nov 2019 frt page - aaps-journal.org

__________The Paleontograph

A newsletter for those interested in all aspects of PaleontologyVolume

_________________________________________________________________

Edited by Tom Caggiano and distributed at no charge

From Your Editor

Welcome to our latest editionis gone, replaced by cooler temps. The holidaalready seeing XMas stuff in the stores.to my annual migration to Tucson to see friends, buy and sell fossils and get abreak from the cold weather.

I've been busy working in msome nice pieces this year and I'm excited to get to work on them. My back hasbeen giving me grief and put a kink in my life over the last months but we willkeep on moving on.

We have another selection of articles from Bob. There are a couple of reviewsincluded. If you are one of those people that skip over the book reviews you maybe missing out. Unlike others, Bob packs tons of background information into hisreviews in order to better help you uif you won't be reading the book, you have an opportunity to learn a lot just fromthe review.

The Paleontograph was created in 2012 to continue what was originally the newsletterof The New Jersey Paleontological Society. The Paleontograph publishes articles, bookreviews, personal accounts, and anything else that relates toFeel free to submit both technical and nonrange of people interested in fossils. Articles about localities, specific types of fossils,fossil preparation, shows or events, museum displaywelcome.

This newsletter is meant to be one by and for the readers. Issues will come out whenthere is enough content to fill an issue. I encourage all to submit contributions. It will beinteresting, informative and fun tcontributors want it to be, so it will be a work in progress. TC, January 2012

The Paleontograph________

newsletter for those interested in all aspects of PaleontologyVolume 8 Issue 4 November, 2019

_________________________________________________________________


[email protected]

Welcome to our latest edition. I hope all is well with you. Well, the warm weatheris gone, replaced by cooler temps. The holidays will be upon us soon, indeed I'malready seeing XMas stuff in the stores. This time of year has meto my annual migration to Tucson to see friends, buy and sell fossils and get abreak from the cold weather.

I've been busy working in my shop preparing many different fossils. I've picked upsome nice pieces this year and I'm excited to get to work on them. My back hasbeen giving me grief and put a kink in my life over the last months but we will

tion of articles from Bob. There are a couple of reviewsincluded. If you are one of those people that skip over the book reviews you maybe missing out. Unlike others, Bob packs tons of background information into hisreviews in order to better help you understand what the book may offer.if you won't be reading the book, you have an opportunity to learn a lot just from

The Paleontograph was created in 2012 to continue what was originally the newsletterof The New Jersey Paleontological Society. The Paleontograph publishes articles, bookreviews, personal accounts, and anything else that relates to Paleontology and fossils.Feel free to submit both technical and non-technical work. We try to appeal to a widerange of people interested in fossils. Articles about localities, specific types of fossils,fossil preparation, shows or events, museum displays, field trips, websites are all

This newsletter is meant to be one by and for the readers. Issues will come out whenthere is enough content to fill an issue. I encourage all to submit contributions. It will beinteresting, informative and fun to read. It can become whatever the readers andcontributors want it to be, so it will be a work in progress. TC, January 2012

________

newsletter for those interested in all aspects of Paleontology

_________________________________________________________________


Well, the warm weatherys will be upon us soon, indeed I'm

This time of year has me looking forwardto my annual migration to Tucson to see friends, buy and sell fossils and get a

y shop preparing many different fossils. I've picked upsome nice pieces this year and I'm excited to get to work on them. My back hasbeen giving me grief and put a kink in my life over the last months but we will

tion of articles from Bob. There are a couple of reviewsincluded. If you are one of those people that skip over the book reviews you maybe missing out. Unlike others, Bob packs tons of background information into his

nderstand what the book may offer. So evenif you won't be reading the book, you have an opportunity to learn a lot just from

The Paleontograph was created in 2012 to continue what was originally the newsletterof The New Jersey Paleontological Society. The Paleontograph publishes articles, book

Paleontology and fossils.technical work. We try to appeal to a wide

range of people interested in fossils. Articles about localities, specific types of fossils,s, field trips, websites are all

This newsletter is meant to be one by and for the readers. Issues will come out whenthere is enough content to fill an issue. I encourage all to submit contributions. It will be

o read. It can become whatever the readers andcontributors want it to be, so it will be a work in progress. TC, January 2012

PALEONTOGRAPH

Dinosaurs RediscoveredBob Sheridan June 16, 2019

I read almost all dinosaur books written for a popularor semi-popular audience. One new one is“Dinosaurs Rediscovered” by MichaelBenton. Benton is a Professor of VertebratePaleontology at the University of Bristol. I have beenreading his books going back decades. The two Iremember the most are “Vertebrate Paleontology(first edition, 1990) and “When Life Nearly Died(2003).

