The Whirlpool of Life

So being eight hours out from the UK and 12 from the US east coast it’s perhaps no surprise that I missed (forgot) that yesterday was the anniversary day of the publication of the Origin. While I totally failed to celebrate, Scott Sampson did not and chose this rather auspicious day to launch his new blog – The Whirlpool of Life. Scott will be covering mainstream science education and communication as well as all aspects of nature and biology and not just palaeontology and the dinosaurs on which he usually works. Nip over there and take a look when you have five minutes.

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An image request

A while back I launched a rather unsuccessful appeal for archosaur images to use on the Musings since I actually don’t have that many that I have not already used. These are of course still welcome, so if you have any photos that you own the copyright for, and don’t mind me using publicly, and if they are of archosaur fossils / casts / mounts then do please send them to me!

However this appeal is of a far more general kind. As I noted recently my main ‘online’ project Ask A Biologist is about to undergo a big makeover and we are also looking for any images related to biology to include in a big online gallery. So basically the same appeal applies but on a much bigger scale – please send me ANY images related to biology / palaeo that we can use. I should note that I do have a rather a lot of dinosaur, bird and mammal images already and we need some variety! Thus lings like people in labs, plants, cells, inverts, molecules, fungi, medicine related stuff, fish, non-dinosaur fossils etc. are especially welcome.

Send anything you have to me at dwe_hone AT yahoo.com
Thanks in advance for your help, it really is greatly appreciated.

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Ten years for Bob!

This week Bob Nicholls celebrates 10 years as a professional free-lance palaeoartist. I’ve known Bob for a number of years now as he’s resident in the West Country and so used to see him semi-regularly in Bristol when he was working. For those at SVP who actually ventured deep into the Geology Department you may have seen his large mural-cum-collage thing that covers the walls around the museum part of the department. His work regularly crops up in books and museum guidebooks (and Luis Rey’s name badge) and he is increasingly becoming recognised as a very modern palaeoartist. So drop over to his website and take a look at some of his work when you have the time.

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So just how many papers are there?

Last week I mentioned the problems of keeping up with the ever growing scientific literature and just how many papers and books there are now readily available. As an illustration of this, here is my bookcase at the IVPP. As you can see, it’s really very full with both books, scientific volumes and monographs and stacks of papers. Standing on top is set of boxfiles of various papers and there are several more sets like this sat on my desk right now for the projects I’m working on. Added to that is all the stuff I didn’t bring to China (another half dozen boxfiles) and my PDF collection (which currently stands just shy of 3000 files, some of which themselves are whole books). In short there is a lot of science out there!

Don’t forget that this collection is just what I have accumulated in around 10 since I first finished my batchelors degree and I only started my PhD in 2002. A great many researchers have entire rooms filled with books and papers and anyone who has stumbled into a science library will know just how much literature there is. Is it then surprising that even those of us with very narrow research interests have not actually read everything on the subject. I’ve not actually read a significant fraction of this collection (for obvious reasons, even averaging a page every 2 minutes, going 24 hours a day at a rough calculation means there is well over three months worth of reading there!) but the information is there and accessible which is the main thing. Even this of course does not take into account what I *don’t* have, I estimate I have only about 1 in 20 of every pterosaur paper ever published in my collections somewhere which is not great when you think about it. In short, the scientific literature is huge.

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A snowy Monolophosaurus

Having covered the ‘arctic’ dinosaurs of Japan in January, the first snowfall of Beijing saw a very cold looking Monolophosaurus outside the IVPP so I braved the weather to take this.

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Update your links – Dracovenator has moved

Due to his ongoing battle with the internet, Adam Yates has moved his Dracovenator blog to here. So update your links and if you are not already, get reading his excellent blog.

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Deliberately aggressively titled post – who cares what you think?

