Welcome Home!

My Tiktaalik Made It!

He's even more adorable than I could have thought. 

I had such a long day at work yesterday. I just started a new shift and adjusting to it has been very rough. I went from working 3PM-11PM Monday-Friday, to 7AM-3PM Thursday-Monday. 

Yeah.

Needless to say, I worked a long stretch from when my new shift started after the old one ended, and had to completely redo my sleeping habits. I've also been training someone at work, which has been trying but he's getting better, but it adds to be already exhausted state. I ended up having to stay 4 extra hours at work yesterday, having been up since 4:30AM and on the edge of sanity I was a touch grumpy.

Meeting my Tiktaalik definitely made my day all worth it.

A Freaking Dream Come True

Plushie Tiktaalik

I finally get a huggable Tiktaalik.

For those you may be unfamiliar with this sweet, lovable face, I posted about Tiktaalik before on my blog back in 2015, which you can check out here. Since there's a whole post dedicated to why I love Tiktaalik so much, I won't eat up this post about how great he is.

I just tested the links on that post, and everything is still there and working, which is awesome. 

According to the email I got from Palaeo Plushies, my order should be at my door step between 5-7 business days, which is impressive considering he's coming from Scotland.

I'm also highly considering recording myself opening it, because I'm just too damn excited, but know that no one is going to super care.

BUT IMMA DO IT ANYWAY.

There might be a video uploaded later of me being a rabid fan girl about a stuffed, ancient fish. So, you know....be on the look out for that.

Richard Dawkins turns 75!

Happy Birthday Richard Dawkins!

I wanted to make a post about Richard Dawkins, because not only is he one of my heroes, he's also a brilliant evolutionary biologist who does amazing work in science communication and helping the general public understand a very complicated concept. 

I've put together a list of my favorite books of his with a link to buy them, some links to my favorite clips and shows with Dawkins and a link to his foundation as well.

I ended up going on a bit of a ride in talking about how I found Dawkins's work and why I like it, so I'll put that at the bottom if anyone cares to read my word vomit.

Go learn something new today! You get bonus points if you use the phrase, "Science works, bitches" at least once today. :D

Books by Richard Dawkins:

• An Appetite for Wonder
• On sale for Kindle for $1.99!! 
• The Greatest Show on Earth: Evidence for Evolution **my personal favorite
• Magic of Reality ** also a favorite
• The Selfish Gene
• Ancestor's Tale
• Out of Eden
• The Blind Watchmaker
• God Delusion

Amazon link to his works.

The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science

From the website:

Dear Friend,

The mission of the Richard Dawkins Foundation is to promote scientific literacy and a secular worldview. Some might see this as two distinct missions: 1) Teaching the value of science, and 2) Advancing secularism.

Yes, those are my foundation’s goals. You will not be surprised to learn that my personal priority is science as one of the highest and most aesthetically rewarding achievements of the human spirit.

But permit me to trace the connection between science and the other preoccupation of my foundation, the advancement of secularism. I see those goals as interrelated and mutually reinforcing.

You are well familiar with the existential challenges of global climate change and unsustainable population growth facing mankind and the planet. Of all the forces opposing an evidence-based response, religion is the most active — and it is especially strong in America.

Religious extremism not only interferes with the advance of science but with personal freedoms and human dignity, and not only in places where jihadists hold sway but in America as well, in areas such as access to contraception, LGBTQ rights and women’s equality.

Critical thinking is the real saviour of humankind. My foundation promotes respect for people who hold critical thinking as a cherished personal value and use it in day-to-day life.

The logical counter to religious extremism is people who rely on evidence to make decisions. Yet the voice of secular people is maligned in this country. Forty-five percent of Americans think you have to believe in God to be moral. Secular voices are considered immoral. They are not listened to on that basis.

We must counter this baseless hostility to allow the contributions of secular people in vital national debates to count. Making secular views and people welcome in politics and policy-making will advance human safety, security, health, achievement, prosperity and most of all, science.

Please accept my personal thanks for your interest in the foundation. If you agree with our mission, please consider becoming one of us. If you are already a member and supporter, thank you for standing with me.

