Updates and All!

So my thesis is due in just under a month, and I have successfully sent a complete draft to my supervisor. He said he'd get it back to me tomorrow, and then we'll see how horribly bad it is. Not really surprisingly, I had a panic attack about getting it done in time, worked my butt off for a while, and finished it a month early. This is pretty much par for the course for me: ultra stress case assuming the worst, then getting it done early and doing ok on it. I still have a few figures to finish, but they are basically done. I basically just need to figure out a title and I'm done. Not sure how that happened exactly.

Update number 2
I finally got word that my abstract for SVPCA was accepted with no corrections, so it's official: I am giving my first ever conference talk in September. I am super nervous for it already, but I've heard the conference is really friendly and a good place to start out. I'm hoping it all goes well, and I don't make a fool of myself. My talk will be titled "A novel approach to estimating pterosaur bone mass using CT scans". It will mainly be about exactly what the title says, with some more detail on what my study found, especially with respect to using birds as pterosaur analogues and the internal structure of pterosaur wing bones as seen in CT scans. The talk will be co-authored by my supervisor, Colin Palmer, but I'll be the one getting up in front of the crowd and talking. 

Next step: work on my publication attempt! Of course, in order to get scholarships, I need publications, which is why Colin suggested I try to publish my preliminary results. I have been working on the paper for months, but because of many things (for example, a thesis to write), haven't submitted it yet. I'm hoping to get it submitted soon, maybe even before my thesis, but that will depend on how many corrections I have to make on my thesis. Hopefully I'll have a publication to put in my scholarship applications!

My side project: Jurassic Forest

Some of you may have heard of this before, or may know that I'm involved, but most of you probably have no idea what I'm talking about. Two years ago, just north of Edmonton, Canada, an animatronic dinosaur park opened called Jurassic Forest. This is an entirely privately owned venture that focuses on being educational, and of course fun for kids of all ages. I was fortunate enough to find out about the park before it opened. Being an undergraduate student in palaeontology at the University of Alberta at the time, I thought maybe I could work as a guide or something so I gave them a call. To my surprise, they had no scientists employed at the time, and I was in the very lucky position of having been told about it and contacting them. And thus began a new and exciting chapter in my life.

Starting in May 2010 before the park opened, I worked on all things scientific and educational. I created signs for the forest ranging from decomposers to amphibians to, of course, dinosaurs. I made content for over 100 signs to be posted around the park, as well as edited material already made for signs and school programs. I was also responsible for training all of our guides, making sure they knew what they were talking about while walking through the trails. In July 2010 we opened to the public. It was an amazing feeling walking around and listening to what people were learning, and hearing the praise about this facility that I was so intimately involved in. We opened with a number of animatronic dinosaurs (about 40 if I recall), some more realistic than others, but most of them are somewhat life-size. It was pretty amazing. Jurassic Forest is set outside in a natural boreal forest, meaning the dinosaurs (and other creatures) are in a slightly more natural setting than in an indoor facility (although the plants aren't quite accurate). The creatures are set back from the paths in a non-frightening, more natural setting, like you may have seen millions of years ago. It's pretty cool.

An Apatosaurus (and Stretch the ostrich) set back in the trees

Jurassic Forest isn't open in the winter though, so we closed down in October 2010, and got ready for the new season. This was a fun winter. We did a major overhaul of all the school programs we had made previously, and made them much more applicable to the Alberta curriculum. In May 2011, we opened for our second season, with an addition: Spinosaurus. After a very rainy and unpleasant May, we had a great rest of the season. Unfortunately, in order to start my Master's in the UK, I had to leave Jurassic Forest in September. It was like my second home, and my second family, and I was sad to leave. But it was time to move on. A career in research doesn't happen while I'm wandering the trails talking to families apparently. I left for England sad that I had to leave Jurassic Forest, but determined to stay connected. I'm still working for Jurassic Forest, running their Facebook and Twitter (@JurassicForest) pages (you should follow us!). I thrive to keep things as scientifically accurate as possible, but still interesting for people. In June, we (they?) welcomed two more new dinos to the park: Pachyrhinosaurus and Troodon. This month, my newest side project has begun: a blog called Mesozoic Mondays where I talk about several aspects of the Mesozoic, each Monday. This is a pretty general, easy blog to follow. The goal is to teach people who may not know a lot about dinosaurs or the Mesozoic. It's been fun so far, but I'm always looking for suggestions and comments! If anyone wants to give me some suggestions, that would be awesome.

I really enjoy working for Jurassic Forest even though I'm in England now. It's a good chance to write about some things I'm really interested in that's not necessarily related to my thesis. It's also nice to be able to put my brain to use and talk about some things I've learned over the years! Anyone who is in the Edmonton region, I would definitely recommend a trip to Jurassic Forest, even if it's just for a walk in the park. It's pretty neat, and from what I've seen, much better than similar parks out there.

