Adieu till Spring

I've left the frigid conditions of the Uinta Basin for a while. I'll likely go back when the snow melts in the spring. In the mean time though, I'm told that SWCA has some work for me here in So Cal, and I plan on contacting all the other environmental consulting companies in the area with the purpose of whoring out my paleontological services to whoever has work for me.

Moustache Champion

Working Conditions

Well, it would seem that my amusingly elaborate mustache has a new function. It now acts as a place for ice to condense while I'm working. Yeah, it's cold. Yes, I'm out there all day. Does it warm up in the afternoon? Not really.

Stark Contrast

They say that mutability is the only constant. The weather in Utah is highly mutable. During the summer, it wasn't uncommon to get back to the truck after a long day of hiking to find that the thermometer read over 110F. Today, the thermometer barely got above 25F. In spite of the dramatic difference, the two temperatures do share the fact that they make working a full day outside somewhat uncomfortable. Those of you in Canada, where the temperature has been below freezing since well before your thanksgiving, please hold of on your scoffing. I happen to know that very few of you do field work up there this time of year. The most time that you really need to spend out side is the time it takes to get from one building to the other or to the bus. Eight hours outside has a bit more demanding toll on the body, even at near freezing temperatures.
In other news, in stark contrast to what I've been saying about being here until it snows, I'll be staying here a little longer apparently. I can't do paleo surveys with even an inch of powder on the grownd, but I can certainly monitor well pad construction. The oil companies finally got permission to build well pads and by damn if they're going to let a little snow and short daylight hours stop them from doing it! It would seem that this is what I'll be doing for the next little while, which suits me, as there isn't much work for me right now in CA except process serving. Not working for my parents makes the bitter cold, just a little more bearable.

Quality Time

The 10 States (in Order traveled through): Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas & Colorado

The Beautiful Women (in no particular order): Spark of Life, Many of the women at SVP (names too numerous to list indivudually) and a few girls that I met on 6th st in Austin (names forgotten or never learned). I would like to state for the record, and to protect those mentioned above from scandle, that I was a near perfect gentleman.

The Friends: Otra, Sudeep, TJ, Becky, Darek & Margret (you're married, you count as one friend), Spark of Life, Team Canada at SVP (includes the above mentioned women)

The Walking Dead: While in California, I read World War Z, an oral history of the zombie war. It was a good book and an interesting, and very practical take on the zombie genre including stories illustrating facets of a global war on the undead that aren't usually highlighted in the movies, such as the need to maintain global communications satelites, flow of refugees, conflict between nuclear powers, what people do for food when they flee north, propaganda films, etc. Like many of the books that I've read lately, it isn't great literature, but it is entertaining.

Rollin'

20 days, 10 states, over 4,000 miles traveled, beautiful women, good friends, a fair amount of booze and the walking dead. It was a good vacation.

Let the Sun Shine

The sun shines differently in southern California. There is a unique combination of altitude, pollution and humidity in this land of eternal summer that makes this place feel like home to me no matter how long I've been away. The moment that I enter the Los Angeles Basin, I feel like I'm right where I belong. Furthermore, although other people who move here after living in more northern clines say that they miss the changing of the seasons, I don't. The only season that I ever miss is summer, and that only happens when I'm away. It's good to be back, if only for a little while.

Photo Update

As promised, I'm posting some of the photos from this summer

I am in a very intersting part of the world. There is no doubt that the people of this are aware of the importance of the local national monument and the paleontology of the area. In many ways, it is like Drumheller, except that the beer has less than half the alcohol. At the same time, the curche is the center of the comunity, literally. The streets around here are actually numbered with the Mormon temple at the dead center.

In the flat areas of our survey, we found many horned lizards of different sizes, but adult and extremely small seemed to dominate. The little guy shown here is not nearly the smallest lizard that I saw. That title would go to a lizard so small that I have no idea what kind it was. It likely could have still been curled into the size of its egg.

This fellow however took the title for most colorful lizard found. I found it in an area of badlands south of Douglas Pass in Colorado

Speaking of Douglas Pass, this is the view to the south from that vantage point

While camping up at Douglas Pass, it had become apparent that I had no conventional can opener handy. Therefore, it fell to my most versitile of tools to do the job. A rock hammer doesn't open a can cleanly, but the can is definately open.

Working in the field kills boots. More precisely it eats them. It chews them up, swallows and later craps out something no longer recognisable as functional footwear. This photo was taken within two weeks of my arival here in Vernal. The wire that you see is all that really held the booth together enough for the photo. Needless to say, I replaced my boots that night at the only shoe store that was still open when I got back into town. Consiquently, I purchased a pair of Redwings for over $80.00, making them the most expensive shoes I've ever owned. In the two and a half months since then, my new boots have been chewed up as well. The leather is worn out, the seems are bursting and the tread is completely gone.