My greatest hope is that together we can change society for the better.

Warmly,

Richard Dawkins

Shows, clips and various other fun things:

• Interviews & Discussions:
• Dawkins and the giraffe laryneal nerve
• this is a dissection of a giraffe, so not for the faint of heart!
• totally one of my favorite videos!
• Interview with Neil DeGrasse Tyson
• Seth Andrews interview
• Darwin Day 2015 -- Dawkins answers questions about evolution
• Discussion with Lawrence Krauss
• Richard Dawkins Foundation YouTube Page

• Being a smart ass
• Science works...bitches
• What if you're wrong?
• Dawkins reading hate mail: Part 1 & Part 2

• Documentaries:
• The Genius of Charles Darwin
• The God Delusion 
• Sex, Death and the Meaning of Life

Word Vomit:

I was always one of those kids who was really into old dead stuff and ancient cultures. I always adored dinosaurs, ancient Egypt, mummies of all variety, fossils, and biology. I don't really remember if the theory of evolution was taught in biology or not, since I went to a Texas school there's a good chance it was lightly brushed over.

What I do know is that when I got the itch to learn more about Charles Darwin and evolution, it started a life long obsession. It didn't take long to realize how much yelling was coming from the other side, a very misinformed and delusional side of anti-science ignorance. I learned about "creationism" and people who took their religious texts as actual literal words from god and not stories. 

I had honestly never heard of that until I started looking into evolution. It blew my mind.

Naturally, this pushed me away from religion, which I didn't have a firm grasp on anyway. We were hardly a religious family, dad is a self proclaimed Catholic though he does not really practice it at all, and mom is just the vanilla "Christian" with no real labels attached. I think through my entire childhood, we went to church maybe five times.

Reading about the nonsense coming from the extreme end of the religious spectrum only widened the canyon between me and faith and pushed me closer to reason. Since it was evolution that drove me to question the shaky grounds of a belief in god, I started looking into just that: science vs religion. Naturally, you don't have to wade far into that ocean without bumping into Richard Dawkins and his work.

I remember getting my copy of The God Delusion as a gift from my then boyfriend now husband for Christmas several years later. I had been happily dancing on the heathen side of life as an anthropology major in college, diving head first into human evolution. I was no longer religious, but still had questions about the grand scheme of things. 

Now I can happily say, "I don't know" with extreme confidence. I am a proud atheist.

While Dawkins is best known for his hard stance against religion, (honestly a stance I share at this point, but that's a post for a different time) he is truly a brilliant evolutionary biology first an foremost. Beyond The God Delusion, his book The Greatest Show on Earth: Evidence for Evolution is one of my favorites. It's bright, colorful, lots of amazing pictures and easy to understand and witty dialog about just how and why evolution is true and all around us. I bought it day one, and it's still one of my treasures.

I own a copy of almost all of his work in one format or another, the newest addition being An Appetite for Wonder, which I snagged on sale. I've still yet to finish The Blind Watchmaker, as I remember it being a tad overwhelming at the time. So far, all the books I've read have been amazing works. Always informative and laced with that witty British charm we all know and love about Dr. Dawkins.

I doubt very highly that the 75 year old scientist will ever be in Texas, but I really hope one day he makes another round of book signing. He's recently had a stroke, so I know it's not going to be for some time, but I'll be heart broken if I never get to meet him.
Though, last time I met someone I admired, I didn't say a damn word. It'll probably be the same scenario if he ever was to come to my neck of the woods. I'd smile, mute, and just hold out a book to be signed. Maybe squeak out a timid "thank you" as I shuffle away.
I'm hopeless in front of my heroes. Star-struck is hardly the word. I loose all brain function.
I'm practically a blinking vegetable.

I was going to go on a bit longer, but I have to get ready for work so I'll wrap it up. If you've read through this and you're still hanging in there with me, you're probably one of my best friends who reads this as one of two of my only subscribers. Look at you being awesome.
I think my next post I'm going to talk about all the super cool dinosaur toys and models I've been pining for over the last couple months. Some really cool stuff has been released and I need a place to vent about how much I covet them.

Until then.

