Hairy Museum of Natural History

The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology has listed the winners of the Lanzendorf PaleoArt Prize for 2008. For the past eight years, noted paleoart collector John J. Lanzendorf has supported this award, which recognizes outstanding achievement in paleontology-based scientific illustration and naturalistic art.

This years winners, in three categories:

• 3-D: Tyler Keillor

Sculpture and photo by Tyler Keillor

Tyler is a talented preparator and sculptor for the University of Chicago’s Fossil Laboratory. Chances are you’ve seen his work before—both his Rugops and Nigersaurus got a lot of play in the media, and he’s recently gotten some attention for the “Stone Age Embrace” plaque reproducing the Gobero triple-burial uncovered from the “People of the Green Sahara” project. Tyler won this year’s Lanzendorf Prize for his sculpture of the Devonian “fishopod” Tiktaalik roseae (shown above). A little web searching uncovered a video showing how Tyler created this award-winning sculpture:

• 2-D: Luis V. Rey

Luis Rey’s vibrantly-colored and often dramatically foreshortened dinosaurs provide a glimpse into a dynamic Mesozoic Era. His unmistakable work has been the visual focus of several books, including Extreme Dinosaurs, A Field Guide to Dinosaurs, and most recently Dinosaurs: the Most Complete, Up-to-Date Encyclopedia for Dinosaur Lovers of All Ages, where he moved away from traditional media and began developing digital painting techniques. These techniques were used in the creation of his award-winning piece: Gigantoraptor Nesting Grounds (defending a raid by Alectrosaurus).

• Scientific Illustration: Carol Abraczinskas

Carol’s work has been most familiar to me as skeletal diagrams and specimen illustrations for many of the finds described by Project Expedition – Sarcosuchus (aka SuperCroc), Nigersaurus, and Jobaria, to name a few. Her illustrations have appeared in Science, Nature, National Geographic, and Newsweek. Carol’s renderings of the phalanges and claw of the prosauropod dinosaur Massospondylus won this year’s Lanzendorf Prize for scientific illustration.

Congratulations to this year’s winners!

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Paleo-Pop.

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Striving for fair and balanced reporting for all arthropod aficionados:

A few weeks old, but worth noting: World’s oldest flying insect fossil. A beautiful resting trace from a Carboniferous insect that landed with its limbs sprawled out like a mayfly; found in Massachusetts by a geology student at Tufts University.

Moving back in time, Chris Nedin kicks off his new Ediacaran blog with a compelling Cambrian tale of how flexible trilobites avoided unlucky breaks in The Spandrels of San Marco and the Anomalocaris Paradigm.

Speaking of the Cambrian, scientists are furthering their insight into the exceptional preservation of the famous Burgess Shale fossils, according to this article.

And  The Life of Madygen provides a brief introduction to the Triassic titanopterans, an extinct group of insects, related to grasshoppers and crickets, but with wingspans reaching half-a-meter across!

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Cambrian, Carboniferous, Invertebrates, Triassic.

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Some quick notes and links summing up some of the paleoart I saw and artists I met at SVP this year:

Paleo-Art Poster Session

This event ran concurrent with the Opening Reception at the CMNH. As I recall about 10-12 artists had posters of their work on display. Between taking in the exhibits and talking to folks that stopped to look at my poster, I missed a couple of the artists that were there, but I did have some inspiring conversations with the following:

• William Stout, who is as friendly and approachable as he is talented, presented a poster on the importance of murals in museums. Keep an eye out a book on his Prehistoric Life Murals to be published this December.
• I had met Judy Peterson, of the Western Interior Paleontological Society, before, but this was the first time I had the opportunity to see her paintings of the Prehistoric West.
• Hirokazu Tokugawa had posters of his incredible sculptures (including a gorgeous Cotylorhynchus). He knew the HMNH and he referred to my Monkey-Lizard Gallery when sculpting a lovely little netsuke-style Drepanosaurus.
• I was happy to meet Takashi Oda, whose work I’ve admired for some time. His poster showing Late Cretaceous dinosaurs of North America is online at his excellent Studio d’Arte Corvo blog. He also introduced me to the work of Hayato Yokoyama, who makes lovely sterling silver pendants and rings based on the skulls of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals.
• Emma Schachner’s work was new to me. Her detailed renderings of fossil and osteological specimens are absolutely stunning.
• Also new to me was the work of Utako Kikutani, (who I did not get to meet).

Cleveland Museum of Natural History

• The Cleveland Museum of Natural History had just opened a show entitled A Passion for Nature: The Art of William E. Scheele, that highlighted dozens of drawings, paintings, and prints by the museum’s former director. I became familiar with Scheele’s work through his dynamic illustrations in his book entitled Prehistoric Animals, and I can see now that I’ll need to add some of Scheele’s other titles to my library.
• The CMNH had a table at the conference, and I picked up a print of Centrosaurus brinkmani featuring Mark Schultz’ elegant rendering of this “popcorn-frilled” ceratopsian. Michael Ryan of PALAEOBLOG has subsequently made these available online.

Merchandise

There was an exhibitors hall at the conference—it was small but packed with ample opportunities to empty one’s wallet:

• I met the Paleoartisans (Beverly Eschberger & Geoff Habiger), who are actually situated not far from me in Tijeras, New Mexico. I think they’ve been making paleo-themed t-shirts since the last time I went to SVP in 1995, and they remain the only place I’m aware of where you can still pick up a “Reunite Gondwanaland” bumper sticker.
• Triebold Paleontology was showing off a cast of the skull, neck, and shoulders of their Pachycephalosaurus, and the new Appalachiasaurus in their catalog caught my eye.
• CM Studio had a handful of impressively detailed sculptures on display, mostly Paleozoic fish (including some early tetrapods).

