You're Doing It Wrong: Protobird Toys Edition

The new Carnegie Velociraptor figure.

I'm pretty slack when it comes to keeping up with my Twitter account, but if one thing can get me to break my one post per month general rule, it's "somebody is wrong on the Internet!" Or, in this case, "somebody made an inaccurate dinosaur model under the auspices of museum-approved accuracy!"

Let me preface this post with a few disclaimers. One, I have no problem with people making dinosaur art however they like. But I feel it's very important to draw a distinction between dinosaur art in general and paleoart. Creating a drawing, painting, or sculpture under the guise of paleoart implies that some degree of research went into the piece. When evaluating paleoart, critics are completely entitled to demand as rigorous an approach to accuracy as the evidence allows. Of course, speculation must be included to some degree, but the baseline expectation is always that basic facts and plausible inference will be taken into consideration.

Dinosaur art is a for of pop art, a purely artistic expression. Paleoart is a representation of a scientific hypothesis about the life appearance and behavior of an extinct organism.

This recent Twitter kerfuffle was due specifically to the debut of a new dinosaur figure in the Carnegie Collection produced by Safari Ltd. I've been a big fan of the Carnegie figures (and the sometimes nicer quality Wild Safari sister series) since I was a wee lad buying my first Carnegie Pteranodon in a little hobby shop for about $2, and pining over their massive Brachiosaurus. Carnegie figures have obvious appeal for scientifically-minded young dinosaur fans. First, most of them are made with a consistent scale (usually 1:40), so when you line them all up you can see how big each animal was compared to one another. Second, they are marketed as having the highest level of scientific authority: the Carnegie Museum stamp and assurances that hey are approved by actual paleontologists gives them the weight of authority and accuracy not found in many other toy lines. Sure, many of the older figures, including my Pteranodon, are now sorely out of date, but this is due largely to the Science Marches On effect rather than a basic, original inaccuracy.

However, like many paleoartists, the sculptors at Carnegie and related accuracy-minded/marketed toy lines seem to be having, well, let's say a little trouble adapting to the feathered revolution. Trained in the '80s and '90s drawing and sculpting Paulian, reptilian dinosaurs, it's been a steep learning curve for many of these artists to switch to bird-like, feathered dinosaurs, which many artists don't even realize requires a crash course in avian anatomy, rather than reptile or mammal anatomy, to get right. This is why expert consultants are so important in these projects--artists simply need help catching up with the latest research. Unfortunately, they're usually getting bad advice from "experts" who simply do not care.

The newest entry in the Carnegie Collection is the old favorite Velociraptor. Carnegie had previously released a scaly Velociraptor, but like many of their other models, they have commendably updated it to try and reflect current science. Unfortunately, it seems they mainly achieved this by slapping feathers over the basic original model with no regard for the fact that feathers inherently change the entire presentation and outline of an animal. Unlike fur or "protofeathers", which just fluff up the outline of an animal, feathers are more like a mobile exoskeleton that re-defines the entire body.

My own hypothesis, based on fossil and phylogenetic evidence as well as
inference from living analogues, about the life appearance of Velociraptor.

That being said, the Carnegie Velociraptor is not that bad overall and is very nicely sculpted, with an interesting and plausible color scheme. The feathers look fur-like, true, but this is not unprecedented among different lineages of large ground birds, and so is not unlikely in flightless protobirds (though they'd probably still be longer). The main problem here is the wing. Yes, wing. Like chickens and ostriches, protobirds possessed fully-fledged wings despite being flightless or nearly so, and retaining large claws on the fingers (yes, chickens, ostriches, and many other birds have hand claws--they are not some prehistoric protobird relic!).

Specifically, the wings in the new Velociraptor figure are very small, with short feathers, and are present only on the forearm, not the hand, making them only half a wing--literally, since they're issuing the primary feathers. We do not have direct evidence of primaries, but we have never found a single example of a maniraptoran that has secondaries but not primaries, and so it should be assumed they were there by default. As for secondaries, we have direct evidence in the form of quill knobs for this species. Quill knobs are not found in all feathered animals, let alone all flying birds, and seem to be associated with strong attachment either due to high-stresses during flight or other flapping behavior and/or especially large/long individual feathers.

Long story short: Not only did Velociraptor have wings, it probably had larger wings than many other dromaeosaurids. AFAIK not even Microraptor and Archaeopteryx had quill knobs to support their wings.

The new Carnegie figure, on the other hand, barely has wings at all. What went wrong?

Some insight can be gained by a recent series of incidents involving sculptor Dan LoRusso on the message board of the Dinosaur Toy Blog. LoRusso Is an amazing artist and is responsible for some of my all-time favorite dinosaur figures released in the Boston Museum of Science Collection by Battat (now being re-released with updates and new figures under the Terra brand). Collectors were understandably excited about the fact that the Battat series was coming back after nearly two decades, though the excitement was dampened a little by some obvious accuracy issues in the new figures, specifically when it came to the feathered species (or species that should have been feathered).