The following are the chapter headings:

1. How scientific discoveries are made.This chapter emphasizes the point that paleontologyhas moved from “stamp collecting” and “speculation”to a real science based on new discoveries andtechnologies. Examples are being able to guess thecolor of dinosaur feathers by examiningmelanosomes, and being able to estimatemaximum dinosaur bite strength by using FiniteElement Analysis, which is a computationaltechnique in engineering to estimate stresses inmaterials.

2. Origin of the dinosaursThe earliest unambiguous dinosaurs are from theLate Triassic ~230 Myr. This chapter summarizesBenton’s work from the 1980s on whether dinosaursoutcompeted other types of reptiles in the LateTriassic or just filled out world emptied by a massextinction. New to me are bipedal archosaurs likeSilesaurus and Asilisaurus. These are probablyclose to the common ancestor of dinosaurs andpterosaurs. Since Asilisaurus, described in the past

Volume 8 Issue 4 November

Dinosaurs RediscoveredBob Sheridan June 16, 2019

I read almost all dinosaur books written for a popularpopular audience. One new one is

” by MichaelBenton is a Professor of Vertebrate

Paleontology at the University of Bristol. I have beenreading his books going back decades. The two I

Vertebrate Paleontology”When Life Nearly Died”

The following are the chapter headings:

1. How scientific discoveries are made.This chapter emphasizes the point that paleontologyhas moved from “stamp collecting” and “speculation”to a real science based on new discoveries and

are being able to guess thecolor of dinosaur feathers by examining

and being able to estimatemaximum dinosaur bite strength by using FiniteElement Analysis, which is a computationaltechnique in engineering to estimate stresses in

The earliest unambiguous dinosaurs are from theLate Triassic ~230 Myr. This chapter summarizesBenton’s work from the 1980s on whether dinosaursoutcompeted other types of reptiles in the Late

world emptied by a massextinction. New to me are bipedal archosaurs likeSilesaurus and Asilisaurus. These are probablyclose to the common ancestor of dinosaurs andpterosaurs. Since Asilisaurus, described in the past

few years, is from ~245 Myr., the oris probably older than was previously thought.

3. Making the treeThe phylogenetic relationship of dinosaurs (or anyother group of genera) is generated today bycladistic methods. The idea of cladistics is that onecan generate evolutionary “trees” that show howanimals are related. Each tree can be consideredan evolutionary hypothesis. The score of a tree ishigh when animals are grouped by sharedanatomical characteristics and the number ofevolutionary reversals and convergences isminimized. Since the number of possible trees risesexponentially with the number of animals, even withmodern computers it is impossible to score eachone. Instead there are computational tricks to findthe best-scoring trees quickly. The besttrees are the most supported hypotheses and areconsidered close to the truth. The final results of theanalysis depend on which animals were included,which characteristics are included, and whatassumptions one makes in the scoring. Benton wasone of the first to explore the idea of “supertrees,”i.e. compiling trees generated from other labs andfinding the best consensus among them. (I supposethis is analogous to “metastudies.) Traditionally, dinosaurs were divided into“saurichians” and “ornithischians” based on thedisposition of their pelvic bones. However, in 2017an alternative proposal was made based on a largenumber of other characteristics. At present thereprobably is not enough information to tell whetherthe traditional or new hypothesis is correct.

4. Digging up dinosaursThis chapter reviews the process by which dinosaursare excavated from the field, studied, and(sometimes) mounted. This is mostly a lowendeavor that has not changed much in 150years. (“Nothing beats a good pair of eyes andsome strong shoulders.”)chapter is the “Bristol Dinosaur Project,” which hasbeen active since 2000. This is a public outreachprogram from Bristol University. One function is tovisit school, with the hope of engaging 7and 14-15 year olds in science. There are alsohands-on projects for undergraduates andvolunteers. The mascot for the project isThecodontosaurus, a small plantfrom Bristol named in 1836.

Cont'd

November 2019

few years, is from ~245 Myr., the origin of dinosaursis probably older than was previously thought.

