you to the substrate when running along curves in walls. Run! Fast! Go! God Damn! Everything's blending together. I can hardly see ridges anymore, it's just bands in this low light! Run! Think! Where the hell is it. It's a ridge with a single plateau with another ridge with 4 plateaus directly to the north of it. Go!
8:00 Sunset! God Damn it [Insert expletives in every language you know]. RUN, GO! GOD DAMN IT! Where the hell is it! I'm going to have to go to a landmark I know and find myway back the long way. Follow the ridges out to the main plateau and then go up the appropriate canyon. Remember, Keep going North whenever possible.
8:20 Okay, going over ridges crosways isn't safe anymore. Keep going, as fast as you can. I'm really pulling off some wicked stunts here. I'd never have tried that jump if this wasn't an emergency, and I've never actually run horizontally on a wall before. Go faster.
8:30. [Dark] Keep going North, always north. I can't see much anymore.
8:45 [Darker] What's this? The fence at the plateau. That means I'm there! That also means that there is a virticle drop of more than 50 feet imediately to my left. Keep right, Keep going north, up this canyon. The GPS unit is useless. I can see where I need to be, but not how to get there. During the day I'd just go over some ridges and get there in a nearly straight line. [Make up new explitives to insert here].
9:15 Can't see my feet at all. I can see my hand okay: it's the silouete against the stars, but my feet are gone and so is the ground. Keep going. Stumble. Go. [forget the expletives, there not doing any good]
9:30 [looking at an overhang cut into the rock by a meander in the stream bed] This will have to do for shelter. It's not much, but it's something.

I layed down in the curve of the rock. At first I tried to hide my face in my hands, my stomach pressed agains the rock. I fit better though if I faced outwards, towards the oncoming cold. Supper was three packets of honey. For the next 8 hours my thoughts were pretty simple. Occasionally, I reflected on how the day had begun, by my testing the myth that if you squeeze an egg evenly it won't break. It broke and I had to change out of my egg covered pants into my relatively clean shorts. I was going to be stuck out there on the day that I'd worn shorts. Besides my shoes, my only other insulation was a t-shirt, a light overshirt and my felt hat. I was dressed for keeping heat off, not in. By ten o'clock I was shivering. At several points throughout the night I stopped shivering and I wondered whether I was actually warmer or if I'd just run out of energy. I tried to sleep but the shivering kept me awake most of the night. I may have gotten an hour of shut-eye the whole night. I thought about the remark that a friend once made, that it would make good tv to have a camera crew follow me around on my travels. This would be great TV. The camera guy would be obligated by some journalistic code not to help me.
What occupied my mind most was the irony of it all. I got a new back-pack a couple of weeks ago and I completely forgot to take the emergency pack out of my old bag and but it into the new one. I own a thermally insulative foil blanket, dry chemical heat packs, candles, matches and protein bars that are old and disgusting but nutritive; all of it back at camp. I'd even taken a pair of wool gloves out of my bag that morning.
To better insulate myself, I dug myself into the sand. Twisting my body, sand was pushed out and I sank a little further. Shiver, dig, shiver, dig. I reburried myself with loose sand. There is now a perfect Will-shaped depression under a rock somewhere in the painted desert of Arizona.
Under normal conditions it would have only taken me half an hour to fourty five minutes to cover the remaining distance. Leaving at sunrise, it took me 2 hours to reach my camp. Once there, I ate heartily and went to sleep. That was a day of rest. I slept fitfully until mid afternoon and did soduku till going to bed for the night.
I hate the cold. Just for the record, it got down to about 40 F that night.

'Tis Madness

I was suffering from schizophrenia¹, then I went insane.

There is a pathogen out there that can take you from normal health to delerious sickness and back in under nine hours. I don't know if it's viral or bacteriological, but I suspect that it's contageous.

Last night I dreamt that I was geology, the strata itself. I was being deposited in streams and rivers. Deep red mud. I was burried, uplifted, faulted, melted, lithified. All felt at once. I saw my history before me; moving events superimposed over each other.
I opened my eyes and then I was two simultaneously, the rock and the man. The hermit and the hermit shale formation. No man is an island. I was a flood plain. I couldn't move except in shutters, spasms; faulting, earthquakes. I yearned for original orizontality, but I was tilted. It's been a long time since I wished so hard for a cold lenolium floor and a toilet to curl around the base of. I needed to throw up, a crevass splay. I needed to eat in order to throw up. Sediment in, sediment out; deposition and erosion.

