Hairy Museum of Natural History

• New Turtle: Odontochelys semitestacea
• Name Means: Half-shelled Toothed Turtle
• Relations: Basal Turtle
• Holotype: IVPP V 15639, complete skeleton
• Other Material: IVPP V13240 (paratype): complete skeleton prepared in ventral (bottom) view, IVPP V 15653: partial skeleton.
• Location: Guizhou Province, southwestern China
• Age: Carnian Triassic, ~220,000,000 years ago
• Length: ~40cm (~16 inches) long.
• Reference: Chun Li, Xiao-Chun Wu, Olivier Rieppel, Li-Ting Wang, and Li-Jun Zhao, 2008. An ancestral turtle from the Late Triassic of southwestern China Nature 456: 497-501 DOI: 10.1038/nature07533 [Figures and Tables] [Supplemental Info]
• Elsewhere on the Web:
  • Canadian Museum of Nature: Press Release
  • Chinleana: Rethinking Turtle Origins: Odontochelys
  • Dracovenator: Closing in on Turtle Origins
  • The Dragon’s Tales: To Osteoderm or Not Osteoderm?
  • Not Exactly Rocket Science: Heroes in a Half-shell Show how Turtles Evolved
  • National Geographic News: Oldest Turtle Found; May Crack Shell Evolution Mystery
  • Oldworld: ついに出た！カメになりかけの古生物
  • Palaeoblog: Odontochelys semitestacea: The Oldest Turtle
  • Pharyngula: Odontochelys, a transitional turtle
  • When Pigs Fly Returns: A carapaceless turtle
  • Why I Hate Theropods: Quote-mining Odontochelys

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Reptiles, Triassic.

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LIFE magazine and Google have begun making millions of images from the LIFE photo archive available online. Some quick searches have already brought these interesting items to my attention:

• “Cave Man of Early Britain”, shown above, who seems quite a bit rougher around the edges than his rarified contemporary, l’Homme Neanderthal.
• A dramatically foreshortened moa.
• A Jurassic scene by early paleoartist Joseph Smit. Unsigned pieces that look like Smit’s work include this size comparison of a human, Diplodocus, and Gigantosaurus, and a couple of placid sauropods unperturbed by the kangaroo-hopping carnosaur (Laelaps?) entering from stage left.
• Paleolithic art authority Abbe Henri Breuil.
• Lots of AMNH exhibits and specimens:
  • Walter Granger and Barnum Brown alongside the AMNH Tenontosaurus.
  • Assembling the Anatotitan pair at the AMNH.
  • Working on the old Tyrannosaurus mount.
  • Cleaning a cast of the Styracosaurus skull.
  • The fossil of the gliding reptile Icarosaurus, before it flew the coop at the AMNH (and made its way back again).
  • A Placodus skeleton.
  • Dusting the Wilmette Meteorite.
• And this shot of teenager Tony Lessa sporting a Coelophysis on his ride.

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Museumabilia, Paleo-Pop, Webbery.

Comments on record: (1)

For any New Mexico readers, there are a couple of lectures coming up this week that would be of interest to the paleontology-minded:

The NM Friends of Paleontology are meeting Monday, Nov. 17 at 7:00pm at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. This month’s meeting includes a talk by Larry Rinehart on some of the recent work he’s done on the allometry, growth, dimorphism and population structure of Coelophysis bauri from Ghost Ranch. The NMFOP meetings are free and open to the public.

On Thursday the 20th, geologist David Love and paleontologist Gary Morgan will be giving a talk on a 10 million year old oreodont recently unearthed at the Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge. The talk will begin at 3:30pm in the Macey Center auditorium at New Mexico Tech in Socorro (admission $5). More info about this find is online here.

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Dinosaurs, Mammals, Neogene, Recent Discoveries, Triassic.

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Many visitors to this blog know the work of Brian Switek, an undergrad student who runs the ScienceBlog Laelaps. Brian is one of twenty finalists in the running to receive this year’s $10,000 Blogging Scholarship. He’s made it to the finals on sheer merit, but he needs your vote to help seal the deal.

I’d like to encourage every HMNH visitor to click this link and vote for Brian. Here are a few reasons why:

• Laelaps provides a daily dose of science writing and photography, focusing on paleontology, biology, and history-of-science. Plus, it’s got one of the best banner images in the blogosphere. (If I do say so myself!)
• Brian also started and keeps up The Boneyard, a monthly bloggers’ carnival for paleontological posts.
• Finally, Brian also contributes content to the Smithsonian Magazine’s Dinosaur Tracking blog.

So there you have it, with just a few simple clicks you can help support one of the strongest and most prolific voices in the paleo-blogging community. Vote now, at the address below:

http://www.collegescholarships.org/blog/2008/11/06/vote-for-the-winner-of-the-2008-blogging-scholarship/

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Webbery.

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The Beyond Bones blog at the Houston Museum of Natural Science is full of paleo-stories these days:

• Several prime pelycosaur posts from recent field work in the Permian beds of Seymour, including Dimetrodon-as-chondrichthivore and new material that may be from the narrow-snouted finback Secodontosaurus .
• And a step-by-step look at how Julius T. Csotonyi recreated the world of Leonardo, the fantastically well-preserved Brachylophosaurus, for the museum’s Dinosaur Mummy CSI: Cretaceous Science Investigation exhibit. Csotonyi’s digital paintings are about the best I’ve seen, and this post gives valuable insight into his process.

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Cretaceous, Dinosaurs, Museumabilia, Permian, Synapsids.

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