The phylogenetic relationship of dinosaurs (or anyother group of genera) is generated today bycladistic methods. The idea of cladistics is that one

onary “trees” that show howEach tree can be considered

an evolutionary hypothesis. The score of a tree ishigh when animals are grouped by sharedanatomical characteristics and the number ofevolutionary reversals and convergences is

Since the number of possible trees risesexponentially with the number of animals, even withmodern computers it is impossible to score eachone. Instead there are computational tricks to find

scoring trees quickly. The best-scoringrees are the most supported hypotheses and are

considered close to the truth. The final results of theanalysis depend on which animals were included,which characteristics are included, and whatassumptions one makes in the scoring. Benton was

first to explore the idea of “supertrees,”i.e. compiling trees generated from other labs andfinding the best consensus among them. (I supposethis is analogous to “meta-analysis” in clinicalstudies.) Traditionally, dinosaurs were divided into

ns” and “ornithischians” based on thedisposition of their pelvic bones. However, in 2017an alternative proposal was made based on a largenumber of other characteristics. At present thereprobably is not enough information to tell whether

or new hypothesis is correct.

This chapter reviews the process by which dinosaursare excavated from the field, studied, and(sometimes) mounted. This is mostly a low-techendeavor that has not changed much in 150

ng beats a good pair of eyes andsome strong shoulders.”) One major topic in thischapter is the “Bristol Dinosaur Project,” which hasbeen active since 2000. This is a public outreachprogram from Bristol University. One function is to

the hope of engaging 7-9 year-olds15 year olds in science. There are also

on projects for undergraduates andvolunteers. The mascot for the project isThecodontosaurus, a small plant-eating dinosaurfrom Bristol named in 1836.

PALEONTOGRAPH Volume 8 Issue 4 November 2019

Rediscovered Cont'd

5. Breathing, brains, and behaviorThis chapter covers a number of topics: Dinosaurphysiology as revealed by bone histology, theevidence that birds are descendants of theropod, thearguments as to whether dinosaurs are “warm-blooded,” and whether dinosaurs used feathers for“sexual selection.” The topic of the size of dinosaurbrains always comes up, especially in regard to howthat relates to complexity of behavior. Generallyspeaking, for all vertebrates, the size of the brain isallometric, that is, as the size of the body increases,the size of the brain increases too, but not as fast.Birds and mammals have brains 6-10 times thevolume of a reptile of the same body weight. Theweight (or volume) of dinosaur brains is about asexpected for reptiles scaled up to the size ofdinosaurs. However, a few dinosaurs had relativebrain sizes approaching that of birds.

6. Jurassic Park (or not)While it might have been marginally plausible in1990, the premise of “Jurassic Park” that we couldclone dinosaurs by sequencing dinosaur DNA isalmost certainly impossible, given that DNAdegrades very quickly. Early reports (1990s) ofsequencing insect DNA in amber have been refuted;the sequences are from modern DNA contaminants.This chapter also discusses whether the presence of“medullary bone” in dinosaur bones is reallyindicative of sex—plausible, since female modernbirds store calcium for egg-laying as extra-densebone. Finally, the chapter addresses whether the“soft tissue” (e.g. blood vessels, red corpuscles, etc.)isolated from dinosaur bones by Mary Schweitzer isreally the original material. As you might expect, thiswas very controversial (was it real or some inorganicartifact?). There have been manyreinterpretations. However, currently, the bestestimate is that the shape of the blood vessels areoriginal, but the proteinaceous material has beenchemically altered

7. From baby to giantThere is a physical limit to the size of eggs, i.e. avery large egg would have to have a thick shell toavoid collapsing, but a thick shell would preventgases from exchanging between the growingembryo and the air, and it would have beenimpossible for the chick to break out. Thus,dinosaurs had to hatch from smallish eggs (football-size at the largest) and grow rapidly. Given thatdinosaur bones contain LAGS (growth rings), wecan estimate their age. Given the age and size ofthe bone, one can generate growth curves for

several species, and these tend confirm the rapidgrowth. CT-scanning allows us to examine dinosaurembryos inside their eggs. Generally speaking theembryo bones are fairly well ossified in the egg,indicating that they probably could move aroundimmediately after hatching, much like modernprecocial birds. Given that dinosaurs generally laida fair number of eggs at a time, and the hatchlingscould probably move about on their own, it seemsplausible that parental care would be limited,something like what we observed with moderncrocodilians. On the other hand, we have specimensthat seem to show at least some parental carebeyond that, perhaps on the level seen in birds(brooding Oviraptor, cluster of Psittacosaurusbabies, etc.).