My shoulders hurt, my knees hurt. I scratched myself, bloody, hematite leatching out. My flesh rotted and I palpated my bones. Fossils encased in the strata. I was full of footprints. The hermit shale, pennsylvanian in age, broken by a nearby volcanic dome, a massive anticline. I was carved by the Grand Canyon: my throat burned, etched by my own acids, a volcanic intrusion. I feared sleep, the way that I fear sleep when I've drunken too much; fiercely, terrified. If I slept, I'd be the stone and not the man. Ancient tides washed over me, I was burried in sand; the coconino sandstone was burying me. I slept.

Some people pay good money for trips like that. I'm okay now. I'm a bit sore from all the shaking I did, but the madness is gone.

1. Schizophrenia as in being of two minds about something, not as in the actual clinical condition.

What, no stega?

It may take a particular kind of person to apreciate this, but I think that a new Devonian sarcopterigian fish is actually kind of cute, if not adorable by fossil fish standards¹. Perhaps most important is that it isn't a dark grey smear on a dull grey rock (or affectionately known as a Smudgeichthys).
It's a great specimen, but I do have a problem with the name that it was givin. The name is perfectly valid, it just won't make things any easier for students of paleontology. The creatures that students typically memorize as transitional between fish and amphibians are Eusthenopteron, Ventostega, Acanthostega and Ichthyostega. The new fish has been dubbed Tiktaalik roseae. Tiktaalik is from the Inuit word for a large freshwater fish and roseae refers to someone who fronted the money for the expedition to Ellesmere Island.

1. Fleshed out, the creature was probably much more fearsome and ugly than cute and it likely tasted like shark meat.

Continued Adventures in AZ

How strong is your education? Even a small part of mine can hold up a car. I'll explain: The first of the events of the last couple of weeks was a flat tire in the middle of the desert. Changing the tire was one big, long lesson in the benefits of redundancy. First of all, it was a good thing that I had a spare tire; second, it was fortunate that I had a spare jack since the first one couldn't withstand the weight of the van and snapped like a steel trap. No fingers were lost but itcertainly didn't do anything to improve my calm. Also, in order to actually hold up the car while I put some boards under the new jack, I found out that a stack of books is really effective. I just now have two deep grooves in the gover of the top book.


the broken Jack.








Thankfully, this was the most major setback I had during the entire two week period. The only other setback was the fact that I spent the first week in an area completely devoid of body fossils. I base where I go searching on data from UC Berkeley's paleo collection database. According to that database, a bonebed containing thousands of specimens was excavated at this particular locality. If there was a bonebed there, then it contained the only fossils around, since I didn't find a single shard of bone for the 7 days I was there. Not only that, but there were only two or three small pieces of petrified wood in an area covering several square miles.
The consolation however came on day 4 when I started to find dinosaur footprints. In all, I found 9 sites with dinosaur prints or trackways; most of them at the edge of the cliff. Furthermore, I also got to do some spelunking, as I found several caves that had entrances large enough for me to crawl through. When I say crawl, I seriously mean it. Those of you who went to Tumbler ridge last summer might remember that I was squeemish about crawling through the smaller exit of the cave that we visited there. Therefore, in light of my claustrophobia, it should surpise you that I was able to do any caving at all. Below, you will find some of the photos of that experience, plus an obligatory ass shot.
While at this site I also saw a bit more wild life than I'd previously encountered, including a golden eagle, a porquepine, chipmunks, rabbits, various passerine birds, and heard (though I never saw) distant coyotes.