-M

Eye bones

Strange Obsession with Bony Eye Rings

Ever one of those head-tilt ponders while staring at something that suddenly becomes very fascinating, all the while you're whispering in your head, "What the fuck is that?"
I'd like to call those puppy thoughts, because whatever you're staring at is just as interesting and thought provoking as an adorable baby dog trying to understand the noise coming out of that chew toy. With all your millions of years of evolution, you suddenly become reduced to a head-tilt, all the while your brain swimming with questions.

Anyone who enjoys looking at bones of dead things may have noticed these extremely odd and unique bony structures around the eyes of certain animals, almost resembling bony rings surrounding the eye socket. These odd, almost robotic looking rings are typically seen in reptiles and fish, but not mammals and crocodiles. I figured they had something to do with the eye function, like perhaps how they attached to the skull or had to do with how they focused the eye because of the camera lens like structure.
That was my guess, but I wasn't exactly right.

• Sidetracked: Eye Evolution

Before diving too headlong into these weird eye adaptations, I think it's a good idea to familiarize yourself with the evolution of the eye, because it is one of the most impressive organs to be forged through the ages. Often the weapon of creationists, the eye in all of it's complexity as been a beautiful enigma for scientists for centuries. The squishy, fluid balloons that sit in your skull have the power to drink in the world around you and flash the images to the wrinkled mess operating your body. How can something so amazing, so oddly specific in it's function come to be?

There's is a misused and misquoting piece of Darwin's Origin of Species that is often haphazardly tossed into arguments against and for evolution that is often brought up when it comes to the human eye:

To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.

Plucked out of context, this sounds like Darwin helps the "designer" argument for the complexity of the eye, which is not at all how he viewed the subject.
If you want to check this yourself, you absolutely can in chapter five of Origin of Species, but the quote goes on as follows:

Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. (Darwin 143-144)

 So, how did eyes evolve into the glorious, often beautiful, complex windows into the world? It's Okay To Be Smart did a series on evolution back in December called 12 Days of Evolution, which I've gushed lovingly about before.
In this particular episode, they go on to talk about the evolution of the eye from humble beginnings into the amazing variety ones sees today. I also very much recommend watching the amazing Neil DeGrasse Tyson's Cosmos, as he very eloquently talks about this process in his storytelling, magical narrative.

• Eye bones: What the hell are they?

The bony structures are called Sclerotic Rings, and they are still somewhat of a mystery. The rings are apparently still found in modern day birds and fish, but the exact function of the rings is still debated. From the couple articles I looked through, it seems the rings most likely are for helping maintain the shape of the eye, especially for larger eyes of marine reptiles.
Some of the best examples of well preserved sclerotic rings are that of Ichthyosaurs, a large marine reptile that looks like a doe-eyed dolphin. In an article from UC Berkeley, a certain species of Ichthyosaur, Temnodontosaurus, had the largest eye ever recorded for any animal. These rings probably helped these massive eyes keep their shape and structural integrity.

Speaking of marine reptiles, I'm sure most people know about Mosasaurs from being the giant badass Shamu attraction from Jurassic World, but these guys also had some pretty impressive eye bones that have been heavily researched.
A team of researchers from Tokyo Gakugei University published an article on PLoS One about how they are using the rings to help classify species of Mosasaurs between one another. Since this is a peer reviewed scientific paper, it's pretty scientific term heavy and dry, but it's pretty fascinating to read.
Along with the common assumption that the rings had something to do with the maintaining the eye's shape, the rings may also have served as "providing the point of muscle insertions fr visual accommodation", like I had thought originally. Score one for me!
What I didn't know was that the rings also may correlate to whether or not dinosaurs were nocturnal, which is really interesting. I went hunting for the paper referenced in the PLoS One article about this claim, but it's unfortunately not available online. It's most likely one of those papers you have to pay for, which is a bummer. I'll keep digging around and maybe do another blog post when I can find more material on the subject, but the idea of nocturnal dinos sounds pretty cool.

