I was pleased to see a recent paper naming a new sauropod from Chile – Atacamatitan chilensis Kellner, Rubilar-Rogers, Vargas and Suarez 2011. Why am I interested in Chilean dinosaurs?
Because I got to go there! Continue reading
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Baron von Nopcsa, Scolosaurus, and the spiky-clubbed ankylosaur.
Baron von Nopcsa is a pretty cool dude, maybe even as cool as Freddie Mercury. Born in 1877 in Transylvania, he is probably best known for his work on the Haţeg fauna of Romania.
Nopcsa also published a lot of papers on ankylosaurs!
Like SCOLOSAURUS!
(This image is from an awesome book I found at WalMart – the Colossal Book of Dinosaurs) Continue reading
Ankylosaurus through the Ages
I saw a post up at Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs today – did you know Ankylosaurus could fly? The original Sinclair World’s Fair Ankylosaurus was being lifted by crane from the Houston Museum of Natural History as the museum undergoes expansion and renovations.
This got me thinking about a talk I gave for the Alberta Palaeontological Society annual meeting last March: “My ankylosaur is a big dumb tank! Ankylosaur reconstructions in the scientific literature and popular media.” I talked about why ankylosaurs are reconstructed in certain ways, both accurate and inaccurate. Darren Naish at Tetrapod Zoology has been talking about memes in palaeontological illustration, and how certain wacky reconstructions and poses pop up again and again. I think this is perhaps especially well illustrated by several ankylosaur taxa and today I’d like to talk about Ankylosaurus.
Brown 1908. The Ankylosauridae, a new family of armored dinosaurs from the upper Cretaceous. AMNH Bulletin 24:187-201. Continue reading
Ice to Meet You
Several weeks ago, I talked about the Antarctic dinosaur Cryolophosaurus. As Phil and Eva’s Antarctic adventure winds down, I thought it was high time to write a little bit about another Antarctic dinosaur, Glacialisaurus.
This is not Glacialisaurus, but it is still awesome. Ice sculpture competitions like Ice on Whyte are one of the winter benefits of living in the frozen tundra of Edmonton. And this year, there were several teams from China participating! Continue reading
On the Presence of Female Palaeontologists in the Popular Media
Last week I did a bunch of interviews with many different media outlets about a new paper I had published. One of the most interesting was a conversation I had with CBC Radio Edmonton’s show Radio Active, which aired on Friday evening. You can listen to it here.
I was asked not just about the pterosaur, but about what it is like to be a female palaeontologist and how the media exposure may affect the career of a scientist just starting out. What I thought was interesting was that the interviewers both before and during the Radio Active show noted that most people don’t really associate palaeontology with women, and that dinosaurs seem to be more for boys. I found this a bit surprising because whenever I go out and do activities with younger kids, ALL kids love dinosaurs, regardless of gender. But it got me thinking again about women in palaeontology, and in particular, where are the female palaeontologists in the popular media? Continue reading
pseudoplocephalus 