Why I may not move back to Canada any time soon

This is a bit of a change from my palaeontology-related posts, but this is something that is pretty important to any Canadian scientists, or anyone wanting to do science in Canada. This is why it is becoming more and more likely I'm not going to return to Canada as a scientist any time soon. 


In the past, people thought of Canada as being in the middle or slightly left-wing hippies that cared about the environment. Not so anymore. A recent story from the CBC looked at "How the world sees Canada", basically interviewing Canadians that live abroad, and are generally in high positions such as university professors. There are some good responses with Canada being a "best kept secret", "fascinating" and more. Unfortunately, it is not all good. Stories of our Public Safety Minister comparing environmentalists to "white supremacists" and "terrorists" and Canadian mining companies "ravaging community after community" in Guatemala. Even worse is when anything about funding or the environment comes up. The one that gets me the most, however, is from a professor in Hull, U.K:

My students, so obsessed these days with environmental themes, revered Canada as a country with more enlightened ideas about preserving the planet. Not any more. Now they talk of oil extraction, of the despoilation of the Arctic North and of Canada's characterization of its environmentalists as subversive.

That pretty much says it all. Canada went from being someone that cared about the environment, to pulling out of the Kyoto Protocol (without really trying to be a part of it), and very nearly denying climate change. Thank you Stephen Harper. On top of that, there is evidence that the Canadian government is keeping it's scientists quiet. Permission must be granted to speak to the media, and in any controversial case, that permission isn't granted. There are two prime examples of this: one with regards to a study on falling salmon stocks, and another on a hole in the ozone layer. Really? Muzzling scientists? I would not expect this from any western country, especially not Canada. Censoring what scientists are allowed to talk about is not cool. Not cool at all.

Now although the above stuff makes me mad, the main reason I may not return, is this: Canada is cutting a lot of it's science funding. A recent budget was passed by the federal government, which names many cuts to science including cutting government research jobs, getting rid of several government-funded research projects, and pollution control. They announced that they are going to scrap the Experimental Lakes Area, which has provided valuable information about acid rain and possible prevention methods. And to take the cake, all funding to the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Science has been axed. Completely. So has funding to the Polar Environmental Atmospheric Research Laboratory. Seriously guys? What are you doing! Furthermore, Harper has shown interest only in projects that have an industrial side, not pure science. There goes palaeontology. Last time I checked, there wasn't much of a palaeo industry.

Fortunately, Canadian scientists are not taking this lightly. According to the CBC, scientists are rallying today in what they call the "Death of Evidence". They are doing an old fashioned march up to Parliament Hill dressed in lab coats or black, to prove a point. I doubt it's going to do anything, but I'm happy to see it's happening, and sad I can't be there.

Basically as long as the Conservatives and Harper are in power, science funding is only going to get worse and worse, and since I'm not in a field that tends to get a lot of funding, that's bad news. It's bad news for all Canadian scientists, but it's even worse for purely experimental sciences. I once had a dream of returning to Canada to continue my research, but that dream seems to slowly be slipping away...

Thesis time and many thanks!

Well now I'm basically done all of my actual research, and I'm about to start writing my thesis, which will likely be the bane of my existence for the next 3 months. Yay! I've never written anything like this before and this should be interesting.

Giving credit where credit is due:
Just want to give some thanks to people that have helped me out along the way. My project is mainly (or entirely) supervised by Colin Palmer, who I owe a lot to. Not only has he helped me a lot in getting started as an academic, but he has been extremely patient with my lack of understanding math and physics, as well as helping me get through a very hard time when my Mom passed away. Not only that, but if it weren't for him, my project wouldn't be possible since he's responsible for getting most of the CT scans done that I am doing my research from. These scans include wing phalanges from the NHM (thanks to Lorna Steel I believe for doing those), and some specimens from Portsmouth that were scanned at Southampton (not sure who to thank, but blanket thanks to those responsible). I also have a set of scans from Mike Habib, so thanks to you as well. I've had some help from and discussions with Mark Witton, who has been great in sharing his data with me and supplying me with awesome pictures for talks and posters, Mike Benton, whose flexibility and understanding meant I could continue the project through a tough time, and lots of my MSc friends (Davide especially). And of course Josh for putting up with me whining about how I'm going to fail and (trying?) to teach me physics :)

This project has been great so far in teaching me basic pterosaur anatomy, more detailed physics and biomechanics (which I am horrible at), and getting my writing. I'm so glad I decided to do it and I'm hoping I come up with a publishable project at the end. I'm hoping to at least present what I have at SVPCA in September, and the pterosaur meeting in Rio in May (if I can figure out a way of being able to afford that).