Long Overdue Update

I'm waiting for my supervisor to finish some office stuff before we go out into the field to extract a large (possibly) brontothere jaw from an extremely large block of sandstone, so I thought that I should take this opportunity to post a long overdue update on what has been going on.

I've been in Vernal, Utah since mid July and will likely be out here until the stat of October, when everyone else takes off and makes it impossible for me to continue working. What I've been doing is what we lovingly call "catch and release paleontology." That is, I'm doing surveys of a very large area on the Ute Tribe Indian Reservation so that when oil wells are put there in the next couple of years, they will know what spots to avoid so as to minimize the impact on this valuable scientific and cultural resource. The bad thing is, and this is the release portion of the name, although we are finding vast quantities of extremely scientifically valuable fossils, that would probably close to double the total collections of fossils from this time period, we are prohibited by the tribe from actually collecting anything on their land. We are allowed to collect fossils from BLM land (hense why I'll be heading out in a few minutes) but our survey of BLM land is restricted to areas where they have already decided to put an oil well. The opinion of the Ute tribe appears to be that they want the fossils saved from destruction by drilling equipment and bulldozers, so that they can be destroyed by the ravages of natural erosion instead.

The most common thing that we find on the reservation is fragmentary turtle remains. There are three or four distinct kinds of turtles here, but only one is readily distinguishable by the texture of its shell. Typically, the turtles are broken by erosion into such small pieces that the texture of the shell is the only thing that we can go by. Other than turtles, we are also finding crocodiles, alligators, tapirs, rhinos, primitive horses, primitive artiodactyls called protoreodonts and leptoreodonts, camels, brontotheres (looks like a rhino but only distantly related) and a variety of microfossils. Most of the animals we find are only fragmentary remains, with jaws and teeth being the most commonly preserved part of a mammal. This is not to say that other parts are not sometimes found as well. In fact, on my first day out in the field, I found the skull of a rhino practically sticking out the side of a cliff.

The number of co-workers that I have has varied widely since I got here as different people arrive and leave as their schedules allow. With two exceptions though, they've all been (at least) moderately attractive young women. The face of paleontology is certainly changing.

Beyond work thought, there hasn't been much going on for me. My Birthday was last month and my parents ordered some really interesting books (Cope's Bible and Este's Phylogeny of the Lizards if you're interested in knowing) and my grandparents sent me checks cumulatively large enough that I can get an air scribe and a stereomicroscope. Tremendous thanks to them if they are reading this! I've also gotten to do some fossil hunting on my own including going out near Bonanza and digging in the Parachute Creek member of the Green River formation. Things that I found there include a large number of fossilized beetles, flies, mosquitos, weavles, leaves and even a small number of exquisite flowers. I also got to go over the mountains to the Bridger Basin (a historically famous area for eocene mammals: Cope and Marsh faught bitterly over naming creatures from that area). The purpose of my brief visit there was to help SWCA's lead paleontologist, Paul Murphy, look for fossils from the upper most Bridger formation, which is also the least fossiliferous, in order to find support for the hypothesis that the upper Bridger is the same age as the Uinta Formation.
I also had a brief and somewhat dissappointing trip to Denver for the Mineral and Fossil show that was out there, but Peter Larson of the Black Hills institute once again beat me to the interesting lizard fossils. I'm fairly confident that he got a new species of mosasaur from Morocco, since it had teeth that were intermediate in form between globidens and a more classic mosasaur dentition.
That pretty much brings everyone up to date. I will have pictures of events so far in an upcoming post and I intend to start posting more regularly.

B-Day

It's my birthday and I've a fair number of thank you cards to write, but I'm exhausted. Working a 12 hour day, 9 of which is vigerous exersize, is great for the pay check, but it leaves you wiped out.

The Conservative View of Paleontology

Aparently, Fox News, the product of conservative billionaire Rupert Murdock's personal love affair with media filters, has an evolution and paleontology web page. Even more amazing, the page includes statements indicating that the eart is over 6,000 years old and that perhaps not all creatures were created at the same time. At the same time though, there is a story on its front page about how well the creation museum in Kentucky is doing, and all of the stories have headlines that would make any thinking follower of evolution and paleontology news cringe. For example "Living fossil not so primitive after all!" This was in reference to a study published about the whether the symetrical fin of the coelocanth is the primitive condition or one derived after its lineage branched off from our own. A discovery of one of the oldest coelocanth fossils shows that it is in fact the derived condition. Not so primitive huh? Beyond the fact that primitive is a relative term, it doesnt change the fact that the coelocanth has remained relatively unchanged in close to 390 million years. Also, one would expect some evolution in that time. Furthermore, the use of the coelocanth limb as a model for pre-tetrapod limb design isn't completely bunk, the elements are all still there, its just their proportions that are a bit off.