After finding nothing but caves and ichnofossils for a week, I moved camp and started exploring a valley that was a bit further to the Northeast. There I had a bit more luck. I found a number of micro sites containing weathered bone and teeth. 11 sites contained whole or partial teeth and I collected a large number of broken bone material that I intend to piece together like a puzzle some time in the future. I was also able to collect two nearly complete cow skeletons that had been bleached in the desert sun. I didn't find any bullet, but I'm sure that these animals didn't die naturally. They were only a few feet apart and showed no broken bones or signs of having died in any kind of a flooding event.
The plan is to get my tire fixed, re-supply and check out one last sight near here. I've been saving it for last since it is likely the hardest to get to and there is no way I'm going to venture over over (and off) roads that the USGS recommends 4 wheel drive for (incidentally, the van only has rear wheel drive, but that won't stop me) without a spare tire.

Fire and Ice

After 3 weeks stuck in Flagstaff, Az due to weather, I'm finally heading back out into the field. I was very fortunate that I left the desert when I did, otherwise I would have been stuck with a 5 mile hike to the nearest town (not that far unless you're hiking through snow on uneven terrain) for supplies. During the last three weeks, I've remained optomistic that the weather would change and that the snow would melt. For three weeks, it didn't. In fact, it just kept snowing. This is definately not how I pictured Arizona in March.
After being confined here as long as I have, I started to consider my options. I could go west back to California and stay at my parents' place until the snow here melted or I could continue east until I was out of the snow. The latter option would take me as far as Texas. The Texas panhandle however has been on fire. Close to one million acres have been burned by wild fires, resulting in the deaths of over 11 thousand horses and cattle, as well as two people. Given my luck, I would have gone out to a site and been just out of range of either cell phone or radio reception when wild fire would sweep through the area. Besides, ash is worse for finding fossils than snow. It drifts, but it doesn't melt. Further east then, into the main body of Texas? No. Just as I was deciding how far east to go, the weather changed dramatically and the snow melted. Three inches of snow fell on tuesday. Today it's nearly all gone. Some might see the hand of providence in all this; quietly suggesting when I should leave an area, or when I should stay. No, it's just nature tending toward maximum irony.

More Book Reviews

As I said in the previous post of book reviews, the one nice thing about being stuck in Flagstaff is that I've gotten alot of reading done. And so, here are the reviews of the four books, in order, that I've just finished reading. I admit, I wish that I had read them in a different order.

Aristotle Indeed
One of my favorite authors is Will Cuppy. There's a good chance that unless you've heard me talk about him, you've never heard of him before. I don't blame you, nobody's perfect. Cuppy mostly wrote humorous but well researched articles about various extinct and extant animals. One recurring subject however was Aristotle. Cuppy loved to lambast Aristotle for his various follies in describing the natural world. For instance, Cuppy reports that aristotle believed the chambered nautilus to float at the surface of the water, using its shell like a boat and its two broadest appendages as sails.
It was with this critical frame of mind that I sat down to read Aristotle's Historia Animalia. I even had a pad of paper to write down every error as I read it, so that I could write a very long post about how silly and quaint the philosopher was. It was perhaps the only time in my life that I've been disappointed by someone being smarter and more reasonable that I thought that he or she would be.
Most of Aristotle's errors arose from a problem with homology vs. analogy. For examle, he states that the knee's of all blooded terrestrial animals that have hair or feathers (witht he exception of humans and apes) point backwards. In our modern perspective, we know that it isn't the knee that points backwards, but the ankle in all tetrapods that does so. The confusion arises from the fact that most animals adapted to a cursorial lifestyle have a short femur and a long set of foot bones that are held off the ground, giving the appearance of having a knee that points backwards. If you ask any child which way the knee of an ostrich or a horse bends, it would probably reply "backwards."
Another thing that I thought must be a gigantic error was the claim that "women produce semen." However, when you look at it from an ancient point of view, this is actually much closer to the truth than it sounds. Biblical scholars believed that a woman was essentially like the soil that a man's seed was planted in; that if you looked inside of a sperm cell, you'd see a little person and that if it was a male little person, he would also have proportionately sized sperm which contained even smaller descendants. Aristotle however believed that both a woman and a man had to contribute some form of semen from which the egg/ fetus was formed. From disections, Aristotle saw that the ovaries were connected to the uterus, and it to the other parts of the anatomy in the same way that the testes were attached to a common tube which connected to excretory organs. In animals with a cloaca, this was clearest, and there were greater degrees of seperation of the excretory and reproductive systems as animals became more advanced. All things considered, this is a very advanced way of looking at things.
Other errors that Aristotle committed arose from base assumptions on which he grounded his assumptions: that the right side of the body was interently better than the left, that the closer a bit of the anatomy was to heaven the more spiritually important it was (eg, most animals hold their heads in line with or only slightly above the horizontal line of the body but only people and birds, both of which capable of creating music, hold the head above the body. Only people have their heads directly above the body.), that you could tell a someone's personality from their facial fetures, and that information reported by his collegues was correct more often than not. This last assumption led to the belief that somewhere in africa there was a racy of tiny people who rode tiny horses and raised tiny cattle, rarher like Lilliput.
All together, I have to admit that perhaps Will Cuppy was more of an eisegete than I would normally like to admit of someone that I like.

