Updates ... and SVP Romer Prize

I've just noticed that it's been about four months since I posted my last blog entry...It is rather scary how time seems to fly even when you are not necessarily having fun...

Anyway, I thought I might as well advertise this. In the upcoming SVP at Bristol, I shall be giving a talk in the Romer Session:

Myology and functional morphology of biting in avian and non-avian dinosaurs.

It's mostly about non-avian theropods now but I have a couple of birds in there for comparison; I don't know now why I emphasised birds in the title, I could have just said dinosaurs... Perhaps it's because I made much of my myological observations in birds (but also a few crocs).

I shan't write too much about it here, but the work is basically a suped-up version of my Masters thesis from way back, almost six years now... I had to come up with a way to rescue the concept if not the work, after I'd realised I had some fatal flaws in the basic assumptions of the calculations in my Masters work, and it took nearly six years to perfect.

Comments

traumador said…

good to have you back, and hope the talk goes well...

08 September, 2009 10:23

Zachary Miller said…

I've got it highlighted, Manabu!

14 September, 2009 23:50

Raptor's Nest (old) said…

Thanks guys. I think my talk should be of interest to a number of people.

I hope you enjoy England, Zach!

15 September, 2009 09:17

Anonymous said…

Indeed, good to have you back! :) I have a feeling you're going to do fine on this talk! :) You've got the blogosphere's support!

18 September, 2009 00:23

The difference between Lion and Tiger skulls

A quick divergence from my usual dinosaurs, and I shall talk about big cats today. This is because to my greatest delight, I had discovered today a wonderful book. It is called The Felidæ of Rancho La Brea (Merriam and Stock 1932, Carnegie Institution of Washington publication, no. 422). As the title suggests it goes into details of felids from the Rancho La Brea, in particular Smilodon californicus (probably synonymous with S. fatalis ), but also the American Cave Lion, Panthera atrox . The book is full of detailed descriptions, numerous measurements and beautiful figures. However, what really got me excited was, in their description and comparative anatomy of P. atrox , Merriam and Stock (1932) provide identification criteria for the Lion and Tiger, a translation of the one devised by the French palaeontologist Marcelin Boule in 1906. I have forever been looking for a set of rules for identifying lions and tigers and ultimately had to come up with a set of my own with a lot of help...

Old drawings: Allosaurus

Recently, I came across a stash of old drawings that I had completely forgotten about. I'll try and upload them in the next week or two. Some are palaeo, others are not, but still quite interesting nonetheless... Here is the first. I think it is an Allosaurus head. At least the skull looks like an Allosaurus and it has lacrimal horns like an Allosaurus , so it must be an Allosaurus . Nothing special I guess...

R for beginners and intermediate users 3: plotting with colours

For my third post on my R tutorials for beginners and intermediate users, I shall finally touch on the subject matter that prompted me to start these tutorials - plotting with group structures in colour. If you are familiar with R, then you may have noticed that assigning group structure is not all that straightforward. You can have a dataset that may have a column specifically for group structure such as this: B0 B1 B2 Family Acrocanthosaurus 0.308 -0.00329 3.28E-05 Allosauroidea Allosaurus 0.302 -0.00285 2.04E-05 Allosauroidea Archaeopteryx 0.142 -0.000871 2.98E-06 Aves Bambiraptor 0.182 -0.00161 1.10E-05 Dromaeosauridae Baryonychid 0.189 -0.00238 2.20E-05 Basal_Tetanurae Carcharodontosaurus 0.369 -0.00502 5.82E-05 Allosauroidea Carnotaurus 0.312 -0.00324 2.94E-05 Neoceratosauria Ceratosaurus 0.377 -0.00522 6.07E-05 Neoceratosauria Citipati 0.278 -0.00119 5.08E-06 Ovir...

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