I'm not dead, I'm in Vernal, Utah

I came here at the end of July after an unreasonably hot (105 F) paleo survey in La Quinta, CA. I'll be here until it starts to snow. My time here has re-confirmed for me that fossil hunting, next to golf, is not only one of the best ways to ruin a good walk, but is simultaneously one of the most frustrating and rewarding activities that I can do. More on this later, hopefully pics too. Once again, I'm not dead, just kind of cut off from the outside world.

Bee Mine

Since global warming, while still threatening everyone, has become somewhat old hat for the news media, it would seem that a new threat is assailing man kind: the loss of honey bees. One quotation that has been popularly used and attributed to Einstein is that if bees die out, then man has four years to live. This is based on the idea that the crops that man kind plants are reliant on honey bees for polination, and would therefore send humanity into starvation if bees died out completely. Snopes.com has classified the claim that Einstein ever said this as uncertain. Until 1994, it seems that no such reference had made it to press (which is why writers should always site their references).
Even if Einstein did say it though, he was not an authority on the subject. Certainly he was a briliant physicist and philosopher, but not a biologist. I say that man kind will not die out as a result of the loss of honey bees. Things won't be super, there will be a difficult adjustment periord, but loss of honeybees alone will not kill us off. The main reason for this is that the majority of crops that we grow are self or wind pollenated. All the grasses (corn, wheat, rice, barley, oats) as well as many legumes (peanuts) and soybeans will be wholey unaffected. Furthermore, honeybees are not the only pollenators. North America alone has more than 3500 species of native bees (most of which don't produce colonies though) which would rise to fill the vacated niche. Also, many species of wasps, beetles, flies, butterflies, moths, ants, bats and hummingbirds also pollenate flowers. Honey bees are not even native to the western hemisphere.
The human reaction to a decrease in honey bees is already seen. Many bee keepers truck their hives from field to field, following the bloom north and are paid well for it. The use of monoculture (only one type of crop in an area) is also declining in some areas so that bees will have a more consistant food suply throughout the year. Similarly, proximity to native grassland or forest also bolster pollination of many crops because native pollinators are more abundant. In the end, if things become too unmanageable, it is likely that new crops or hybrids that don't rely so much on honey bees will be implemented and that agricultural engineers might even produce a mechanical method for mass pollination.
The moral to be learned from this is not that man-kind is doomed, but that we are going to have to learn to be good stuards of our planet, for its sake and for ours.

While Banging My Head on the Desk

The Creation Museum in Kentucky has finally opened after several years of fighting over permits. The museum teaches a 6-day, literal interpretation of the story of genesis and has anamatronics, multi-sensory cinematic productions and all the other things that a $27 million budget gets a museum. Everything that is except for reasonable scientists to currate it and probably also a fossil collection.
Thankfully, because this place is privately owned, it does not count as a governmentally recognised repository for fossils from public lands, but that probably won't stop the owner from purchasing a large collection of fossils that would seem to support his 6-day creation belief.
news article

The Swiss Rock Hammer

There is something little perverse about doing field paleontology with a set of binoculars while sipping Starbucks coffee. It is however an easy paycheck. That is how my week has pretty much been. I've been on construction sites, watching huge machinery move around relatively new (100,000 yrs or younger) alluvium and finding absolutely nothing. On Monday and Tuesday I was in Irvine and was allowed to get relatively close to the equipment as they made a very shallow excavation. Wednesday to Friday however, I was not permitted within 50 feet of where the equipment was cutting a very deep hole in the ground. The latter case wasn't because of any particular resistance by the earth moving crew, but because the ground is contaminated with diesel from when a chevron research facility used to be on the property. As useless as I was made to feel by looking for fossils through binoculars from the top of the pit, I was comforted by the fact that there is a Starbucks across the street and that I'll likely be elsewhere when they start excavating what is lovingly being referred to as "the arsenic hole."

Slighly Over Marketed

While browsing Amazon.com, I came across what must be one of the furthest reaches for marketing of Harry Potter products. It is an actually liscenced Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets fossil kit. It comes with 5 actual fossils as well as an activity to "excavate" a fossil and to imbed something in resin like a piece of amber.