LoRusso was criticized online for producing a very well done but very inaccurate therizinosaur figure which completely lacked feathers. It would have fit right in with the excellent quality and Paulian style of the original series... back in 1994. But in 2014, when we have incontrovertible proof that therizinosaurs were not only feathered but that at least smaller species were very densely feathered, it is simply bizarre to see a featherless figure in a line that is being marketed as scientifically accurate. LoRusso stated that his consultants told him larger therizinosaurs would have been featherless. It's not LoRusso's fault that he somehow was able to sculpt a bald maniraptoran in the year 2013. Somebody who did not know what they were talking about and claiming to be an expert in paleoart just because they work in the related field of paleontology told him to do it, and he very reasonably believed them because they were an "expert", though obviously they had misrepresented themselves.

And there's the biggest problem and probably the answer to the question of what is going on with these strange and obvious inaccuracies. Paleoart consultants for major projects tend to be, often but not always, simply terrible. They seem not to know what they are talking about. Not only that, but second-hand reports suggest that they often simply do not care. Seriously: When asked about blatant inaccuracies creeping into paleoart-based projects like toys or books or even press releases, at least one anonymous paid paleontological consultant stated that they don't care what dinosaurs looked like in life, and so would presumably rubber-stamp any abomination that came across their desk.

@mpmartyniuk You know I've spoken to working palaeontologists who even say that they >don't care< about depicting life appearance?
— Darren Naish (@TetZoo) October 4, 2014

Here's a prime, objective example: The Carnegie Collection Caudipteryx zoui figure. This species was first found in 1998, a complete skeleton with feather impressions. There are plenty of photos of Caudipteryx fossils that show crystal clear how the feathers attach and were ignored completely for this figure. The artist might have copied some inaccurate depiction rather than doing actual research or glancing at a fossil, and the consultant approved it because they didn't know or didn't care about the relevant details. The Carnegie Caudipteryx proves that consultants are utterly useless and often have no clue what they're talking about. Any one of us can compare the model with the fossil and show that the model is objectively wrong in major details. Look for yourself:

Caudipteryx wing fossil: note the primaries, longer than the hand, anchored along the second finger,
and lack of a clawed third finger.

Carnegie Collection Caudipteryx figure. Note the wing feathers anchored everywhere along the arm
EXCEPT on the second finger where they belong, and the incorrect number of fingers.

The wings/arms of this figure are wrong in just about every single way possible, and these are not minor details. Yet it's marketed as accurate and "paleontologist approved" in a series bearing the name of a major scientific institution!

It's not fair to ask all working paleontologists to know or care how their research into fossils translates into life appearance. Matching osteological and behavioral correlates with the structure and anatomy of living analogues could almost be considered a distinct field separate from actual paleontology. This is something paleoartists can and do think about and research constantly, but would almost never need to enter into the research when describing fossils. There's really no reason for working paleontologists to keep up to date with developments and research that go into paleoart.

The solution? Don't ask these paleontologists to consult! Just because someone is a paleontologist does not make them an expert on the life appearance of any given species of prehistoric organism. The examples cited above were, allegedly, all approved by "expert" consultants. This simply proves the consultants that are being employed are utterly failing at their job. I hate to say it, but there are legions of paleoartists and other dinosaur fans online who jump at the chance to criticize and nitpick and otherwise consult on these things for free. It's just that by the time the product is released, it's too late to do anything about inaccuracies. If companies that use paleoart would simply post concept art beforehand on, say, Facebook, they could probably get much better advice for free. Or, preferably, they could employ actual paleoartists as experts, hopefully artists who specialize in researching the life appearance of a given subject group of organisms.

Darren Naish, Mark Witton, and John Conway recently published an article on the (shameful) state of  paleoart as used in professional and commercial contexts. Companies like Safari Ltd. would do well to listen to their advice.

The Strange Bird Dalianraptor cuhe

Type specimen of D. cuhe, originally posted by Andrea Cau

I'm interrupting my regularly scheduled upcoming blog posts to bring some attention to a little-known Jehol bird: the strange 'jeholornithid'-grade species Dalianraptor cuhe.

D. cuhe has spent the last several years as a species in obscurity, even among most paleontology enthusiasts. I recall my first glimpse of the type specimen, wondering over the seemingly-complete remains of an "undescribed possible dromaeosauird" in a low-res photo posted online in the early '00s. I can remember saving the image to my reference folder, hoping that one day I'd be able to update the file name. It's a fascinating animal, but... is it real?

You're Doing It Wrong: Dinosaur Tails

A new post by W. Scott Persons over at the Art Evolved blog is an excellent overview of why most artists, even the pros, have been getting dinosaur tails completely wrong since the Dinosaur Renaissance. It makes me feel a little better to know I was in the company of Mark Hallett and other titans of paleoart when I'd simply make up cool-looking tail musculature in my older drawings with no regard for anatomy...

You can read the post here.

