Flugsaurier 2010 second circular

This has just arrived from Jungchang Lu. This year’s pterosaur meeting will be held in Beijing with talks, posters, discussions and a fieldtrip to Liaoning. I’m sure I’ll see at least a few of you there. I have left out some details of the registration and payment methods etc. contact JC or Dave Unwin (or me I suppose, since I have a copy of the forms) for details.

Late breaking edit: apparently there are some more detials to finalise and I put this up too early. Apologies. I’ll fill the gaps as they come in,  but I doubt it really affects anyone seriously.

A good article on science…

in a national newspaper. Makes a nice change, though of course, it is written by a scientist, so perhaps it’s less of a surprise.

Still, this is well worth a read on the subject of scepticism and self-correction in science.



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Shenzhousaurus

The ornithomimosaurs could not have had much less attention on here if I’d tried (Deinocheirus aside), despite the frankly massive bias towards theropods on here. I must confess to not finding them especially exciting, but a good specimen with an interesting feature or two is always worth a quick look. In this case the photos come courtesy of Steve Brusatte (occasional Musings guest poster and research collaborator) as, although the specimen is on exhibit in Beijing, I never got around to taking any photos of it and Steve has a nice set that he was willing to share. Thanks, Steve. (BTW, it’s another boxed in specimen hence the reflections / flash flare).

Shenzhousaurus is known from this single beautifully preserved and excellently prepared skeleton. That on its own makes it worth showing here (as it makes quite a change from either mounted skeletons in exhibition halls, squished flat Liaoning specimens, or isolated teeth) but I suppose I should talk about the group in a bit of detail now I’ve started. I’ll wrap up with just a couple of comments on this taxon and then pick up with a more general post on the clade soon.

Hopefully you can see the small teeth preserved in the front of the jaws (it’s better in the close-up below), something only found in this animal and the other basal ornithomimosaur – Pelicanimimus. All other members of the clade are toothless and presumably had some kind of beak. Also just about visible are a scattering of small stones that are probably gastroliths. These are normally found in a single patch when present, but here it looks like the stomach burst and they escaped and thus are a bit spread out, but still inside the rib cage and there are no other stones like these in the block suggesting they’re genuine gastroliths.

It’s really rather well preserved and an important specimen. I keep meaning to write something on the importance of early members of clades but have never quite got around to it. Even so, hopefully you can appreciate that having an animal with a few small teeth, that descended from a group with lots of big teeth and who is a member of a clade whose later members had no teeth can really help fill in a gap and inform you about their evolution.

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Some numbers for documentary makers

As part of my recent whinge about poor quality science documentaries I muttered about audiences and conceded that it was understandable that given that the makers either need to make money (most) or get value for money (public broadcasters) then they want to attract as a big an audience as possible. However, I don’t think that means that they necessarily need to dumb down the science.

You would hope that most people who are involved in science one way or the other might at least be interested in a good science documentary. Of course not all particle physicists will watch shows on dinosaurs and not all vertebrate palaeontologists will watch a show on the chemistry of helium but there would be, I suspect, a fair bit of overlap. And ‘science’ at the level of the average documentary covers quite a range of subjects – not just biology, chemistry, physics and medicine, but engineering of all kinds, psychology, geology, maths, environmental sciences and more. A good general science documentary might expect to drag in quite a number of scientists, or people who have a science background or profession.

There are quite a few of these. A quick play on the internet gives us various numbers for the UK and while these are often estimates or not very specific, I think the picture itself is clear. There are around 450 000 new students attend university in the UK each year. Obviously this covers all subjects, but it’s probably reasonable to think that half of them are on some form of science degree or other (again with engineering, maths etc.). Even if it’s well under half that means that say 200 000 people are learning about science and the vast majority of them will graduate suggesting that in the last 10 years around 2 million people have graduated with a science-based degree (though numbers are likely a bit higer recently than before). That’s a pretty big set of people who know quite a lot about science and don’t need to be dumbed-down to. I only graduated in 1999, so this only deals with people who are mostly under 35, or even under 30.

