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.
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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.
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.
Gobi Desert Diaries: Nemegtomaia Edition
Today I’ve got five questions for Federico Fanti, the lead author on a paper published a few weeks ago in PLoS ONE on a nesting oviraptorosaur. I first met Federico during the 2007 Nomadic Expeditions Dinosaurs of the Gobi expedition, in which we all had a grand time prospecting for dinosaurs and during which we celebrated a fine discovery indeed. Continue reading
Cool Stuff
“Cool Stuff: The University of Alberta Museums Do Winter” is a winter-themed exhibit that opened last week at the U of A’s Enterprise Square location. I checked it out last weekend and was pleased to see so many different types of objects on display. We have 28 different collections on campus, and most (maybe all?) were represented in the exhibit – butterflies, moss, picked parasites, textiles, and more. Continue reading
5 Questions for Phil Bell
Hot on the heels of yesterday’s interview with Caleb, here’s an interview with Phil Bell of the Pipestone Creek Dinosaur Initiative. Phil is a former Currie Lab member who completed his PhD last spring, focusing on the Mongolian and North American hadrosaur Saurolophus. He recently published a paper on skin impressions in Saurolophus. Thanks to David Lloyd of the Tyrrell Museum for the great photos of work at the Dragon’s Tomb in 2010! Continue reading
Care of Magical Creatures
The University of Alberta is currently hosting an exhibit called Harry Potter’s World: Renaissance Science, Magic, and Medicine, in the John W. Scott Health Sciences Library. Let’s Talk Science, a Canadian science outreach organization with a U of A chapter, was asked to organize ‘classes’ for a Harry Potter-themed science day, so my good friend Scott Persons and I put together “Care of Magical Creatures”. You may think it would be hard to mix magic and mythology with science, but we were pretty happy with how much natural history education we were able to convey over the course of the day. For those interested in science outreach and education, here’s how to do your own Care of Magical Creatures class. You might be surprised by the results!
Houston Museum of Natural Science
On my way home from Buenos Aires I had an eleven hour layover in Houston. Having just about exhausted the entertainment potential of the Houston airport on my nine hour layover on the way down, and feeling quite confident that there was no way I could stay awake the whole time if I stayed in the airport, I decided to venture in to Houston to poke around for the day. I managed to visit the Houston Museum of Natural Science and the Houston Zoo, which are both located in the immensely pleasant Hermann Park.
Birds at the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales
After finishing up with the dinosaur hall at the Buenos Aires natural history museum, I was pleasantly surprised to find more dinosaurs when I headed upstairs. I can’t recall a time where I’ve actually seen dinosaurs in the bird gallery – often the dinosaur story ends with the origin of birds, but when the birds are on display it’s usually more about extant bird diversity and conservation. So it was really nice to see the origin of birds explained right at the very beginning of this exhibit. Continue reading
pseudoplocephalus 