Now to write!

How much did that pterosaur weigh?

So a forever perennial problem in palaeontology is estimating the mass of an extinct animal. It's important to know for about a million reasons including ecology, but it's especially important in terms of locomotion and biomechanics. There are of course several methods to estimating the mass of extinct animals, primarily focusing on dinosaurs. Recently, this made the news with the so called 'Dinosaurs and lasers' paper, which you can read about here. Of course, I'm more interested in the mass of pterosaurs, which I'm working on for my MSc thesis (kind of). In flying animals, mass is even more important because it largely dictates whether an animal is able to achieve lift or not. If it's too heavy, it's not flying. Period.

So how is pterosaur mass estimated anyways?
There are lots of different pterosaur mass estimates out there, and several different ways of doing it, but I'm going to focus on 3 (more like 2) main ways.

The first method relies on estimating the volume of the pterosaur, and multiplying it by a density. This was first done pre-computer and relied on estimating the volumes of different portions of the body on paper (by estimating how much muscle there would have been). Bramwell and Whitfield (1974) did this first for Pteranodon and multiplied the volume by an overall density of 1000 kg/m3, to get a mass of 16.6 kg. A similar method was used by Brower and Veinus (1981), but with a density of 900 kg/m3, to get a mass of 14.94 kg. This method is good for a first try, but there are some holes in it. It doesn't account for the huge variation in density between regions of the body, and it relies heavily on using birds as a modern analogue for pterosaurs... which is a big problem. But more on that another day perhaps (or check out Witton and Habib 2010 for details).

The second method is a lot like the first one, but it uses a computer programme to estimate the volumes. Henderson (2010) applied this method to many pterosaur genera, by making 3D computerised models of each animal. This method allowed him to apply a different density to different areas, such as a much lower density to the neck and skull, where there is heavy pneumatisation. He was also able to subtract the volumes of cavities such as the lungs from the equation. This gave him a mass of 18.6 kg for Pteranodon longiceps. He verified this method using birds, and found it was pretty accurate. However, it also relies heavily on the idea that birds are a good modern analogue for pterosaurs... no good!

The third method is definitely the most interesting in my opinion (although I might be biased since it's similar to my project). In birds and mammals, there is a relationship between the skeletal mass and the total mass (Prange et al. 1979). That's pretty cool since with fossils, we basically only have the bones. Mark Witton (2008) used this method to estimate pterosaur masses by first estimating the skeletal mass, then applying the relationship seen in birds to get the total mass. To do this, he first estimated the volume of each bone in a pterosaur skeleton by simplifying it to assume it is a geologic shape. For example, a wing phalanx (the long bones that make up the fourth finger and therefore the wing in a pterosaur) is assumed to be the shape of a cylinder. Knowing the cortical thickness, length, and radius, the volume can be calculated. Once the volume is multiplied by density, you have the mass of the bone! This method is good since it relies precisely on what you have in the fossil record: bones. However, again, it relies heavily on using birds as a modern analogue, and it does some over simplification. For example, a cortical thickness of 0.7 mm was used for the entire bone, when the thickness can very from 0.6-2.4mm in one section. Big difference.

Without saying too much about what I'm doing, I'm working on a new, more accurate method of estimating bone mass using CT scans. This has shown me that the cortical thickness can very A LOT within one bone (specifically a phalanx), and 0.7 mm is a pretty small number for the whole bone. Basically, I'm finding that the previous mass estimates for single bones are underestimated. And underestimated by a fair bit (although not as much as I had thought at first, which I was struggling to explain so I'm glad I figured that out). Does this mean that Witton's entire skeletal estimate is underestimated? Not necessarily... More likely it is further evidence that we can't directly use relationships seen in birds to estimate things in pterosaurs. They aren't the same! Just because a bird did it one way doesn't mean a pterosaur did. They are different animals! Stop assuming they are the same!

References

Bramwell, C. D. & Whitfield, G. R. 1974. Biomechanics of Pteranodon. Philos. T. Roy. Soc. B 267, 503-81.

Brower, J. C. & Veinus, J. 1981. Allometry in pterosaurs. University of Kansas Paleontological Contributions Paper, 1-32.

Henderson, D. M. 2010. Pterosaur body mass estimates from three-dimensional mathematical slicing. J. Vertebr. Paleontol. 30, 768-785.

Prange, H. D., Anderson, J. F., & Rahn, H. 1979. Scaling of skeletal mass to body mass in birds and mammals. Am. Nat. 113, 103-122.

