Book Review: Dinosaurs & A Dirigible

I'm not going to lie to you, I picked this book up on a complete whim while out at Barnes & Noble about...two weeks ago. Along with snagging this book I got myself a new Schielc t-rex toy, which I abosultely adore. The look the toy is giving this book prompted someone to call him "Skeptasaurus", which I think is now going to be his name forever.

I'm going to do a more detailed review about my lovely toy in a little bit. I actually had full intentions of doing one that day, but I got lost in my crazy world of distractions.

This book is actually a collection of short stories mostly starring the same main character in different dinosaur related scienarios. It had a lot of promise, but the stories seemed to kind of feel too familiar or repatative in character design. I ended up only reading 3 our of 5 of them and don't really have a desire to finish the book. While the stories do have some really cool paleontology elements, the characters were too similar between stories and sometimes the plot elements didn't make any damn sense.

The main protaginist of each story is Henry Vickers, a cool, manly-man hunter guy who tracks dinosaurs. In the three stories I read, he had to help rangle a t-rex or tag along with people going back in time.
If they explained how they went back in time, I don't remember it, but I think Vickers was more of the muscle and not the brains. He often dismissed the science behind the magic because he wasn't there to do that job.

In the two time-travel stories, Vickers was there to help either gather paleontology information and observe, or help rich dick-heads do a dinosaur safari. The second one wasn't my favorite, but I will say "Calibration Run", the first of the time-travelly stories, was pretty fun to read. Vickers is tossed back into time to help a lady paleontologist gather priceless information about plants, animals, etc...and they happen to run across a tribe of early hominids. They never really identify which hominds they were supposed to be, but the paleontologist explained that there was no way to really tell and it could be a species they'd never seen before.
Naturally, she wanted to take one back with them to study, but when the creature started to shed tears inside the trap, Vickers lets the thing go, saying that it was too human for them to treat like an animal.
Pretty legit, in my opinion.

Sadly, that is really the only highlight of these stories. 1 out of 3 I read were pretty good, but there was a glaring issue with each of the group of characters Vickers was tossed in with.
Each story had the same two tropes that I couldn't get past: a female who is sleeping with someone she's not supposed to and a over-the-top hot tempered asshole. It was just...distracting. I was even willing to forgive the fact that it was never explained just how they were going back in time (though to be fair they may talk about it in another story I didn't make it to), and the fact that in one of the stories is about safari hunting dinosaurs.
I hate that sport anyway.

So, would I reccomend this book? No, I wouldn't. I wasn't fun and I didn't enjoy the characters at all. The second story is pretty cool, but the rest of it fell short. I think if you want a good dinosaur book, there are others you can dabble in.

I think the next dinosaur book I'm going to try out is Dinosaur Wars: Earthfall by Thomas P. Hopp. It's dinosaurs...from spaaaaace!

That'll probably come next month as I'm going to finish up a nerdy book about vampires before I start that one. I'll keep you updated for sure.

Next week is Darwin Day, so I'm going to work on getting something prepared. I posted about the weird computer issues Ive been having, so bear with me while I get that mess sorted out.
Unfortunately, typing these posts through the Blogspot app on the phone isn't the best format wise....and spellcheck wise.
So, sorry for that too.

Anyway, I'll try and post more often than I have been. I actually have a lot of stuff I can gush about, so I just gotta wittle out the time.

Until then!

- M

A lot of goodness.

The holidays came a little late for me this year, so I'm just now getting my hands on some simply amazing things my family and friends got for me this year. One thing I actually meant to post about in the past was something given to me early in December, but I wanted to wait to post one big post about all the goodness.

But before I dive into my fan-girling, there was a new article posted about a new GIANT, sea-dwelling, ancient crocodile called Machimosaurus rex. This dude was about 30 feet long and lived during the Cretaceous period. There's a great video through the link as well as the article, so I recommend checking it out!


This year was awesome for really unique and cool dinosaur/paleontology swag. My best friend got me the first thing I'm going to gush about as a "silly gift", but it turned out to be one of the most entertaining toy I've had in a long time.
It may look like an ordinary giant green beetle, but it's actually a giant green beetle made of what I assume is compacted saw dust with little bugs encased in acrylic buried inside. The goal of this cute little thing is to "excavate" these little buggers out of the big beetle with the tools provided. It comes with a scraping/digging tool, a magnifying glass and a little brush to knock away the enormous amount of dust that happens when you start scraping away at a sawdust beetle.
While this toy is a blast, I do recommend digging on a solid surface that's easy to clean because you will get this shit everywhere.