Perhaps my memory is a bit faulty (and I'm sure that a few people would easily be able to corroborate or falsify this) but I'm pretty sure that there are absolutely no mentions of paleontology or fossils in any of the books, much less in the second one. For that matter, sinse when did anybody need to do anything more than mention dinosaurs to make kids interested in a cheap fossil collection? Is there anybody who bought this thing who might not have if it didn't have Harry Potter on it? There are other Harry Potter themed science kits, but they at least have a more plausible tie-in to what the Hogwarts students would be taught.

Oh well, I guess that there really is no stopping marketing execs from taking over every facet of the world around them.

Oh Say Can You See?

Here in the US (and no doubt on US programms broadcasted in other countries) there has been quite a bit of discussion lately about patriotism. Therefore, since I haven't posted anything else in a while, I thought I'd do my own critique of love for one's country. From an evolutionary standpoint, patriotism derives from the preference of those like yourself over those who are less so. In a purely biological setting, differences are indicators of genetics and of upbringing.
continue this essay

Members of a village find the other members attractive because such feelings increase probability of the same genes being propogated, especially when the population is of sufficient size and genetic diversity that ailments don't arise from inbreeding. Xenophobia might be considered an extreme case of this. In a human setting however, our intellect allows us to discern more differences than those of a genetic origin. Traits such as language, culture, dress and religion are differences that distinguish us but have no biological basis, although the instinctual more different = less attractive responce is still in place. Therefore, on an individual basis patriotism stems from an evolutionary process. As will be discussed later, natural selection also serves to perpetuate patriotism. The above form of patriotism, because it is instinctual, I will refer to blind patriotism, the lowest form. Blind patriotism is what gets people to say that "America is the greatest country on Earth" without knowing enough about other countries, or even this one to justify that judgement. Another form of patriotism is more informed. This is the sort of patriotism that says "my country is better than that one because of literacy rates, crime rate, infrastructure, average income, climate, etc." While blind patriotism is about as sensible a thing (in my opionion) to die or kill for as religious conquest or racial cleansing, informed patriotism is what is the current justification for the war in Iraq, the bringing of a better lifestyle to another people: ie spreading democracy. That the military destroyed the Iraqi infrasctructure, which has lead to increases in rates of crime, disease, unemployment, racial cleansing and that the climate can't be fixed is another matter (at least their declared intentions are being recorded as good if their planning wasn't). The third form of patriotism is governmental. When a government has a social contract with its citizenry to look out for its best interests, it is justified in taking advantage of other countries' people for that purpose, just as it is the duty of the other country to stop the first from doing that. As for borders, controlled flow is essential to maintane an inflow of both highly skill and highly unskilled (and therefore cheap) labour, while keeping down poverty levels. Furthermore, governmental patriotism extends into informed patriotism when one claims that country A is better than B because of its form of government; eg. "We're English, our parlamentary system is far superior to that american system because we don't have an electoral college." or "my country could kick your country's ass!" or "if you were better off, we wouldn't export our worst jobs to you." When however, as is often the case, people conflate blind patriotism with governmental patriotism, terrible things happen. Members of the government don't even themselves need to personally have blind patriotism, they just need to utilize it in their constituancy to justify their actions. In the middle east, everyone hates Israel just for being there and being a jewish state among muslim ones. The argument of "it was our/ their land first" is thrown around a tremendous deal. In my opinion, it doesn't really matter in the least who owned the land before. What matters is who owns it now, and who lives there. Claiming a right to property because one's ancestors had possession of it removes personal responsibility from ownership. Just as the sins of the father do not cary to the son, entitlement is not enheritied, it is earned or it is given. A good analogy would be if every black person over the age of fourty in the US claimed that they deserved respect from the younger generation because they faced fire hoses, police and dogs in the fight for civil rights. Everyone should have the civil rights, but the added respect for facing danger only goes to the people who actually faced it. "Respect me, my dad fought for you." says a man. "That's nice, but what have you done?" responds his neighbor. Certainly, in the persuit for personal advantage, people have the right to use whatever argument that they like, especially if it works. The point is that it shouldn't work. The problem lies in that countries that don't succumb to blind patriotism will be overthrown by ones that do. Suppose that two countries start out homogeneous unto themselves, but different from each other. One strives to maintain homogeneaty in its population, while the other accepts people from the first who retain characteristics of their homeland at least initially and gradually come to resemble the average of their new home. Gradually, both countries will be homogeneous again, but will both resemble the one that was resistant foreign influence. Furthermore, an informed patriot may regard immigration as a source of degredation of his or her way of life, but if the new immigrants, who are now protected by governmental contract, have different priorities, then informed patriotism arguments go out the window because the collective metric for judging quality of life has changed. "We brought you democracy" says one. "But you brought with you godlessness and loose ways" says the other. Ultimately, people should not feel indignant in the face of a lack of patriotism, or feel pride in its possession. It is an extension of our biological drive to increase our like kind to the point of domination. Those who are sufficiently intellectual to see both sides of a patriotic dispute will adapt to their surroundings, and ultimately be overtaken by those whose feelings rule even their political actions and aspirations. Thus, mankind is doomed to remain in a primitive state. Stagnation maintained by perpetual change.