Alice's Adventures inWonderland and Through the Looking Glass
Lewis Carroll, aka Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, was a genius. If you wonder about the alternate name, it's because the second is his given name, under which he published works on mathematics. People who have a natural flare for both mathematics and the arts (see also M.C. Escher & Bento) are no doubt all at least a little strange. Carroll certainly pushed the limits. Every chapter in his Alice books is positively abserd; filled with poetry, word games and character that take everything too literally. Unlike most victorian literature that has a young protagonist, Alice learns absolutely nothing of any practical use from her adventures and is by far the most reasonable person right from the start. After reading these two books, I'm sure that Carroll must be either the father of modern british humor, or at least the crazy uncle.

Harry Potter and the Complete Lack of Surprise
Rowling's books keep getting longer and longer, but the same amount of material seems to be covered in each. After reading Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, I didn't feel that much more had happened than in The Chamber of Secrets. The primary difference was amount of space devoted to character developement. Getting just about everybody in the book to fall in love with each other at some point or another takes up alot of pages. Not only that, but a tremendous amout of time was spent with Harry and his friends not really solving anything. Given that it was leaked that Dumbledore dies at the end of the book, possibly before the book was even released, it made it difficult for me to appreciate the ending when it happened. Even so, from the second chapter it was kind of obvious. Rowling's books follow a pattern: Harry and his friends enjoy a year at Hogwarts, wherein they solve a mystery, grow up a little, fight Voldemort or his forces and a good guy dies. The person that dies in each book is more important each time than the person who died at the end of the previous book. We all know that Harry can't die (at least until the very end) and it's hard to find someone more important to Harry than Syrius Black without going strait to Dumbledore.
My prediction is that book 7 will not be the ninal volume unless it is exceptionally thick (six inches wide at least). Rowling is richer than the queen of England; why kill the goose that's laying so many golden eggs? Of course, if the series doesn't end by book eight or nine, the readers might get a bit upset.

Chuck Palahniuk's Diary
High art is what an artist calls the attempt of another artist at a profound statement about art. Oscar Wilde did this with A Picture of Dorian Grey, Richard Russo tried this with Straight Man, Tim Burton's attempt was Edward Scissor Hands, and Chuck Palahniuk's claim to high (literary) art is Diary. This novel is almost exactly like every other Chuck Palahniuk novel; all the motifs are there:
1. Being abandoned
2. You always hurt the one's you love
3. The only way to acheive greatness is through suffering - "Self improvement is masterbation" (Fight Club). Another, almost identical motif is that the only way to be saved, is to be destroyed.
4. By the end of the book, the protagonist is toxified, emaciated and trying very hard to save society from themself.
5. The service industry sucks the life/soul out of you, and almost everyone these days is in the service industry.
6. All the characters are well educated and never hesitate to spout esoteric knowledge gained from what they ultimately felt was a wasted education.
7. Prominant architecture is destroyed at the end. This only happens in about half of Palahniuk's works, like the film version of Fight Club, but not the novel.
8. Once again, Palahniuk's disjointed, first person sentence structure has screwed with my internal monologue.
What differentiates Diary as Palahniuk's claim to high art is that the protagonist is a a failed art student instead of a failed something else. This gives the author the avenue to wax bitterly poetic about art history; the diseases of great painters, the pretense of visiual irony among modern artists -"Just smelling super gross doesn't make their work art." Furthermore, Palahniuk writes that "Nothing you ever create is original becuase everything you do is a self portrait. Shows some part of yourself." Given that, Chuck must be one really messed up guy, I mean seriously mentally fucked up. Every book is how he sees himself, his life, or at least that's what he's trying to say. The poor tortured artist.
What Diary lacks, that all the other books possess, is (and this really spoils it for you) a good surprise ending. Unlike all other books that I've read by this author, this book ends exactly the way you think it will. By the time that you're half way through the book, a cynical reader has figured out the conspiracy and all that remains are a few twists at the end that really don't change how you perceive the whole situation. There's no "because we're the same person," no "I shot myself," no "she's a mental patient too." No, it's just stuff like "turns out he was gay, who knew?" and "by the way, I was in on it the whole time." This isn't to say that the ending isn't twisted, it is. It's just that an intelligent reader sees the ending coming a mile away, by about the middle of the book.

