The live fauna of Dinosaur Provincial Park

In addition to the actual fossils, I do have a decent record of seeing live animals while out in the field, and the DPP and environs of the Tyrrell were no exception. The dinosaurs are of course, awesome, but it’s nice to see some wildlife too. Mark Graham had mentioned in his guest post that I’d been snapping some of the fauna, so now seemed a good time to bring them out

First off is the easy one, these ground squirrels infest the area around the Tyrrell and this guy was literally sat on the front steps begging for food. While I didn’t give him any, the pot belly on this one and those that were hanging around make it quite obvious that plenty of people do, though just a few yards away other locals were much more shy and sveldt.

Just traces here, but quite cool that you have coyote and deer (presumably mule deer given their abundance) going in opposite directions, though of course who knows how far apart in time. The canid also has some nice overprinting going on such that the two feet have left what appears to be one large, but rather odd, footprint.

And here’s a pronghorn. A male rather obviously, and something I’d long wanted to see. I didn’t realise their range was this far north, so were a complete surprise to me when we came across a small group and I’ve got some nice photos of them mooching around.

And here are some of those mule deer. This was part of a herd of a dozen or so, though there were plenty of odd ones or pairs seen from time to time in various places both around the museum and out into the wilds. I did see white-tailed deer too, but didn’t get any great photos.

A real prize for me, a nice big bunny. I assume this is a jackrabbit, but I don’t actually know. I really like rabbits in general and have seen desert hares a couple of times in the wilds of China, but they tend to explode out of cover and vanish over the horizon before I realise I’ve spooked one, whereas this one was kind enough to move not too fast and stop a couple of times allowing me to get decent snaps (though out of tons that are out of focus or suffering from motion blur).

And finally a chipmunk, one of many hanging around in the woods near Don Henderson’s house, though I was also surprised to see them out in boulder fields too. I saw traces of activity from beavers and porcupines on several trees (and a couple of roadkill of the latter) but sadly no live ones were around. I think pretty much all of these bar the chipmunk were new to me, not just in the wild, but in zoos too. Perhaps as they are considered too ‘boring’ or ‘normal’ for most collections, and if the US doesn’t bother, then they’re not too likely to end up in Europe or Asia either, so this was really a pretty good haul by my standards.

Ankylosaur!

This place is going to be Theropod Central for a bit (until the huge volume of ceratopsians kick in), so here’s an ankylosaur to keep things ticking over. As usual, enthralled though I was with the exhibitions, I didn’t pay that much attention to the various signs or details of some of what I was looking at. As a result I don’t know all the identifications exactly and when it comes to things like these guys, well it’s hardly my best subject either.

Happily however, Victoria Arbour has just published a monster paper with Phil Currie on the taxonomy and identity of North American ankylosaurs and is also furiously blogging about it. So hop on over to her blog and start reading up on them. Handily there’s guides to the various parts of the skulls and rings of armour on the neck too which will really help out here. So while I’m obviously being too lazy to look it up myself, I’ll claim I’m inspiring readers to learn how to do it themselves.

Late edit: Victoria has joined in the comments to point out this is a nodosaur, and thus not in her review. D’oh. Still, go read her series anyway, it’s ace, and look at the pretty nodosaur skull (also ace). It is Edmontonia.

Academic ancestry

While looking through Don Henderson’ personal collection, I stumbled across this picture of my (and indeed Don’s) PhD supervisor, Mike Benton. It’s from a book of Mike’s (On the trail of the dinosaurs) from 1985 and shows him with a hadrosaur skull he found while in Alberta.

Don spotted immediately that it was a specimen in the Tyrrell collections, and indeed the cabinets are a bit of a give away too. In a moment of inspiration, Don suggested that as academic descendents of Mike, we could redo the photo with the specimen as it is now. A quick hunt in the collections turned up the skull, but it’s now in their special protected room and not on the normal shelves. As a result the background and position are of course imperfect, but we did our best with the available materials. Note that both Mike and I have different generation Tyrrell guest badges too which rather nicely links the two eras as well.

Just a bit of fun really, but this could be a great meme for those researchers who want to celebrate their mentors and supervisors. Go and recreate their famous appearances with discoveries or research photos.