From what I've gathered through my couple hours of poking around the internet on a whim, these unique eye bones, or Sclerotic Rings, still have some research to be done by much more brilliant minds that myself.
I think the next thing I want to dig into is going to be the purpose of sails on dinosaurs and other early life forms. I think the research for that is going to be about the same as the eye rings, a lot of great and strange ideas worth sorting through with the hopes of one of them making sense.
I also need to be a certain dinosaur to do research on and make a post about, and have a couple in mind I want to fan-girl out over. Maybe a monthly recap is in the future too.
We'll see.

Until then!

-M



Sources of my internet poking:

UC Berkeley article about giant eyed Ithyosaurs

PLoS One talking about Mosasaurs

Perot Museum: Art meets Science

Alamosaurus and T-Rex

This is not the first time I've been to the Perot Museum and it is definitely not going to be my last. I think I've been at least three times so far, and each time I still get those wonderful butterflies of excitement in my tummy when I walk inside. Since the museum is so new, it still has that sparkle that hasn't been dulled over thousands and thousands of field trips that will eventually wear it all down.
Sadly, that's the state of most museums in the DFW area, especially Fort Worth. The museums have seen so much foot traffic and natural destruction of curious children that it starts to look extremely dated and defeated.
That's not the case with the Perot Museum. It's gorgeous. The exhibits are still shiny and exciting with new information and up to date displays and interactive games for the kids at every turn. They've done a great job keeping it very entertaining but also really alluring for adults. It doesn't feel overly children geared, and is unapologetic in it's clear cut facts about evolution and science.
Thus, Perot Museum has got to be one of my all time favorite places to visit.

The building itself is so hypnotically strange from the outside, so unique you can't help but fall in love right away. I'm not going to do this building description justice, but I can't help but describe it as a giant, gray mud hut with a slanted window falling down the side of it.
Hey, I warned you it was going to sound weird.

Here's what it looks like from the outside:

Weird, right?

It looks more like a modern art museum than a museum of natural history, and I'm sure this was absolutely on purpose. It wants to dray you in and surprise you with education. 

I guess calling it an art museum isn't too far from the truth though, because the exhibits are set up like works of art. They are beautifully displayed and alluring, especially the Gem Hall, which is like walking through a hidden treasure vault.

The museum is made up of several floors with different exhibits on each one, but my absolute favorites are the Life: Then and Now (dinosaurs), Becoming Human, and the Gem Hall. All of them are fantastic, but I of course adore the dinosaur hall the most and love the fact that the top floor of the dinosaur exhibit is all about birds and lets you get close to the tall Alamosaurus face.

Amazingly realistic dinosaur skeleton replicas tower over the guests, frozen in mid action as fan-favorite t-rex stomps along side the breathtaking Alamosaurus who stretches high above the first floor. A massive pterosaur sores above with long skeleton wings spanning several feet while avicious Mosasur flanks the opposite wall. 

A parade of other dinosaurs and far distant cousins surround the t-rex and Alamosaurus battle: hadrosaurs grazing calmly, raptors sprinting with claws displayed as they ready attack, and a Pachyrhinosaur mulls about towards the back.

Murals of these creatures in the flesh hang as testaments to how beautiful they would have been in life as well as in death, the backdrops to help fill the imagination.

 
 

Being Human is my next favorite, a perfect hall to visit right before Darwin Day even though this post isn't going live until after the 12th. I actually was at the museum on the 4th but haven't gotten around to write about it until now. 

As a side note, totally unrelated to the post, I'm actually home sick from work with a mild cold. While it sucks I'm feeling like three-times-hammered dogshit, I was able to get my Darwin Day blog post finished and get this post going during my recovery time. I'm sitting on the couch listening to my dogs snoring and my husband playing Xcom, musing about the upcoming awesome events and my past visit to the museum.

Not a bad way to spend a sick day.

Walking into the Being Human hall is so dreamy. There are pillars of cubed pictures showing our clearly human skulls along side our almost human ancestors floating high above wax hyper realistic wax models of hominids and humans. A long white table height display is not far from these silent statues showing the always humbling diagrams of hand and arm bone similarities between all species. Outlines of a cat's arm is shown next to a bat's, a frogs beside a whales, and our wiggly fingers besides chimps.