The end result are these cute little bugs that I will be keeping in my tiny Zelda chest that makes noise when you open it.

Spider, Scorpion, and Beetle 

I'm a huge coffee drinker, so getting me a coffee mug for xmas is a fantastic idea. I have a really awesome clay coffee mug my best friend got me a couple years back, so finding one equal to my Stegosaurus mug was not an easy feet.

A feet only my partner in science, Jess, could accomplish.

I will never not thing color changing mugs are extremely cool, so this beautiful ridiculous masterpiece is right up my ally. In it's neutrual state, the picture is that of a Brachiosaur, T-rex, and Deinonychus hanging out swamp side, defying space and time. These awesome dudes are from three totally different time periods but that didn't stop them from getting together and having a good time.

You have no excuse for not seeing people now, if these guys can make this magic happen.

What's so cool about this, is not only do they slowly turn into skeletons when my favorite hot beverage is being poured into it, but little name plates appear at their feet like a museum display. I freaking love this thing!

Before coffee

After coffee

Before coffee

After coffee

I made a video on Instagram if you want to go check it out. XD

My father-in-law is a mastermind of giving cute gifts for xmas. Me and my husband have gotten some awesome things over the past years, but the Indominous Rex Chia Pet has got to take the cake.

The moment I put this picture up on Instagram, my feed blew up with likes (for me anyway, I'm not followed by a lot of people). 

I've never had one of these things before, so I'm looking forward to seeing how its uh...coat...grows? It's the perfect amount of ridiculous and I'm very excited. I'm actually soaking the planter now so I get plant the seeds today. I'll absolutely post progress pictures.

Last but certainly not least is something that I believe has sparked a whole new collectors need in my soul. I had heard about Canada's amazing dinosaur coins before, and was always so incredibly jealous at the country's open acceptance of science in their culture. I would love to see something like this in America's mint, but I think we still have a long way to go. These beautiful works of art are stunning, and many of them are still around to purchase. One of my favorite coins they have ever produced isn't a dinosaur, but is our fishy ancestor Tiktaalic, which I think I've talked about before. 

I adore this creature and everything it means for understanding the history of life and evolution, so having this amazing coin given to me last night was breath-taking.

Small side note, my dad was a huge coin collector when he was a kid, and had an impressive collection still when I was growing up. Sadly, that collection has since been lost or sold, so I always have a bit of a fondness to coin collecting, even if it wasn't something I personally got into. It was something he really enjoyed, and I'm sad the collection is no longer around.

I recently had heard on the latest I Know Dino podcast that the Canadian mint had put out another t-rex coin. I think I'm going to try and start buying these things and making my own, incredibly niche, coin collection. These things aren't in circulation of course, but they're beautiful and definitely collectors items. 

I love my new coin so much!!

I'm glad to finally be able to share these fantastic things on my blog. I'm going to hopefully get more studying done today for my Coursera class and finish up some housework, so maybe I'll post again soonish.

Until then!

-M

Dinosaur and not so dinosaur courses online!

While listening to the latest episode of I Know Dino, they brought up a free online college course website called Coursera and mentioned there are some paleontology classes being offered this semester.

If you're not familiar with Coursera, it's a totally free site with university taught classes you can sign up for. You can pay to have a certificate printed stating you passed the course, and apparently certain colleges will give you credit for those certificates. The certifications seem to run about $70, otherwise you can skip that and learn everything for free without the certificates.

Now, I knew about this site, as I was told about it a couple years ago from my good friend Jess, but for whatever reason I never took the plunge. This time around I actually signed up for a total of three classes, two of which haven't started just yet.
The class that has already started is Intro to Evolution and Genetics, which so far I'm really enjoying. The lessons are clear and informative, and the instructor is fun and excited about the subject. One of the lessons is actually a 30mins interview with Jerry Coyne, which is the author of Why Evolution is True, and has a great blog I follow.

I think there's still a day or two left to jump into this class, so I highly recommend it if you're interested in learning some good basics of evolution!

The other two classes I signed up for is Theropod Dinosaurs and the Origin of Birds which starts later in January and Ancient Marine Reptiles that starts in February. Both of these courses are taught from professors from the University of Alberta.
I was going to take the Dinosaur 101 class that is offered, but I took a class similar to it in college a couple of years ago, so I skipped it. I heard it's a great class, and a fantastic place to start if you're interested in learning some dinosaur basics. I think the sign up is still open for it too.