Quick News: SV-POW & SVP

Last time I reported on the odd case of a crazy new amateur paper on Morrison sauropod diversity, including the naming of a new species of Amphicloelias. I hoped that the SV-POWsketeers would comment on this situation, and they have. Be sure to check out this post and it's two follow-ups, as well as the comments (including comments by one of the paper's authors). The upshot is that "A. brontodiplodocus" has not been published, and the authors claim the current .pdf is an unfinished manuscript, but that they stand by their ridiculous conclusions nevertheless. As far as I know, because the name has only appeared in electronic form which is not recognized by the ICZN, "A. brontodiplodocus" can't even be considered a nomen nudum. It may be a nomen manuscriptum or something.

In more pleasant, mainly non-taxonomic quibbling news, SVP is happening right now! Those of us lucky enough to not be within a few hours drive of Pittsburgh for once in their lives (I kid!) but unlucky enough for that one time to coincide with the biggest paleo event of the year, can follow the interesting stuff in real time on Twitter, thanks largely to the efforts of Brian Switek of Lealaps, who is braving the conference's strict press policy and lack of free wifi to get the news out. Follow @Laelaps for hints about sampling biases, even more new, weird ceratopsians, how Euoplocephalus is over-lumped (early '80s favorite Scolosaurus coming back, I wonder?), and which bloggers are going to the bar tonight.

What Is A Nomen Oblitum? Not What You Probably Think

Above: Illustration of Manospondylus gigas by Matt Martyniuk, copyright.

In a previous post, I brought up the taboo subject of Manospondylus gigas, the large Lancian theropod named by E.D. Cope in 1886 and a potential senior synonym of Tyrannosaurus rex. Google "manospondylus" and the first hit is an old Q&A post by Mike Taylor called "So why hasn't Tyrannosaurus been renamed Manospondylus?"

Good question!

Aside from cultural inertia, the answer Taylor gave is this: "As of 1st January 2000, a new ICZN ruling has come into effect, saying that a name that's been considered valid for fifty years can't now be replaced by one that's been considered invalid during that time." This is also the answer Mickey Mortimer gave in some (but not all) relevant entries on the current Theropod Database. Brian Switek, in an old Laelaps post, gave the same answer: Manospondylus hasn't been considered valid in 50 years, so it's a nomen oblitum ("forgotten name"). He also suggested that this means T. rex has "protected status" which would have to be overturned by the ICZN in order for M. gigas to become valid.

The problem is that none of that has any bearing on what "nomen oblitum" actually means according to the current ICZN code. The ICZN states that in order for a name to be declared a nomen oblitum, all of the following things need to be true:
1. the senior synonym or homonym has not been used as a valid name after 1899
2. the junior synonym or homonym has been used for a particular taxon, as its presumed valid name, in at least 25 works, published by at least 10 authors in the immediately preceding 50 years
3. a paper must be published citing evidence for #2, and citing both names together, declare that the junior synonym or homonym is being made a nomen protectum ("protected name") in accordance with ICZN article 23.9.

The confusion seems to come from #2. It's not a matter of the senior name not having been used in the past 50 years, but the junior name must have been used frequently enough in recent history in order to be eligible for conservation. Clearly, T. rex meets the second criteria. But what about the first and third?

For number one, the answer is I'm not sure, but I think so. It depends on what your definition if "is" is. Has Manospondylus been used since 1899? Definitely, yes, and in several papers, as Mickey Mortimer pointed out in the comments on my previous post on this topic. But was it used as valid? Most authors, even in the early 20th century, recognized that two vertebrae were pretty poor material to be basing a species on. Many of them considered it to be what we'd now call a nomen dubium ("dubious name"). For example, here's what Matthew & Brown (1922) had to say on the subject: "Osborn has already (1917) called attention to another fragmentary type, Manospondylus gigas, as possibly identical with Tyrannosaurus but based upon an inadequate type." They don't explicitly say it's valid or invalid (I'd like to know what Osborn 1917 actually aid on the matter but don't have that paper. Anyone?).

As for number three, it appears that the situation has never been adequately addressed in the literature, so the criterion is not satisfied. The issue came up in 2000, when Peter Larson claimed to have rediscovered the original Manospondylus locality, and more of the type specimen, confirming it is the same as T. rex. As far as I know, this has never seen print beyond an AP article (Anonymous, 2000. "Discovery could Endanger T.Rex Name." The Associated Press.)

In short, could M. gigas be a nomen oblitum? Maybe, depending on the meaning of "valid" and if somebody gets up the nerve to actually publish the case. Is Manospondylus a nomen oblitum as of right now? Definitely not, and it remains the valid senior synonym of Tyrannosaurus until and unless someone acts as revisor to the contrary.

Addendum: Just for fun, I looked up "valid" in the ICZN's glossary. Who better to determine what the ICZN means by valid than the ICZN? Here's the entry:
valid, a. (validity, n.) Of an available name or a nomenclatural act: one that is acceptable under the provisions of the Code and, in the case of a name, which is the correct name of a taxon in an author's taxonomic judgment.

