Juvenile Mosasaurs

The other night it occurred to me that I had never seen a specimen identified as a juvenile mosasaur. That's because none exist (actually there's a jaw bone that was misidentified for a while, but that appears to be it). For something as relatively common as mosasaurs with as wide of a geologic range and diversity of species and genera, it seemed odd to me that none would be known. After all, even the elusive T. rex had subadult specimens known and even some that would really count as juveniles. I then though to myself that there would be several reasons for why this would happen. First of all, a smaller animals is less likely to preserve. However, smaller animals, with much more delicate bones than those of a mosasaur (eg fish and a few birds) have been readily preserved in the Niabrara, Kansas chalk. Perhaps there were just very few jouveniles swimming around in environments where they could be preserved. Interspecific cannibalism is certainly known for mosasaurs so it stands to reason that a little guy would just get eaten up such that the vast majority of the population is composed of animals much too large to be preyed upon. This sort of thing is seen in crododiles where juveniles are quite inconspicuous and the adults live for a very long time once too large to be eaten by most predators. The fear of being preyed upon also results in a behavioral reason for a lack of preservation. Were a young mosasaur to spend the majority of his young life in estuaries (an environment quite poor for preservation and seen much less commonly than deltas or open seas) and only venture into open water once too large to subsist on the small estuarine fauna, then that too would explain the lack of early ontonogenic stages. The last idea would be that these reptiles gave live birth as some variety of snake do as did ichthyosaurs ( I don't know about plesiosaurs). Snakes typically give birth to a large number of very small young, but ichthyosaurs and modern marine mammals only birth one comparatively large young at a time. It could be then that the young mosasaur reached adulthood rather quickly, decreasing the probability of leaving juvenile fossils. Of course the truth probably lies in a combination of several of these factors.

Gelnaw's Law

Although Gelnaw's Law has been deleted from Wikipedia, it still survives right now in a couple of online dictionary type websites that derived their definitions from the open source encyclopedia. In order to commemorate eminent demise in anonymity, I have found a couple of historical examples of Gelnaw's Law in action.
Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, had his wife Martha put the toothpaste on his toothbrush for him every night.
While studying theater at the Pasadena Playhouse, Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman (Classmates) were voted least likely to succeed in show business. Along the same lines, John Murray Anderson's Dramatic school in New York sent a young Lucille Ball home because she was "too shy" to be an actress.
Movie star W.C. Fields was so suspicious of his girlfriends that he hired detectives to follow them around and see if they were cheating. One girl ended up marrying the detective hired to follow her.
The Earl of Cardigan, who became famous for sending British Calvary to their pointless deaths in the famous "Charge of the Light Brigade" died some years later from falling off a horse.
Joseph Murray, who founded the Irish League of Decency to promote censorship, died from a heart attack after watching his first nude scene on Irish TV.
My source for this information is a calendar of stupid things through history which does not site its own sources.

University level unintelligence

Buying books from the university bookstore is never fun. Crowds of people lining up to buy overpriced books. Yesterday there had been a whole pile of text books for my Stat class in Subtitles, the used books store, but today there were none, leaving me rather annoyed and in need of a quick alternative. Seeing that the price of a new text with SPSS software was about $160 I decided to try to buy from an individual rather than the store. But since I was there and had cash, I bought the course book for my science and religion class. The woman at the cash register was an excellent example of garbage in; garbage out computing. With tax the book was $15.12. I gave a twenty and got $5.88 back. Anybody with any brains at all should have noticed that you shouldn't get a 5 back from 20 if the price was over 15. Whatever, I wasn't going to point this out. Later I saw that she had some how hit $2.00 before the $20.00 which meant that she still gave me the wrong change from what she entered. Whatever, I bought a chicken turnover with my small windfall.

goings on

I think I may soon become a stinky, unenthusiastic, paleontologically obsessed trogladite (as many of those things go together). I guess somebody was having fun, but today the only shower in my apartment is broken and there is a sign on the door saying that the whole bathroom is out of order. Without a shower I am left with two options: become rather smelly or use showers in the locker-rooms on campus. As I have never used the campus showers before (always preferring showering at home) I can only imagine how bad it is. Hopefully not too bad 'cause I need to pick up this weekend.
As for unenthusiastic, everybody's been asking me what I did this summer and for the sake of saving time, each time I tell the story, it gets shorter and shorter. Unlike most fish stories, what I did on my summer vacation is rapidly becoming very uninteresting. I suppose that eventually people will be able to tell how uninteresting it is even before they ask, thereby saving much time and apathy all around.
I tried to identify my new dinosaur claw when I got home but to my dismay The Dinosauria wasn't much help. In fact, I'm starting to wonder if it even is from a dinosaur. It is very weakly recurved and has no perceptable flexor tubercle, but it is much too long and narrow to be a pedal ungual (I think). My computer is a piece of crap right now so I can't unload my pictures from my digital camera. I suppose I could delete one of the superfluous pics on the camera but I am reluctant. I guess I'll have to wait a while on that identification.

Fossils

I have finally received my fossils from the middle east. Stacey brought me 4 medium sized theropod teeth, probably from Deltadromeus, a Carcharodontosaurus tooth, a Spinosaurus tooth and a mosasaur tooth and a theropod claw (probably from an ornithomimid). All of the teeth are in excellent condition with all of the points intact with at most minor but invisible repairs. The deltadromaeus teeth are each about 2 cm long, the Carcharodontosaurus tooth is about 4 or 5 cm and the Spinosaurus tooth is about 10 cm. For these I paid $100.00 canadian dollars. As I am obsessed with the value of things, I checked out ebay to see what my new collection might be worth here in north America. A similarly sized but inferior quality collection was for sale for $250.00 US dollars while another seller with a large Carcharodontosaur tooth but smaller Spinosaur tooth was selling the two for $299.00 US dollars. I certainly got my money's worth. I know from experience that the mosasaur tooth would sell retail for between $15 (trade show) and $40 (mall rock shop) USD. But what if I were to try and buy these individually? At FossilMall.comhttp://www.fossilmall.com/index.htm I saw deltadromeus teeth for about $45 each and spinosaur teeth for $250+ each. And I have yet to see an ornithomimid claw for sale anywhere.
As a matter of fact, i have no recollection of mention of any ornithomimids from north Africa ever! While writing this, I've done a quick check of the literature with Georef and have come up with Elaphrosaurus which apparently occurs in North America and Africa but is late jurrasic in age and is found in the Tendaguru beds of East Africa, specifically Tanzania as well as elements from Tegana Formation, Province de Kasr-es-Souk, Morocco. It is known from fragmentary postcranial remains and has recently been allied with the ceratosauria not the ornithomimosauria. So either I've miss-identified the fossil, it is a claw from Elaphrosaurus or there could possibly be an ornithomimid from north Africa which nobody has previously noted. However, having only one claw would make it impossible to correcly identify it, especially if there is conflict righ now over the affinity of Elaphrosaurus. I'll have to check what elements have been ascribed to that genus. I'll be contacting Paul Sereno of the Chicago Field Museum to see what he thinks.
If you were wondering why I haven't gone off about the fish I received from Lebanon it is because i simply don't know enough about them. From Matt's e-mail I had anticipated a single large plate with a rather spectacular fish. Instead, I received several smaller fish plates, a shrimp, a cray fish and an ophiroid. While not particularly spectacular compared to much of the material available on the market here in Canada and the US, it is nice to have some fish from the late cretaceous. The ones here in North America are mostly from the Eocene of the Green River fm in Wyoming.

the world on its head

For the first time in my life, planning isn't going as well as I had planned. Craig Dylke is fond of saying that planning is for communists and school girls. I on the other hand have often said that with good information, events and their outcomes will be possible. The "good information" part though is critical. For the longest time, since my second year of high school (7 years ago) I've had kind of a crush on a particular girl. However, my crippling shyness and the fact that I moved 3000 miles away prevented me from ever doing anything about it. We however remained friends and I had always figured that if I moved back to Southern California, I could use the friendship as a springboard for a relationship. Poor foolish me. Last week I called her just to see how things were going when she told me some shocking news. She was gay, a lesbian. She had tried dating guys but found girls better. Well, so much for that plan! After hanging up, I noticed dull pain throughout my left arm, the sure sign of a broken heart.
Look on the bright side, I thought to myself, I can better concentrate on someone else. I had hooked up with a girl at a party only two days before leaving Edmonton for field school and then for South Dakota and figured that things there were promising. After all, in her e-mails to me she had given me a stupidly lovable nick name, a good sign if ever I saw one. She had however neglected to mention that she was seeing someone else. So much for that plan too.
This is also the first time in my life that I'm not certain of where exactly I want to be one year from now. Since Jr. High I had known that I wanted to study paleontology at the U of Alberta. Of course at the time I thought that there were closer ties with the Royal Tyrrell and that there would be dinosaur specialist here (but that's another issue). Now that I need to start picking a grad school. I'm much less certain. I need to take the GRE's and schmooze with potential advisors and see what I'm even going to specifically study next year. I also feel like I need to produce some sort of master work that I can present while I'm applying as sort of the kicker.
I had always planned to be happy and successful at 25. The domino's need to start falling into place. I need a new plan of action. It seems like I'm turning my life on its head, but I need to step it into high gear.
And for somebody who's had 4 complete meals in as many days, i'm surprised how lucid I am.