8. How did dinosaurs eat?Guesses about what dinosaurs ate comes from anumber of classical sources: anatomy of the teeth,tooth marks on the bones of prey, wear on the tooth,microscopic scratches on the teeth, stomachcontents, contents of coprolites, etc.. A new scienceof estimating bite strengths comes from FiniteElement Analysis, specifically where in the skullmost of the force ends up and, given the strength ofbone, how much force could be applied before thebone failed. Another, to me fairly speculative, field ofstudy is the construction of food webs for ancientecosystems and estimating the probability of“collapse” when a single animal is removed.

9. How did they move and run?Thanks to some classical work by Neil Alexander inthe 1970’s we can estimate how fast dinosaursmoved, given the hip height and the spacing oftracks. Almost all dinosaur trackways indicate a slowwalk. (Of course tracks are impressed in soft mud,and generally an animal cannot run in mud.)Nowadays, many digital models are made of movingdinosaurs, using the virtual skeletons of dinosaurs,estimated muscle size, known strength of muscle,etc. Tyrannosaurus is usually the favorite target forthis kind of study, and models indicate a top speedof 22 miles per hour. Also covered in this chapter istrackway evidence for dinosaurs swimming. Plusthere is a discussion of the old “ground-up” vs.“trees-down” ideas about the origin of flight. Givenall the early feathered dinosaurs we know about whocould probably glide, “trees-down” is looking moreplausible.

Cont'd


Rediscovered Cont'd

10. Mass extinctionThirty years later, the idea that the Age of Dinosaurswas ended by an asteroid strike seems like anobvious truth, but it was quite controversial whenfirst proposed in 1980. It was only by a slowaccretion of evidence over a period of a decade,including the discovery of a crater of the right age,was it accepted. In the 1980’s, there was muchdiscussion whether was a periodicity in massextinctions and whether this was explainable byastronomical phenomena that could perturb cometsin the Oort cloud. The remainder of the chapterdiscusses how many groups of birds and mammalssurvived the extinction.

This book contains an Afterword on how sciencediffers from speculation in general, and specifically,how dinosaur science has gotten more scientific inrecent decades. It also has an amusing four-pagecompilation of all the ideas put forth explaining theextinction of the dinosaurs. There is no evidence atall for the vast majority of them. There are abouteight proposals with some evidence, but only two(impact of an asteroid, eruption of the DeccanTraps) that are considered well-supported.

I have to give this book high marks about presentingsemi-technical information in a readable way. Manybooks claim to be summarizing the latest informationabout dinosaurs, but in the most cases, since I keepup with the paleontology as a hobby, I find thecontents “old news.” “Dinosaurs Rediscovered”seems to be a happy exception, and I recommendyou read it if you can.

This book is densely illustrated. There are manyclear scientific diagrams, and many color plates.One slight complaint: Every time a dinosaur speciesis mentioned, there is an almost full-page figure ofthat species with basic information: who named it,where it was found, length, little-known fact, map ofthe Earth during the geological period. These wouldbe great in an appendix, but I found them somewhatdistracting when reading.

Sources:

Benton, M.J.

“Dinosaurs Rediscovered. The Scientific Revolutionin Paleontology.”

Thames &Hudson, London, 2019, 320, $35(hardcover)

101 American Fossil Sites You’veGotta See —A Review

Bob Sheridan June 1, 2019

This week in my local public library I came across abook from last year: “101 American Fossil SitesYou’ve Gotta See” by Albert Dickas. Dickas is aformer industrial geologist and professor emeritus atthe University of Wisconsin. He has dozens ofprofessional publications and several popular bookslike “101 Geo-sites You’ve Gotta See” and “OhioRocks.”

This book is a set of two-page spreads on specificfossil sites in alphabetical order by state. There arebetween one and four sites per state (Texas has themost). For New Jersey, my home state, we have“Big Brook Preserve” and “Hamburg Stromatolites.”

The left page of the spread is text and the right hasphotographs of the relevant site and/or fossils. Thelocation of each site is given in latitude and longitudeto the nearest second. There is a list of 4 or 5references at the appendix for each site. It’s beenmany years since I have done any collecting out inthe field, and this can be a useful book for those wholike to do that.

In some Amazon reviews, one criticism is that thiscompilation includes sites where collecting by thepublic is allowed at all times, where collecting isallowed only by special permission, and where thereis no collecting at all (museums), and onesometimes has to dig into the text to tell which it is.Since the title says “Gotta See” and not “GottaCollect At,” this is not necessarily a valid criticism.The museums are usually the smaller ones outsidemajor cities. (Exceptions are the Denver Museum ofNature and Science and the Peabody Museum.) Ihad never heard of most of them and they are nowon my “bucket list” should I visit those states.