Since the Code does not formally recognize nomina dubia as invalid names (or at all, really), this seems to indicate that M. gigas was considered valid by all those authors in the 20th century, at least under the ICZN's definition. Matthew and Brown, for example, did not consider M. gigas an invalid name (a junior homonym, improperly coined, etc.), just non-diagnostic. Which as far as the rules are concerned, is A-OK. Sorry kids, barring an act of ICZN, M. gigas looks like it's on solid footing as a currently valid name.

Trendsetting: DinoGoss Committed (or possibly Commended)

Just a quick note that the blog over at Bachelorsdegree.org is featuring DinoGoss among a multitude of far more worthy paleo-blogs, intended to be a list of resources for Paleontology students. I can't say I disagree with any of the selections, and most of these are mandatory subscriptions for anyone interested in paleo.

As you can probably tell, the main impetus for this post was as an excuse to use a picture from Back to the Future II.

While I'm here, and advertising myself, I might as well post a link to my ongoing attempt to put together a "field guide" to the lower Yixian Formation flora and fauna. You can check out the gallery at DeviantArt. And don't be afraid to comment on them, the harsher the anatomical nitpicks, the better!

Nyctosaurus Lost

Above: Private fossil dealer Rob Frithiof, just before Harrison Ford sucker punches him and Coronado's Cross nearly falls off the deck of the ship. Photo by Aaron Huey from Smithsonian Online, see link below.

Last month I covered an appearance by the famous giant-crested Nyctosaurus specimens in the Brazos Valley Museum in Texas, displayed along with a piece of my artwork (for which I was neither compensated nor, more importantly, notified). These crested specimens were first described by Chris Bennett in 2003. In his paper, Bennett noted that the specimens were in a private collection, usually shunned by scientists when describing new species; what if, after the initial description, other researchers are not allowed access to the specimens? Without the possibility of further independent study, the specimens are effectively lost to science.

In a way, we're lucky Bennett did what he did, because knowledge of these spectacular finds has inspired a mini-surge of research into pterosaur crest dynamics and function, as well as brought attention to the otherwise little-known Nyctosaurus, bringing it out from under the shadow of its contemporary cousin Pteranodon as arguably the more charismatic pterosaur. But private collections are private collections, and Bennett's worst fears have come true, according to a recent post on the Pterosaur.net blog.

Apparently, a little while ago, one of the crested Nyctosaurus specimens (KJ1 and KJ2 in Bennett's unofficial numbering scheme, KJ1 shown at right, photo by mavra_chang) showed up on eBay. We're talking the actual specimen here, not a cast (I'm not aware if any casts have been made of these guys). [Update 7/31/2012 - see comments below; apparently, casts have been made and distributed for at least KJ1]. It was snapped up by an unknown buyer and is currently lost to science. Pterosaurologist Mark Witton, who writes for the blog, didn't say what happened but noted that the other KJ specimen has also "dropped off the radar completely."

The KJ specimens were owned by Rob Frithiof, a real estate developer and part-time fossil collector based out of Texas, who organized the Brazos Valley exhibit (news story here) before the specimens were sold. Presumably, Frithiof, in a fit of pique after watching the first 10 minutes of Last Crusade one too many times, decided that "it belongs in a museum" and placed them there for a few weeks before auctioning some of the most interesting and impressive pterosaur specimens ever known off to some anonymous highest bidder. Frithiof was already infamous in the paleo community for his discovery and subsequent litigation over the juvenile tyrannosaur specimen "Tinker", over which he was cleared of all charges and retained ownership of the phenomenally important fossil. As of 2006, Frithiof had sent Tinker to a private prep lab in Pennsylvania to be prepped and mounted, but the lab went out of business, and the fossil is still sitting in storage as far as I know--also effectively off limits to science, but at least we know where the thing is.

You can read more about Frithiof in this Smithsonian article from last year. You'll never read anything about the crested Nyctosaurus specimens ever again, except in the context of history, unless some eBay buyer with too much money on his hands decides to heed Indy's famous plea better than Frithiof did. And so it goes.

Dinogoss: Trendsetting

One more really short post... Because it's time to claim tenuous credit for starting a trend!

This is another image that caught my attention today as I finally took some time to catch up on my Google Reader blog subscriptions. Also at Michael Ryan's Palaeoblog, I found the above size comparison of the cool new sauropodomorph Seitaad with a human. But not just any human, it's the Pioneer Dork's girlfriend!

Above: The Dork poses dorkily with the smallest dinosaur, Anchiornis huxleyi. Say, "Hi dork!" Image by Matt Martyniuk, licensed.

The Pioneer Dork is of course the male figure from the gold plaque sent along with the Pioneer probes 10 and 11. When I first started doing size comparison diagrams for Wikipedia in 2006 or '07, I used this public domain image for the human and have done so since (and so have a few others). We Wiki editors lovingly referred to him as the 'Dork', due to, well, his dorky pose. Several Wiki readers have posted comments on talk pages noting how hilarious it is to depict a happy, waving man inches away from the maw of a charging Albertosaurus. But they just don't understand the Dork's simple charm. There was a brief push to replace the Dork with something a bit edgier, namely a silhouette of Catherine Zeta Jones. Cooler heads prevailed and pointed out that dammit, Jim, this is an encyclopaedia, not a trucker's mud flaps! (I, however, have opted to use her in the scale charts I make for my own site).

