This has just hit the stands and I wanted to give it a bit of a promotion for three reasons:
1. It contains a nice big piece on giant sauropods that you can read on the link provided as well as in the magazine.
2. It is a great example of science journalism (after all my recent complaints) if in a magazine devoted to science (though today I note they stated that ornithischians had feathers).
3. I get mentioned in it (as is Dr Vector, a.k.a. Matt Wedel). And I am stupidly pleased about that fact, even if it is a couple of very short quotes.
Nice one! It’s annoying that the article frequently includes official genus names without capitilisation or italics (e.g., isanosaurus, shantungosaurus) diplodocus, brachiosaurus, etc)… perhaps it’s just the online version. It’s something that New Scientist should get right.
One other thing that occurred to me is how low the survival rate for sauropod offspring must have been, if they laid large numbers of eggs with little or no parental care. Given their size, carrying capacity must have kept population density fairly low—very high juvenile mortality, in other words!
Things like that happen, you should see soem of the drafts of my papers!
As for the infant mortaility, funny you should mention it, I have just had a paper accepted on that subject. Still have to get it revised and then past the editor, but it will get there. One day. Probably.