Belated Book Reviews

As a hermit, one gets to do a good deal of reading, and in the name of fairness I'll give you all my latest book reviews in one dose rather than torture you with them over a long period of time. In fact, you don't even have to scroll past them if you don't want to. However, if you care to, simply follow the link to the full post.

Good Omens = good read
If you liked the movie Dogma and you like the writing of Douglas Adams, then there's an excellent chance that you'll enjoy Good Omens. The premise is as follows: A satanic order of talkitive nuns accidentally misplaces the antichrist, who incidentally turns out to be a really nice kid. Meanwhile, the minions of heaven and hell amass for the final battle at armaggeddon, the four bikers of the apocolypse (war, famine, death and pollution; plague retired in the 30's mumbling something about mold) converge on a small idealic village in Brittain and an angel and demon who were both proven incompetant a few days after the creation bend their awesome power and subhuman free will towards preventing the end of the world. Owing the the multiple plains of existance on which the story takes place, there are alot of characters, but it all comes together like the end of a Guy Ritchie movie. And all of this, as the book explains, was fortold in "the nice an acurate prophecies of Anges Nutter: witche" which, while indeed acurate, was the most unsuccessful book of prophecy ever published.
Furthermore, I'd like to thank Mr. Tyler Shaw for recommending the book. If he doesn't read this blog, more's the pitty.

Treasure Island:
This is one of those books that is so famous that everybody knows the story; so well in fact, that not many people that i've spoken to have actually read it. R.L. Stevenson definately wrote this book for kids, there is no doubt about it. It is fast paced, the plot is simple enough and all of the characters are rather flat. Many have hailed treasure island as a 'growing up' story, wherein Jim Hawkins (who's own father dies early in the book) learns a great deal from Long John Silver and their voyages at sea. This idea has so well permiated thought about the book that adaptations are forced write that stuff in. Disney's Treasure Planet is the worst offender in that department; though given all the other liberties that they took with the story, it can certainly be understood.
Despite these seeming literary short comings, Treasure Island is is very enjoyable in much the same way as The Coral Island is more enjoyable than Robinson Crusoe and episodes 4, 5 & 6 of Star Wars are more enjoyable than episodes 1, 2 & 3.

Robinson Crusoe:
This was the origin of the ship-wreck genre, the architype that all the others copied, transcribing all that is good and bad about it. In terms of the good, Robinson Crusoe had far more believability than any of the other ship-wreck novels that I've read. Unlike the Swiss Family Robinson, the protagonist doesn't know the names of every creature that he meets and isn't confronted by, and have the opportinity to eat every creature in creation. Furthermore, unlike The Coral Island, Crusoe recognizes that discression is the better part of valor and only confronts savage cannibles twice - and with guns not sticks. Even the Cannibles are more reasonable: only eating prisoners of war, not killing and eating each other on a whim. Once again however, the drawback for me was the overdone praise of god. I'd estimate that a full one third to one half of the book was devoted to various forms of worship. Crusoe considers himself a rather sinful person and a bad Christian, but never-the-less spends page after page reflecting about how he should be more thankful for his deliverance from danger and sin. The christian prostelatizing in The Coral Island was overwhelming because of the bias and biogtry of the christian viewpoint. In Robinson Crusoe, it's overwhelming because he just talks about it too much.