I choose to believe the Dork's female counterpart was done as an homage to those Wiki scale charts and will not listen if somebody comes up with an alternate explanation. Note that this must be a press release only image, as the skeletal in the free open-access paper lacks a human figure. Bummer. Maybe the next paper can include CZJ to make up for it.

Above: Yowza.

V-D Day for Matt Wedel

Quick epilogue to the Clash of the Dinosaurs quote-mining incident, Matt was able to talk to someone at the Discovery Channel (which aired and distributes but did not directly produce the special). Discovery promised not to re-run the show until the offending segment was removed, and it will be fixed on the DVD and Blu-ray release as well. Congrats Matt, and way to go Discovery Channel! It is definitely the network's responsibility to ensure the integrity of the shows they air, and Discovery is certainly living by its policy here.

You can read Matt's latest post at SV-POW.

CotD: The Saga Continues

Above: If Wedel had used the words "laser" and "armor" at any time during his interview, CotD would have looked like this. Not that I'd complain.

Matt Wedel has posted his experiences trying to chase down what exactly went wrong with his infamous interview segment in the Discovery Channel and Dangerous, Ltd.'s special Clash of the Dinosaurs. You can read the letter where Dangerous, Ltd. admits that they quote-mined him like creationists and had him spouting nonsense discredited before he was born as if it were fact, here.

An excerpt of the good part:

"In your email, you said: ‘Someone in the editing room cut away the framing explanation and left me presenting a thoroughly discredited idea as if it was current science.’ In your interview you carefully set out a context in which you made your argument, a context that was perhaps not included in the show as carefully as it could have been. Whether this was in the interests of brevity or not, I entirely appreciate your position. We had no wish to suggest you were presenting an old, discredited argument, we were simply working on the show ever aware of the demands of our audience. This does not excuse a part of the program which was perhaps not edited with as much finesse as it could have been and consequently I will make your concerns clear to the production team in the hope that we may avoid such situations again."

Note that they don't apologize or say they'll fix this in future broadcasts of the show (and if it's like other Discovery shows, it will be running on a loop for months). The best part is that the lame excuse email makes clear Dangerous' motivations: They only wanted to accomodate the needs of their audience and hold everyone's attention. That means this was done ON PURPOSE, because the truth was TOO BORING.

Discovery Communications and their affiliate production companies don't care about science. Sorry if I sound like Kanye, but this is true and everybody needs to learn this fact. The only goal here is to keep eyeballs glued to the TV with whatever fake nonsense they can piece together from edited sound bites given by experts hired only to bring a veneer of credibility. They decide what they want to say and show, then hire experts and interview them until they've said enough vowels and consonants to piece together a convincing ransom-note narration.

Not that this wasn't already obvious, but there it is in print.

CotD: More Ugly

Above: The modern conception of sauropods, as envisioned by Dangerous productions.

In last week's post on Clash of the Dinosaurs, I discussed the pros and cons from a viewers perspective. To sum up, I thought it was decent but flawed, with too much repetitive CGI and science made palatable by the presence of real experts like Matt Wedel.

Matt has chimed in with his own post about the special, which points out some really, really troubling behind-the-scenes behavior on the part of the producers, and proves once and for all that Dangerous Ltd., a production company for venues like the Discovery Channel, are not interested in science. Well maybe initially, but when it comes time to air, snazzy gee-whiz-wow anti-facts are all that matters to them. From Matt's blog post:

"I said something like, 'There was this old idea that the sacral expansion functioned as a second brain to control the hindlimbs and tail. But in fact, it almost certainly contained a glycogen body, like the sacral expansions of birds. Trouble is, nobody knows exactly what the glycogen bodies of birds do.'"
...
"Somebody in the editing room neatly sidestepped the mystery of the glycogen body by cutting that bit down, so what I am shown saying in the program is this, 'The sacral expansion functioned as a second brain to control the hindlimbs and tail.'"

Matt is rightly extremely pissed about this and I'm right there with him. A show supposedly about science edited the words of a sauropod expert to espouse the idea, in a national TV program airing in the year 2009 (note: not year 1939!) that sauropods had a second brain in the tail.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Ok? Good. This is like the paleo equivalent of a documentary about Darwin, featuring Darwin on film, then editing Darwin's words to make it sound like he was a creationist. Did I just call Matt Wedel the Darwin of sauropodology? You decide.

To sum up, the only thing worse than science reporting in the news, are science "documentaries" on TV. I'd have no problem if Discovery Channel had called this a science fiction special, but they did not, and that's flat-out lying.

Science Reporting Today: Sauropod Necks

And finally, we have the first of (unfortunately) probably very many entries under the heading of Science Reporting Today. That is, how god-awful it often is.

[Above: Cast of Diplodocus carnegii at the NMH in London. This mount has not been made obsolete!]

