Variation, a cool glass, and my Tate talk

1. VARIATION

You know what’s variable? Apatosaur cervicals. Top: NSMT-PV 20375, cervical 7 in anterior and left lateral views (Upchurch et al. 2005). Middle: YPM 1861, cervical ?13, in posterior and left lateral views (Ostrom & McIntosh 1966). Bottom: YPM 1980, cervical 8 in anterior and left lateral views (Ostrom & McIntosh 1966).

An anatomical variant that shows up in 1 in 500 or 1 in 1000 humans is by medical standards pretty common; in a metro area the size of London or Los Angeles you’d expect to find 10,000 or 20,000 people with that variation. But we shouldn’t expect to find those “pretty common” variations in any sauropods, for lack of specimens. We might find them, but we can’t count on it — and if we do find them, we might well mistake them for the normal anatomy. Stuff like this keeps me up at night.

(I wrote that in a comment on the previous post, and Mike suggested — correctly — that it would make a good post. But I’m not done!)

2. A COOL GLASS

Shoutout and thank you to Andy Farke, who got me an early birthday present: this phenomenally awesome pint glass with Marsh’s reconstruction of Brontosaurus. Pretty gol-durned satisfying, especially given that two of my most recent papers were on apatosaurs (one, two), and I have more in the works. Looks great holding a dark beer, but photographs less well. I blame the glass (hic).

3. MY TATE TALK

We’re just over two weeks out from the Tate Geological Museum’s Annual Summer Conference. There will be field trips on June 7 and 9, and talks on June 8. The theme is “The Jurassic: Death, Diversity, and Dinosaurs”, and you can see the list of speakers and talk titles here — basically crack for Morrison addicts like myself. Plus a little Sundance Sea action, as alluded to in the sweet conference art by Russell Hawley (above).

I am honored to have been invited to give the Saturday evening keynote talk, and I wanted to give the conference organizers a good return on their investment. Most of my in-the-pipeline stuff isn’t read for prime time, and the stuff that’s out is, well, out. Published, blogged, globally available, and therefore neither novel nor surprising. The abstract guidelines were wonderfully open-ended, encompassing everything from the standard 250-word text bolus to a multi-page mini-paper with figures and references. That set my hindbrain tingling — no prizes for guessing which way I went.

Evolution turned mammals into moles several times (not pictured: marsupial moles). How certain are we that evolution only turned dinosaurs into sauropods once? Moles by Michelle Leveille, from Partha et al. (2017: fig. 1).

The title of my talk is “The sauropod heresies: evolutionary ratchets, the taphonomic event horizon, and all the evidence we cannot see.” My only regret is that attendees will get to read my paper uh, abstract, before my talk, so they’ll be less surprised than I’d prefer. I’m trying to figure out how many new heretical thoughts, not voiced in my abstract, I can cram into the talk without voiding the warranty on my invite. Maybe it will be inspiring, maybe it will be an act of career immolation, but whatever happens, it won’t be boring. Come out and say hi if you get the chance.

Reference

Raghavendran Partha, Bharesh K Chauhan, Zelia Ferreira, Joseph D Robinson, Kira Lathrop, Ken K Nischal, Maria Chikina, and Nathan L Clark. 2017. Subterranean mammals show convergent regression in ocular genes and enhancers, along with adaptation to tunneling. eLife 6:e25884.