I had a chance to visit “Wolf to Woof“, a travelling exhibit hosted by the Royal Alberta Museum this summer. This exhibit does a nice job covering the biology and evolution of dogs, and the relationships between canids and humans, and overall I was pretty happy that I got to see it.
What I Did on My Summer Vacation: Take the Left Turn at Albuquerque
I visited the New Mexico Museum of Natural History in June for a couple of days with my friend and colleague Mike Burns to look at [top secret specimen yet again, sorry!]. OH MAN was Albuquerque toasty in June. But we had a very fine time indeed eating southwest food and visiting the museum.
What I Did on My Summer Vacation: Happy Campers
This is Happy Jack’s (or as it used to be called, Old Mexico Ranch), an old homestead occupied by Happy Jack Jackson from 1903 to 1942. There are a couple of log cabins, some with cacti growing on the roof. Happy Jack’s is found on the north side of the Red Deer River in Dinosaur Provincial Park, and is the home base for the Currie Lab when we do fieldwork in DPP. Continue reading
What I Did on My Summer Vacation: Danek Bonebed
The summer is over and school is back in session. Here in Edmonton the leaves already started to turn yellow last week. And somehow the summer got so busy that I hardly posted anything at all here. So, it’s nice to fix that up and talk about what I did on my summer ‘vacation’, by which I mean the time that undergrads are not at university but grad students are.
The ‘summer’ (which doesn’t really start until mid-June in Edmonton, but whatevs) started up with the PALEO 400 field school in early May. For three weeks, students help excavate the Danek Bonebed, a hadrosaur bonebed located right in the city (but in a secret location, to prevent vandalism). Over the course of those three weeks, they get to do everything: shoveling lots of dirt, uncovering bones with fine tools, plaster jacketing, carrying heavy things back to the truck, quarry mapping, field identification, you name it. Each student comes up with a research project related to the bonebed and writes a paper and/or presents a talk in October. This year we had five enthusiastic students and I am looking forward to hearing all about their projects later this fall.
Thoughts on Tarbosaurus, Part 3
Previously in this series on the poached Tarbosaurus skeleton, I’ve discussed the role of museums in fossil collecting, how the specimen was identified as Tarbosaurus, and how we know the skeleton came from Mongolia. Today, I’ll discuss one final question: Why is fossil poaching such a big deal, anyway? Continue reading
Thoughts on Tarbosaurus, Part 2
In my last post I talked about the role of museums in conserving fossil resources, with regards to the recent news about the Tarbosaurus auction. I wanted to address some of the other frequent comments I have seen on blogs and news articles. So, we’re now on to:
Comment 2: How do we know the tyrannosaur came from Mongolia? (and the related question, which I’ve decided to lump with this one: Why does the auction company, and subsequent news stories, refer to the specimen as Tyrannosaurus bataar while palaeontologists call it Tarbosaurus? Continue reading
Thoughts on Tarbosaurus, Part 1.
Last time I promised photos of our fieldwork here in Edmonton, but then over the weekend the palaeoverse kind of erupted (in a good way) over the auction of a Tarbosaurus skeleton. Go read Brian Switek’s articlefirst if you’re not acquainted with the story.
Because I am insane, I often read the comments sections on news articles about palaeontology. There are a lot of weird and misguided statements in the comments sections of some of the Tarbosaurus auction news articles (e.g. at CNN, USAToday, Wired). Some of these comments make me frustrated, so I figured I’d try to write down my thoughts on some of the most common recurring themes: 1) Paleontologists are just as bad as fossil poachers and/or private collectors because we hoard the dinosaurs all to ourselves and lock them away in cabinets where the public can’t see them; 2) How do we know the tyrannosaur came from Mongolia?; 3) Why does the auction company call it Tyrannosaurus bataar while palaeontologists call it Tarbosaurus?; and 4) Why is fossil poaching such a big deal, anyway? I’m going to address these over a couple of blog posts because for some reason on these topics I am unusually longwinded and the answer to the first question was getting kind of gigantic. Continue reading
LogiCON and the Paleo Gala
Fieldwork has begun here in Edmonton and I’ll have some more pictures to show off next week…currently we are digging a big hole in the dirt, so there’s not much to see yet. Until then, here’s a wrap-up of some of my outreach and teaching activities from the last few weeks. Continue reading
Waking up from hibernation.
And by hibernation, I mean grad school. The last few weeks have been pretty busy here in Edmonton and I’ve found myself without a lot of time to blog about interesting things that have been going on. Thankfully, that busy-ness is a result of research productivity and teaching, which are both good things! So, over the next few days, as we head into the (still somewhat cold) field season here in Alberta, I’ll try to cover a bit of what’s been happening for the last couple months… Continue reading
5 Questions for Aaron Leblanc
It’s been a bit quiet around here lately as I plug away at my thesis, but here’s an interview with UALVP alumnus Aaron Leblanc, now a PhD student at the University of Toronto. Aaron’s description of the new mosasaur Eremiasaurus was published in the January issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
pseudoplocephalus 