The big dino news today has been the paper by Darren Naish, Matt Wedel, and Mike Taylor (all of the glorious SV-POW! blog) that, contrary to studies in the early 2000s, sauropod necks were not constrained to a horizontal position. Note that, if you read the papers or their own blog posts, they're very careful to spell out that this is not to say that sauropods are just going from one constrained pose to another. I read one comment on a news story, where some poor dim soul honestly said the new study must be bogus, because if they held their heads up high, how did they drink? For serious, a human being, presumably without any mental defects, said that. For a second I thought I'd been frozen for 500 years and woken up in Idiocracy.

Generally, the problem with science reporting, as detailed in the comic I posted a few days ago, is that science reporters, who are rarely specialists in whatever particular area they're reporting on, must not only interpret the information given to them by experts, but they also feel the need to severely dumb the info down for a general audience (and, often, try to spice it up or over-exaggerate the importance of discoveries, so people who aren't interested in science will be impressed. See exhibit A).

Here are some examples of news stories discussing today's sauropod neck paper, and either getting things wrong or dumbing it down so much that they're misleading people rather than educating them.

• "Generations of children have been brought up on the idea that that long necked dinosaurs like sauropods, lumbered along with their necks stretched out horizontally." --Channel 4 News

Really? Generations of children. When I was a kid, every dinosaur book and toy I had depicted sauropods with an erect neck posture. This is the stereotypical brontosaur image, after all. This is the posture that lead people to mistakenly surmise that sauropods lived under water and used their long necks like snorkels. In reality, though some older museum mounts depicted sauropods with horizontal necks (mainly due to lack of ceiling space), the low-slung, horizontal necks didn't gain popularity until Walking with Dinosaurs was released in 1999. Ten years is hardly "generations." This is an example of exaggerating the impact of a find. It's important, sure, but not that earth-shattering, as its overturning a view that's only been entrenched a decade.

The headline of the Times Online article:

• Natural History Museum's sauropod exhibit 'anatomically wrong': The Natural History Museum's flagship dinosaur exhibit may be misleading because sauropods held their heads up high rather than keeping them low, claim scientists.

"May be misleading", well that's arguably true, but anatomically wrong? No. Of course sauropods could achieve a horizontal position. Here's an example of a headline making a bold, exaggerated, and incorrect claim, and only backpedaling if you read the fine print (i.e., the actual article).

Anyway, those are just the first few examples I noticed. The SV-POWsketeers are keeping track of news stories about their research here, if you'd like to play along at spotting shoddy science reporting practices. If you find anything truly ridiculous, drop it in the comments!

Also, bear in mind that this is not a criticism of science reporters per se. Whenever trying to communicate complex ideas in a simple way, you're going to mislead some people. Take a look at the graphic I did for the previous post (linked at the top). Big ol' red X over the WWD Diplodocus. What I meant to convey is that this is no longer the standard, default posture for these animals. Will somebody look at that and think I meant they could not hold their necks horizontally? Unfortunately, it's possible. But maybe it's a problem inherent to the whole approach all the science news outlets seem to be taking. Rather than "New discovery disproves conventional view of sauropods," wouldn't a better tack be, "New discovery shows sauropods had greater range of neck motion than previously thought"? Or does that not sound earth-shattering and controversial enough for Joe Average to care?

Put Your Heads Up For Detroit!

A quick note on a new paper out today on sauropod anatomy. Always exciting stuff, obviously, but today especially so.

As many of you may have heard, the days of sauropods with their heads held high and proud came to a crushing end in 1999, when Kent Stephens, using his DinoMorph computer anatomy program, found that contrary to decades of portrayals in art and museum mounts, sauropods did not carry their heads much higher than their shoulders. The neutral pose of the long neck was found to be that of a vertical beam, dipping towards the ground to mow down field after field of ferns, not a high, swan-like S-curve.

Enter the SV-POWsketeers, the new guard of sauropod experts who made a splash a few years back by starting a collaborative blog about nothing more than Sauropod Vertebrae (Pictures Of the Week, hence the acronym).

In thier first formal paper as a team, the SV-POW! guys became the first to really challange Stephens' findings, which had by now become the orthodox view, represented in such pop culture icons as Walking with Dinosaurs. Stephens stated in his paper that no modern animals normally held their necks out of neutral pose, except to drink, display, etc. When just walking around, they were, as Zapp Brannigan said with disdain, "So beautiful, yet so neutral."

But, were they? And are they? According to the SV-POWsketeers, who looked at living animals from all major tetrapod groups using X-rays and studies of the existing scientific literature, no. Living animals never walk around with their necks in a neutral pose. In fact, far from being disgustingly neutral, the normal position for most animals is to flex the head and neck as much as possible! Doing this to sauropods means that (barring any unusual, unknown specilizations, like pressurized air sacs in the neck), not only can the poor things reach the ground to drink, they walked with heads held high, able to browse from the treetops as traditionally depicted without having to rear up onto two legs (though they could do that too, at least the diplodocids).

Note that this still rules out the traditional swan-curve. Everybody seems to agree that the neck vertebrae acted sort of like a long, rigid pole that would have been straight along the whole middle section, just bent severely at the base of the neck and at the head.