Life: The Odd (And How to Improve Them):
A decently humorous look at the odds of events happining to random people. E.g.: Dating a super model, marrying money, having the same birthday as someone you meet, death by various means (including desctruction of the earth and of the universe), winning the lotto, etc. It makes a good reference book for some of the esoteric knowledge that one might, eventualy, actually be interested in calling on.

The Ig-nobel Prize:
A very funny book that comes from the annals of improbable research, in the same vein as the Darwin Awards. Not all awards are ignoble as improbable. A prize for chemistry was given to the woman who figured out how to make Jell-o blue. Others are odd but not quite dubious. A prize was given for the publication of a six-page standard opporating procedure for making hot tea. Other awards are as dubious as the name suggests. Various awards were givin to people for writing about the face on Mars, quantum healing, microbes that kind of look like people and dragons (thereby showing that our ancestors were tiny), and the memory held by water of chemicals that it no longer contains. The people awarded this latter group of award did not show up at Harvard to collect their prizes. Like the Darwin Awards, it is a book that is meant to show just how abserd the world is, and to make the reader feel better for never having done anything that might qualify. However, unlike the darwin awards, people who don't win ignobel prizes are more likely to suffer from a dearth of imagination than an abundance of intelligence.

Planetary Mineralogy

There has been a great deal of coverage in the press lately about the discovery of a mineral that is characteristic of very high temperature environments, from a comet, which is typically described as a ball of ice. The mineral in question is a two micron grain of Forsterite, a magnesium rich form of olivine from ultramafic magmas. Unfortunately, I do not have the benefit of having taken any mineralogy courses. I have however been able to find out that Forsterite is stable below 1,557° C, which means that where ever this crystal formed, it had to be exceptionally hot. I however do not think that this necessarily means that it formed near the sun as many people are saying, but could have formed in situ within the asteroid belt. Olivine is found all the time within stoney meteorites. Those of you at the University of Alberta have an excellent opportunity to see this by going to the Mineralogy/ Petrology museum in the basement of the Earth Science Building.
Scientific pondering to follow:
Three things that I'd like to know are: 1. at what pressure does a magma need to be at to form forsterite? 2. what form of olivine is found in the chondrites? 3. What is the currently favored hypothesis for how loosely agregated masses in the asteroid belt become a single, solid mass that can then differentiate? Anyone who works for Dr. Herd at the U of A should feel free to answer these. If they don't read this blog, more's the pity.
Regarding the last question, I have my own idea: space lighning. Okay, it's perhaps not the best name for it, but if dust particles rub past each other, there's bound to be a build up of an electrical charge. When lightning discharges on earth, it reaches temperatures of up to 28,000 kelvin and frequently turns sand that it hits to glass structures called fulgurites. This certainly seems to meet the temperature requirements. If this happens on a reqular basis over a several billion year period, one might expect some fairly large masses to ultimately fuse together (collisions would regularly break up masses too, and after a certain point gravity and radiation would have the more dominant roles). The problem with my hypothesis however is observability. Electricity arcing through air is highly luminous, but in the vacuum of space it wouldn't give off much light in the arc, but rather as a diffuse cloud as it heated up the dust. Furthermore, lightning is small by comparison to objects that are easily seen with telescopes. Of course, if there's a problem with my reasoning due to my own ignorance, I'd appreciate it if someone corrected me.

Exchange Rates

In the past, with regard to the U.S. economy, I've done very little but complain about the decreasing value of the U.S. dollar compared to the Canadian. For once though, I'm glad that the U.S. dollar is failing. This isn't because I'm unpatriotic or unamerican. Quite the opposite, I'm a capitalist pig who wants to get the most that he can. As a consiquence of leaving much of my funds in a Canadian bank, my money is growing faster than if I had put it into stocks. Furthermore, I have the liquidity that one would expect from any bank account.

Suspicious

I get the feeling that there was an alterior motive to holding a paleontological conference in Maastricht.

Palaeophis: a snake with thecodont dentition?

