Hairy Museum of Natural History

Gomphotherium installation at Galleta Meadows. Photo from here.

From this story in the San Diego Union-Tribune, I learned of the life-sized (or larger) sculptures of Ricardo Breceda, who is in the process of installing an entire zoo of sheet metal megafauna on the Galleta Meadows Estate in Borrego Springs, California. The project appears to be a collaboration between sculptor Breceda, who was inspired to start sculpting prehistoric animals after watching Jurassic Park, and landowner Dennis Avery, who came up with the idea of “of adding ‘free standing art’ to his property” to recreate the area’s prehistoric inhabitants.

It’s hard not to be impressed with ambitious scope of this project, and Breceda’s sculptures seem to be a perfect fit for the arid landscape around Borrego Springs. I’m particularly fond of the character and detailing seen in the Gomphotherium (shown above) and the smaller ground sloths, like this little fella.

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Mammals, Neogene, Paleo-Pop.

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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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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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You could almost say, “Critters whose great big claws are their fingers”:

• Albertonykus and the Myrmecophagous Alvarezsaurs at When Pigs Fly Returns
• I, Priodontes, the tatuasu at Tetrapod Zoology

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Cretaceous, Dinosaurs, Mammals, Neogene.

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I couldn’t improve upon the existing caption to this intriguing image, which accompanies this intriguing article.

Albardi, L. 2004. Comparative aspects of the inner root sheath in adult and developing hairs of mammals in relation to the evolution of hairs. Journal of Anatomy 205: 3, pp. 179-200.

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Mammals, Rogaine, Synapsids.

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