Paleontology delirium

As is sometimes the case when I travel, I caught some sort of stomach bug. This combined with sleeping on a very hard floor (not mattress yet) resulted in quite vivid dreams that frequently crossed partly into the waking world. As such, last night the collective finds of Charles H. And George F. Sternberg reeled through my drab apartment. Opened plaster jackets with columns of vertebrae exposed, mosasaurs, titanotheres, xiphactinus, dinosaurs, oreodons, etc. These particular visions were undoubtedly the result of the fact that I've been reading the biography of the Sternberg family of fossil hunters titled "Dinosaur Dynasty." I suppose that it's a good thing that I wasn't reading Fight Club or other such work. As much as I enjoy paleontology, I hope never to ruin it again by including it in any fever induced delirium.

The Proliferation of Stuff

There is an old saying which dictates that "friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate." I believe that the same is true of personal belongings; it just piles up. As someone who is constantly moving from one region to another, this becomes a major annoyance. I have tried to be minimalist in my life, not buying much, not even owning more than the bare essentials of furniture (not even a kitchen table or a couch) this has alleviated much of the problem. When I move to a new area I have to store my belongings somewhere and decide what I will need for the rest of the season. The boy scout motto of "Be Prepared" usually flashes through my mind at this time. Anything that I don't bring, I will automatically need. Anything that I bring, I will largely not need; it is better to have it an not need it than need it an not have it. As a result, when I came out to south Dakota I packed up my enormous green bag, a smaller green suit case, my green back pack, another back pack and a poster tube full of stuff and hauled it 1260 miles from Edmonton, AB to Hot Springs, SD.
In short, I ended up not even using: half of my long sleeve shirts, my corduroy pants, swim trunks, good black shoes, hand lens, cellulose acetate strips, mancalla board (and marbles), half the books I brought, several cd's of software and data, leather jacket, touque, gloves, Tyrrell Staff hat, most photocopies from scientific journals and coloured pencils. There's more to that list but I can't remember off hand what. I also could have lived quite comfortably without my bath robe, dinosaur skull models, posters, hat rack, journal, drawing pencils, art paper, several t-shirts, jazz and swing cd's (I don't have a cd player and the others that do decided that they didn't like my music), rock hammer and dissection kit.
All of this stuff could have gone into storage but didn't. Now that I have to go back to Edmonton, I've accumulated even more stuff. Most of what I accumulate anywhere I go is books. Academia is heavy to lug around. The problem is that if I didn't buy a lot of the books that I wanted here at Mammoth site, then I would not have received my employee discount of 20% and thus would have paid considerably more online. Fight Club, Choke and Lulably I bought and read here because I finally made the time for it and am shipping those back to California (I can't imagine any problem from my siblings trying to read it; my family doesn't exactly read for fun). "Marsh's Dinosaurs" I bought because I found it for $30: much better than I've seen before. There's also the books that my parents and grand parents sent me, and the National Geographics from the 1920's and the copy of Darwin's "The Descent of Man" that I bought at the library book sale.
And then there's the fossils. I'm addicted to those. If I see a deal on an ammonite, or an oreodon skull, I can't pass it up. I bought something like 3 half complete skulls, one nearly complete one, 6 cranial endocasts, a 20 lb ammonite and found a neonate oreodon skull and a paleolagus skull. From a local rancher I bought close to a dozen mosasaur vertebrae, a plesiosaur vertebra, 3 partial didimoceras, a piece of petrified cycad and a dinosaur bone that I can't identify. Most of that I'm shipping to California at great expense. Because of Alberta's strict fossil protection laws, I'm a bit hesitant to take fossils into Canada for fear that I won't be able to take them back out.
I have way too much stuff!

Improved readership

I seem to have acumulated a few new readers lately. Last week I had the fortune of meeting a couple of people my own age here in Hot Springs. The reason that this is significant is that just about everybody my age here has left in order to "see the world." Growing up in a small town must be a bit trying on one's patients. In any case, when they hit 30, most have realized that they don't like the rest of the world and move back to their small home town to raise their new (often accidental) family. The two people that I met, by the names of Steph and Glen, were both interesting people from North Dakota and they were traveling around in a Suburban doing sidewalk sundayschool programs for kids. I told them about my blog and even inspired Steph to start her own. I think the thing that kind of knocked me off my feet was that they had both thought I was cute when they met me ( I was their tour guide at Mammoth Site). Being a self professed homophobe, I'm not sure to be flattered or just react auckwardly. As such, when I found out I did both.
Another new reader is my advisor Dr. Michael Caldwell. Apparently he found out about my blog and actually read a great deal of it. I had written him asking what he thought I should do for my 499 project and he recommended working on some aspect of braincases and the Rieppel-Caldwell debate. Realizing that he had read my confession to only understanding about half of Rieppel's paper and my extremely high goals that I had set in my entry about the archaeopteryx brain case I feel a bit sheepish. Oh well, them's the breaks. Either way, I've got more readers for my site and hopefully I'll actually be able to expand that further thr0ugh word of mouth.

tyrannosaur family values

The more that I've read about the tyrannosaur growth rates, the more problems I've seen. First of all, the paper places the age of senescence and death at about 30 years old. That is really young for a big animal. In mammals and reptiles, the larger and animal is, generally the longer that it lives. Also, the paper said that T. rex and other members of the group would have only spent about 30% of their lives at their adult size, which seems to me to be extraordonarily short. It does mean that more of their lives would have been spent being able to run very fast, thereby benefiting their hunting ability, but only having 10 years to reproduce and raise a family presents a problem. The biggest problem lies in when tyrannosaurs would have reached sexual maturity relative to somatic maturity. If they are both at the same time, then the females would be starting their own family group well after loosing the ability to run quickly. Does this mean that females did not leave the family group they started life in before starting their own family? For a youngster to be helpful in the hunt, it would have needed to be at least 2 years old (youngest tyrannosaur individual found in association with larger individuals) and would have only weighed about 50 kg. Would aunts and even uncles have helped to care for the young for 2 years or more? possibly sacrificing their own reproductive success?
This also means that the mother of the family group would have died well before any of her offspring would have started reproducing. Thus a family group would be siblings from possibly several broods (therefore half siblings- usually reducing it's willingness to help with sibling's young compared to starting its own family group). In the case of Sue, the most famous T. rex, Duffy, a jouvenille found in association might have actually been her sibling rather than her offspring.
Sue presents another problem. She is really, really battle worn. Evidence of broken bones, infections, torn ligaments etc. This degree of wear and tear initially lead Peter Larson to believe that she was about three times older than the newest age estamate of death. If even a few of those injuries were sustained during the period when she was experiencing exponential growth (up to about 2.8 kg per day) then she would have needed not only to be cared for by her siblings, but massive quantities of food would have had to been draged to her in order to sustain her increadable growth spirt. Also, that much injury in 30 years seems a bit excessive. Have young tyrannosaurs been found with proportionate amounts of battle damage? Would childhood injuries be as visible as those seen on Sue? And what about the Gorgosaurus at the Indianapolis childrens museum with what apears to be a tumor in its brain case? Could a cancer have sprouted up and grown that large in the last 10 years of its life between reaching maturity and death?
I'll include some other problems and implications that I've noticed in another blog, but i've notice that this one has dragged on a bit long.

Tyrannosaur growth rates

Oh joyous day, somebody has actually published on Tyrannosaur growth rates! They included T. rex, Daspletosaurus, Albertosaurus and Gorgosaurus. I kind of wish that they had published on Nanotyrannus and Tarbosaurus as well, but them's the breaks. Much of the research was based on Tyrrell material and this gives me the ideal opportunety to springboard my research on brain body size relationships within that group. I think that the first thing I need to do is actually measure the size of the endocasts of the various specimens (I think that I'll use liquid latex). From there, I'll find out how much each weighed and calculate the strength of the skulls of each. I think that with their methods I could also do this for Allosaurus, Ceratosaurus, dromaeosaurs, oviraptorosaurs, ornithomimids and any other group of theropods. Using the fibula (one of the only non hollow bones in a theropod) is brilliant! However, I din't see them use any comparison to modern bird fibulas to test whether or not they were acurate. Oh, that'd make another really good project! I have way, way too many projects that I need to do. Hopefully without a TV this year, I'll be able to accomplish a few of them. That in itself would be a good experiment to see if its the bad influence of TV or my own lack of a strong work ethic (and funding and specimens) that has kept me from completing any projects.