The specimen pictured at the left is of Palaeophis toliapicus from the London clay of the island of Sheppey, in Great Britain. The whole specimen is one that represents the only known complete skull of Paleophis. It is however owned by a private collector who has so far been unwilling to donate it to a public institution. As one can see, the dentitiion is rather unique for snakes, appearing to be thecodont (set in sockets) rather than pleurodont (adhered to the side of the jaw). This is particularly interesting because it bolsters the hypothesis of a mosasauroid (who also have thecodonty) origin of snakes, which is favored by Caldwell, Lee and Scanlon.
Since this is such a unique specimen and since the owner is simultaneously interested in having it studied and unwilling to part with it, I propose a compromise. If the owner were to donate the specimen to a public museum, it would receive an accession number and then could then be published on. The museum would subsiquently issue the fossil on a long term loan back to the collector so that he may keep it in his personal collection until deciding to have it stored in the museum or his eventual death. Either that, or someone should just find out how much money he wants for the damned thing and raise the funds to buy it from him. Of course, givin the fact that these collectors have found two articulate specimes in the last 10 years, it makes sence that someone aught to send out a field crew and try to find a specimen specifically for a museum.

There's a Lesson Here

"Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it." - Lewis Carroll

If anyone has wondered why I'm blogging so frequently this week when I should be in the field and distantly removed from civilization and computers, it's because I'm stuck here in Flagstaff. The reason is that its snowing here and it would be stupid to try to take an Astro van off road through the snow. Furthermore, it would show equally poor judgement to go out too soon after the snow melts because the hills that I'm interested in are made up largely of bentonite. When wet, bentonite becomes as slippery as grease. It's one thing to get one's car stuck in sand (done that), another thing to get it stuck in snow (done that too), but it's something entirely worse to get it stuck in bentonite.

My situation however smacks of irony. When I came into Flagstaff to re-supply I was sun-burnt from the waist up. In spite of the mild pain, I'd been enjoying the warmth and sunshine so thuroughly that I considered it a large, red badge of honor and was glad to have it. To this end, I mocked those of you in Alberta who were forced to trudge through close to a foot of snow. Now, after over a hundred days without percipitation in Flagstaff, I have to contend with snow, people that have no idea how to drive in snow and the fact that my only entertainment comes from my favorites on the net and going through the NAU library's entire natural history section.

Paleo Poetry

What follows after the break is the remainder of the paleontologically inspired poetry that I came up with last night. I had been meaning to take notes on Aristotle's Historia Animalia but found my diversion much more rewarding.
Three attempts at verse:

Ode to an Elasmosaur
Among the many creatures
Who've lived in the briney deep
the plesiosaur is very special
for his neck is quite unique.

It's as long as it is slender
and supports a tiny head;
The head supports his many teeth
that fill fishes full of dread

The length of the neck is what's peculior,
as its not shared by seals, turtles or the whales.
What is this adaptation for?
It's so they can look at their own tails.

Plea From an Inverted Turtle

I am not dead.
I simply cannot right myself
as I am flipped upon my back.
I was put in this position by my rival
in a sudden sneak attack.
He did it because he got it in his head
that to be this way would be deleterious to my health
and thus my chances of survival.

The problem as I see it
arises from my shell
which keeps my feet a pointing skywards
and thus me from moving all that well.

And if you help me get right side up today
it's a courtesy I'd someday be willing to repay.

Reflections from a Mosasaur
"I am not a dinosaur,"
states a lizard gliding through the surf
"I have been much happier
For abandoning the turf.

A land lubber I am not
I much prefer the waves
going about upon the shore
is no way for a Clidastes to behave.

My yellow scales stay bright and clean
And my body long and lean
And if you wonder why I abhor the shore,
The reason's plainly seen.

I enjoy eating till I'm busting
Things a dinosaur finds disgusting
Since I could wish
For no greater dish
Than of calamary or some fish."

A Permian Parable

A Dimetrodon and an Edaphosaur
One day happened to have a chat
Wherein the Dimetrodon remarked
That they were both getting rather fat.

"The issue with my waistline
Has its roots within my head.
And if you come a little closer
I'll explain just what I mean."

For a moment the Edaphosaur hesitated,
his feeble brain gave him an inckling of dread,
but since they both had sails upon their backs
he figured that they must have temperments equally serene.

"Obesity is caused by caring for our dentition"
continued the Dimetrodon, who smiled as he said
"A little closer perhaps and you'll see
That I keep every single tooth of mine exceptionally clean."

