Well it seemed about time I did a review of the last year since I sat alone in my office working over Christmas, so here we go, the Musings 2009 roundup. This is intended to cover the things that more happened to me, rather than things I wrote about since there is a general lack of themes on this blog and my deliberate intention to avoid reviewing new papers and discoveries means that actually the palaeoworld often bypasses this blog, so focusing on things like Raptorex is a bit misleading. This is then, a personal review, and since I have gained quite a few readers over the year, hopefully provides a lead into my older posts that new readers might not have seen. On that note, I started the year with a robust 7 500 readers in January, and finished with September through December each reaching between 14 500 and near 19 000 reads, so I can only be happy with that. Right onto the review:
January saw me trying to catch up with all the posts on the newly published (officially the 31st of December, 2008) Wellnhofer pterosaur volume that I edited, and the massive series of guest posts that followed. This was rather a struggle as I spent most of the month on an excellent trip to Japan that took in the amazing Fukui Dinosaur Museum and the Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo.
February gave birth to the long running and much read “How to” series which carried on through the year (this linked post is from October as a round-up).
March saw me in Darwin’s home of Down House in a trip to the UK and Germany, and while Tianyulong was making the rounds, I was off to Stuttgart and Karlsruhe.
April gave me the first fieldtrip of the year to Xixia and the dinosaur eggs while May was rather quiet.
June took me back to Bayan Mandahu for our major field expedition of the year while palaeontolgically, the amazing Limusaurus was published.
July took me to Liaoning for the first time and thus a great chance to see many amazing fossils.
August was hectic with the appearance of my theropod feeding paper and then the fall-out of the media coverage.
September saw the return of Anchiornis in its new guise as well as SVP in the UK and the launch of the PPC with Andy Farke.
October ushered in my debut as an author (of sorts) with the publication of the “Prehistory” book and my minor contribution to its contents.
November took me to Zucheng and various things that I can’t talk about just yet, though expect to see more on this very soon and December brought various members of the pterosaur research team from Karlsruhe made it over and thus kept me busy while the Jeholopterus paper finally made it’s formal existence known, though it was in press in June.
That’s about it. Coming in 2010? Well that largely depends on papers getting accepted / published, permits for fieldsites, access to fossils and other issues. However, I can promise some information on spinosaurs in Asia and the eventual launch of the long promised pterosaur website, and I hope at least one paper on theropod behaviour and a new pterosaur or two not to mention some big hadrosaurs. Stay tuned. Oh yes, and the first annual Archosaur Musings awards will be coming up tomorrow.
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