Archaeopteryx

I read in science news today that in the Aug 5 edition of science, the CT scan team at U of Texas scanned the brain case of the london specimen of Archaeopteryx. There were a couple of things that struck me right away. I saw this presented on at SVP last year and I'm pretty sure that it wasn't the same people presenting as are now getting the paper in Nature. Also, then it was the Berlin Specimen, which actually has a brain case that is only half crushed. The London specimen is actually missing its head entirely. I don't know if this is an error on the part of Science news or what but I am definately glad to see that this particular team did the ct scan. They do good work and it means that they will eventually post it on http://www.digimorph.org . It also occured to me that in order to present at last years svp, they would have had to have had an abstract ready by April 2003. Is that how long it takes a paper to get into nature these days? I'm not sure if that's a long time or not, but I don't think that the science is moving fast enough (Nature needs to be weekly now instead of biweekly) The report went on to say that the digital endocast had enlarged regions for sight (optic lobes and optic tectum), muscle controle and had a very birdlike middle ear with an elongate hearing aparatus similar to modern birds.
Speaking of brain cases, I've decided that I'm going to compare the brain cases of helodermata, amphisbainids, snakes, dolichosaurs and mosasaurs to hopefully refute some of the groups as a sister group to snakes. Personally, I'd also like to find out where dolichosaurs are phylogenetically (descendants of basal mosasaurs or some other lizard group entirely?). Onfortunately though, when I tried to read Rieppel's paper comparing mosasaurs, snakes and varanids, I think I understood the abstract, the intro and the discussion but only about every third word in the actual body of the paper. It's going to be an interesting year. Hopefully since I won't have a tv I'll actually get alot done.

Stressed is desserts spelled backwards

Well, my stress level is quickly climbing back up to school year norms. So far I don't have a place to live, the classes that I want conflict, leaving me with nothing to do mondays and fridays after 10:00 am (and while it may seem very relaxing, I know it will kill any motivation I'll have to get out of bet at a reasonable time on those days), my insomnia is back (7 hrs sleep in the last 65) , I haven't accomplished anything that I wanted to this summer, I don't have a 499 research topic, the girls here still hate my guts, even if I do apply for canadian perminant residency, it will take at least a year to process which counts out my chances of affording any Canadian grad school and I've only saved about $2,000 USD this summer (well below even the cost of the fall semester). It's good to have things back to normal.

At the Movies

Spider-Man 2 finally came to Hot Springs, South Dakota. It was a decent movie but it could have been better. It seemed to me that Toby McGuire must have been stoned throughout the entire shooting of the movie. In just about every scene where we could see his eyes, they were blood shot and watery. Further proof is that there is a scene in the movie where Peter Parker is just eating chocolate cake with his land lords daughter. There was absolutely no reason for that scene to be in the movie. The whole point was that she eventually gives him a message from his aunt.
What was worse was that Doc. Oc. who could have been a really cool villain, was really shallow and one dimentional as a character. He doesn't even get that much screen time compared to how much time is spent on Peter Parker trying to ballance duty and booty. What really bothered me was that he quit being evil just as soon as Spider-Man tried reasoning with him. Shouldn't that be a hero's first response, especially if its one academic to another? And who gives machinary artificial inteligence complex enough and dangerous enough that it needs an inhibitor chip? If you know it's that dangerous, redesign the software with the inhibition built in!

Even Mexico's sold out

Today I saw a visitor to the museum that was wearing a t-shirt that said "Hard Rock Cafe - Tijuana. What happened to the good old TJ of yore. When you could go there to buy weapons, drugs, alcohol all before your 21st birthday. The appeal of TJ was that you could go to some sleazy hole in the wall bar, pic up a cute chicana, promise to take her back to the USA then dump her and go back to your homeland after you were done with her. Or even better yet, pick up an american girl and giver her some disease or get her pregnant so that it'd be really funny when her family asks here what souvenirs she got south of the border. I tell you, the whole world's gradually selling out.

Natural Law

Gelnaw's Law: Nature tends towards maximum irony.

 

Digging with the BHI

   This weekend I went to Wyoming to participate in a Dino dig with the Black Hills Institute.  There were three dinosaur horizons within only a couple of meters of each other.  The first had some sauropod and some stegosaur bits, but the material was really badly weathered from being at the surface.  The next horizon, the one that I worked at contained a nearly complete "Camarasaur."  I put that in quotes because they really aren't sure yet.  Alot of the features look like a mix of camarasaur and diplodocoid characters.  An hour before I left they started to find the skull so that ought to provide some insite.  The next horizon below that contained some more stegosaur bits but that site hadn't been opened yet.  What I found while there included a number of rib fragments, what might be part of the maxilla of the sauropod we're looking and a coelurus tooth.  While walking around a found a couple of large (25+  lbs) bone fragments that everybody else had passed over as rocks.  I guess they weren't expecting to find eroded material that big.  Too bad I didn't get to keep one of them, but it probably would have cost about $30 to send it home to the collection anyway.
   Over the weekend I also read Fight Club.  It's a good book and the movie parted from it a bit, but having seen both I'd have to say that the movie was a really good adaptation.  What was changed was probably done so to cut down on the number of characters and to keep it from getting an NC17 rating.  I liked it so much that I just ordered that author's other books Lulaby and Choke.  But since I found a good deal on Marsh's Dinosaurs, I ordered that at the same time too. 

Bush

I don't know much about politics, but I know what I dislike, and I dislike president Bush.  This November I'll be voting for Kerry.  There are many reasons why (http://drivingvotes.org/bushfacts.shtml) but my biggest reason is that when I started University in Canada, the Canadian dollar traded for roughly 66 cents American.  Now it trades for 76.5 cents.  I've lost money without spending it, and I hate losing money.  I think of the value of things in terms of their permanence or lack of mutability.  I hope that Bush doesn't have much permanence.

Much new stuff

    Well, none of the plans that I had for this last week panned out.  I thought that they might not, hense the "of mice and men" title on the post.  I really wanted to go to the rex dig site, but the van left without me that morning.  I was a little late but they must have left early because if they had left right on time, I would have at least seen them pulling away.  I'm making up for that loss though.  Tomarrow, whether I like it or not, I'm going to a Jurassic Dig site with the Black Hills institute.  My boss felt sorry for me missing the van last time so she arranged me to work with them Friday, Saturday and Sunday. 
    The plan to go cave exploring kind of fell out too.  I wanted to get the most out of my day off so I decided to see Mt Rushmore and go cave exploring in the same day.  And since I don't own a car (and the people who I could borrow one from are still a bit angry with me) I decided to hitch hike.  In the proud tradition of my father Gypsy Gelnaw, I hit the road and stuck out my thumb.  I left at 8:00 in the morning an had made it the 50 miles by 2:00 in the afternoon.  I was supposed to be at the cave by 5:00 pm.  It takes about two hours to see the monument and do everything that there is to do there (I might have been a bit slower because I was tired and my feet hurt).  As luck would have it, one of the people who gave me a ride (specifically the one who gave me the lift to the monument) was actually the daughter of Bob Farrar, one of the co-owners of the black hills institute.  So at 4:30, rather than try to make it 40 miles back to the cave in two hours, I decided to accept her invitation to visit the institute.  I don't know if my positive impression helped me get the weekend spot on the dig, but it couldn't have hurt. 
    On the way to Mt. Rushmore, I stopped in Custer and checked out the rock shops there.  For under $30 I picked up 4 cranial endocasts, two half skulls, one 3/4 complete skull and 3 very incomplete skulls of oreodons (oligocene sheep sized horse).  And to think, my parents got me a 5/6 complete skull for me for x-mas when I was  about 12 for $200.  Boy they charge alot for importing a fossil to California.

Of Mice and Men

Well, this week promises to be a bit more interesting than usual. Tomarrow I'm going to Wyoming with Earthwatch to check out one of Peter Larson's Tyrannosaur sites. It's either where they found Sue or where they found Stan. Either way, their's more Tyrannosaur material there which supports the hypothesis that gregarious behavior is a conservative trait across the tyrannosauria.
Saturday Evening I might be going spelunking in Wind Cave. The park manager is going to try to map some unexplored parts of the cave and said I could join him. It aught to be a very memorable experience if my mild claustrophobia doesn't turn into crippling claustrophobia. Then again, even if it does, it will still be quite memorable, but for the entirely wrong reasons.
On top of this, I'm finally getting some bigger projects in the lab. We're getting in Pygmy Mammoth material from the channel islands of California (The Santa Barbara Museum which sould be handling it doesn't have a preparator right now so we're handling it) but so far I haven't been able to work on any of it. Right now I've got a first thorasic vertebra, two phalangies and a mid thoracic vertebra to work on. I aught to be done with three of them by the end of Saturday.

Bone Bed

I got to work in the bonebed today. This is only the second time that they've let me work in there but this time I was at least closer to bone, though I didn't personally find any. Bonebed work is quite possibly the most satisfying work that I've done here: considerably more enjoyable than giving tours and working in the gift shop and more physically exerting than time in the lab.