This post is in response to this current report. For once I’m not targeting the journalism, but the actual point of the survey. It’s an assessment of the public’s opinion on the teaching of non-evolution-based ‘theories’ (as everyone insists on calling them for no obvious reason, despite a lack of evidence that would make them barely viable as hypotheses) as part of science in the UK.

Right, here’s the rub. I don’t care what the public thinks here. They are not to be trusted. Look, yes of course you must consult parents / the public on general themes in education (do they want their kids to have more or less physical education, should history be focused on the recent past or great times in history and so on) and I’m all in favour of public education and dialogue, but in this case the point is absolutely and utterly irrelevant.

Let’s pick something comparable:

When you are ill do you a) seek a doctor (i.e. professional in the medical establishment) or b) take a straw poll of the nearest 1000 people to you and do what they say?

When your car breaks down do you a) call out a professional mechanic or b) take a straw poll of the nearest 1000 people to you and do what they say?

When your sink backs up and overflows do you a) call out a reputable plumber to attend the problem or b) take a straw poll of the nearest 1000 people to you and do what they say?

You may be seeing a pattern here. And it is this – not everyone in the world knows everything about everything. In fact when you consdier the truly stupendous and vast amount of knowldge in the world (whether it be about fixing spark plus, the Roman occupation of France, the second series of ‘The A-team’ or quantum physics) most people know next to nothing about anything. To get around this issue for things that are complex and matter we have a system of telling apart who does know something and who does not, like, for example internationally recognised qualifications like degrees and doctorates. You know who real doctors are as they hold MD degrees and are members of professional bodies.

Recognised and qualified experts in science are called scientists and those in the narrower field of biology are called biologists. It should therefore be obvious that the people who get to decide what is and is not good science and good biology should be the biologists. Joe Public should not get a look in anymore than he should be allowed to take out your appendix (unless he’s a doctor) or fix the plumbing (unless he’s a plumber).

The odd thing is people do know this – they go to doctors when they are ill, call out mechanics to fix their car, fly in planes with pilots, get architects to design houses and so on. They clearly at some level do know what they are and are not qualified to talk about (despite this evidence) but people need to think rationally about this. Don’t even think of taking a poll on something like this, the question is irrelevant and the people asked are in the main not skilled or qualified to give an accurate answer. It might tell you a little which way the wind is blowing, but its actual effect or outcome is meaningless. Ask the biologists what should be taught. Ask the teachers how. Don’t ask the public.

Now, before you sink your teeth in to reply (assuming you are going to contradict me) please first read these two posts: on academic authority and this on scientific dialogue and do also note that this is somewhat deliberately provocative – it’s deliberately exaggerated for effect. I’m still right though, obviously…

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More birds

Recently I have been very busy as the fallout from SVP and a two week break come back to haunt me. I’ve got a paper to review, have submitted the corrections on one of my own, have reviewed two pieces of work by my students, completed my comments on the description of the new theropod to come out of the IVPP ( a secret for now, sorry), sent off a specimen  for preparation, done four drawings for another paper and generally tried to to catch up with my e-mails. As a result, the Musings has been a bit sparse on the detailed posts front and it might continue a bit longer since my next big task is to write some job applications. In order to keep you all interested though, have a couple of vaguely related things.

First off, this photo of a bird of paradise I took in the Ueno Zoo in Tokyo. I’m really rather pleased to have seen it and very pleased with how the photo came out given the poor lighting, reflectance off the glass and other factors that made this a challenge.

This in turn leads into a couple of other things. First off, today saw the release of some of the photos from the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Award, which is a must for me and I rarely miss it, despite having been based in Germany and China for the last four years. It does tour both the UK and the world (the 2008 version is now on display in the Beijing Zoo) so keep an eye out. Secondly, the bird at hand – the Greater Bird of Paradise (Paradisaea apoda) formed a central part in the lecture on Alfred Wallace that was recently given by Sir David Attenborough which i was lucky enough to attend and got to ask the man himself about the very bird you see pictured here.