One valid criticism is that, while the latitude andlongitude given will in theory get you within a fewhundred feet, this is not necessarily useful for mostpeople when one is trying to find these places by caron roads.

Cont'd


101 Cont'dOne should also be aware that the 101 compilationis maximizing “diversity by state” and not necessarily“diversity by fossil type,” in the sense that most ofthe sites have very common invertebrate fossils onecan find nearly anywhere: crinoid stems,brachiopods, trilobites, gastropods, corals,etc. There are, however, those sites with moreunique fossils: dinosaurs, mammoths, ichthyosaurspetrified trees, etc.

So overall I am quite lukewarm on this format. If onewanted to list collecting sites, one would certainlyinclude more than 101. Plus the directions on howto get to these sites could be more useful. If onewere listing museums, one would certainly list themajor ones first.

Sources:

Dickas, A.B.

“101 American Fossil Sites You’ve Gotta See.”Mountain Press Publishing Company, MissoulaMontana, 2018, 248 pages, $25 (paperback)

Another Bird Foot in Amber

Bob Sheridan July 14, 2019

In April I related the work of Xing et al. (2019), whodescribed a dismembered bird foot and partial wingembedded in Burmese amber. Surprisingly, fiveamber specimens containing parts of birds havebeen described. Today’s story is about the work ofXing et al. (2019A), which describes a sixth suchspecimen.

The piece of Burmese amber is from TanaiTownship, northern Myanmar. It is ~99 Myr. old. Theinclusions consist of a partial right hindlimb and leftwing tip. The foot contains the pes, fibula,tibiotarsus, and femur, but the femur is not clearlyvisible because it is covered in soft tissue. Thespecimen probably was partially decayed beforebeing embedded because skin has sloughed off thefoot bones. The foot bones are clearly that of anenantornithine, an early type of modern bird thatwent extinct after the Cretaceous. The foot isprobably that of a near-adult based on the state offusion of the tarsals and metatarsals.

The authors have given this bird the nameElektorornis changuani (“amber bird” and after ChenGuang, the curator at the Hupoge AmberMuseum). The curvature of the bones makes itlikely that Elektornis was a perching bird.

The most unusual thing about the foot is that thethird toe is about twice as long as the others, andthat is due to the fact that the third phalange in thattoe is extra-long. This feature has never been seenbefore in any bird, either living or extinct. Theauthors suggest this claw might have served afunction much like the elongated middle finger of theaye-aye, a lemur that uses the elongated finger tofish grubs out of tree bark. Another possibility is thatthe extra-long finger helped Elekornis climb trees.

Sources:

Xing, L.; McKellar, R.C.; O’Connor, J.K.; Bai, M.;Tseng, K.; Chiappe, L.M.A fully feathered enantiornithine foot and wingfragment preserved in mid-Cretaceous Burmeseamber.Nature Scientific Reports, 2019, 9: 927.

Xing, L.; O’Connoer, J.K.; Chiappe, L.M.; McKellar,R.C.; Carroll, N.; Hu, H., Bai, M.; Lei, F.A new eantiornithine bird with unusual pedal

proportions found in amber.Curr. Biol. 2019, 29, 2396-2401.


Assembling the Dinosaur— A Review

Bob Sheridan July 13, 2019

Today’s review concerns “Assembling the Dinosaur”by Lukas Rieppel. The major theme for this book isthat there was a perfect storm of events that madepaleontology great in what is now called the “GildedAge” (most people define this as the period 1870-1900, but we can extend it into the 1920s). In thattime we had the original dinosaur discoveries in theAmerican West, the rise of capitalism in the US,transcontinental telegraphy, the transcontinentalrailroad, and a public appetite for spectacle.

The author Lukas Rieppel is a professor of history atBrown University, specializing in the history of theearth sciences. This appears to be his first semi-popular book on paleontology, although he has abook “Science and Capitalism: Entangled Histories”and many articles in professional journals. This bookseems to have been inspired by Rieppel’s graduatedissertation from 2012, which is reviewed at thislink: https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/10381365

This is the chapter formulation of the book:

1. Prospecting for dinosaurs.This chapter reviews the original dinosaurdiscoveries in the American West in 1877 by WilliamHarlow Reed (Wyoming), Arthur Lakes (Colorado)and Oramel Lucas (Colorado) and the negotiationswith Yale Paleontologist O.C. Marsh. Themotivations of these three men was purely financial;they were paid for digging up the bones andshipping them back east. Negotiations, as with anytype of mineral resource, were complex. It was veryhard to know what one had before it was dug out ofthe ground. Sellers had reason to exaggerate thefinds, and buyers had every reason to distrust thesellers. Locations were always kept secret, evenfrom the buyer, lest a competitor swoop in.Eventually, eastern museums were able to mounttheir own expeditions, and the day of theentrepreneurial fossil collector faded within a fewdecades.