money better spent

The following is a form letter that I would like to see be used someday by a would-be political candidate. They can check which ever box they like. I don't think that hopes for such a letter are realistic, but it's a nice hope.

Dear Contributor,
I realize that it must seem like I've taken your money under false pretences, but rather than spend the tens of millions that I've raised on advertising, lobbying and otherwise running for office, I've decided to drop out of the race and indstead use the money to:

[] plant a million trees.
[] found a library/ museum/ school/ zoo/ performing arts center/large public park.
[] create a large planned community for low income individuals and families.
[] create an endowment for the arts and sciences that gives out over a million dollars a year from the interest and never runs out of money.
[] turn a section of northern/ equitorial rainforest into a wildlife preserve.
[] buy solar pannels/ wind turbines to power 5 thousand homes.
[] actually fund the social programs that I said I'd fund if I took office.
[] give out over a billion condoms to people around the world.
[] give out (favorite virus here) vaccines in developing nations.
[] build a new prison.
[] Grant the wishes of nearly a million terminally ill children over the next several years.
[] nearly double alternative energy research spending for a year.
[] create an endowment that supports law enforcement.
[] give one million people food for a week that wouldn't have otherwise gotten it.
[] actually save an endangered species.
[] have another self enriched food created like vitamin A rice.
[] have garbage removed from close to a thousand miles of coast line.

Thank you for helping me acheive this powerful act of good for the world.
Sincerely,
A former candidate for office

Attention Impulse Shoppers

Besides food, rent and gasoline, the thing that I spend the most money on by far is books. I have no problem checking books out of the library when available, but more often than not, I prefer the out of print, poorly known, and ultimately somewhat rare books that one doesn't find at any but the best libraries. Below is an example of the books that I've purchased recently:

Osteology of the Reptiles by Alfred Sherwood Romer
Atlas of Invertebrate Macrofossils by John Murray
Ends of the Earth by Roy Chapman Andrews
Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchet
Florida's Fossils by Robin C Brown
Fossiling in Florida by Mark Renz
Splendid Isolation by George Gaylord Simpson
The Dechronization of Sam Magruder by George Gaylord Simpson
Dinosaurs and other Mesozoic Reptiles of California by Richard P. Hilton
Evolution of Herbivory in Terrestrial Vertebrates edited by Hans-Dieter Sues
Systematics and Morphology of American Mosasaurs by Dale A. Russell
Coastal Process and Engineering Geology of San Diego by the San Diego Association of Geologists
Anonymous Rex & Casual Rex by Eric Garcia
Lake Wobegone Summer 1956 by Garrison Keillor
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
Tortilla Flats by John Steinbeck
A Log From the Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck
The Pearl by John Steinbeck

There are others that I'll probably get just as soon as I find an acceptable price; perhaps below 10 cents per page. Furthermore, I'll admit that all the Steinbeck novels at the end are available at most libraries, but I was on the road and in need of something to read when I bought three of the four of them. On the other hand, I'm sure that this is all just an extension of my compulsion to collect things and adorn my home with them the way a hermit crab sticks bits of lichen to the shell it inhabits. Besides though, who ever heard of a hermit that wasn't well read.
As an afterthought and as I've said before, in the event of my passing, my library is to remain intact and shall not be dispersed under penalty of severe beating by a zombie paleontologist.

He Says He's Not Dead!

I appologize for the lack of posts lately. I've been without internet service for a little while, but now I'm back and I should be posting a few wildly interesting posts to compensate for my absesnce. I think that a 3 page essay on the biological implications of the origin of various forms of patriotism should bring back a few readers. Or perhaps an investigative report on mustaches, the growing threat. Maybe even an expose on Snapple and the tin infused apples that are damaging teeth around the country. If you'd like to ready any of these posts, press 1 now. It won't do anything on my end, but hopefully you'll feel slightly empowered by it.