Welcome New Readers

I have recently acquired what I believe will be several regular readers and so I say welcome. Perhaps this means I'll soon be able to get more than 1000 hits on this site. And so to them I say welcome.
Today's blog is about villains. Nearly every movie, book and comic book has a villain in it (except for crappy dramas that rely on interpersonal and internal conflict). There is a very fine line between super hero and super villain. It often depends on the point of view. To the British of the 1770's the revolutionary Americans were treasonous terrorists. Villains often could have been hero's if not for some bitterness, spite or resentment introduced to their lives. But what makes a villain and what makes him good at what he does? Quintessential, a villain must inspire hatred in either the protagonists or in the audience. Merely causing fear or pain or injustice is not enough to be really evil. Instead, the victims must vow to exact vengeance on their nemesis. Ideally this must be difficult for the good guy(s), that way there's actually some plot.
In nearly every comic book, the super hero has some weakness which his arch rival attempts to exploit. Knowledge is power and so if the villain knows for example the hero's secret identity (often quite contrary to their usual appearance to the world) then that villain has the upper hand. I rather like Superman as an example. Kill Bill vol. 2 explained it quite eloquently. Clark Kent is Superman's critique of the human race- cowardly, weak and physically flawed (the glasses). But even when he's Clark Kent, he's still Superman on the inside and drops everything to go do some good deed. No matter how hard he tries, he would never stop being Superman. Clark is merely a camouflage cover so that he can blend in with normal society. If Luthor were ever to discover that duality, then Superman would be rendered powerless against him. Bringing Luthor to justice would automatically mean having to accept that everyone would know his secret and that he would never be able to partake in casual society again. It would be lost to him forever and not even Superman has courage enough to give that up.
Until the final resolution, the villain is the one that has the most fun. Toying with the hero's, dangling false leads in front of their noses. Inevitably however, villain always slips up. Otherwise the audience would be outraged at the conclusion and the series would quickly end. The villain's tragic flaw is usually pride. Pride in one's work leads to bragging and the villain makes the mistake of revealing his sinister plot before the job is done. In the really good comics, the hero's even learn something from the villain. The reasons for his megalomania or other such condition as revealed through a very open rant encourage the heros to prevent other from going down the darker path.
Be on the look out for villains everywhere... Mwahahahahaha!!!

National Geographic

Yesterday the public library held a book sale, at which there was quite alot of crap, but also a couple of gems. I picked up a copy of Darwin's "On the Oriin of Species" and "The Descent of Man" for a dollar as well as the major works of Levoisier and Faraday and some other chemist who's name I can't remember for another dollar. I also picked up a whole bunch of old national geographic magazines. Unfortunately they didn't have anything from 1919 (the year I really want because it contains an article by on Barnum Brown) but they did have 1920, 1921, 1922 and 1923. Despite this wide range of years, none of them were complete. There was another collector there competing with me for posession. As a result I got a little over half of each of the above mentioned years. I normally wouldn't have wasted my time on National Geographics that don't have a Paleo article but for $1 each, it seemed like too good of an offer to pass up. The Wee book in in Edmonton near where I used to live offered National Geographics from the 1920's for $32 CAD each, so I feel that I got a really good deal. Even if I can only sell them for $10 USD each, I'm still making $270 USD profit on a $30 investment. If anyone would like to buy some old Nat Geo's off me for $10 a piece, I'd be more than happy to sell. Otherwise, I'll just be mailing them back to California to join the rest of the Gelnaw Library and Museum.
Just as a side note, I'm at the public library and the guy sitting next to me at the computers is watching copious amounts of gay porn. I reallize that it's gay pride week or month or whatever, but that is just rediculous.

William Gelnaw's Guide to Frugal Living

The people at google have recently reintroduced the ignorant masses to one of my favorite words; frugale. Unfortunatly, They spell it Froogle so it matches the parent company and now nobody anwhere will be able to spell it properly (heaven help us if it ever makes its way onto spell check lists). I have often found myself trying to explain to people why this word is such an appropriate discription of me. If you know me and know the meaning of the word, then its clear. But when the girl is asking if you want a private dance and all you have is ones, I find myself coming up with synonyms like cheap, pennywise, thrifty, a miser etc.
Frugal is not only a word but an idea that is sorely out of use. People today really don't know how to save their money. Granted, there are alot of circumstances in life that prevent one from being able to save (like getting knocked up), but for much of the population there is no excuse. The American economy practically runs on the fact that Americans buy more than they can afford thereby keeping inflation and interest rates pretty constant. As such I have decided two write the great unamerican novel (or manual). "William Gelnaw's Guide to Frugal living" or just "The Guide to Frugal Living" will instruct the ignorant and spend happy populace of this great nation in the ways of making their money last. If it works en mass then its true that my followers will see an initial reduction in the quality of their lives, but in the long run they'll be glad. I've come up with a few chapter headings as follows:

Never Pay full Price for Retail

Making it Last

Shared Living Arangements or Try Living at the Office

Never Buy Name Brand

The Gender Difference

Peasant Vision

Ebay, the Dollar Store, the Salvatio Army and You

Comparison Shopping

Don't have kids, Please

The Credit Conspiracy

It's Cheaper to Keep'er

Sugar Mamma's/ Daddies and You

Don't Let Grades Get in the Way of Your Education, Attending University for Free

Gambling Losses

Charity

The Tax Man Cometh

Police Auctions, the Repo Depot

Don't Have Much, Will Travel

Free Lunch and other Myths (getting/stealing free food, and pot lucks)

Grow Your Own, Make Your Own

Penny Wise but Pound Foolish

Black Hills Institute

Yesterday, I went to The Black Hills Institute of Geological Research in Hill City South Dakota, and it's awesome!!! It's only a three room museum (the mineral room, the fossil room and the gift shop) but its great. When I picture what I would really want my own museum to be like, I picture something like that. It is the former home of Sue the T. Rex and is the perminant home of Stan of the same species as well as several other Tyrannosaurs of various nick names. Generally, I think t sucks that they had Sue taken away by the FBI and then sold to another museum for $8.3 million (all procedes going to the guy who was leasing the land from the Soix). The institute saw no money from that sale despite the fact that they gave the guy $5000 to dig on his land, and pumped thousands more into its excavation and partial preparation. In spite of this, and the fact that the owners both did some jail time for alleged fossil poaching, the institute seems to be doing ok. The skull of Stan is quite possibly the best preserved dinosaur skull I have ever seen. Ironically, they also have a cast on display of MOR 555. I can't imagine it should have been too hard for the Chicago field museum to sell them or even give them a cast of Sue. The Institute should have at least have been offered a discount (you know, for finding the damn thing!!!). They've also got awesome displays of lagerstaten fossils from the Green River Formation, Lebanon (Yay lebanese fossil exports) and the Solenhofren, Germany. They've also got the biggest, best preserved Euriptyerid I've ever seen.
I highly recomend a visit to any avid fossil nerd. Admission is free but please give them a donation. They've earned it.

writing friends

I've been getting the impression lately that I may be trying to contact people by the wrong e-mail addresses. I've sent out a couple of e-mails to friends but I get the impression that nobody is getting them. Either that or they just haven't written back yet. Michelle wrote me back and did it rather promptly. I've written Sudeep twice in the last two months and haven't gotten any reply. Perhaps he feels bad about the fact that I spent more time with Michelle the last time I was in California than with him. If that is the Case, I'm sorry dude. Ok, that could explain one lack of response. What's wrong with the rest of you. I lead a really boring life here in South Dakota and it means alot when I get correspondence.

perminance and imperminance

I was surprised today to find out that the wiki that I created about the value of public participants in field work still exists despite the fact that it was at one point slated for deletion due to its enormous size. It's no longer under the heading field work, but you can get to it from a link in that heading or using the above link. I am kind of depressed that whoever relocated it specified it as archaeological despite the fact that there isn't one archaeological organization that I surveyed. He must not have even read the abstract.
Besides checking out my old Wiki, I've been filling up my G-mail account. I think I must be the only person to have already filled close to 30% of my free Gigabite of space already. I've been sending myself my digital photos so I can get them off of my memory card. I didn't want to burn them onto a cd yet because it seemed like only 240 megabytes of an available 700 would be a waste of space. In retrospect I should have just burt the cd as a session and added more later. Oh well.
In other news, somebody took my idea and is making a whole lot of money off of it. Well, actually they just had a similar idea and are making money off of a limited academic circle. There's a book called "the dinosaur paper 1676-1908" (dates may be wrong here) in which it repuplishes all of the original papers starting with the very first description of a dinosaur and going to the start of the 20th century. My idea was a bit more limited in scope. I just wanted to do this for each major journal that published dino papers separately. Whoever compiled this is briliant, and clearly very hard working. I have no idea how they got some of these papers. Anyway, I must have this book. Unfortunately, It's just as costly as a text book ($75 USD) so I think I'll wait until I can get it used. Or, since I'm only buying used texts now, I think I'll use what I save on those to buy it. I've spent alot lately on my paleo adiction (Lebanese and Moroccan fossils) so I think I should wait.
Another book that I'm really sorry that I have to wait to buy is Alfred S. Romer's "The Osteology of the Reptiles." It looks like a great book but its about $110 USD. That's alot for book that hasn't had a new edition in over 30 years and doesn't have a single color plate. Perhaps some money making scheme of mine will cover it. Who knows?

Good to be me

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

DinoData

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

What a Good Day!!!

Today's been going pretty good. It turns out somebody actually reads my blog! Who knew, huh? I've also taken care of the financial stuff for the U of A paleo society (that I to say I'v passed the buck to somebody else), I've packed up most of my stuff and I got Gmail. As for the comment on my last blog about becoming a superhero called Mammoth Man, I've decided to pass on that. After all, I've always wanted to be a super villain rather than the hero and people might be kind of confused when they expect somebody mammoth in proportion but only get me. On top of that, the idea of an evil paleontologist has been done. Remember the 80's movie BABY, about a baby dinosaur that's being hunted by an evil paleontologist in the Congo and a beautiful but ditsy female paleontologist and her husband are trying to save it? The movie did ok, but the evil paleontologist dies at the end, and i really don't want that kind of precedent set for me.