This chapter also covers the back-story of fossildiscoveries in England 40 years before. Certainly,people like Mary Anning made a marginal livingfinding and selling fossils, but for the most part themotivation for discovery was less about money, andmore about prestige among gentleman naturalists.

2. Tea with BrontosaurusThis chapter starts with the mounting of the“Brontosaurus” skeleton at the American Museum ofNatural History (AMNH) in 1905 and the centraltheme is what museums are for. Are they places forserious research, places for the education of thepublic, or places of entertainment? Nowadays, mostof us feel that museums can be a balance of allthose things at once. However, at one timemounting dinosaur skeletons was considered to becreating a “spectacle” (associated with unsavorycharacters like P.T. Barnum) and not seriousscience. One must admit, even now, there is somedeception involved. Mounted skeletons may be acomposite of bones from more than one individualanimal (sometimes of different sizes), containguesses as to the form of missing parts, etc.

This chapter also gives the background about aproposal in 1869 by naturalist Albert Smith Bickmoreto found a museum of natural history in New YorkCity. (After all, most major cities of Europe had one.)This proposal was ultimately successful and resultedin the AMNH we know today, although the currentone is not at its original location. In contrast, only afew years before a “Paleozoic Museum” wasplanned for the new Central Park, and artistWaterhouse Hawkins (who did the dinosaursculptures for the Crystal Palace exhibit in England)was commissioned to do the sculptures. The workgot underway, but ran afoul of corrupt politics of thetime when Hawkins denounced Boss Tweed. Theoriginal models were destroyed by vandals and thismuseum never opened.

3. Andrew Carnegie’s DiplodocusAndrew Carnegie is an example of a self-made manfrom the Gilded Age who spent the first part of hislife ruthlessly acquiring wealth (mostly from makingsteel) and the last part giving it away.(Bill Gates, I guess, would be the most parallelmodern example.) The relevant story for this book ishow William Harlow Reed discovered a largesauropod femur in Wyoming and took the story tothe local press, probably in a calculated attempt toattract buyers. The press went wild with headlineslike “Most Colossal Animal Ever on Earth” andpublished fanciful pictures of a sauropod leaningupright against a skyscraper. Carnegie read thesestories and sent William Holland to Wyoming to buythe specimen. It is a complicated story, but ultimatelyCarnegie financed the excavation of another, mostlycomplete, Diplodocus specimen (nicknamed “Dippy”)from another different quarry.Cont'd


Assembling Cont'dPrevious specimens of Diplodocus were known, butDippy was the largest known so far; it was given thespecies name Diplodocus carnegii. Casts wereprepared at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh anddonated to a few dozen museums around the world.It is, thus, probably the most widely known dinosaurspecimen so far.

It seems strange to modern ears, but there wasmuch nationalistic sparring about the significance ofthe Diplodocus donations. In England the attitudeseems to have been that it was amusing that theupstart Americans should present a dinosaur toEngland, where dinosaurs were discovered, and,anyway, Diplodocus was a very stupid dinosaur. Itdid not help the English to know that Carnegie wasborn in Scotland. From Germany there was muchcriticism about the upright stance of the Diplodocusmount because, obviously, reptiles walk with theirlimbs splayed to the side. Americans, of course,considered the fact that the US contained largedinosaurs as proof that it had arrived as a nation.

4. Accounting for DinosaursNowadays we are used to large, hierarchical,bureaucratic organizations that keep meticulousaccounting records and micromanage their workersfrom afar. This is a product of the Gilded Age.“Vertical Integration,” the concept that one shouldcontrol all aspects of a process instead of relying onmiddlemen, is also from that time. The upside ofthese ideas is that one can control costs, avoidredundancy, and make sure things are done right.The Chicago Field Museum was probably the firstmuseum to keep a central record of specimens andwhat they cost. O.C. Marsh was probably the firstpaleontologist who bought into the idea of centralcontrol in a big way. The downside of this idea, ofwhich Marsh also provides the example, is thatdecisions can be made only by a few people, peoplewho have no direct contact with the field work. Alsothe workers in the field come to resent those who tellthem what to do.