And that’s just recent graduates. There are about 400 000 teachers instate schools in England (admittedly a number of which will overlap with my graduates of above, but is for England, not the UK and does not include private schools, though of course less then half will likely be science teachers) and some 100 000 doctors (so not including nurses, midwives, surgeons, and various technicians or lab workers) and then there’s the engineers, academics and the rest, as well as those in industrial chemistry or the pharmaceutical industry and so on, not to mention people who are just generally interested in science or even kids studying at school.

While this is all obviously all a bit approximate and there is overlap etc. making it a rather more complicated, I think it’s fair to say that there are an awful lot of ’science literate’ people out there. Hundreds of thousands of people are employed to teach science, millions have degrees in science and perhaps millions more are employed doing jobs that require a knowledge or interest in science.

In other words, while you might want to attract as big an audience as possible there is potentially a very big audience who have the knowledge and ability to enjoy something more technical than the current output. Indeed, I would suspect many of them *want* that and dumbing down will put off a large number of people from watching. In short, there is a big audience out there for good science so why not target it? Not all science shows have to be dumb and simple as Feynmann, Sagan, Attenborough and others have shown and continue to show, so can we just have a few more please?

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Elementary my dear Troodon

Now I’m a big fan of Sherlock Homes as a character and I’ve read every story more than once and seen pretty much every adaptation from film or TV that I can get my hands on (though there are really quite a few). The key characteristic of Holmes is typically portrayed as being his ability to make his inferences and deductions based on the tiniest details.

However what gets overlooked is his colossal knowledge of well, nearly everything (except practical gardening and astronomy of course). Spotting a tiny splash of mud on the leg of a trouser is one thing, but that information is only useful if you know what the soil looks like for every part of London and can thus identify where it originated. In other words, noticing something is only part of the battle, and if anything the smaller part of it. A vast bank of technical knowledge is required to turn observations into useful data and then this has to be interpreted correctly.

Obviously these are works of fiction and certainly Holmes gets to bend things to his benefit from time to time. At his first appearance he notes that Watson must have been in Afghanistan recently since he was clearly from the British army and got a lot of sun and a war wound, despite the presence of the British army in South Africa in the Boer War at that time as well (Conan Doyle wasn’t always so exacting in his knowledge as his creation). That spot of mud on the trouser leg may have been picked up from someone else’s shaken umbrella perhaps, or splashed from a passing bicycle, or was three days old, but such numerous possible exceptions are left out as they confound the narrative.

However, aside from an excuse to crowbar in a favourite of mine into a discussion of dinosaurs, for stories written in the early 1900’s there are far worse models to follow with regards to his basic procedural science. Collect as much data as possible. Try to avoid sources of bias and error. Use your knowledge to interpret, and if lacking do some research. Follow every lead to its conclusion, or at least until sure it is no longer relevant. Assemble and assimilate your data and attempt to come to a logical conclusion based on your knowledge and experience. Not too shabby really as a creation of a man who accepted spiritualism and fairies. Despite that Holmes himself is given to some rather choice quotes about science as well as his abilities:

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.”

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”

“Data! Data! Data!” he cried impatiently. “I can’t make bricks without clay.”

“Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing,” answered Holmes thoughtfully. “It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different.”

“We balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination.”

“As Cuvier could correctly describe a whole animal by the contemplation of a single bone, so the observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents should be able to accurately state all the other ones, both before and after.”

And let’s face it anyone who knows well enough to invoke Cuvier’s ability as an anatomist requires a little love from the palaeontologists, surely?

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Caudipteryx feathers

We have a number of excellent specimens of Caudipteryx at the IVPP, though only this one example on display. It shows off just how frustrating these things can be – it’s the best preserved Liaoning oviraptorosaur I know of, with very well preserved bones, feathers and a complete set of gastroliths, but the head and neck is missing as well as the tip of the tail. Ah well, can’t have everything (apparently).

Still, the feathers here are rather nice so here’s a couple of snaps of them, though the glass and position of the specimens means they are not great, sorry about that. One day more museums will actually consider, you known, the people who want to see the specimens when they design the display.

Anyhow, Caudipteryx is most notable for the long feathers on the forearm and manus and the fan of feathers on the tail, though as can be seen in various specimens there were feathers over much of the body. Here are a couple of close-up (well, as far as possible) showing off the arm feathers, though some of those from the chest are also visible. Also in shot are the gastroliths (stomach stones).

