Well the great news is that the project is now 101% funded. There are still a few days left, but I have hit the total and can plan my trip to the Tyrrell for April! Obviously the best news if for regular readers and friends as it means in the short term at least I’m going to shut up and stop hassling people to fund me or tweet about it. Still, if you do want to push a few bucks my way, don’t let me stop you. Excess funding (i.e. over and above the 100% target) will help cover costs of OA publication so it’s not a waste or going to my pocket. Project T-shirts and other goodies are still available and of course if you contribute you’ll be in for the draw to win the lovely Luis Rey artwork.
On the subject of art, I was alerted to this yesterday. It’s by Finn artist Tuomas Koviurinne (you can see more of his stuff here) and he did it to support the project and was good enough to let me post it here. It’s gorgeous, obviously, and much appreciated and inspiring to see this is already making people think and produce things this cool. Wow.
I want to add a massive and final thanks to all those who have helped to date in various ways. Darren Tanke for inviting me to do the work, Don Henderson who’ll be hosting my trip, Denny Luan and Microrzya for hosting the appeal, David Orr for his awesome project design and running the shop, Matt van Rooijen for helping with the video, Brett Booth for his auctioning off of his wonderful art, Luis Rey for the cool picture he created and donated and Julius Csotonyi for putting his stuff forwards to help out as well. Thanks of course to all those who have tweeted, blogged and Facebooked this and helped keep things moving and advertised the project. And yes, of course, a massive thank you to all those who have generously donated funds to the project. It is very much appreciated, and I hope I can repay your faith with some cool research.
Dave Hone's Archosaur Musings 
Congratulations! I hope this encourages more paleo projects on Microryza.
My wife and I are going to the Tyrrell for the 6th Annual Fossil Preparation & Collections Symposium starting April 19.
Then I’ll see you there, I’ll be presenting. 🙂
Glad I chipped in, although seeing the amount raised, you could’ve survived without me 🙂 Do you already have a schedule for when you’ll start etc.?
Well I’ve booked the flights, so in that respect, yes. Obviously I’ll be getting as much done on the skull as I can and taking advantage of the Tyrrell collections to see some other things and do comparative work on other tyrannosaur material. Then comes the serious writing. The issue, as is ever the case with such things, is quite how long everything takes to put together given other commitments (once I come back from Canada I’ll have a couple of hundred exam scripts to mark for a start) and those of collaborators.
I would *hope* to wrap it all up this year and get it submitted, but I’ve said that about things before, and any experienced worker will tell you things can easily drag on (not least in review). Obviously I’ll be keeping people abreast of the progress.
Nice, congrats Dave!