Now, an Edaphosaur is quite stupid
And he is easy to mislead
So that while examining his companion's teeth
he became trapped in between.

Thus by eating other poor pelycosaurs
The Dimetrodon keeps himself well fed.
He gives the appearance of being docile,
but is not what he seems.

Science News

- Snake!
I evidently made a mistake by not applying to do research in Australia. They've aparently found another large, non-macrostomatan (what you typically think of when you think snake) snake. From the picture below a couple of really cool things pop out at me right away. First, the quadrate looks rather similar to the c-shaped condition of mosasaurs. The other thing is that the trigeminal foramen in the prootic of the braincase is open anteriorly and would have been bound on that side by the descending flange of the parietal. I'll grant that this second feature could just be an artifact of breakage, but if not, then it represents the primitive condition also seen in Wonambi. Another cool thing is the jugal. In varanids, the lower half of the orbital margin is made up of a robust jugal. It appears to be the same case here. In a python, there is no jugal. In the defense of people who say that mosasaurs are not the sister taxon to snakes however, this snake has big nasals and small premaxillae (the other way around in varanoids), the frontal-parietal suture is pointed backwards rather than being straight and I see no supratemporal listed in the diagram.

Yurlunggur:


Python



-Immunologists realize that lab mice have two thymuses (thymice?), not one.
I honestly can't blame them too much for missing this little organ for the last two hundred or so years. It's about the size of the head of a pin and looks like a lymph gland. My only concern is that this might be an abaration of using lab mice rather than wild mice. Lab mice are all genetically identical. It's like there are 80 million clones. If however a mutation were to rise in one of the breeding stocks of lab mice (say, for an extra thymus), it wouldn't really get noticed and it might be coinsidence that this particular research team got mice from this mutated stock. In humans, the number of thymuses is incosistant, with most people having one in the chest and some having an additional one in the neck as with these mice. I'd like to see if a wild mouse has an extra thymus.

-Leave it to scientists to find a way to grow tits in the lab.
Naturally, the report only talked about the prospects of this research for treatment of breast cancer and not augmentation.

-Plants produce greenhouse gas
I was forced in high school to memorize the Kreb cycle, the Calvin cycle and several other cycles and pathways that I've since forgotten the name of. But aparently there is a new one that produces methane under normal atmospheric conditions. I can't wait for the conservatives to jump all over this and say that cutting down the rainforest will help eliminate this greenhouse gas.

-Further evidence that my Y-chomosome is mostly junk DNA
Any guy who has taken genetics or who has a girlfriend that has, has been told that only a very small part of the gender determining Y-chomosome actually does anything; specifically regulate the production of androgens and of hair on the earlobes. The rest of the chromosome is there so that it can line up with the X during myocis. To do this, there has to be some similarity to the X, otherwise the two wouldn't come together. Aparently though, this hasn't stopped repeated, massive mutations in the Y-chromosome that further show that you can do a whole lot to it (except have more than one) without deleterious effects.

-Hummingbirds capable of watching scientists
A study conducted on rufus troated hummingbirds provides evidence that the birds are able to remember now only what something looks like and where it is, but when they last saw it. This was done by refilling artificial flowers with nectar at specific intervals. The hummingbirds made a pattern of visiting the flowers right after they were filled. So either they can remember things well, or can deduce that everytime a person goes to a fake flower, it gets refilled.

I (and a few other Albertan Paleontologists) owe Nick Longrich an apology.
Nick didn't make the cover of Scince magazine, nor did he contribute to the article that it relates to. He did however give a talk on the exact same kind of convergence on the semi-aquatic lifestyle in a mesozoic non-eutherian mammal last September at a conference at the Royal Tyrrell Museum. Nick is known among his friends (and we really do consider ourselves friends of his) for being able to talk your ear off for extended periods of time and for drawing dramatic conclusions from only a little evidence. In September he tried to convinse us that didelphadon was semi-aquatic and had a beaver-style, flattened tail. I and a few others were skepticle because he only had two, relatively unrelated pieces of evidence. First was his recognition of some flattened mammalian tail vertebrae, the second was a well known set of robust jaws. The two have never been found together. But this new chinese discovery makes it look like Nick might have been right after all.