Serious Bondage

Since November, work for SWCA has been minimal, and since the end of January its been non-existant. So what does a man do when he has a rent to pay and no work? He goes to work at his parents' company. In my case, it's an attorney service company. Neither of my parents are lawyers, they're process servers. These are the people that serve subpoenas, writs, summons, and file the paperwork at the various courthouses.
Because I've been doing so much work for them, it has become necessary that I myself become a registered process server. To do this simply requires that I pay a fee, get fingerprinted and buy a process server's bond (insurange against an error on my part that screws up somebody's case).
The thing is though that with no end to my occupational hiatus from SWCA in sight, I wonder how long I'll end up working as a process server. Both my siblings are currently working for companies that compete with (and give work to) my parents'. Quite the family business. People who I run into in downtown LA ask "hey, are you B.G. jr.?" Not quite junior, but close.
The primary reason that any of this worries me is that his string of events is strikingly similar to what happened to my mom's scientific career. She graduated college with a B.Sc., was one of the only people in her class to get a job in the field, did that for a while before being cut and eventually going to work with my dad (presumably with the intention of someday going back to marine biology). She never did though and I've always gotten the impression that so many years out of her chosen proffession has taken a large toll on her.
I thank my luck so far that I don't have any responsibilities to bind my to this job forever.

New Additions

I think that it's about time that I share some slightly belated photos of the more spectacular fossils that I picked up in Tucson.

This critter is a crocodilian from the Sichuan province (supposedly) of China. It appears to be mostly real, except for the retroarticular process of the right jaw.

Directly above is the same Moroccan Dyrosaur (an Eocene Crocodilian) in two stages of preparation. At the left is how it looked when I first got it and at the right is how it looks now. I'm still not done yet, but obviously much closer. What lies ahead of me is lots of fine detail work.

Here is the greatest prize in my collection, a Moroccan mosasaur skull. It is fairly small and has an oddly short muzzle, but it does actually seem to be genuine. The view of the underside shows where repair work has been done to hold it together and improve it's aesthetic value. The red shows major cracs that have been repaired and the green outlines areas that have been filled in with rock putty. The top of the skull has been stained and laquered to give the bone more contrast from the maxtrix. Clearly, I've got alot of work cut out for me before I can declare it ready for study.

What I can tell so far about the skull is that it's definately not a tylosaur because the teeth go all the way to the end of the snout and that it's not a globidens (what is visable of the teeth is the wrong shape.) Because of the small size, I'd be willing to say for now that it could be a Halisaurus, but I'll know better once I've removed the matrix. If anyone else familiar with mosasaur would like to venture a guess, please feel free.

As for the fate of these fossils, please rest assured that once they are cleaned up, I will write descriptions of each and then deposit them in a museum so that I can publish.

Holy #@^!

I'd never heard of this, but apparently this is the second year that there will be an "Evolution Sunday" in which about 500 congregations will pick up The Origin of Species as a way of responding to Intedigent Designists (ie Creationists) who publicly argue that science an religion are in conflict.

link: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11145-christian-faith-in-the-iotheri-good-book.html

Tucson '07 day two

Another expensive day; my total coming to about $755. The two big purchases for today are a chinese crocodilian skull and a brazilian geod with a large piece of selenite in it. I understand that some of those who read my blog probably have a problem with me supporting the chinese fossil trade. I justify the purchase because I am not the first person outside china to own it. The person that I bought it from purchased it in San Francisco from a man who was selling off his collection. That and it was a really good price. At least I didn't buy the larger morroccan crocodile that I was offered for less today. Even if it were only $100, I wouldn't pay for that much plaster and miscelaneous bone fragments.
Other purchases include a small eurypterid from Europe, two small Miocene crabs from California, an ediacaran jelly from Morrocco and a piece of triassic petrified wood from Zimbabway that strongly resembles an unusual piece that I found in northern Arizona last year. I also spent a great deal of time browsing the gem and jewlery section of the show today. I try to take orders every year for jewlery when I come here since the show is right before St. Valentine's Day, but was unable to fill even the one request that I was given. Two factors conspired here; one is that the price of gold is very high right now, the other is that since this is esentially a show for jewlers and not for the public, the dealers only bring their finest murchendice and the prices to match. Before coming out here, I went to all the jewlery stores in the mall in El Cajon. I saw lots of fine pendants and ear rings with either low grade stones or no information about the stones that they were set with. For example, at Kay jewler, I saw a 2ct pear cut blue topaz on 14kt gold for less than $200. Here, I saw a flawless, perfectly clear, 2 ct pear cut london blue topaz from a small mine in Pakistan, that had only been heat treated to improve the color, custom set on a 14kt victorian style pendant mount, for over $500. Clearly, information is quite valuable among dealers and of little real interest to the people that ultimately buy it retail. After all, jewlers and gemologists pay alot for the education that enables them to know that one stone is enharently better than another. And to think, I almost signed up to go to the GIA.