Anyway, I figured I'd share my excitement for getting a chance to learn something new and exciting without paying thousands of dollars to do so. I never did get a chance to finish school, so it's awesome to feel like I'm back in the classroom again.

-M

Ceratopsians: my week long research and my life long love

Ceratopsians

I spent all day curled up in my recliner reading and browsing through websites, learning whatever I could. Since I was sick today, I was chair bound and not really going to get much housework done anyway. I figured the best way to spend a sick day is to learn about something amazing.

I don’t know why I suddenly became overcome with wanting to research into this group of dinosaurs, but the journey has been pretty damn entertaining. To be honest, I only knew very basic information about this species when I started, probably about the same as any dinosaur fan when they first get into a species they really like. I knew and adored the common rock stars, Triceratops, Styracosaurus and Torosaurus, but didn’t know a lot of the scientific details about them.

I wanted to know about the classification process, what they knew about the uniquely ceratopsian features of horns and frills, and what they knew so far about the evolutionary process for these animals. I was really amazed to find out the extent in which is known about these creatures, and what is still being heavily debated.

These animals have been one of my favorites since I was a little kid, so getting to dive off into the deep end of the research pool was a blast. I feel like I've had a chance to revisit an old friend as a grown up and have a whole new appreciation for these amazing dinosaurs. I've learned so much, so I hope I get a chance to share with you something you may not have known before.

Off on a side note, I will say that reading through scientific literature has made me realize how much I’ve slipped in my education. I guess spending several years away from universities and being immersed in academic studies has made my brain a little mushy.

I could tell you all about the last episode of Adventure Time I watched, but was stumped when it came to what which order “clade” fit in the classification order. Since I was having such a hard time with some of these terms, or had to have a refresher on some of them, I decided to put in a vocabulary section to help incase any of you were in the same boat as me. If not, don’t tell me, just humor me by smiling and nodding, please.

I will also admit that I used two books for this research but a lot of quick references through the internet. The bulk of what I looked into I read from the books I had at my disposal, but for general questions I used Wikipedia, which I know isn’t always the best. I tried to use information from universities if they were available, but honestly Wiki is the best for when you get stumped on what a species is called or something simple like that.

• Terms/Vocabulary -- I learned a bunch of new terms and words I had never heard before while diving into some of the more scientifically heavy reading.
• Monophyletic: In common cladistic usage, a monophyletic group is a taxon (group of organisms) which forms a clade, meaning that it consists of an ancestral species and all its descendants.
• Marginocephalia: a clade, or group, with thick skulls made up of Ceratopsians and Pachycephalosauria.
• Jugles: term used for dinosaurs, birds, crocodiles and lizards for their cheekbones.
• Epoccipitas: spikes along the frill.
• Sexual Dimorphism: The physical differences in species based on their sex. i.e. color, size and shape.

• What makes a dinosaur a “Ceratopsian” dinosaur?

Ceratopsian dinosaurs are herbivorous, quadrupedal animals (walked on four legs) with large face horns and large cranial frills coming from the back of the skull. These guys are known as “thick skulled” or Marginocephalia, which is actually the same classification as the Pachycephalosaurus, or the dudes with the dome head who people usually imagine slamming their heads into each other like bulls. I don’t honestly know if they actually do that, so I’ll have to do some research on that topic. I want to say the last thing I had read was that this behavior is still widely debated.

Back to the horn-faces.

Each species looks a little different in either the shape of their frill or horns, but all of them have those defining characteristics along with a beak and “exaggerated jugles”, or weird looking cheekbones. They most likely had rough, pebble skin without feathers or hair and wide feet with digits and padding. We know about their skin because of fossilized skin impressions that show how their what the skin’s texture was.

When I looked into how fast they could move, the most common answer I could find was they were faster an an elephant for sure, and probably about the same as a rhino. Rhinos, fun fact, run about 35MPH, so that’s pretty nightmarish.

Diabloceratops saying "Eeey"
Art by Ramon Garcia

So, why a beak?

Other than the horns and frills, the Ceratopsians having a beak is also pretty unique, but not entirely exclusive. According to what I read in The Dinosauria, these beaky horn-faces had a pretty impressive dental battery and a powerful bite force, which means they could much down on really anything they could find. With them being such large animals, finding enough food to sustain them must have been tough, so adapting to be able to get nutrients from anything they could is a great advantage.

The beak was most likely used to grab strongly onto plants and break them loose to eat, which makes sense since a lot of ancient plants were thick and tough.