The end is near

Well, despite the fact that everything I touch seams to be doomed to ruin (even especially this blog), I can just about see the end at hand. Eleve more days until I leave for field school and about ten more after that until I leave for south Dakota. My housing situation is taken care of for once and I just have to worry about getting through my exams and field school alive. Given that my shoes are absolute crapola (I was going to buy new ones but cheaped out) I think I'm going to buy some insoles and glue tire tred onto the bottom of my current shoes. That ought to extend the life of them for another year or so. The next time I blog, odds are I'll have something to say about the pleistocene of South Dakota.

Putting an end to it

In the opinion section of the Gateway (the University of Alberta student's union run news paper) there has been something of a debate each week regarding evolution and creation. Since for some reason, the debate is now even being advertised on my site, I figured I'd just try to put an end to it. The fact of the matter is that anyone who has ever become embroiled in such a debate has inadvertently come to the inevitable conclusion that you will never convince someone of a different opinion than yourself that they are wrong and that they will never convince you. You walk away from the conversation wondering how the other person could be so closed minded and blind to the obvious truth. People are stubborn. Pretty much once they've reached the age of 15 their ideologies are set and only life altering experiences will ever change it. A person may become more complacent over time about their ideology and this may lead that person having less of an impact on the ideology of the next generation, but the persons themselves are rather unchanging. It's like evolution is suppose, any individual is stuck in their genetic place. Small changes can occur but its just a matter of how much impact that individual has on the next generation that determines the eventual outcome of the population. The population will fluctuate with changes in the environment, but without the introduction of novel features or a stark need for change, there will be a fair amount of stasis in the relative proportions of ideologies in the population.

piling up

Right now I'm supposed to be working on either of two systematics papers, one on gerrids one on conodons, or an applied ethics paper, or even a paper on the value of amature field assistants to paleontology (particularly in day digs programs) or an interpretation of a wheeler diagram that my strat team constructed this last week. I haven't started any of them. And frankly I really don't feel like doing any of them today. What I'd really like to do is scan through my annotated bibliography of dinosaur paleopathology and find articles relevant to predator-prey relations (for somebody elses research project) or look up the mineralology of dinosaur bone from different locals or continue my ongoing quest to measure all of the relevant qualities of all the fenestrae in theropod skulls. After all, I haven't even been given the topics for my ethics paper, I don't have the references for my conodonts paper and I didn't print out my trees for my gerrids systematics paper. That prety much leaves the Day Digs paper and the wheeler diagram write up. Being that the wheeler diagram is due sooner, in the spirit of procrastination, I think I'll work on the Day Digs paper instead. University would be great if you got to do your own research, on topics that hold your interest. I've been told that grad school is like that (but not by grad students or profs) so I guess I'll have to wait until i've got a degree before people will just let me research what I like in peace.

A call for Wikipedia submissions

I was surfing wikipedia and was shocked to find that there was practically no discussion of marine reptiles. A search for Euryapsida doesn't even turn up any results. I'm imploring anyone with expertise on marine reptiles (even extant ones) to submit to the site. Honestly, how are people supposed to learn if we don't teach them. I set up a stub site that has a basic break down of the marine reptiles into diapsids (mosasaurs, marine crocs and marine iguanas) and Euryapsids (plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs and placodonts) there is of course a plethora of others but I don't have the time to fill them in.

I hate the people who advertize on this site

When I've looked at the top of the screen on my blog yesterday and today, I was shocked to see ads for creation science, 7 day creation, bible help etc. HAVE I MENIONED THESE AT ALL? I'm a devout atheist and usually talk about biology, paleontology or ethics, not creationism. I usually don't even give creationism the time of day. If you are interested in these bible help places, please don't link to them from my site. It's just embarassing.

Free Vert Paleo Papers

I found a great web site that is giving away free copies of recent paleotnological papers in pdf format. I highly recomend visiting the site soon. I don't think that it is quite in agreement with international copyright laws and may be shut down soon. So all of you Paleo Pirates should head over now! the addresss is :
www.geocities.com/mesozoicdinosaurs/dinopapers.html#dinosaurs

the book quiz

You're The Grapes of Wrath!

by John Steinbeck

You're mired in a deep depression that encompasses you and everyone
you know. You're trying to get out of the depression, but your idea of help is, in
itself, pretty sad. While some are convinced that this all has a deeper meaning, you're
really just dull and tedious. And utterly obsessed with dust. You really need to focus
on something other than dust. Your best moments center around turtles.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Another Ethical thought

My ethics class has been talking alot lately about what human nature is and why its so important. Frankly, I think most of what's been said is a load of crap. Not one of the philosophers we've covered have even mentioned natural selection, evolution or mutability. Not one seems to have ever taken a biology class within the last 150 years. Granted, philosophers before then wouldn't have even heard of Darwin (except perhaps for he accomplishments of Erasmus Darwin), but there's no excuse for more recent ones. Even before the theory of natural selection was formalized, the vast majority of the biologically minded community acknowledged that humans are in fact animals and that no species is immutable. Apparently nobody told the ethical theorists. Even today in class, my prof said that human nature was human nature and that it was universal across the species.
OK, here's a new ethical theory for you, it has two assumptions: 1. human beings came to their current state through the process of evolution by natural selection. 2. If there is such a thing as justice, then it is subjective (ie. one group argues that each person is autonomous with equal rights and another argues that people are variably dependant and have the equal right to have their dependancy accomodated). "Moral action is that which is in accordance with those which produced that which is viewed as human nature or changes what human nature is for a significant proportion of the population." This theory is univeralizable (throughout all life), consequentialist, and can serve as an umbrella theory under which all the other theories which my ethics class has covered.
It is universalizable across all life becaue it has all reached a current state through a process of evolution. If an organism is capable of behavior, then we shall arbitrarily say that its behavior can be deemed either beneficial/ moral, detrimental/ imoral or neutral. For much of the animal kingdom, we shall say that the range of potential behaviors is genetically hard wired (to apply to humans you can either change all occurances of the word gene to idea, belief or code of action, and any word synonymous with inherited to learned, or you can leave it as is, depending on you views of human developement). An organism is therefore obligated to conduct itself in those behaviors which increase the fitness of its gene line and those behaviors which are utilized to that end. A behavior that inhibits the reproduction of that organism will not be passed on to the next generation and thus the proportion of individuals with that trait will remain very close to 0 (its distance from zero depending on the liklihood of mutation wich results in the production of those inhibitory behaviors). Likewise, behaviors which improve evolutionary fitness will increase in proportion within the population. The developement of a novel behavior which does not affect the likelihood that the gene which controls it will get passed on will be subject to genetic drift. There would be an accumulation of novel characters which are not necssarilty shared by the entire population nor all in one sect, if the rate of mutation to produce these behaviors is greater than their random elimination through serendipitious death, non reproduction or reverse mutation. The other factor that would affect the accumulation of those characters which do not affect reproductive success is linkage. The likage/ closeness of two genes is an expression of the probablility that in a random sample of progeny from a single set of parents, individuals that inherit one character will also inherit another without necessarilty a causal relationship. If a completely neutral gene is likely do be inherited with a detrimental one, then it will likely be eradicated from the population. The converse is also true (linkage to a beneficial gene increases the carrying proportion of the population).
It is important to noe here that the affect a behavior has on fitness is entirely situationally dependant. On its own, anything becomes nuetral because it serves no direct purpose (digestion is meaningless without absorbtion, copulation is meaningless without gestation). An act can be beneficial in one situation but nuetral or detrimental in another dependig on a change in the environment (including social environment). The value of any behavior can switch to any other value depending on the situation. In the human world, flying would be considered by most to be morally nuetral. It becomes evil if you purposely crash it into a couple of builings and admirable if you fly air drop supplies for the hungry.
Humans are particularly interesting creatures because of the complexity and placticity of our behaviors, of which, one behavior is reasoning. Reasoning ability opens range of behavior even wider because we have the ability to construct tools to manifest our ideas, desires and feelings. We as human beings are not physiologically capable of completely independant powered flight, yet it is clearly within the range of our abilities to achieve flight through our natural tool use and reasoning. The act of reasoning itself one could argue is evolutionarily nuetral, but it is the impementation of that reasoning through our mechanations which affect our success (dolphins could be capable of reasoning but we'd never know it because they don't visibly do anything with it). In this way we are contrained by the limitations of our mechanations and the sum of the mechanations of previous generations. Therefore we cannot actually act outside the limits of our natures since we have it within our natures to achieve anything given time and resourses. Thus it is completely meaningless to say that acting in dischord with our nature is immoral since it is an impossible condition.
Ok, so no that I've explained alot of the biological background, I can actually get into the syntax of the theory itself. Since it is not possible to act outside the limitations of ones nature, it is possible to not act in accordance with those behaviors which increase or maintain genetic fitness or contradict those that developed the current condition of the species.
You know what, I'm actually getting bored of writing this, as I'm sure you're bored of reading this. Ok, it boils down to there is no objective good or evil act, its all situational; a group can feel threatened by a suddenly successful group and intentionally suppress it as a way of maintaining their success or they can join the new group; people when you get down to it, really aren't that bright.