Read more about it in the scientists' own words over at SV-POW!

[Images used above are of Diplodocus carnegii, from Walking with Dinosaurs and SV-POW, copyright the BBC and Mark Witton, respectively.]

References:

• Taylor, M.P., Wedel, M.J. and Naish, D. 2009. Head and neck posture in sauropod dinosaurs inferred from extant animals. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 54(2): 213-220.

The Up Side of Hype

Darwinus is not a dinosaur. I've gritted my teeth and resisted posting on the whole whirlwind of ridiculous media hype, fallout from said hype, shady purchases from private collectors, TV deals forcing incomplete science through the fast track, and online publications that laugh in the face of actually officially naming and describing new finds.

For those who want to catch up, here's a few links, which have all unfolded in the bloggy goss-o-sphere (these are from The Loom, but check literally any paleo or science blog for more):

• Darwinius Changes Everything, Or Not
• Science Held Hostage
• Does Darwinius Exist?
• ...Not Yet
• Ok now it does
  

And because it's a really nice fossil, I've even included a pretty picture from the paper, but that's all I have to say about that.

Anyway, the whole controversy over Darwinius not meeting ICZN standards for valid publication has implication for dinosaurs as well. Namely, Aerosteon and Panphagia, both of which were published in the same online journal, PLoS ONE. Now, you'd think an online journal would go out of its way to make sure species published in it were valid, however this does not seem to be the case. It's apparently on the authors to make sure their papers have proper printing and distribution to meet ICZN criteria. Aerosteon and Panphagia, as far as we know, do not meet these criteria and are not valid names. Their papers are unpublished manuscripts at this point. If and when the names are printed in 50 or more copies and made publicly available for sale or to libraries, then they'll be valid, but at least the year of publication for Aerosteon will need to be amended from 2008 to 2009, assuming it happens this year. The same goes for the early whale Maiacetus, which is a Stinking Mammal.

Because of all the hype and the potential PR fallout should somebody pull an Aeto-Gate on "Ida" (Rioarribasimius as Mike Taylor jokingly threatened), PLoS ONE has acted quickly and pushed Darwinius through the proper print channels, checked with the ICZN higher-ups, and gotten the green light. Who will think of the poor dinosaurs in all this?

So, a warning to anyone publishing online: Make sure you arrange for a print run of your paper. Think of poor Epidendrosaurus--there but by the grace of the ICZN go you.

How Science News Works

Ok, not DinoGoss, but one of my main ideas for this blog that I haven't (fortunately!) gotten to delve into yet is "science reporting so tragically bad it's almost funny." You all know what I mean, so I'll just show this awesome comic I picked up from Brian Switek's blog Laelaps:

(click for full size).

Comic copyright Jorge Cham, all rights reserved. Check out PhD Comics!

"They look like big, good, strong hands, don't they?"

Just popping in to report on the ongoing saga of the new Deinocheirus specimen(s?).

For those who haven't been keeping up, rumors of one or more new finds from this age-old dino mystery have been swirling for a few months now. While a new find was whispered of over a year ago, the real action didn't start until Michael Ryan posted on his blog regarding Phil Currie's re-discovery of the original quarry where the infamous "terrible hands" and their adjoining titanic arms were first found in the late 1960s. He ended the short post with the tantalizing statement that they'd found more of the skeleton.

[Reconstruction of Deinocheirus as an ornithomimid by Wikipedia illustrator and DinoForum member known as FunkMonk, some rights reserved. More on this image below]

As a child of the '80s, and thanks to any number of old dinosaur books for kids, Deinocheirus stands out at THE mystery dinosaur. Gigantic, clawed arms of a predatory dinosaur larger than anything else like them by an order of magnitude. What kind of creature could these possibly have belonged to? The imagination runs wild.

Thanks to phylogenetic studies done in the 1990s and 2000s, most paleontologists have concluded that it was probably a gigantic ornithomid, or "ostrich dinosaur," though just what a 40ft ornithomimid would look like and what kind of specialised adaptations it must have had remain a mystery.

Well, a mystery to most. I brought up Ryan's blog post at DinoForum last November to fish for clues. And boy did I get them. Several people posted tortured cries of "wait for the paper." I can't imagine the Machiavellian pleasure people must take in knowing the answer to such a compelling and long-standing mystery and not being able to talk about it. They must feel like the creators of Lost.

Most people couldn't resist posting more clues, or teaser answers to questions in that thread. T. Mike Keesey of Dinosauricon fame knows what it is. Is it a giant ornithomid, or something more? Says Keesey: "Oh, it's more." Keesey also dropped the bomb that the find in the original quarry was NOT the one he was thinking of. More than one Deinocheirus? A new member of the deinocheirid family? Something else? Somebody knows what it is. Somebody knows. Ok, now I'm just sounding like the creepy ginger guy from Watchmen. Anyway, more rumors from those in the know suggested that, while Currie and Ryan's site had turned up new remains, they weren't much. The other new find, however, seemed to be something much more complete.