• Ceratopsians are broken down into groups:

• Two Groups
• Centrosaurinae: no brow horns but one big nose horn and long or exaggerated frill spikes or “epoccipitas”. Examples: Centrosaurus, Styracosaurus. This group is further split into another subfamily called pachyrhinosaurini, which has the weird turkey head looking horned dinosaurs.
• Chasmosaurinae: brow horns, nose horn and sometimes long, skinny frills. Examples: Triceratops, Chamosaurus. Regaliceratops.

In each group, their defining characteristics are the shape of their frills and what kind of horns they have. The horns functionality is pretty obvious, but the purpose of their frill is really waht interested me. What is that for, exactly? And why do they look so different between species?

The reason and functionality of frills is actually still widely debated. I remember when I was a kid, I read that the frills were used to protect the neck of the animals from large theropods that are always a threat. The frills would act like a knight’s shield to block the incoming death from above as the massive jaws tried to grab onto their necks.

This doesn’t seem to be the theory so much anymore, as the recent studies of the frills show that they actually weren’t very strong and filled with lots of blood vessels. Having a pair of massive jaws clamp down on the frill would most likely break the bones and cause massive bleeding.

The more accepted theory nowadays is that the frill was probably used to warn off predators or attract mates, or both. Since the frill did have so many blood vessels in it, it most likely was able to flush with blood to display colors for these purposes. Both males and females had frills and horns, so I think it’s pretty reasonable to think that their frills had many purposes in displaying intimidation and signaling to each other.

• Sexual Dimorphism

The reason I brought up the term “sexual dimorphism” in the vocabulary, is because a big reason for the disagreement in species is over this. Every species has differences between the sexes biologically, thus making males and females look different. Sometimes this is very obvious: in deers only males have antlers, or how in certain birds the males are brightly colored, whereas in other species the differences are more subtle. The tricky thing with dinosaurs is, well, they’re aren’t any around to study while alive. Going off of just the skeleton is tough, because we don’t know which ones were male and female right away.

I dug into how paleontologists could tell the difference between sexes in dinosaurs and ended up finding a paper about it. It covers a broad range of dinosaurs, but I locked in on the clues used for specifically Ceratopsians. I got lucky in this case, because apparently the sexual dimorphism examples in this species is widely accepted, were as the ground is still pretty shaky in a lot of other species. The reason for that is because there have been so many different specimens of Ceratopsians found.

It seems that the horn morphology is what’s going to be key in figuring out if a Ceratopsian is a male or female, at least in the case with Chasmosaurine Ceratopsians, with male horns pointing up more, were females horns face more forward.

For Centrosaurine clade, the frill shape is going to be what determines more of the sex since they don’t have the brow horns. This is a bit trickier because the frill changes shape as the animal grows into adulthood. This classification seems to be still debated, because it is hard to tell the difference between smaller species of Centrosaurine and ones of the same species who just haven’t hit puberty yet.  

Ethser Van Hulsen

I had meant to get this post out much earlier, but I wanted to make sure the research I started was all fully sited and made sense. I guess I accidently fell off a science ledge on this one, because I kept coming up with more questions that needed more digging.

I hope I covered all the ground that there could possibly be about basic knowledge for Ceratopsian dinosaurs, without writing a book about them. This was a lot of fun and I enjoyed myself, so I hope it’s fun to take the journey with me as well. I think I’ll do this again with another species, maybe try Saurpods next time around. That’s another species I really adore and don’t really know a ton about.

Just in case you wanted to hear more about specific species of Ceratopsians, there’s a great podcast I listen to called I Know Dino that has “dinosaurs of the day” on each episode. Here’s a list with links to the podcasts with Ceratopsians as their stars of the show:

• I Know Dino:
• Episode 15 -- Pentaceratops
• Episode 30 -- Triceratops
• Episode 42 -- Styracosaurus
• Episode 44 -- Pachyrhinosaurus

Triceracops from Kung Fury...cause why not?

Sources:

Chapman, Ralph David Weishample, Gene Hunt, and Diego Rasskin-Gutman Sexual Dimorphism in Dinosaurs Natural Museum of Natural History, 1997

Weishampel, David, Peter Doddson, and Haszaka Osmolska Dinosauria: Second Edition. University of California press, 2004.

Prim, Keiron Dinosaurs -- The Grand Tour: Everything Worth Knowing About Dinosaurs from Aardonyx to Zuniceratops Workman Publishing Co, 2013