Pending

The big annual event for the paleoart-minded is the awarding of the Lanzendorf PaleoArt Prizes. It doesn’t look like the Society has updated their website to announce this year’s winners yet, but when it does I’ll pass the news along here as well.

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Paleo-Pop.

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Other bloggers have noted some confusion as to how much information it is appropriate to share from the technical and poster sessions at the SVP Annual Meeting. Certainly there was work presented there that is in the process of being written up and published, and it’s probably best to err on the side of caution regarding what can be reposted on blogs or other personal publishing arenas.

Still, there is definitely some information that has begun to be spread around to members of the media and the public at large. Rather than risk breaking any news that isn’t ready to be broken, I’m going to compile a list of existing press releases, news stories, and other web content that refers more or less directly to information presented during the sessions at this year’s SVP. If anyone is aware of other stories that apply, please let me know and I’ll happily add them to the list:

Presentations released in their entirety:

• Removing Fossil Ribs: The Thread Technique
Amy Davidson

• Growth, allometry, and age/size distribution of the Late Triassic theropod dinosaur Coelophysis bauri: preliminary results
Larry F. Rinehart, Andrew B. Heckert, Spencer G. Lucas, and Matthew D. Celeskey

• Restoration and three-dimensional assembly of a nearly complete, articulated Eocele Protocetid whale skeleton from Pakistan
William Sanders, John Graf, Iyad Salmout, Munir Ul-Haq, and Philip Gingerich

Publications, press releases, and news stories based on or related to presentations:

The abstracts these stories appear to relate to are printed below the links

• Fossil Find May Document Largest Snake
J. Bloch et al.: Vertebrate Faunas from the Paleocene Bogota Formation of Northern Colombia

• The cranial endoskeleton of Tiktaalik roseae
• Ancient Fish Heads for Land
J. Downs et al.: The cranial endoskeleton of Tiktaalik roseae (Tetrapodomorpha, Elpistostegalia)

• Brain structure provides the key to unraveling the function of bizarre dinosaur crests
D. Evans et al.: Endocranial anatomy of lambeosaurine dinosaurs: Implications for cranial crest function and evolution

• Frontal sinuses and head-butting in goats: a finite element analysis
• Head Butting Goats, Part 1
A. Farke, Evolution and function of the supracranial sinuses in ceratopsid dinosaurs and the frontal sinuses in bovid mammals

• How pterosaurs took flight
M. Habib: Skeletal architecture and launch mechanics of pterosaurs

• Reconstructing a Stone Age Embrace
T. Keillor: Challenge: How to excavate, prepare, display and transport delicate articulated fossils found in unconsolidated sand?

• Live birth in the Devonian Period
• World’s oldest mother – Live birth in the Devonian (includes video content)
• Dr. John Long presents the Matterpiscis M. attenboroughi (video)
J. Long and K. Trinajstic: Devonian placoderm embryos and the origins of vertebrate sex

• Dinosaur ‘mummies’ were just thick-skinned
E. Lund et al.: Preservation of dinosaur integumentary impressions in the Upper Cretaceous Kaiparowits Formation, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, southern Utah

• New Haven scientist says he has solved ancient mystery: How did the turtle get its shell? (includes video content)
T. Lyson & W. Joyce: How did the turtle get its shoulder inside its ribcage, or did it?

• A more fearsome saber-toothed cat
V. Naples and K. Spearing: Reconstruction of the forelimb musculature and function in Xenosmilus hodsonae: an atypical scimitar-toothed cat
L. Martin et al.: Cookie-cutter cats; another saber-toothed morphotype

• Impact of increased character sampling on the phylogeny of Cetartiodactyla (Mammalia): combined analysis including fossils
O’Leary et al.: Instability of pivotal fossil clades in cetartiodactylan phylogeny and evolution of the ear region and ankle

Items that showed up on the conference bulletin board that are hard to classify but fascinating to look at nonetheless:

• treeosaur.com

Updated 10/24 from content found by Neil.

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Recent Discoveries.

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• 
• Epidexipteryx hui
  Credit: Zhao Chuang & Xing Lida.

• New Dinosaur: Epidexipteryx hui
• Name Means: Yaoming Hu’s Display Feather
• Relations: Scansoripterygid Avialaean
• Holotype: IVPP V15471, skeleton preserved with feather impressions.
• Location: Inner Mongolia, northern China
• Age: ?Middle to Late Jurassic, somewhere between 152,000,000 to 168,000,000 years ago
• Info: The well-preserved skeleton of little Epidexipteryx shows that this pigeon-sized dinosaur was covered in a fluffy feather coat, although it did not possess any contour feathers that would have enabled it to fly. It did, however sport two pairs of long ribbon-like plumes that fanned out from the tip of its rather short tail, presumably used for some sort of display. Other interesting features include its enlarged, forward-curving front teeth and its unusually proportioned hip bones. Its describers suggest that Epidexipteryx was related to the long-fingered Epidendrosaurus, and that these unusual little dinosaurs are examples of a previously unknown diversity of theropods near the origin of birds.
• Reference: F. Zhang, Z. Zhou, X. Xu, X. Wang and C. Sullivan, 2008. A bizarre Jurassic maniraptoran from China with elongate ribbon-like feathers Nature 455: 1105-1108.
• Elsewhere on the Web:
  • Nature: Figures and Tables
  • Palaeoblog: Epidexipteryx, Jurassic Feathered Dinosaur
  • Catalog of Organisms: A New Stem-Bird and Publication in the Digital Age
  • BBC News: New Feathered Dinosaur Discovered
  • Dave Hone’s Archosaur Musings has a guest post by one of the describers of Epidexipteryx, Corwin Sullivan: The Vampire Peacock of Daohugou

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Dinosaurs, Jurassic.

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