The Enemy list

Throughout my brief life I seem to have had alot of enemies, nemecies and people I just plain didn't like. Many have commented that I must have a list of people that I'm enemies with a mile long. The other day I tried to actually think of the names on that list but very few came to me. As a matter of fact, only a few of the big ones or the more recent ones came tomind: Anna Lisa Dockman, Daniel Panosh, Richard Sander, Penrose (we only ever called him by his last name). There are certainly others that I can remember, but who's names I've forgotten. The kid in second through fifth grade that ritualistically embarresed and bullied me, that kid in fifth and sixth grade that thought I was his friend, but was really, really annoying (I have a piece of graphite perminantly in my thumb thanks to him), his other friend who pestered me to the point where a teacher dropped the F bomb yelling at him. In junior high there was the kid who sat next to me in band opposite Daniel Panosh, who constantly ridiculed me about my clothing, my weight, and on several occasions tried to cut me. In early high school pretty much hated everybody; the guy that never called me by any name other than Timmy, the majority of the brass section in the band, and pretty much any guy not labeled as a nerd, and even some that were.
I think that what I need is somebody to be my arch nemesis. A rivle who will chalange the limits of my malice and contempt, and with whom I can have such a bitter rivalry that anybody that knows of either of us will recognize our loathsome contempt for each other. Having an enemy can push a person to great things, motivated by hate, the most powerful emotion of all. I do some of my best work when I'm trying to vanquish another. Even Proffessor Membrane on the show 'Invader Zim' had a foe in Santa Clause; "From this day forward, I shall devote a small portion of my life to destroying Santa!!!"

Rage Time

Yesterday, either Allan or Joel brought up an interesting question; how much time you you say you spend enraged? For the purpose of discussion, we made rage to include angry frustration and bad moods that include mental images of hurting others or overpowering other (even if only to get rid of them). Joel responded that 15-20% of his time was spent in such a condition (this is including all that time spent sleeping). This means that practically a third of his waking time is spent in an extremely foul mood. Allans responce also seemed high at 5%, though much lower than Joel's. Allan has always outwardly presented himself as a stoic, emotionless zen master. I guess he just bottles it up. I'll have to remember to stay on his good side. As for me, I really don't know. My mood is highly dependant on ambient temperature and light and CO2 levels. The warmer it is (within reason) generally the happier I am. The converse is also true. This does not necessarily mean that I go strait into rage when it gets below freezing. Actually, I just get sluggish and go into periods of metabolic torpor. Thought there is set of ballance points where it is warm enough for me to get my blood up. Generally this is the temperature that I'm at when I'm lightly bundled in one of the halls of V-wing. With thousands of people around me struggling in one direction like some anatomical macrocosm, consuming all the O2 and acting like complete idiots, I am prone to visions of massive sweeping motions that hurtle people into the snow, or into adjacent lecture theaters. Sauron at the very start of Fellowship used such swings. Another time when I "feel" rage, or as I prefer, the wrathful power of provedence, is in any dance club or bar in which the average age of attendees is below 21. Clearly these people are wastes of oxygen and ought to be eliminated from my path like insects beneath my heel. But then I getting carried away.

The Purity Test

Well, it seems to be the popular thing right now to take the purity test. There are many different versions of the purity test. In this one, a high score means that you are more pure/ wholesome etc. In otherwords, the the lower the score, the more things that you've done in that catagory. Once again, for clarification, gayness of 100% means that you've never done anything gay. I reiterate this because I know that somebody (e-hem, Don) is going to leave a comment completely to the contrary to what I have just established. He does this because he knows that I'm a homophobe. I've also tried to include the scores for my room-mates for comparison as well as the average.
Category _____ ME Allan Joel Average

Self-Love _____ 55% 23.3% 46.7% 65%


Shamelessness 95.2% 71.4% 73.8% 79.3%


Sex Drive _____ 92.1% 92.1% 32.4% 77.6%


Straightness _ _ 87.5% 89.3% 3.6% 44.8%


Gayness _____ 100% 92.9% 89.3% 83.5%

Fucking Sick _ 97.3% 94.7% 84.1% 89.9%


You are _ 85.42% pure 77.2% 57.29% 72.6%

A couple of interesting things occur to me right away. First of all, despite the fact that I don't have a girlfriend, I still scored more pure on the self love catagory than Joel who is (at least amongst us nerds) the most womanizing guy around. Also, Allan didn't post his average, so I decidd to calculate it for him. Also, Allan's gayness and straitnes are pretty close to equal, in fact, I'm sure that if one were to run statistical analysis, the two would be indistinguishable.
Well, it seems like I'm the purest guy in the house, which isn't really saying a whole lot. I'm not really sure if this whole purity thing is good or bad, especially since I was pretty liberal with my answers, trying to depress my score. oh well.

Reunite Gondwanaland!!!

The University of Alberta Students Union is quite possibly the most useless organization on campus. The only function that the SU has served lately seems to have been to fight the provincial government over the amount of subsidies that the university receives. Freeze the Fees is their slogan. This refers to the desire to stop current rise in tuition. Since 1990, tuition, they claim, has risen over 200 percent. The SU points out that Alberta is currently in one of the largest budget surpluses ever and that only a small fraction of that surplus would be necessary to maintain tuition costs for the next several years.
So what has the SU done to actually fight rising tuition costs? They've given out free hamburgers and soda to passing students in order to get them to sign petitions and pre-typed letters to legislature. A couple of times, the SU has organized a march on the parliament building and staged "theatrical" protests on the steps of the provincial government building.
What has this accomplished? Absolutely nothing! Not only did the SU completely fail in its attempt to fight bill 43, the bill which removes tuition caps for universities, but they continue to fail in every single attempt to make a politician (students for the most part too) care about keeping tuition the same. The SU is going about this issue in entirely the wrong way. They might as well be screaming "Reunite Gondwanaland" infront of the United Nations building. Reuniting the southern continents is both physically and politically impossible. Anybody That knows what the issue is would laugh, even if it did seem like a good idea. Politicians don't care about the rants of a few young university students, they care about the voters. I've said it before, but I'll say it again. If the student union were to put as much effort into backing candidates that support their cause and convince students to go to the poles and vote out the current administration, then some change will be seen. People will act if they're afraid of losing their jobs. Student's parents and the parents of prospective students, if they vote would probably be able to make a huge impact.
I hate people who say "fight the system." No, the system is there for a reason, it's a good system. It's changeable but it takes time and effort; so that people wont just fiddle with it every time there is a small, but upset group. Unlike a lot of situations where the squeaky weal gets the grease, the politicians will normally just say that the squeak of students isn't loud enough to be worth the grease. However, if a couple of current leaders of state are replaced, the remaining individuals would be able to clearly see that they are not immune from lay offs.
Voter turn out is absolutely appalling. Old people make up the vast majority of voters, and let me tell you, they don't care about student tuition, unless their grandkids are hitting them up for money. There are approximately 30 thousand students and professors at the U of A. Each of those students has two parents. If half of those people are even eligible to vote, and a tenth of those actually show up to the poles, then that is nearly 5000 votes agains increased tuition. Granted, that isn't very many people, but Alberta has just about the lowest average age of the population, so that some octogenarian won't be skewing the vote. Consider also the 1400 voting parents of students that will be entering university next year. With such low normal voter tern out, over 6000 people voting the same way on a particular issue will has a tremendous impact.

Tuition

Being an American student in Canada can be hard for some reasons that may not seem appartent at first. Beyond the constant jabs at my country's leader and frequent remarks about American stereotypes I have to deal with my tuition. Being a foreigner, I pay more than twice as much as other students in the same classes which means that my tuition this semester cost me $ 6,883.69 CAD. Of course, now that the tuition cap has been eliminated by the province of Alberta the student's union has been holding feeble protests against a 5.5% rise in tuition. How would they feel about a 125% rise? The stressful part of this is not the actual amount that I'm paying for tuition. In fact, this is still a bit less that I would pay at a comparable university in California as a local. The stressful part is deciding when to pay my tuition. Currency exchange rates have not been in my favor. The U.S. economy has been abismal practically since Bush took office. As a result, the value of the U.S. dollar has plumeted. When I first came to Canada, the Canadian dollar traded for 65 cents U.S. Now it is trading at 77 cents U.S. This means that on approximately $10,000 CAD in tuition for one year, I have lost an equivalent of $1,200 US just by inflation. For a student with no income this is a HUGE chunk of change. In September the Canadian dollar was at practically a 20 year high of 75 cents on the US dollar. I thought that this was too high and that the canadian dollar would be affected the US and would eventually depreciate in value. As a result I only paid $6000 of my tuition (just a little more than the first semester's total) hoping that the CAD would fall in time for me to pay the next semester. But instead the CAD continued to rise reaching recently over 78 cents. Since I only have until January 30 to pay this semester's tuition, I was feeling the pressure to get the lowest possible exchange rate in a short period of time. As a result, when the canadian dollar dropped just a little, back down to 76.9 I resolved to pay. Hoping that it would continue to drop I waited a day to see how the Canadian dollar was going. When I went back up to 77.07 I felt that this was a bad trend and paid my tuition on the spot.
Of course, not 2 hours later, my room mate Joel informs me that the Bank of Canada will deciding next week whether or not to drop interest rates in order to inflate the Canadian dollar. If they don't the CAD may continue to soar up to 90 cents, but if they do ( which I feel is more likely) then dollar will plumet and make me kick my self in the pants for paying too early.

