Raptor's Nest

Ever since I started having suspicions of the role of olfaction in scavenging behaviours of Tyrannosaurus rex , I have been interested in the olfactory capabilities in predators and how they correlate with their behaviours. So much that I bought a nice book called Predator-prey dynamics: the role of olfaction . However, I shan't write about that book today, even though I quite like it. Instead I shall comment on a paper that became available in Proceedings of the Royal Society B . I refer to the new study by Darla Zelenitsky and colleagues on the olfactory bulbs in theropod dinosaurs and alligator. Zelenitsky et al. (2009) provide the "first quantitative evaluation of the olfactory acuity in extinct theropod dinosaurs". They calculate relative olfactory bulb sizes (olfactory ratio: the size of the olfactory bulb relative to the size of the cerebral hemisphere) in 21 species of theropods (including Archaeopteryx ) and 1 species of crocodilian ( Alligator mississippiensis...

I know I have been lazy with the postings here, and I really need to finish my Pachyrhinosaurus reconstruction. But I have been faced with a bit of a problem since I've decided to reconstruct this dinosaur one layer at a time, i.e. I wanted to be as accurate in the muscle reconstructions as possible so that the fleshed out version would look realistically three-dimensional even over the skin. Basically, I don't know enough about the postcranial musculature. Previously, I would have just roughly fleshed the whole creature out, from the outside in - basically imagining what a dinosaur would have looked like in life and just sketching it. This way, I didn't really need to be accurate in the myology just as long as the animal looked good enough. However, reconstruction from the skeleton up requires a bit more accuracy on the muscle reconstruction, or at least I would want to be as accurate. If you have been following my blog for any period of time, you would know by now t...

Well, yes, I just happen to be a doctor... I passed my viva last Wednesday (it's been a whole week already). Despite my fears that my examiners were going to shred up my thesis, my examination went extremely pleasantly. It was almost like an extended discussion than what I'd imagined a thesis defense would be like. Both my examiners were very pleased and I passed with minor corrections, mostly typos, and clarification. I was gonna post a bit on the content, but one chapter is almost ready to submit so I think I'll hold on to that until things are a bit more definite...

Having submitted my thesis on the 29th of September, a day before the absolute deadline (the University of Bristol permits exactly 48 months to submit a PhD thesis), I thought I could kick back and relax...maybe spend more time on drawing or blogging - but I was wrong. Not having secured a postdoc position, I spend most days stressing, searching, working closely with academic staff on postdoc proposals, and working on converting my thesis chapters into manuscripts. At the same time, I'm trying to catch up on the reading that I'd put on hold while I was manically typing away on my thesis. I have quite a large 'to read' pile. There are some rather interesting papers out there that I only recently stumbled across and so I must blog about them sometime, when I get my head arround all the head-ouch evolutionary theories and models. ...I have this thing about not posting anything until I have something either interesting or useful to post, so not having devoted much time or e...

With 42 days to go until I have to submit my PhD thesis, I haven't really had much time to blog...let alone draw dinosaurs! All I have time for is to get stressed out. Anyway, in the midst of all this, I've finally decided on a thesis title: Bite force, and the evolution of feeding function in birds, dinosaurs and cats. The perfect title to show just how much unfocused my thesis is when it comes to a taxonomic group of interest, but extremely obsessed with bite force...ha! Of course it may be subject to change. The actual thesis consists of five chapters: Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Myology and functional morphology of extant archosaurs Chapter 3: Reconstruction of the jaw adductor muscles and jaw biomechanics in dinosaurs Chapter 4: Dry skull bite force estimation in felids Chapter 5: Tracing the evolution of bite force in Darwin’s finches and felids Chapter 1 introduces biomechanical concepts regarding bite force and also introduces bite force as a useful single-value ...

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...

Albertaceratops nesmoi MK II! It looks a lot better than my previous one, which is way too embarassing to link to now... You may have noticed but I am having fun with all these ceratopsians. It seems like I'm stuck in a ceratopsian phase right now... I can't really comment much on Albertaceratops other than what's already been covered elsewhere. I don't think there's really anything done with this dinosaur other than the original description. But then again, what is there to do with a dinosaur known from a single skull and some fragments? Ah - someone should do functional morphology, like FEA - provided they have access to a huge scanner, that is... Not just in Albertaceratops but someone should look into stress distribution patterns in ceratopsian crania using FEA. Better yet, someone should look at pachycephalosaurs... Anyway, I think it's the new paper but the pencil just came out too dark...and it started getting smudged so I couldn't really add any m...