And while I’m on the subject, Don has penned this lovely little piece on the superb Alberta ankylosaur that some will have seen presented at SVPCA a could of years back. Enjoy.

Berlin spirits

So a last look at some of what is on show in the new Berlin halls. These are a couple of shots of their new spirit room, a climate-controlled room to protect all of the various pickled specimens in jar upon glass jar that line the shelves. The Natural History Museum in London have also relatively recently renovated their spirit collection and moved it to not just a better environment for the material, but also opened it up to the public in a similar manner and the effect in both cases is superb.

These are parts of collections rarely seen by visitors to museums and they are difficult to display and are probably seen as something of a turn-off since it does tend to be lots of very bleached and slightly decayed bodies crammed unceremoniously into jars, and it’s often pretty tricky to tell what’s in there. However in both cases I think the point is less about exactly what is there, and more the “look at all this stuff” effect of the whole collection. You are there to see the forest, not the trees, and so it’s a demonstration of just what material and information is there and what this means for both the museum collections and science as a whole. When that is offset by the aesthetics of all that glass in a glass-fronted room and clever lighting, the effect is quite wonderful.

Berlin exhibitions

I started looking through the huge collection of photos from the Tyrrell and realised that I’d never finished covering all of the Berlin Museum that I started back at the end of Jan. I really don’t want to leave that hanging on till after we’ve trawled through huge amounts of the Tyrrell, so it’s time to try and polish them off. I had planned to spin these out a bit, but with plenty more pressing, I’ll have to keep it down. If you want more, I guess you’ll just have to go and visit.

Much of the museum has been renovated and updated in relatively recent years and this was my first visit since the big update of the dinosaur hall in 2007. There are some lovely new displays and cabinets and in particular, some great little pieces that demonstrate key features of biology or evolution. Above we have a diversity wall, an increasingly common introduction to biology halls, something like this is present in many museums. Still, it is wonderfully done and well-lit and there is a lot to take in.

This case is a great one about convergence, but sadly was hard to photograph so doesn’t really show it off well. As you can see, there’s a variety of aquatic vertebrates here, both extant and extinct, and the text explains the convergences in form of both body shape and fins / flippers etc. Each skeleton is apparently backed in black, but the other side shows the ‘fleshed’ out forms, with taxidermy skins for the extant animals, and well-made models for the extinct ones.

And on the subject of taxidermy, here’s a great series of displays on the construction of museum-quality exhibits, covering all the issues of drawings, sculpture, skin preparation and the rest. While many places discuss casting and mounting skeletons, model making and the like, I can’t think of another set-up I’ve seen covering this aspect of curation. I suspect the reason may be a bit of anticipated squeamishness on behalf of the public, museums won’t want to draw attention to the killing and skinning of animals, even if it was done decades, even centuries ago, but it shouldn’t be ignored and this is a hell of a skill and should be celebrated.

Though here is that almost inevitable (but again, very well done) case on casting and replicating materials, and for once not just dinosaur bones but other hard pieces and even a mounted fish. Again, clearly laid out, but concise, and well thought out.

This one was really impressive: so simple and so effective. We have a nice relief map of New Guinea, with various skins of birds of paradise laid out, and then a map to show how the different barriers (mountains etc.) have led to reproductive isolation and the development of the different species and subspecies. It ties together wonderfully easily and it’s quite clear how they are all similar, but still different. A wonderful example of biogeography and evolution and presented very simply and clearly.

And finally yes, some fossils. This is part of the Solnhofen display and does a nice job of showing off a lot of material, but without it being too crowded. It gets across the real diversity of species there and indeed the different modes of preservation (there’s some 3D bits in there).

Overall, the new material is really pretty good. There are some niggles and inevitably compromises, but there’s an awful lot of material to see and it’s well displayed. While I do really like exhibits and cabinets that show off the mechanics of museums as it were, these are especially good here and there’s a lot to be gained from them, and in particular how compact many of them are. And of course, really quite a few big dinosaurs as well.