A giant table displaying the entire tree of life is topped with magnifying glasses so you can read the incredibly small print of all the names around the massive family pinwheel, the jagged lines tracing back in fewer and fewer brackets until it reached the very middle in all its simplicity. A small red dot in the blur of names simply states "You are here".

Behind this table Darwin's own small paper doodle is displayed above the reality he inspired the great scientists after him to discover.

 

While I'm very much in love with the dinosaur hall, the Gem Hall is pure magic. Sparkling treasures rest behind panes of glass and under soft light, casting shimmers across the dim and haunting room. Natural precious gems in their raw form vying for attention beside the often more impressive cubed and otherworldly minerals. 

It's hard not to lust after these remarkable treasures.

 

If the dinosaur exhibit is my true love, the Human Hall is my passion, then the Gem Hall is my incredibly guilty pleasure. I should know more about them than I do, especially as a fossil nerd and anthropology major, but honestly my geology skills are embarrassingly small. I remember bits and pieces from my geology II class from many years ago, but I never really kept up with it. I typically stuck with the biology, evolutionary or anatomy studies of things instead of the actual geology. Each time I visit the Gem Hall, it makes me want to take another geology class so I know what I'm reading. 

But instead I go home and blog about my visit and read about other things for hours. 

We also had a chance to visit the travelling exhibit all about Bio-Luminescent life. We weren't able to take pictures inside, so sadly I don't have any to share here. The whole room was dark with the displays lit up with models and information. Water effects rippled off the walls during the deep sea areas, which were my favorite, and showed the alien life that lives at the ocean floor. They had a display about the Vampire Squid, another favorite, and had some live luminescent fish in tanks we could peek into.

Of course, the fish were pretty tired from the boatload of kids who came in before us, but we got to see a little of their twinkling before we left.

I have seen three of the travelling exhibits including this one, and so far my favorite is still going to be the Animals Inside Out one from the very first visit.

Alex, my husband, surprised me by taking me to the Perot Museum a couple of years ago for this very freaky but amazing exhibit of real, skinned models of animals. It showed the muscles and inner workings of giraffes, goats, camels, and of course a couple humans were tossed in as well. It was all very well done and hauntingly mesmerizing. If I felt like digging through my Facebook to find the pictures I would, but instead I'm going to gracefully bow out of that and let you instead just enjoy the current pictures from the last visit.

While this wasn't my first time here, it was an amazing trip. Jess was with me of course, but my dear best friend Shen had never been before. I'm going to wager that the Gem Hall was her favorite, considering that she was having a mild panic attack over the beauty of some of the pieces there. 

I cannot wait to be able to go back again and see my old favorite exhibits and whatever amazing travelling one they have to offer. 

The museum also does Social Science nights on occasion, which hosts lectures and adult themed (not like...sexy time adult stuff, just with like alcohol and no kids) activities and drinks. One of these days I'll catch one and let you know how it goes. They tend to be on weekends and I am one of those not nine-to-five types, much to my dismay.

If you're in Texas and remotely close to Dallas, there is zero reason for you not to go check out this amazing museum. I'd suggest going in the week to avoid the crowds and catch one of the travelling exhibits, they're usually pretty damn cool.

- M

You can check out my full album of my visit on my Facebook here.

Happy almost Darwin Day: Prepping for fun

Happy Darwin Day! (almost)

Darwin Day has become a tradition of food, friends, drinks and science for about 3 years now. It started as a small gathering of a couple close friends eating a store bought cake with the Darwin Fish drawn out in icing on top.

Well, the size is still about the same with the same core group, only about 3-4 of us, but our activities and menu has changed quite a bit. Last year me and Jess made up a drink called Primordial Booze, a mixture of vodka, blue curacao, orange juice, and redbull. The drink comes out a wonderful green color and is extremely yummy. Since Jess is an amazing cook, she typically is in charge of the food and I tag along for simple stuff that’s easily tossed together.

For those of you who may not know what I’m talking about, Darwin Day is the celebration of Charles Darwin’s birthday, February 12th, and a celebration of the theory of Evolution. The reason this is so important is because evolution is still not completely accepted and very often is vastly misunderstood.