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The Pterosaur.net blog is live

We’ve had a few ups and downs on with the launching of the Pterosaur.net site. Msotly downs to be honst as we try and fix all the typos and misspellings, add in the missing figures and broken links and so on. Even so, it’s doing OK and is attracting visitors and links alike.

As noted before, the main site is designed to be pretty static so those wanting up-to-date pterosaur information will be wanting to use the Pterosaur.net blog more than the main site. So it’s great news that we have actually managed to get that going now and already there are a couple of introductory posts by me up there and Mark Witton is reporting on his pterosaur building project as well as reviewing some old pterosaur related books. So hop on over there to enjoy some hot-off-the-press pterosaur goodness. I’ll be away for a few days, I’m off to Laioning again, so that should give you something to read while the Musings is quiet.

Oh and the comments seem to be down, I can’t approve or post comments, even my own. I assume it’s temporary but you may have to wait a bit, sorry.

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Haplocheirus on the wires

Given that the dinosaur colours story broke the day before, I thought that the Haplocheirus story might struggle to make the press, especially as it is quite a complex story to cover. Nevertheless, plenty of places picked it up an a few of them are rounded up here. You can judge for yourself how successful or otherwise they were (especially in light of my recent ‘guide‘). Do take special note of the audio slide show at NSF’s website and from GW university that have lots of detail, including a video interview with Jonah Choiniere.

ABC news

AFP news

BBC online

Live Science

Scientific American

Discovery News

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Guest post: Haplocheirus – the skilful one

Jonah Choiniere continues his guest spot on the Musings with the news of the fascinating Haplocheirus, a basal alvarezsaur from the Jurassic that tells us quite a bit about theropod diversification and alvarezsaur evolution. If you have missed out, my brief review of alvarezsaurs is here, with a more detailed one by Jonah here.

I started working with Dr. Clark in 2004 when I entered the Ph.D. program at George Washington University. Dr. Clark set me up with a project working on the systematic relationships of basal coelurosaurs, a big group of theropod dinosaurs that includes things like Tyrannosaurus, Velociraptor, and of course birds. I began work on this project in the summer of 2005, on my first visit to China. One of the first fossils I looked at was the theropod skeleton unearthed in 2004. On first glance, the skull looked like an ornithomimosaur, but Dr. Xu and Dr. Clark bade me to carefully consider the specimen. We began to notice similarities between the skeleton and that of alvarezsaurids, and a large phylogenetic analysis confirmed that many of these similarities were shared, derived characteristics – this was an alvarezsaur. The paper released today is a first look at these characteristics. After toying with some other names, we finally settled on Haplocheirus sollers as the scientific name for the new animal. The name means “simple-handed skilful one,” in reference to the fact that Haplocheirus has a simple (plesiomorphic) hand relative to the derived hand of other alvarezsaurids, and that it may have used this hand in ways that other alvarezsaurids couldn’t have (i.e., grasping prey rather than merely digging). Because Haplocheirus slots in at the base of Alvarezsauridae, we elected to call this larger group (i.e., Alvarezsauridae plus Haplocheirus) the Alvarezsauroidea, which is consistent with some other larger groups of theropods (eg., Spinosauroidea, Tyrannosauroidea) and reflects the increased diversity of this clade.

The specimen of Haplocheirus (less the skull). Image courtesy of Jonah Choiniere.

I present the details of why we think Haplocheirus is an alvarezsauroid in the paper, so I’ll let the reader look there, but below I’ll talk a bit about some of the neater features of the skull and the forelimb.

Dinosaurs, now available in colour

Among the near interminable questions one has to answer as a palaeontologist such as ‘what was the biggest dinosaur?’ and ‘how fast were they?’ is ‘what colour were they?’. The stock answer is always, ‘well we don’t know, but we can make an educated guess based on living animals’. The new answer is ‘we look at the microstructure of the melanosomes in the feathers’.

Two different kinds of melanosomes from fossil feathers. Modified from Zhang et al., 2010.