Tucson '07, day one

I have some rather mixed feelings about the Tucson gem and fossil show this year. For one thing, I'm bummed that I've missed alot of it. The show is winding down and many of the fossil dealers have already left. Another thing is that somebody beet me to two fossils that I was prepared to spend several thousand dollars on. They were a small and a large Archialosaur (or Agialosaur depending on which dealer you ask). It turns out that the people who had the smaller one last year bought the larger one that I had seen and then sold them both a couple of days ago. They both went to private museums, but the large one went to the Black Hills institute, which means that casts will be available relatively soon.
After a mad dash around town, I found one guy who had an agialosaur (his nomenclature, not mine) with what definately look like intact gut contents in the form of an undulating concretion running between the ribs down to the hips. The rarety of the gut cast bumped the price up well out of my price range. The biggest dissapointment is that the guy absolutely refused to let me take a picture of it on the grounds that if somebody does buy it, then they'll want to never see it elsewhere in cast or photographic form. I.e. he caters to people who sequester their fossils rather than sharing them with the world.
That somebody beet me to what I wanted doesn't mean that I didn't spend anything today. My grand total for the day was $922.62, although I very nearly spent more. My two big purchases were a mosasaur skull (jaws not included) and an eocene sea turle carapase, both from Morrocco. Other items purchased today include Madagascan ammonites, a dried gliding gecko, two crabs from different parts of the world, an opalized clam, Globidens sp. teeth, a butterfly collection, snake skeleton, Deltadromaeus sp. teeth and others.

Photos to come when I get back to Fullerton

The longest 3 days

I just finished up a monitoring project in El Cajon, which is the somewhat poorer city about 10 miles east of San Diego proper. The long and the short of it is that I didn't find a damn thing, and wasn't going to. Whoever did the initial assessment of the site for its palaeontological sensitivity got it dead wrong. What I was told would be eocene fine sandstone turned out to be granite rich modern alluvium. Not only that, but there was a tremendous amount of garbage in it. Not just leaves or roots or the other naturally occuring detritus that might accumulate in alluvium, but broken glass, big pieces of asphault, cement, plates, mugs, plastics, etc. I don't blame the person for mistaking one formation for another, but I got the impression that they didn't check out the site too thuroughly if at all. For one thing, the most recent geological maps say that it's alluvium right there. When I compared a sample from the site to pieces in the San Diego Museum of Natural History, there seemed to be no resemblance to rocks from the formation that I was told I'd be finding. Last of All, the project only called for moving the top three feet of earth. Unless the project site is in a canyon or the side of a cliff or something, the first three feet of anywhere are typically going to have NO fossils, it's all soil.
The fact that I didn't find anything wasn't what was frustrating, it was that for every day of actual work done on the site, I did two days of waiting for it to continue. The day that it was supposed to start, it didn't. The next two days were spent essentially standing around while the guys who did the work removed tree roots from one corner of the site. This was followed by the week-end. Monday, things went smoothly, tuesday and wednesday it rained. Thursday, half the day was spent mixing the soil and drying it out. Friday, with the exception of hitting a natural gas line, work proceeded smoothly, followed by the week-end. Monday, work proceeded smoothly for half the day, until they needed to start moving the stock pile of dirt that they'd built up and discovered that it was still too wet from last week's rain. Tuesday, still too wet and I'm pulled off the project before it even goes to completion. With the exception of Friday and Saturday nights I'd been staying at a Best Western hotel that was charging a little under $70 (after tax) per night. All this delay, meant too much time at the hotel, which means that the company that I work for is pretty much loosing money for taking this project, which they shouldn't have done in the first place and having nothing to show for it to boot.
As for me, besides the frustration of doing something utterly futile for two weeks, I'm doing fine. I'm in Tucson, Az, ready to spend my hard earned money.