Wikipedia

Yesterday I was introduced to the open source encyclopedia called Wikipedia. In this encyclopedia, anybody can contribute information and anybody can edit the site. There are of course graffiti controls and your contribution may not stay very long, but that's at least quality control. I have taken it upon myself to enrich the paleontology section of the site and encourage other people that I know to do the same for their respective fields. For example, last night I corrected some rather dated information that stated that Al Romer currently had the definitive book on vertebrate paleontology and I made it to say that the currently better book is by Robert Carroll (mostly because his text is more recent and because he's coming out with a second edition which Romer (deceased) cannot). Of course, my html skills are abysmal so my contributions thus far are minor.

Paper Tigers

I'm taking a philosophy course on ethics and the first thing that I notice about the subject is that the conflicts between people seem primarily to be fabricated from misunderstanding of what the other is saying and the seemingly innate desire to prove one's philosophical opponent wrong. I'll draw an example from another field which I am more familiar. Dr.'s Stephen J. Gould and Nile Eldrich published together on the topic of punctuated equilibrium which states that evolution is characterized by long periods of stasis with periodic rapid jumps in evolution, in which a peripheral isolate is separated from the main population under slightly different conditions and eventually replaces the parent population when conditions change to favor the isolated new species. Many people (especially young earth creationists) have latched onto this as the theory that disproves Darwinian gradual evolution. Actually, punctuated equilibrium is predicted by population genetics which relies on the principal of evolution by natural selection. The argument that Gould and Eldridge had with other evolutionary biologists was the significance and relative quantities of evolutionary transisions that occur suddenly as the result of the introduction of a peripheral isolate or via what's known as non alosteric evolution (by which the main parent population changes into a distinct species from its ancestors gradually). People have trumped up the argument so much that they seem to feel that the two processes are mutually exclusive and therefore one of them is completely wrong. Then again, people wouldn't sell as many books if all that they said was that a compomise must be made between the views on the significance of the various processes.
'Ethical' philosophers do something similar by constructing definitions or implications for a principal introduced by a colleague and then 'disprove' their argument on the basis of the new definition. For example, today in class we discussed ethical relativism, particularly cultural relativism. The argument goes as such: the relativist says "We should not judge other cultures out of respect for their right to their beliefs, largely because we cannot understand the inticasies of that culture enough to pass absolute moral judgment."
To which the philosopher we were studying would respond "you don't actually respect their culture because respect implies some sort of a positive judgment and if we aren't allowed to make negative judgment then any positive judgment is worthless. Furthermore, if we cannot judge others, the can they judge us? Can we even judge ourselves?"
"Ok then, we should tolerate the other culture's moral views if you want to put so fine a point on it. If we do not understand the system of beliefs which those people draw their morals from, and the ranking of their values, then we cannot state that they are morally wrong, especially if their argument would still be logically correct. As for foreigners judging us, we listen to what foreigners have to say all the time. We only really acknowledge them when they are pointing out a hypocrisy or contradiction in our system of beliefs. And as for judging ourselves, everybody has a unique system of beliefs, they aren't beliefs that are all exclusive to any individual but rather a unique ordering of the value of each value."
"Aha! Then you admit that your original statement is completely wrong! Cultures can pass judgment on one another and you even said that we all have the same values!"
"No, I said that we have different permutations of the values that we give to ethical statements of should or aught, besides a lot of it is entirely circumstantial!"
"But people still have a universal system, I win."
"What!? That universal system is logic, which can be used on ethical statements. The statements that make up that logical system are personal or shared within a culture. I could stay a should b. a then ethically b. It doesn't mean that the ethical decisions that one comes to or the system of actions is in any way universal."
"But you still stay that EVERYBODY SHOULD use logic. That in itself is an objective ethical statement.
"Fine! That's the only one! Are you happy!? Besides, how would be even know if we should use logic? After all, we're had to use logic to come to that conclusion. In any case, this argument SHOULD have been over ages ago, because clearly neither of us ever agreed on what we were even talking about; you were saying that there exists universal truths about morals while I was saying that one's ethical decisions and code of action are dependent on the value ranking of ethical statements, the actual order of which is dependent on culture or individual. We obviously have different opinions on what's more important in a discussion of ethics. But I wont hold that against you since I'm a relativist and I'll 'tolerate' your opinion because I'm sure that in your own head, it makes logical sense, logic being the only objective ethic which I will hold onto since I can't even think of how to argue without it!"
"Ok then, I win."
"Fine, if that's what you want to believe."

Commercial sale of fossils

It is abhorrent that potentially scientifically valuable fossils can be sold readily on the Internet and at Rock and Fossil shows. Just the other day I saw a ceratosaur brain case for sale on Ebay. On a site that it is often possible to link to from this site there are many psittacosaur skeletons for sale for thousands of dollars. Not a single one of these excellent specimens have been examined by university train paleontologists. Not only were there skeletons of dinosaurs, but dinosaur eggs and skeletons of other ancient reptiles and amphibians as well. Most if not all of the specimens that I have seen for sale were smuggled illegally out of china. China claims all fossils as its own historical resource and property of the people of that nation. By buying these fossils, people only support an illegal trade in fossils. Not that long ago a psittacosaur skull and part of the skeleton was actually stolen from the Russian National Museum. I have no idea if that person was ever caught. If people were to stop buying these fossils to display in their homes and offices, then the middle men would find themselves without retailers to sell to. It would trickle down the line to the poor Chinese farmer who gets maybe a dollar for his priceless specimen that happened to be on his land. If the Beijing museum could pay these farmers equivalent amounts of money for their specimens that they might have gotten from smugglers, then the fossils would make their way to museum collections instead of fossil dealers snatching up these finds. The reason that it is important that the museum have the fossil is that they are essentially there to allow everybody to appreciate the fossil. Also, about 90% of the information that can be gleamed from a fossil is collected before its even out of the ground. Poachers don't collect this information and its therefor lost forever.

I propose a solution to this problem that I only think fossil dealers would find unamacable. The museums accross the world have unique specimens which they make copies of for the purpose of trading with other museums so that they can display more specimens than they have in their collections. The molds that they use to make the copies are kept in a warehouse. The museums could copywrite the mold as an artistic creation then have exclusive writes to make copies of the fossil (people who make a copy of a copy are penalized under copywrite law). By taking orders for skeletons from people interested in buying copies, they could satiate the croud just looking for something to have in their home or office. Also, making the copies much more affordable than real fossils would also curb desire to own the real thing. A couple of staff members could even be hired on for the sole purpose of filling orders. Profits from the sale of these replicas could then be used to compensate land owners competitively for their fossil finds.

I've heard it argued that eliminating the sale of fossils or widely distributing copies of bones would reduse interest in fossils (kids become interested with a childhood fossil collection) or in going to the museum. It would be naive to believe that reducing the sale of scientifically valuable specimens will totally eliminate the fossil dealing industry. Scores of invertebrates such as ammonites, brachiopods, polycopods, trilobites, corals, bryozoans, etc. would still be widely available. Kids don't start their collection with a 10 thousand dollar dinosaur skeleton. Oligocene mammals are also in abundant (but not infinite) supply. Then again I'm a little biased towards the preservation of reptile and amphibian skeletons. As an added measure, enforcement agents should be able to seive illegally collected fossils and return them to their appropriate institutions. In Alberta, Dan Spivak is known as the fossil cop. He regualarly checks the internet an fossil shops for the sale of fossils that were collected in Alberta. For example, Burgess Shale fossils are strictly prohibited from sale. So he alerts law enforcement and testifies in court against people who illegally have Alberta fossils. As part of the Sino Canadian Dinosaur Project, an enforcement agent could force the return of stolen fossils to china. China in turn could grant north american museums (particularly those who the enforcer is associated with) the right to prep the fossils and publish on them first or jointly with Chinese paleontologists.

today's Laws

"In any heirarchy an individual rises to his or her own level of incompetance and then remains there."