As a big fan of the theory of evolution and science in general, I love participating in this awesome day of science appreciation and literacy. To find out more about Darwin Day, you can check out the official website to get more information.

Last year really set the bar for festivities and had to have been my favorite Darwin Day so far. I spent the better part of a month putting together a long playlist on YouTube of any evolution education videos I could find. Turns out there are a LOT of them and a good chunk are very well done. Videos from SciShow, It’s Okay to be Smart, PBS studios, and a ton of others made up the list of about 20+ short videos, each about 2-10 minutes long.

I’ll put a link to my playlist at the bottom with all the other things I want to include in this rambling of science admiration.

The best part was that Jess had set up her nifty projector in the backyard, and we all huddled together in the slightly chilly February weather to watch every single one.

Awesome night of nerdy fun.

This year we’re doing something pretty similar since we had so much fun, but instead of YouTube videos we’re going to watch one of the videos that comes recommended from the Darwin Day website. I’m torn between a documentary starring Sir David Attenborough talking about Charles Darwin’s life, or the BBC drama about Darwin’s inner struggle with his findings verses his religious beliefs.

Edgy stuff, man.

I’m also going to be making “fossil cookies”, which is something I’ve seen online that’s staggeringly simply to make. It’s cookies with dinosaur footprints in them, and since you can buy dough already made and I have all kinds of different dinosaur toys...well...that’s about as easy and it can be. Boom. Done. Dinosaur fossil cookies.

I’ll post pictures, but yeah...it’s not rocket surgery.

Since I found out about DD in 2012, there have been a lot more celebrations and activities popping up all over during this time. It used to be a handful of celebrations across the US, but not there are tons all over the world, which is really inspiring. There’s a big event happening in Austin Texas this coming up weekend that I really wish I could go to. Austin is usually the only area in Texas having these kind of events, which isn’t shocking.

One of these days I’m going to put something bigger together, but I just don’t have the manpower to do something like that.

That’s a lie. I think I could actually make something amazing happen in the DFW area, but it’s more the time/funding that trips me up each year. Maybe that can be my 2017 goal for next year is to do something amazing and big for Darwin Day. For now though, it’s just another amazing gathering of friends I’m looking forward to.

Are you guys going to be doing anything to celebrate? You should totally let me know! I’d love to have some great ideas for next year. I'll do another post and actually take some damn pictures this time and do another post-Darwin Day blog about how it went.

Is this your first year celebrating? Your tenth? Share!! I wanna hear all about it.

Here are some pictures from past events, some book recommendations for those who want to read up on evolution, and/or a video playlist if you’d rather get your info that way.

Happy Darwin Day, everyone!!

-M

• Pictures from years past!

I honestly don't know why I don't have more pictures.

First Darwin Day 2012

Last year 2015 with Primordial Booze!!

• Darwin Day links and books

Links and Videos:

Darwin Day Website

Vegoego’s super awesome YouTube Darwin Day Playlist Turbo Ultra Remix

Your Inner Fish series

Book Recommendations:

• Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
• The entire book can be read for free online here!!

• Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne 

• Greatest Show On Earth: Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins

• Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin

• Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation by Bill Nye

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

Dinosaur news 12.11.15: new dinos, fossil blood vessels, dino poop and more!

It's been a pretty good week in dinosaur and evolution related news. Honestly, so much stuff was posted this week it was hard to keep up!

Fossilized Blood Vessels!

Fossilization of tissue is almost impossible. Almost. These amazing jewels of information are so rare only a few precious handfuls have been found in the entire fossil record.

We have found only a few of these gems, mostly in skin and feather impressions, but every so often someone brilliant finds something hidden the bones.

This particular trophy was discovered inside a hardosaur leg bone.

What does finding fossilized blood vessel mean, actually?

Unfortunately, it does not mean that Jurassic Park is in our future, so we’ll take a moment of silence for the heartbreak.

It’s ok to cry a little.

There was no actual blood inside, so no DNA to clone and make inaccurate, featherless hybrid monsters dinosaurs.

The good news is this find may shed some light into the proteins involved in dinosaur evolution by comparing it to their living relatives, birds and crocodiles.