An expected journey

Well I’m back from my trip to the Tyrrell to do the research part of Project Daspletosaurus. I’ve had a great time and been extremely busy, but in addition, barely had any internet access or there would have been more blog posts. Now I have to claw my way through mountains of built up e-mails, reviews and exam marking, but I have also returned with several thousand photos of the museum, Dinosaur Provincial Park, Calgary Zoo and others, so there will be plenty to come sooner or later.

These were my first photos in Canada however, with this fun set-up on an old luggage carousel. Before people complain too much, the sign does explicitly say the models are old and discusses feathers. It’s still rather fun though and as it links to the airport, seemed a worthy contribution to the post. More to come, but it might be a few days before I have the time, motivation and lack of jet-lag.

Project Daspletosaurus update

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.

Berlin ornithischians

Keeping on track with clearing out the Berlin backlog, here’s a couple more beasties from the main gallery (though obviously rather smaller than the sauropods!). Above is the lovely stegosaur Kentrosaurus which is remarkably complete and with a lovely long tail (for those keeping track). The stegosaurus don’t seem to get too much love, but they’re fascinating animals and despite their obvious affinities to the other thyrephoreans, have a unique bauplan with those stumpy little forelimbs, humped backs, and all those plates and spikes.

Below is the the little ornithopod Dysolotosaurus. Again, something that’s rather underappreciated (how many drawings of tyrannosaurs online are there vs the small ornithopods?) and yet this is one of the species of dinosaur for which we have the most fossil material. Thousands of elements were collected in Tendaguru and shipped back to Berlin and from there, many were set out to other collections in Germany given the profusion of material. Sadly as with many other collections, a fair amount of material was lost to second World War bombings, but even so, a very large amount of material remains so it’s something that deserves more research attention that the relatively little it’s had to date.

Yes, more Daspletosaurus stuff

I’m still looking for support for my Daspletosaurus project, so if you want to get involved (and, yes, contribute) then do please follow this link and help out. Obviously I’d like to think it’s a very cool project with big potential for theropod behaviour and it fits nicely into the work I’ve done to date and am continuing to develop, and of course, blog about. Thanks to a generous offer of accommodation, the total now required is a very modest $3000 and I’m nearly halfway already.

A number of other options are out there if you want to provide funds – Julius Csotonyi has kindly offered up profits from sales on his site for the next couple of weeks, Brett Booth is selling off dinosaur-based sketches on Twitter (every Saturday afternoon, Batman and Superman coming soon I’m told) and David Orr has a shop going for the project logo available on T-shirts and other things.

Latest to join in with a generous contribution is Luis Rey with this entry that he has done especially for this project. Taking the putative cannibalism back to its origins, Luis has gone for some classic tyrannosaur cranio-facial biting between two fluffy Daspletosaurus adults. I understand he’s still revising and updating the image, but this is the preliminary version (you can see his notes and the original sketch here). Luis is going to produce a limited and signed canvas print of the final version and give it away to one lucky person.

So how do you get hold of this beauty? Simple! Just pop along to the Microryza site and sponsor the project to the tone of at least $10. At the end of the project funding period, we’ll randomly select one person and they will get it. Luis is apparently happy to send this anywhere in the world, so there’s no restrictions there. If you’ve already sponsored the project for at least 10 bucks then no need to do anything else, and if you’re under, it is possible to bump up what you have.

Right, a chance to win a unique piece of Rey art and help out? Surely there’s something to like about that. Thanks again to all those who have contributed so far. I know it’s a lot to ask, but any contributions at all make a difference, and do please blog, tweet, and generally let other people know about the project.

New achievement unlocked

OK, a small bit of self-promotion on here. This last week the Musings had entry number 1250! Wooo. While there’s been various guest posts and interviews, obviously I’m really proud to have worked up to this figure – that’s a lot of entries and information out there.

On top of that, this morning I posted my 1000th answer on Ask A Biologist, which rather appropriately was about pterosaur evolution.

I’ve already hit nearly 50 entries in the Guardian over the last few months, and while Dinobase seems to be down at the moment, there were the best part of a 100 entries on there before I moved to WordPress. On top of that, there’s Pterosaur.net and the accompanying blog, various magazine articles, guest posts on other blogs, podcasts and the like I’ve put together. All of this has been in the last 5 and a bit years. That’s averaging out at a post or entry around every 0.8 days (and not including the thousands of comments I’ve had answering people’s questions about posts or the e-mails I get).