5. Exhibiting ExtinctionThis chapter details some of the more misguidedideas about Darwinian evolution that came from theGilded Age, partly inspired by the “bone rush”. Wenever hear any more about “racial senescence”, theidea that species, like individuals, have a youth, amiddle age, and an old age, that inevitably leads toextinction. Similarly “orthogenesis”, the idea thatevolution in a group of animals has a momentum inone direction, for instance getting larger teeth, untilthe animals became so dysfunctional that extinction

is inevitable. The most famous misinterpretation ofbiological evolution, self-servingly accepted by thewealthy in that society, is that of “socialdarwinism.” That is, the rich and powerful were intheir current station because they deserved it; theywere able to out-compete their rivals. Also popularwas “eugenics,” the idea that the lesser classeswere genetically inferior and should be kept frombreeding; unfortunately this idea lasted well into theTwentieth Century.

This chapter also proposes the curious idea thatexhibiting skeletal mounts with more than oneanimal, as was planned for some exhibits in theAMNH, or depicting extinct animals workingtogether, as in some Charles R. Knight paintings,somehow implies that large corporate capitalism isgood. Seems a stretch to me.

6. Bringing dinosaurs back to life.The impact of depicting live dinosaurs in popularculture dinosaurs in movies, cartoons, theme parks,etc. The take off point for this discussion is the stop-motion animated dinosaurs in the 1925 movie “TheLost World.” The major idea here is that, heretofore,photographs were considered in most people’sminds a representation of reality and the idea that aphotograph could lie, e.g. by showing a livedinosaur, was a shock. An exaggeration, in myopinion.

This chapter also covers what is called the “Bumpus-Dean Controversy” at the AMNH in 1910. Thiscentered on whether museum exhibits should bearranged so as to best allow scientific study forspecialists, or should have an appeal for a massaudience. This clash was so heated it caused aresignation and a long leave-of-absence for themuseum director and curator of ichthyology,respectively.

7. Feathered dragonsThis covers everything in dinosaur paleontologyfrom the 1920’s until now. Basically, the centraltheme is that the commercial forces that made theUS the center of paleontology in the late 19thCentury are repeating in China. The fact that Chinais the home of some amazingly well-preservedfeathered dinosaurs certainly does not hurt.

This book is not so much about dinosaursthemselves, but about the history of dinosaurscience from a hundred years ago and how it wasaffected by economic forces.Cont'd


Assembling Cont'dIn some previous reviews I argued against books ondinosaurs written by professors who were notprofessional paleontologists or at least did not havea background in scientific journalism, because suchbooks tend to make arguments that are very basedon vague definitions, or have very low standard ofproof. Happily, this book is an exception. While Icould not buy into every argument linkingpaleontology with capitalism in America, I could atleast see why the arguments were plausible.

Each chapter contains a summary, very useful forme in writing up this review. I wouldn’t call this adensely illustrated book; there are about 3 or 4photographs per chapter, usually depicting amounted skeleton or a picture of one of the peopleor places mentioned in the text.

If you are interested in the history of science,“Assembling the Dinosaur” is a good read.

Sources:Rieppel, L.“Assembling the Dinosaur. Fossil hunters, tycoons,and the making of a spectacle.”Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass. 2019,

325 pages $30 (hardcover).

MicrodocodonBob Sheridan July 20, 2019

This story requires three bits of backgroundconcerning the transitions from reptiles to mammals.The first concerns middle ear bones. Reptiles havemany bones in their lower jaws. Mammals, incontrast, have only a single bone, the dentary. Onthe other hand, reptiles have a single bone in themiddle ear (the stapes) that directly connects theeardrum to the inner ear. Mammals have three (orfour depending on what you count as "middle"): theectotympanic, malleus, incus, stapes. Theectotympanic provides support for the eardrum,while the malleus, incus connects the eardrum to thestapes. There is much evidence from mammal-likereptiles and basal mammals from the Permian andTriassic that the middle ear bones in mammals arehomologous to the bones in the reptile jaw, butattached to the skull rather than the jaw and wellbehind the jaw joint: ectotympanic=angular,malleus=articular+prearticular, incus=quadrate. One

can see with many intermediate stages how theactual joint between the jaw and the skull changedfrom being between the articular and quadrate tobeing between the dentary and squamosal.