So while no DNA was left over, the remains of the blood vessels proteins are still intact, which is a fantastic find.

Full article can be found here.

Sauropod tracks found in Scotland!

I’m going to refrain from making the “Nessy” joke about the “long neck” creature in a lagoon in Scotland. It's just too easy. :P 

Early theories of sauropod life. Not at all what is believed
now, even with these tracks.

These tracks are like a treasure trove because of the lagoon sediment that the prints were found in. Back in the early days of understanding these giant, strange creatures, one of the more popular thoughts is that these beasts lived in the water, using their long necks to stick their heads up from under the water.

This was back before we had a much better idea of the body mass for these creatures, and how exactly the necks articulated.

This new finding, which is the largest find in Scotland so far, shows that these unknown species of sauropods spent time in shallow water and by coast lines. They aren’t sure which species made the prints, but they know the prints were made during the Triassic period. Not a lot is known about sauropods during this time period, so finding these tracks is helping paleontologists better understand the species during this time.

This is a National Geographic site with the full article is really amazing, because it not only has great pictures but also some short video clips. Beautifully done and fun to watch.

What were dinosaurs's nests like?

Very little is known about how dinosaurs cared of their young because there’s no dinosaurs left to study in the flesh. There have been fossilized eggs found, some of which yielding amazing baby dino skeletons, but it doesn't really show how the parent/parents rared their young. Paleontoloists started studying the porousness of these eggshells of living cousins of dinosaurs to help determain the nature of their nests.

By comparing the shells to living relatives eggs, paleontologists can determine if the eggs were buried in the ground like cros, or left in the open like birds. Shells with bigger pores typically meant the animal buried its nests like modern day crocodiles, and eggs with smaller pores are more inline with modern bird's open-air nests.
This helps build a bigger picture for how dinosaurs raised their young, if they did at all.
Full article here, if you want to take a look.

Dinosaur Poop

Not just any poop, but fossilized dinosaur poop! In a great headline that reads "Giant Turds showed that Dinosaurs dined on flowering plants", you know it's going to be a great read. 

These particular pieces of poopy were dated to be from the late Cretaceous from a large planet eating dinosaur who dined on angiosperms, or "flowering plants". The reason this is so interesting is not only because we know what they were eating from 65 million year old shit, but also because the food source may have been very important to their survival and diversity. Coprolite, poop-turn-fossil, are extremely rare so finding a uh...sample...that has evidence of diet is pretty amazing, and hilarious.

Mammal evolution and distant cousins

The mammal family tree is ancient and complex, and could stretch back a little further than we originally thought.

Paleontologists are now reexamining the remains of one of our earliest rodent-like relatives, Haramiyavia. After careful review of the teeth and jaw structures of specimens found, paleontologists are suggesting that

Haramiyavia may not be a “crown mammal”, or a starting point for mammalian evolution. If Haramiyavia IS a crown mammal, that means mammals origins started in the Early Triassic, if not then it’s likely mammals started much later down the pipeline. If we did start in the early Triassic, that means that mammal ancestors survived two mass extinctions, one at the end of the Triassic and then again in the Late Cretaceous. Making us kind of a big deal as a class.

Jury is still out scientifically speaking. There are other studies that still keep this little dude as a crown mammal, so he has not been de-throned just yet.

Check out Haramiyavia’s new findings here.

Meet Kunbarrasaurus!

This new ankylosaur from Australia is possibly early on the evolutionary tree. Another great find for Australia this year!

Ankylosaurs are cool in general, but what makes Kunbarrasaurus so great is just how well preserved it is. This fossil is probably the best specimen ever found of any ankylosaur which enabled paleontologists to get a detailed scan of it’s brain casing and inner ears. It also seems to be less armored than other ankylosaurs, which means it’s probably an early ancestor to the bigger, tankier hulks.

I imagine that Kunbarrasaurs had a good Aussy accent and liked taking it easy. But I base that off zero scientific evidence.

Another fun fact, according to the article, Kunbarrasaurus has a large inner ear, similar to that of modern turtles. Not sure what that means at this point, but I thought it was interesting.