I genuinely do all of this because I like it and think it’s important. I can’t imagine I haven’t reached really quite a good number of people and helped get more people interested and involved in palaeontology and outreach.

And yeah, I’d be stupid at this point not to remind you I’m still looking for sponsorship in my tyrannosaur research. Please help if you can.

New ways to fund – the artists rise

OK, just so you know, I am going to keep bludgeoning you with stuff about the Daspletosaurus project till it’s funded. Please do spare a few pounds / euros / dollars / rand / gold pieces if you can, even a little goes a long way when everyone contributes. It only takes a few moments and makes a big difference.

However, while any funds at all will help me out, I can appreciate that maybe you want something in return (other than the opportunity to fund some awesome science and have me blog it to death). Well I’ve been really touched by the responses of some of my friends in the palaeoart community and people have risen out of nowhere to help out enormously.

First off is David Orr of Love in the Time of Chasmosaurus fame. Designer of this superb logo (the details are great, he’s used the flag of Alberta as an outline, used Darren Tanke’s field hammer in silhouette, and stylised stratigraphic marks from a paper on the Dinosaur Park Formation as a background), David is now offering various pieces with this on his Red Bubble Shop (most notably T-shirts). Profits go to the project fund and obviously, a hue thank you from me for this.

While David was still finalising this and getting the links up, I got a message from Brett Booth offering to do me some dinosaur-themed comic art to auction for the project! Regular readers will know Brett from his interview here and his blog Carnosauria. However, comic fans will know his work on X-Men, Teen Titans and most recently as the new artist for Nightwing, that’s some CV (and yeah, he’s filled in on Batman and Spider-Man over the years too). Starting with this effort of cannibalistic Daspletosaurus being observed by Ka-Zar in the Savage Land, Brett has promised more to come including, yes, Batman in the cave with his famous trophy Tyrannosaurus. I’ll try and blog and tweet these as they come up, but the easiest thing to do is follow Brett on twitter as @Demonpuppy It’s very kind of Brett and obviously geek heaven – dinosaurs and superheroes! Get in while you can guys.

Finally, before the ink was barely dry on Brett’s sketch, I had an alert on Facebook from Julius Csotonyi (another artist who has submitted to my interviews) with an incredibly generous offer.  For the next 3 weeks only, he is donating all profits for ALL art sales on his site to the project!! So head on over to his huge catalog and take your pick. It hardly goes without saying how generous this is.

So there you have it, three artists have all generously given up their time and talents (and yes, even some of their earnings) to help me and my research out. I’m bordering on speechless (no mean feat) and delighted and excited. My sincere and deep thanks to them all, and I hope people take advantage of this. Sure, it helps me out, but damn there’s some cool stuff there.

 

Project Daspletosaurus 2013

I’m sure a goodly number of readers are already aware of this as I’ve been tweeting and facebooking it quite a lot, but I have a science kick-starter project running on the Microryza site. It sounds almost too contrived to be honest, but it’s a project aimed at looking at possible cannibalism in Daspletosaurus based on material Darren Tanke has worked on at the Tyrrell.

Obviously Darren and I have form when it come to tyrannosaurs, both with our own research interests and in particular with the Gorgosaurus preparation project. Here though it’s a skull of Daspletosaurus with bite marks attributable from another large tyrannosaurine. I’m looking for funding to get me out to Alberta and check out this and related material and work to write this all up and hopefully learn something about tyrannosaur behaviour and ecology.

I’ll skimp on the details here because it’s all up on the Microryza site, so do follow this link and take a look. More specifically, if you can spare a small amount towards the total, it would be very much appreciated and do please blog and tweet this – the model only really works if people know about it and are intrigued or excited so spreading the wrod is very important (and free!). Obviously I’ll be blogging the project and putting as much information out as I am able, so I hope to make this as open as I can and get the audience involved.

My thanks to Microryza for supporting this, and to David Orr for the fantastic logo up top and Matt van Rooijen for help with the project video (featuring much Matt artwork).