Quartzite '07

This year marked my shortest trip to Quartzite ever. I left Thursday night and was back at home less than 24 hours later. The fact was that I'd seen just about all of it before. In fact, there seemed to be even less variety this year. I didn't really imagine that there could be much in the way of new fossils, but it was a little depressing none the less. Prices have been gradually climbing too.
In the end, I bought some hematite spheres as per my room-mate's request, a keichasaurus, two pieces of australian jurassic tree fern, a chinese stromatolite sphere, about two dozen discounted gemstones and close to a dozen cleaned animal skulls. As for the skulls, I'd been meaning to pick some up for the last few years, but really only had the cash this year. I was tempted to get a few pretty mineral samples, but decided against it on the grounds of cost, priority and the fact that the vender was rather rude about it. I was also tempted to buy the skull of a large, tusked (lower not upper) mammal from china. I assume that it was some sort of ungulate, but since I couldn't see the teeth, I can't be sure that it wasn't a probosidian. I came pretty close to buying it too. I could tell that a few portions of the skull, particularly the tip of the rostrum and the cheek bones were artificially restored, but over all, it seemed like a good specimen. I even managed to get the guy selling it to seriously consider my offer of $500, a significant decrease from his asking price of $4500. What ruined the deal for me was that he said that he had several such skulls. I typically only buy rarer fossil material if I think that I'm saving it from a private collection and that I'm not promoting further collection. In this case, the dealer could probably restock, thereby defeating my intention of 'saving' the specimen.

academic priorities

Today I discovered the website of the University of Wisconsin's Brain Museum. It has the specimens of brains from over 150 different species, with photographs of whole specimens and cross sections. This got me to thinking ; are there any museums devoted to other strictly to one organ. I checked for spleen, heart, lungs, stomach, intestine, kidney, liver, skin, penis and vagina. Wouldn't you know it, there's a penis museum in iceland, a traveling vulva museum (no specimens of vulvas but lots of art) and a liver museum in Saudi Arabia. There are certainly lots of medical museums and general museums that contain preserved specimens of each of the organs from many species, but when it came down to it people only put together specific museums for the organs which enable us to have sex, think about sex, filter the alcohol that facilitates getting sex because we would otherwise overthink it, and the brain.

The Itch

Every once in a while, I get the itch. That urge which pushes me to spend more time, effort and money in pursuit of one thing than for anything else. Mine is an itch for TRAVEL!

Until this last weekend, I'd been in southern California continuously now for 9 months, the longest that I've stayed in any one location without a major change in scenory since I left for university. As such, the wanderlust has been naging at me for some time, thought to no avail since my van was unreliable. About $4,000 took take of the van's reliability and once I was satisfied with it I took off North to Monterey, for the greatest part following Pacific Coast Highway.

In Pismo beach I stopped at Monarch grove and observed the clusters of butterflies that congregate there. The local researchers reported that there were roughly 15,000 monarch butterflies in this grove at the time. This estimate was based on counts made by capturing several clusters in paper bags while it was still cold in the morning and individually counting the insects in each cluster, extrapolating the total number from the number of clusters and the average cluster size. It interested me that the butterflies didn't seem to care whether the trees that they roosted in were native or not, only that there was a grove of them large enought to reduce the amount of wind coming through.

That night I arrived in Monterey and passed the sleeping hours in the parking lot of a McDonalds. The next day I was treated to a tour of the Aquarium by my roommate's father, who volunteers there regularly. The aquarium requires about 2000 people to keep it running and accomodate the two and half million visitors per year. Of the staff only about 400 are actually paid employees, the rest being volunteers, many of whom hope to eventually become part of the paid group.

That night, I actually chatted with one of the volunteers (as well as a local stained glass artisan) that I met at an English pub downtown. The two of them typically worked evenings for the Aquarium's catering division, serving food at events held after the exhibits close to the public and otherwise wouldn't be able to make a living there.

On New Year's Eve I went to Marina State Beach and in my walk lent further support to the notion that death just seems to like being around me. One my walk along the beach, I found several dead sea birds, a large dead pinniped and one bleached braincase of what (I assume) was once a juvenile pinniped. The large pinniped wasn't very far decayed, but enought to keep me from being able to tell weather it was a small elephant seal or a full grown sea lion. The fins were tucked under the bloated body and the face was sufficiently eaten away to keep me from seeing if it had ear lobes. And here I was taking a walk without my collecting bags! I opted not to call Fish and Wildlife (formerly Fish and Game).

That night, after taking in the First Night festivities in downtown Monterey, I drove south along PCH to Big Sur, where I the next day I hiked among giant sequoias and climbed Mt. Manuel. I noticed that many of the largest trees grew in clumps of three or four and had eventually fused at the base, resulting in trees with bases up to 15 feet across, but upper reaches that quickly thinned down to four or five across at most. The hikes and the views were exhilerating albeit tiring and I think that I would have had more zest for hiking later in my trip if I hadn't exerted myself so much on that day.

The On tuesday I returned to southern Califonia, stopping at several beaches along the way to search for jade, watch basking elephant seals, explore tide pools and read Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth while enjoying a beautiful Californian sunset. Insidentally, the jade that I found was of low quality and in pieces typically too large to cary back to the van.