Witton, M. P. 2008. A new approach to determining pterosaur body mass and its implications for pterosaur flight. Zitteliana Reihe B 28, 143-158.

Witton, M. P. & Habib, M. B. 2010. On the size and flight diversity of giant pterosaurs, the use of birds as pterosaur analogues and comments on pterosaur flightlessness. PloS One 5, e13982. 

Progressive Palaeontology, Cambridge 2012

The last three days were the Progressive Palaeontology conference in Cambridge, which I attended. As a first conference, it's a great one to go to. It's designed mainly for graduate students, meaning the pressure is taken off a bit. It's mainly attended by students from the UK, but there were a few from Europe as well (Poland and Germany). ProgPal started out on Wednesday with a nice reception in the Sedgwick Museum, followed by the presentations and posters on Thursday, and a field trip to some fossil localities on Friday.

Presentation day started out with a talk from Professor Simon Conway-Morris which was pretty interesting. He discussed his belief that palaeontology is not a dying science, but is in fact just at the beginning of it's "life". Good news for us young'uns! The presentations consisted of a wide variety of topics ranging from the possible first biomineraliser in the Ediacaran (by one of my fellow Bristol MSc student Peter Adamson), to fish, to dinosaurs and biomechanics to climate change. Surprisingly, not a single talk on anything related to mammal palaeontology, but most other groups were touched upon. All of the talks were amazing, but a few stood out to me. I was impressed by the undergraduate student from the University of Glasgow who had the guts to get up in front of everyone and talk about her dissertation project on identifying some possible theropod limb bones from Africa. Definitely give her props for showing up to a conference among a bunch of grad students. My favourite presentation was "Ichthyosaur ontogeny and sexual dimorphism", if not because it was started with "One thing I've learned is that if you put sex in the title of a talk, people will show up", but because it was really interesting (Sam Bennett - Royal Holloway). Top presentation went to a talk on Teleost superiority (John Clarke - University of Oxford), while the runners up were "Surface ocean productivity across the Eocene/Oligocene transition" (Katy Prentice - Imperial College London) and "The Jurassic beetroot stone: an old pink and white puzzle revisited" (Holly Barden - University of Manchester). Top poster went to Edine Pape (University of Bristol represent!) on the Evolution of the actinopterygian dermal skeleton, while the runner up was Alex Dunhill (also UoB) on the Phanerozoic of Great Britain. Some interesting stats showed that UoB made up about a quarter of the entire delegation, even more than Cambridge. Slowly starting to realise how big UoB is in terms of UK palaeontology.

Something that isn't really clear to me is how the judging was done for both the posters and presentations. I was told that it's at least somewhat random by people other than the organisers, but then the organisers said that they read through each poster and they were discussed. I think that Edine's poster was awesome and it should have won, but I was curious about the judging since I didn't speak to anyone from the committee about my poster. I'm still a bit confused about how it worked, but oh well!

Next ProgPal will be next year, and it might be in Portsmouth, which would be cool since there are a bunch of pterosaur workers there. Next up on the conference list is SVPCA, which I'm hoping to present some of my findings at. That would be my first ever presentation and I'm nervous already!

Edit: I forgot to talk about the field trip in my first post! In the morning, we went to a working quarry called Kings Dyke, which is a Jurassic marine deposit. It is kind of shaley/clay, very fine grained and very fragile fossils mostly. In it there are tons and tons of belemnites, some ammonites, and bivalves. We did find one pretty nice fish scale, but that was about it. The belemnites were best preserved while the ammonites kind of crumbled in your hand... After lunch, we headed off to a reservoir near Yaxley where we could collect fossils from the water bank. More marine fossils, but here we found crinoids, some more shells, and really tiny ammonites that were preserved really well. Pretty cool!

Tarbosaurus Auctioned Off

Just a bit of an update on the illegally collected Tarbosaurus skeleton that was on auction at Heritage Auctions in the US.


Ok so despite there being a Temporary Restraining Order against the auction of the Tarbosaurus skeleton, Heritage Auctions went along with the auction yesterday. The lawyer who got the restraining order was present at the auction and when he tried to protest, called the judge who gave the order, he was ushered out and asked to leave. Apparently they have no interest in not only following Mongolian law, but also American law. They have said that the sale of the skeleton is "contingent upon resolution of a court hearing", but we'll see. For more details on the auction, see Brian Switek's blog. 

Also, the Daily Mail has released some information about how the fossil came to be in the US. Apparently it was collected in 2005 by a private fossil collector in England, and then partially put together in the UK, then it was shipped to the US where it was finished. However, none of these details have been officially confirmed, but the article can be found here.

(I tried to add this update to the bottom of my previous post, but Blogger hates me and it didn't want to work, so I had to write a new post)