"Everything east of the San Andreas Fault will evenually plunge into the Atlantic Ocean"

"Nature always sides with the hidden law"

Bristled psittacosaur

Well, it looks like somebody beat me to it. The bristled psittacosaur as been described. Now that I've seen the photos, it isn't really all that surprising that it was found. An integumentary structure on any dinosaur is great, but it isn't that odd for there to be long fibrous structures coming off of the psittacosaur's tail. It would take a lot of work to demonstrate that these were not evolved independantly from the feathers that exist on birds. It would take alot more specimens of basal ornithopods with the same kind of integumentary structures and a few very basal theropods and probably even some prosauropods with the structures to say that fibrous integumentary protrusions were ubiquitous in dinosaurs. I for one am doubtful that any such assemblage of "feathered" or "bristled" dinosaurs will ever be found.
The grainy photos do thankfully nullify a couple of my initial hypothesies. There is no way that those structures in their observed density or configuration could have served in thermoregulation (weather for keeping warm or keeping cool). Of course some people may argue that there may be a difference in summer and winter coats (sounds like something that Bob Bakker may propose) but there is no evience to support or refute that hypothesis. Then again a couple of eaqually unprovable hypothesies come to mind. For example, if the psittacosaur had enough flexability in its tail, the bristles may have served to fend off flying insects. The other possibility is that they serve no partucularly useful function. The dorsal spines on a green iguana arent partucularly strong and could not be used to defend against attacking predators. They may look spiny an unpalatable, but the predators such as hawks or cats or other large reptiles would quickly learn that these large spines weren't so bad. That is unless there is a factor in their environment that constantly reinforces the view that all spines are effective (such as a particularly spiny plant). There is little evidence to support a sexually selective role, they're just there. There was nothing in particular stopping them from evolving. The first iguanas possibly had a use for them that is not not as evident. The same may be true of the psittacosaur. There may be no particulatly good function fro those bristles but their ancestors may have had a use for them.
This is not the first time that an integumentary structure has been found in an ornithischian. The Ankylosaurs with their dermal armour aside, hadrosaurs have been found frequently with skin impressions. Many of those hadrosaurs have a row of dorsal spines that seem similar in pattern to those of an iguana. Not nearly so tall relative to the whole animal as the iguana's spines or the psittacosaur's bristels, but definately restricted to a dorsal crest. These discoveries have prompted illustrations such as this one by Bob Bakker.

A psittacosaur with Feathers?

Can feathers be considered a synapomorphy of any group of animals at all? It used to be thought that birds alone possessed feathers. This was until a number of chinese dinosaurs were found to bear filamenous structures and even long true feathers in some other forms. So ok, a synapomorphy of the higher coelurosaurs? Maybe not even a synapomorphy of theropods or even saurischians. Dr. Michael Caldwell revealed to his Paleo 318 class today that a well renouned fossil dealer had approached both him and Phil Currie with a psittacosaur which he had purchased at the world famous Tucson Rock, Mineral and Fossil Expo, which appeared to bear featherrs. Dr. Caldwell is scepticle that the structure are in fact true feathers and instead called them epidermal extensions. I imagine that Dr. Currie is rather sceptical because of his recent encounter with a forged fossil. He had supported a fellow paleontologist who purchased a fossil at the same infamous show purporting that it was an even mix of dinosauriand and bird features. the fossil turned out to be an actual mix of bird and dinosaur fossils from separate animals, thereby causing alot of academic grief for Currie. Kevin Aulenback who preped the fossil had been quick to point out the error and unfortunetly also received much grief and has since transitioned to paleobotony so that he wouldn't have to deal with the politics of Vertebrate paleo. I for one am willing to believe that any scenario could be true at this time since I haven't actually seen the specimen. In fact, all that Caldwell has is a photo. Hopefully i'll be able to procure a copy of the photo for this site and I will try to provide as full a description as I can on the basis of what is visible. However, this means that if I can argue that it is a new species, then I will be able to name it without ever actually seeing the real specimen. Since I will be the first to publish on it. However I will refrain from committing this academic suicide as nobody will be willig to share anything with me since they'll only see that I steal their research.
The issue of the feather also begs the question, could this fibrous epidermal covering be ancestral to all the dinosaurs and their immediate relatives. At least one pterosaur has been found to have some kind of "fury" covering. So if the outgroup to dinosaur even has this covering, how far back might it go. This is of course wild conjecture. There is a pretty good chance that the covering evolved multiple times in order serve in thermo regulation. Keep in mind that an animal in the deserts of mongolia might have used feathers to stay cool, not just keep in body heat.

Procrastination Nation

Well, its down to the wire. I have 5 final exams in 12 days ending on Dec 15. Am I worried. Of course I am. Except for paleo, seem to have learned didly squat this semester. Sure I now know how a glacier works and the names of countless parts of the human skeleton, but frankly, unless I keep using this stuff, the details will go the way of much of my American and European history knowledge. It will be forcefully pushed from my short term memory such that I will only know where to look it up if ever I need to know this information again. This is a common occurance among University students. Many attribute their immediate loss of information due the amount of binge drinking that they do immediately after an exam, but i don't have that excuse. Rather I attibute the ubiquitous loss of minute detail with time to the fact that we aren't actually learning this stuff. We procrastinate to the last minute, wasting enormous amounts of time on things like blogs and social lives resulting in a mad panic when exams come around. Right after a round of bad exams, a student will swear that they'll start to study more, but it's only marginally effective. Tomarrow I'll sing a sweeter song. The procrastinators motto pronounced by Colleridge on being unable to finish a poem due to the fact that he was coming out of an opium trip. When we cram everything at the last minute its true that we have it in the forefront of our mind, but that doesn't mean that we'll remember it beyond the exam. A good measure of how well something is learned is if it can be recalled a year after the exam. So what do I remember from Ecology which I was finishing up this time last year, or from Mechanisms of Evolution or even general zoology of the vertebrates or paleontology of the Invertebrates or one other class which seems to have been entirely blocked from my memory. Well I don't seem to remember very much about the differences between the varieties of brachiopods, but I could recite the entire history of amniote evolution if you wanted me to tell you all about the evolution of various vertebrates or their physiological mechanisms only because that was covered and expanded upon in Paleo 318. As for ecology, I remember the basics and could look it up in a heartbeat. And until now, I couldn't even remember that I only took 4 classes my first semester and five the second.
As for the classes that I will be tested in very shortly. I will definately continue to use Paleo (as that's my major) and I think that I'd be interested in writing a book on the history of Paleontology, so that incorporates my history of science class (though that sect of biology and geology was barely covered, even in passing). As for physiology. I think that I'll chalk that one up as a mulligan. Nothing that was covered had any bearing on anything even remotely identifiable in the fossil record. As for Human Osteology... Yech!!! Now there's a class that seemed like it would be useful for future studies. Now I suppose that if the Prof was able to teach or if the TA's had any interest in inparting the information to the students rather than collecting their meager pay checks it might have been useful. However, human beings are so minutely described that no phylogenetic study would ever include the thousands of characters seen on the bones of human beings. Also, humans are so drastically different from reptiles that any studies that I would conduct in my chosen field would include only the broadest similarities to one an anthropologist might conduct. And to think that I had the option to take Evolution of the homonids.

Common man policies

This is a continuation of my "Achademiarchy" blog from a couple of days ago. When one considers the potential power that a politically unified academic community would have, one wonders what this group should do besides promote lower tuition costs and increased funding for the sciences and arts. Since the 1950s is been generally assumed that science itself has no place in making moral judgments. However, it'll be a cold day in hell before I let some arts students call the shots. Ok, so science can't make moral judgments, but there is nothing saying that scientists can't. After all, the statement that science shouldn't make moral judgments is itself a moral statement.
The first and most natural policy for this political group to make would be to support primary and secondary education as a tool to prepare students for University. But not everybody is university bound. Unfortunately, a lot of schools make the assumption that they should prepare everybody for university and therefore leave a lot of less academically inclined people without a skill set. I really think that technical schools should be supported by the academic group. Another reason why a lot of attention should be paid to non academics is that unfortunately, stupid people seem to comprise the majority demographic. It would be shortsighted for the acamemiarchy to seem elitist by ignoring the common man. I'm not saying that this group wouldn't be elitist. It's just not a very politically friendly appearance to keep up. Another measure to reach the common man would definitely involve measures to improve the economy. Frankly, a lot of money gets spent on totally useless things. For example five congressmen agreed to spend 86 billion dollars of taxpayer money to fund the war in Iraq. Independent auditors and efficiency experts could have been called in and a large portion of that could have been saved. For example, instead of Americans bringing in truck loads of bottled water, what they should have done was set up and water purification system that the Iraqi people could also use. This would go a long way to fostering peace and saving money. The Canadians in Afghanistan did that and only two Canadians have been killed by enemy forces (the other 4 were killed by friendly fire).
Another way to improve the economy is to instigate measures to lower the unemployment rate. The distribution of people in North America is not even with the distribution of jobs. In Canada, one often sees images of the shanty towns built in Vancouver and Toronto; monuments of poverty. These people have very little in the way of skilled training. That's Perfect! In Alberta and Saskatchewan unskilled labor is really needed. It doesn't take a genius to work on the Oil Patch or on a farm or ranch. People just flock to cities because they think that it's the place to be an that they will get hand outs. For the cost of feeding and sheltering the enormous homeless population, the federal or provincial governments could bus these people to sites of primary production and set them up with jobs and possibly even low income housing. Granted, this year the ranching community took a big hit from the closing of the US border to Canadian beef, but that won't last forever. The academic party could even start an advertising campain; a "go west young man" sort of thing. If this sort of thing were instituted in the US, unemployment rates would drop and other economic indicators such as consumer spending and the construction industry would rise. Hopefully this would stimulate a stronger US dollar.

today's Law

When in doubt, mumble. When in trouble, deligate.