The second topic is the hyoid bone. This bone existsin the throat area of most tetrapods. It is unique asa bone in that it is not connected to any other bonebut is connected by ligaments to muscles of the floorof the mouth, larynx, and tongue. In reptiles andearly mammal-like reptiles, the hyoid consists of twoseparate rods. In birds, the hyoid may be one solidpiece and more Y-shaped, with the stem of the Ypointing forward. In advanced mammal-like reptileslike cynodonts, the hyoid is horse-shoe shaped withthe arms pointing backwards. In most mammals, thehyoid is build of several separate bones and has anH-shape, and the upright posts of the H beingcurved out of the plane. This is sometimes called the“saddle” configuration. The thought is that mammalsneed a complex, flexible hyoid for chewing andswallowing and also for sucking milk. I am not surehow to interpret that for humans. We also swallowand suck as infants, but our hyoid is a simple horse-shoe shaped bone.

As you can imagine, the hyoid is rarely preserved infossils, it being so small and not articulated withother bones.


Microdocodon Cont'dFinally, doconodonts. These are mouse-size“mammaliaforms” (named after Doconodon) knownfrom the Jurassic and Cretaceous of North America.They have unique teeth, with two parallel cusps onthe inside and outside edge, probably specialized foreating insects.

A paper by Zhou et al. (2019) describes a newextremely well-preserved doconodont specimenfrom the Jurassic of China (165 Myr.) which they callMicrodocodon gracilis. This animal is shrew size(estimated mass 5-9 grams). The hyoid apparatus ispartially preserved (the earliest known example),and it appears to be the flexible, H-shape version weexpect for mammals. This might imply a mammalianstyle of swallowing. On the other hand, the earbones are still very close to the jaw articulation,indicating Microdocodon had not attained fullmammalian status in respect to the middle ear.

Sources:Zhou, C.-F.; Bhullar, B.A.-S.; Neander, A.I.; Martin,T.; Luo, Z.-X.New Jurassic mamaliaform sheds early light on earlyevolution of mammal-like hyoid bones.Science (2019) 365, 276-279.

Eyes of the Crane FlyBob Sheridan September 17, 2019

The first thing we need for this story is a discussionof the arthropod eye. Most arthropods havecompound eyes that are composed of many(thousands to tens of thousands) of units calledommatidia packed tightly together. Eachommatidium is a tapered cylindrical structure severalhundred micrometers long and about one-tenth aswide, with a hexagonal cross-section. At the top ofthe ommatidium is a lens with a rounded top and aconical bottom. Most of the length of theommatidium is filled with 6-9 long light-sensitive cellspacked tightly together. There is usually some kindof pigment-containing cell surrounding theommatidium that keeps light from leaking from oneommatidium to another. It is thought that thosepigments in arthropods are a chemical class calledommachromes, and these are responsible for theyellow to brown color of the eye.

The other thing we need to know about are somemodern analytical techniques. One is time-of-flightsecondary ion mass spectroscopy or ToF-SIMS.This is a technique of shooting charged particles at asurface and chemically analyzing (by atomic weight)

the vapor that comes off. For our purposes, the mostinteresting thing is that the resolution of the analysisis less than a micrometer, i.e. it can be used toanalyze very tiny features, and it can be applied tofossils. Other techniques are various scanningelectron microscopy and x-ray CT scanning. Theresolution of these is also sub-micrometer.

Now we get to the main story. Lindgren et al.chemically analyze the eyes of 23 fossil specimensof the crane fly from the Fur Formation in Denmark,which is dated to the Eocene (54 Myr). This is agreat opportunity to compare the chemicalcomposition of these fossils to that of living cranefiles. There are two very interesting findings. Firstthe mass spectrum of the pigment surrounding theommatidia resembles eumelanin more thanommachrome in both fossil and living crane flies.Eumelanin is a pigment that is found in almost allvertebrates and many invertebrates, but this is thefirst time it is identified in insect eyes, fossil or living.Second, the lenses of the fossil crane flies appear tocontain calcite, while the lenses of living crane fliesare made of chitin, the same substance forming thecuticle in most arthropods. Much has been made ofthe fact that trilobites have lenses made of calcite,but this raises the possibility that living trilobites hadchitinous lenses like living arthropods, and thecalcite in their lenses accumulated as part of thefossilization process.

Sources:

Lindgren, J.; Nilsson, D.E.; Sjovall, P.; Jarenmark,M.; Ito, S.; Wakamatsu, K.; Kear, B.P.; Schultz, B.P.;Sylvestersen, R.L.; Madsen, H.; LaFountain, J.R.Jr.;Alwmark, C.; Eriksson, M.E.; Hall, S.A.; Lindgren, P.;Rodriguez-Mizoso, I.; Ahlberg, P.“Fossil insect eyes shed light on trilobite optics and

the arthropod pigment screen.”Nature 2019, 573, 122-126.

PALEONTOGRAPH

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