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In praise of hornbills

Since I brought up hornbills the other day, I now have the excuse of posting this picture I recently took at Beijing Zoo. In the main on the Musings, I try to stick to reviews of palaeontological issues, things pertinent to science communication and education and the like. It is a deliberate choice to avoid speaking about anything personal, but i really have a soft-spot for the Great Indian Hornbill (Buceros bicornis) and with no other obvious reason to post this picture but a personal one, I though it time to break ranks, if only briefly.

As I have mentioned here before and has been covered elsewhere, I have worked as a volunteer at London Zoo for a while and like most people there, got to know Josephine. Josie was a Great Indian Hornbill who live at the zoo for some 47 years (and was probably well into her 50s when she died in 1998) and was very well know with both the staff and the public. So much so in fact that she was one of the select number of animals to have her obituary published in the The Times upon her death.

She was a friendly bird who would knew a great many people by sight and would often become more active in their presence and come to the front of her enclosure to greet them. I used to make a detour most lunchtimes on my way to the staff cafeteria  to bypass her in the Tropical Birdhouse and see how she was doing. She was very old when I ‘knew’ her and spent most of her time doing very little, but it was still nice to see her and to appreciate a beautiful bird in wonderful condition. Since those times I’ve always liked these birds and make a special effort to see them in any zoos that keep hornbills.

Enough reminiscences for now, more dinosaurs to come soon.

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Did any archosaurs have ornamented beaks?

The title of this post may seem like a strange one but this is a question worthy of serious, if brief, attention. While records of head crests and ornaments in the archosaurs (including birds like cassowaries), and most famously the pterosaurs,  are well known, these have an underlying bony core. What I’m referring to here is purely the keratinous sheath that sheathes the beak of a great many archosaur lineages (and one day I really must get round to noting just how common these are and in just how many places on the archosaurina tree they occur). Is there any evidence that these might themselves have had ornamental structures on them?

Well the short answer is no – there’s no good fossil evidence for this kind of thing. Admittedly only very few exceptional fossils preserve even traces of keratin so we are hardly sampling from a huge range of taxa. Even if they were present, they might be compressed to the point of unrecognisability or be mistaken for a taphomic or ostelogical factor in the specimen. So why then this rhetorical question? Well this is the answer, the wreathed hornbill (Rhyticeros undulatus):

Oh look, my new book is out.

OK, so you probably all know about this already since I suspect I have few readers who don’t read Tetrapod Zoology religiously (and if not, why not?) and yes, this indeed the same book that Darren is promoting. I really can’t take much credit for this – I was basically filling in a few gaps and did something like 12 entries of dinosaurs and pterosaurs in a 500 page encyclopedia covering all of prehistoric life.
However, my copy has been sent to my UK address so I’ve not actually seen the thing yet and can really only tell you that at least 12 of the entries are very good. I hope that it is and I hope people enjoy it, but really this is all I can offer apart from a link to Amazon. Feel free not to tell me if it’s terrible, ignorance being bliss and all that (meaning a great many mainstream media people should be the happiest on Earth ho-ho-ho).

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Fossils, fact and fiction

The title of this post is taken directly from a discussion given at the Royal Society on Monday that I was lucky enough to attend. Even better you can watch the recording of this event (and many others) directly from their website, so mosey on over and take a look. The discussion was between Dr Richard Fortey FRS (of ‘Trilobite!’ and ‘Life – an unauthorised biography’ fame) covering fossils and Tracy Chevalier (who wrote the ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ and recently and pertinently ‘Remarkable Creatures’ on the life of Mary Anning), and the whole thing was chaired by Dr Alice Roberts.

The discussion centers around different kinds of truths in the sense that a scientific truth from the perspective of a researcher might differ from that of an author (like Chevalier) who uses know historical documents as the basis for works of fiction. It combines history, science, palaeontology and bit of philosophical musings on science communication and well worth an hour of anyone’s time with an interest in fossils.