Hairy Museum of Natural History

A few paleontology posts of note have sprung up within the past 24 hours or so…

Laelaps takes a look at pachycephalosaurs, and the possibility that three named genera of these thick-headed dinosaurs might actually represent three growth stages of a single species.

Zach reviews the Troödontidae, which paleontologists suspect filled the niche of the skinny, brainy outcasts compared to their more popular dromaeosaur cousins.

And Amanda shows off a few stunning works-in-progress at the Self-Designed Student household: a lovely Triceratops skeleton, and the “Pteranodon jeebus,” a fantastic paleo-icon sure to inspire praise among the fossiliferous faithful.

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Cretaceous, Dinosaurs, Paleo-Pop, Webbery.

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Coming up on the National Geographic Channel this weekend are a couple of dinosaur documentaries, including “Dino Death Trap,” highlighting Jurassic discoveries from China’s Junggar Basin (including the crested tyrannosauroid Guanlong, pictured above). Next in the lineup is “Dino Autopsy,” focusing on what information can be gleaned from the 67,000,000 year-old corpse of Dakota, the hadrosaur mummy who’s been all over the papers of late.

The National Geographic Channel has put a ton of effort into online marketing for these programs, ranging from the silly (dinocentralpark.com, where you get the simulated experience of unleashing a Jurassic roar at unsuspecting passersby) to fairly informational, such as the 3-D Dino Death Trap viewer (scroll down for the link to launch it), which introduces some of the Junggar Basin’s unique paleofauna (toothless, two-fingered ceratosaur?). I must admit, however, most my time on the site was spent trying to uncover theropod bones in the Taipei-style Fossil Hunt game.

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Paleo-Pop, Webbery.

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Well, folks, it looks like the month of December is going to be hairier than usual around HMNH HQ. At the top of the list are some thrilling but time-consuming deadlines from the day job rushing towards me, including a set of illustrations for a new exhibit opening this spring, but needed by January in order to flesh out a little publication that has to be printed and ready to distribute by opening day. Sorry to be so tight-lipped about this project, but there should be more to say very soon!

The upside is that I’m making more time during the normal workdays to paint. The downside is that I’m squeezing it in alongside several other duties that are coalescing around the same exhibit. Actually, that isn’t really a downside, since everything I’m working on is pretty exciting—the real downside is that it will be bleeding into more personal time as the holidays approach. Postings here may tend to be a bit sporadic over the next few weeks as a result.

In anticipation of this, I’ve bitten the bullet and ordered a long-overdue replacement to my aging computer. I’m hoping it will help me accomplish the tasks ahead at blazing speed, but I’m sure its main function will be to serve as a shiny bit of positive reinforcement when I need to hunker down and plug away at some image files or layouts.

Speaking of layouts, I’ve been threatening to redesign this site for a couple of months now, so I really should add that to the list of things that need my attention this month. When I last mentioned it, a couple of comments encouraged me to retire the Titanophoneus skull that has grinned out from the HMNH logo for the past three years, in favor of something a little more appropriately hairy. I haven’t quite settled on what will replace it just yet, but there are a couple of fruitful possibilities…

…so, just off the cuff, is there a kind reader out there able to send me a PDF of the following article?

Hopson & Kitching 2001. A probainognathian cynodont from South Africa and the phylogeny of non-mammalian cynodonts. Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, 156, p.5-35.

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Rogaine, The Day Job.

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The second edition of Linneaus’ Legacy, a new-ish blog carnival for the taxonomically inclined, is now online at Laelaps.

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Webbery.

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