Yes, a new paper in Nature today reveals how we might yet be able to work out the colours of some dinosaurs and birds thank to the quite incredible preservation of various animals in places like Liaoning. Melanosomes are tiny organelles that hold colour pigments and help give feathers their colours (more on them here, something written for this paper) and these have now been found in some feathers from ancient fossil beds. For a start this is likely to be the final nail in the coffin that some feathers are just collagen fibers or even fakes as some have claimed, since you know, having a microstructure identical to that seen in modern feathers seems rather unlikely that something 0.005 of a millimetre could be faked.

More importantly and excitingly though, some melanosomes in extant birds vary in size and shape according to the pigments they house. In other words, you can tell what colour they are by their shape. If it’s one shape it’ll be one colour, a different shape, a different colour. That means that if you have a feather from a dinosaur say, you can tell what colour it was by the shape of the preserved melanosomes.

While some fossil feathers already show a striping pattern of light and dark this only tells us that one part was lighter than the other, the actual colours were unknown so it could have been blue and yellow or green and brown or even black and white. The presence of identifiable melanosomes with known structures can help to work out the colours of the animals that bore them. Similar work has admittedly already been done by another research team on feathers of similar antiquity, but this is the first time it’s been applied to dinosaurs.

Inevitably the results are not going to be that dramatic. Only a small part of some individual feathers have been analysed and feather colour is made up of more than just the melanosomes. Nevertheless, some distinctions can be made and the authors note that it looks like Sinosauropteryx for example had a red-brown tail (or at least some russet tail feathers). It’s in one sense a small step forwards, but in the long term it could be one of the most important for finally revealing the colour of the dinosaurs.

Zhang, F. et al. 2010. Fossilised melanosomes and the colour of Cretaceous dinosaurs and birds. Nature. doi:10.1038/nature08740doi:10.1038/nature08740

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Guest post: A brief history of Alvarezsaur research

In preparation for the main post tomorrow, Jonah Choiniere, elaborates on my little overview of alvarezsaurs from yesterday and provides some historical context for the new find.

The wonderfully weird alvarezsaurs

There’s a pretty exciting alvarezsaur paper in the works that’s due out very soon and so as a brief primer I thought it time for a quick post on the Musings. It’s going to be a big year for alvarezsaurs in China if all the papers come through in time, but the first is likely to be the best and that’s due in just a day or so.

Alvarezsaurs are maniraptoran theropods, that is they belong to the derived group that includes things like oviraptorosaurs, dromaeosaurs and of course, birds. While everything else in this group have noticeably long arms and hands, those of the alvarezsaurs are notably, even strikingly, reduced. Although the clade is pretty new (the first animal only being identified in the 1990s) it was a while before they were widely accepted as non-avian dinosaurs hence their exclusion from ‘The Dinosauria’ and inclusion in the Mesozoic birds tome ‘Above the Heads of Dinosaurs’, but their position now as maniraptorans seems pretty secure. They do indeed have several features which resemble birds such as the big sternum and very avian-like legs and as discussed previously, when fossils are pretty incomplete a few convergent characters can mask the true identity of a species or group, especially if you only have very derived and highly modified taxa present.

Jonah Choiniere with a typically small alvarezsaur - Mononykys.

Most alvarezsaurs are really quite small, the biggest were only about 2 m long (which even by the standards of the relatively small maniraptorans is about average) and the smallest were a fraction of this – more like 50 cm or so. In gross appearance and proportions they looked rather like the average ornithomimosaur (long neck, small head, long legs, medium tail) but again it’s the hands that really stand out (or not). While T. rex is famous for having just a couple of fingers and the derived ceratosaurs have very small hands (and indeed even the basal ones are quite small) they don’t have much on the alvarezsaurs. The arms are massively reduced and the fingers largely gone except for one which is massive and robust. In short they have one giant finger and claw, one or two other small digits and a short, but powerful arm. It’s quite a combination.

Ecologically the consensus (or at least best supported hypothesis) is that these animals were insectivores or perhaps even more specialist ant and termite eaters. This would fit well with the numerous but very small teeth seen in the few skull elements we have preserved and the very robust forelimbs and giant claw but on an otherwise reduced arm. Digging animals sport many of these same adaptations so it would suggest that alvarezsaurs (or at least some of them) were digging for their supper either in the ground or more probably in wood.

That’s it for now as this is supposed to be a short primer, more to come very soon.

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