By the end of January, Scott Hartman weighed in... by laughing at us poor blind plebs. Openly mocking our futile attempts at solving the puzzle. Yup, creators of Lost all right.

But, today, another solid clue, perhaps the most solid yet. Not a clue: an answer.

FunkMonk (mentioned above, sorry, don't know your real name dude) had posted a thread for critiques of his artwork a while back, also at DinoForum. Now the subject of his Deinocheirus has come up again. Scott Hartman reckoned a giant ornithomimid should be more graviportal (with heavy and stout limbs, unlike the lithe form of small, fast ornithomimds). But, it was an old thread, and the picture was done before rumors of the new find(s), and Keesey's implication that it might not be an ornithomimid. Funk didn't want to put more effort into a drawing that might be completely off base. Well, someone came along and put that one to rest.

"It's an ornithomimid."

Stay tuned, gosshounds, as the saga continues to unfold!

[Photo: cast of the currently-known Deinocheirus specimen from Wikipedia, some rights reserved.]

Miragaia: So long, stegosaur

Here's another new species for you gosshounds: Miragaira longicollum, or "long-neck from Miragaia village, Portugal."

This is a new stegosaur with a twist--look at that neck!

Photo credit by Dr Octavio Mateus.

As Tom Holtz pointed out on the DML, first we had Brachytrachelopan, the stegosaur-like short-necked sauropod, and now Miragaia, the long-necked stegosaur. Then he cryptically adds that there's another new dinosaur coming out that wants to belong to a different suborder... Could it be a long-necked theropod? Not that we don't have any, but maybe a long-necked 'carnosaur'? Or a short-necked ornithomimid? Or a flying ornithopod? Stay tuned to find out!

As the Everything Dinosaur blog is speculating, Miragaia might have implications for the old debate (and SVP poster joke) about bipedal stegosaurs. Long necks usually mean high browsing, dontcha know. Well, the Goss would point to diplodocid sauropods (which are now known to have had straight necks held close to the ground for low browsing over a wide area) as possibly a better example. But given the long back legs of stegosaurs and very robust forelimbs of Miragaia (maybe for doing "push-ups" into a bipedal or tripodal stance?), and the fact that the neck is pretty high from the ground, so unless it was wading shoulder-deep in ferns... Well, who knows? More opinions likely to come!

Further goss on Panphagia

Quick update on the new, primitive sauropodomorph Panphagia:

Adam Yates, at his blog Dracovenator, has his own post about this critter with a juicy bit of goss that applies to the old, early dinosaur favorite Eoraptor. Eoraptor is variously considered to be a primitive member of the theropod branch of the saurischian tree. Makes sense, since it's a small bipedal carnivore like all other primitive theropods.

Apparently Panphagia and Eoraptor are so similar that Yates reckons the authors of Panphagia are implying that Eoraptor might actually be a primitive sauropodomorph itself! This would be a mighty cool turn of events, giving us the most primitive of primitive sauropods and a very theropod-like, fully carnivorous one to boot. There's no solid phylogenetic evidence for this yet but it hasn't really been tested for either. Keep an eye on how this shakes out in the future.

Picture of Eoraptor is public domain from Wiki Commons.

Iguanodon divided by (at least) 3

As anyone who follows ornithischian classification (all five of you) knows, the famous British ornithopod Iguanodon has been getting the chop in the last few years. One of the first dinosaurs to be found and named, Iguano has picked up dozens of species over the past century or so and, not surprisingly, as studies of iguanodont realtionships got more precise it became necessary to divvy most up into their own genera outside Iguanodon proper. Last year, researcher, artist, and screaming-biplane enthusiast Gregory S. Paul published a paper reviewing the genus and spun off two new genera: Mantellisaurus and Dollodon.

Now, word on the tubes is that David Norman has given a lecture called "Iguanodontians from the Wealden of Britain and Europe" in which he gave his own review of the genus and spun off a few extras. These aren't published yet and far be it from me to facilitate any claim-jumping or Iguano-gate scandals by naming them here. That being said, goss hungry dino fans can find the names in a DML post from today and on a few Spanish-language blogs including aragosaurus.com. As you'll see, one of the new names kind of sounds like it'd be more at home on the periodic table than a list of dinosaur taxa. Ornithischian workers are werid guys.

Norman also discussed Paul's new genera: he thinks Mantellisaurus is valid but reckons Dollodon should be kept as a species of Iguanodon. We'll problably have to wait for all this to hit the press before reaching any kind of consensus, but stay tuned to the Goss to see if anybody weighs in prematurely.

Picture of Dollodon is public domain from Wiki Commons.

Welcome to DinoGoss

Welcome to DinoGoss, my half-baked attempt to jump into the paleo blog arena! The idea for this site is to act as an aggregation of paleontology-related news and rumors from all over the web. Hopefully, this will be a useful way to keep track of cutting edge paleo (is that an oxymoron?) for people who don't want to spend the time and energy to follow all the blogs, forums, and mailing lists out there. It'll also give me an excuse to weigh in on current paleo events.

So watch this space and don't be afraid to comment!