Centrosaurines vs. Chasmosaurines

When I visited the AMNH this past December, I was particularly taken with the Triceratops on display. Having recently painted a skeleton in detail, each bone seemed extremely familiar and identifiable. In “person,” the Triceratops skeleton was a beautiful testament to the power and presence of the animal. I found myself with a new appreciation for Ceratopsids.

I don’t know much about Ceratopsids. It seems they’re lost in a sea of Theropods…overshadowed by the gigantic Sauropods. In movies, T-rex, Velociraptor and other carnivorous dinosaurs are given the spotlight. Jurassic Park featured a Triceratops, but it was sick, on its side and hardly depicted as exciting.

Most of what I do know about Ceratopsids comes from my visit to AMNH. In fact, during that visit, Brian taught me one of the most basic of facts: the difference between Chasmosaurines and Centrosaurines.

Chasmosaurinae includes Anchiceratops, Arrhinoceratops, Chasmosaurus, Eotriceratops Pentaceratops, Torosaurus and Triceratops. Chasmosaurines are characterized by huge triangular frills with large fenestrae to minimize the weight, large eye horns, long skulls and short-to-absent nasal horns.



Pentaceratops (top) and Chasmosaurus (middle) images from weatherenthusiast.com and skulls-skeletons.com, respectively. Triceratops (bottom) image from mnh.si.edu.

Centrosaurinae includes Achelosaurus, Avaceratops, Brachyceratops, Centrosaurus,, Einiosaurus, Pachyrhinosaurus and Styracosaurus. Centrosaurines are characterized by highly ornamented, small frills, short skulls, absent eye horns and large nose horns.



Centrosaurus (top) and Pachyrhinosaurus (middle) images from uoregon.edu and tyrrellmuseum.com, respectively. Styracosaurus (bottom)image from biology-blog.com.

You can see, particularly well, the general differences in the skulls by comparing the Triceratops and Centrosaurus images.

Also, you'll notice, in the photo of Chasmosaurus, a round opening in the skull slightly above and between the orbital sockets. From what I know, this opening is called the pineal foramen, frontoparietal foramen or postfrontal foramen, though I believe the latter is an out-of-date term. I haven't been able to find much information on this particular part of the skull, nor do I know if it is specific to certain families of Ceratopsians, though I do remember Brian telling me something about it at AMNH.

Anyone know more about this?

References:

Zach Miller, When Pigs Fly, Evolution of Ceratopsia Part 2.

Wikipedia. Ceratopsidae.

Dodson, P., Forster, C., and Sampson, S. 2004. Ceratopsidae, p. 494-513. In Weishampel, D., Dodson, P., and Osmólska, H. (eds.), The Dinosauria (second edition), University of California Press, Los Angeles.

Fossilized wound?

I just came across this article on the National Geographic website. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. has the research article, if you're interested.

Here's the abstract:

This paper reports on a unique preservation of soft tissues in the ventrolateral region of the plant-eating dinosaur Psittacosaurus from the Jehol biota of China. The reservation is of a deep cross section through the dermis, which includes multiple layers of collagenous fibres in excess of 25, among the highest recorded in vertebrates, with a further 15 more layers (poorly preserved) estimated for the entire height of the section. Also, for the first time in a dinosaur two fibre layers parallel to the skin surface are preserved deep within the dermis at the base of the cross section. These fibre layers comprise regularly disposed fibres arranged in left- and right-handed geodesic helices, matching the pattern at the surface and reasonably inferred for the entire section. As noted from the studies on modern-day animals, this fibre structure plays a critical part in the stresses and strains the skin may be subjected to and is ideally suited to providing support and protection. Psittacosaurus gives a remarkable, unprecedented understanding of the dinosaur skin.

I can't get to the rest of the article because I'm not a subscriber, but I'm interested in what National Geographic had to say about Psittacosaurus's protofeathers (Brian wrote about this on his pre-Sb blog) and whether or not the research article tackles the subject.. The NG article said "The research also suggests that some dinosaurs had thick, scaly skin like that of modern-day reptiles, refuting the theory that dinos had primitive feathers." Interesting...

J calls this dinosaur "Pistachiosaurus."

Photo from http://dinonews.net/

Plans...

Part of the reason I took so many pictures at AMNH was to have some photos of my own to paint from. I'm still where I was a month ago on the Triceratops painting, but once I'm done with that, I'll move on to another one. Here're the photos I hope to paint, for your viewing pleasure:

New stuff and a teaser...sorta...

On New Year’s Eve, I’ll be posting the first edition of Miss Emily’s Munchie Madness Monday. It will be the first in a new line of posts that are food-related, probably containing recipes and meal ideas. Really, though, the posts will be a vehicle for me to use my new camera and capture my little Persian, Emily, showing her love of people-food. While the theme isn’t really paleo-related, I think it’ll be entertaining and interesting. Also, while I have low confidence when it comes to writing about paleontology, I have all the confidence in the world that I can write a decent post about my cat.

And what’s a blog without the occasional cat post?

What’s this about a new camera, you ask? Well, little did I know as I was lurking about the American Museum of Natural History and experiencing serious camera inadequacy, J had a little Squidmas surprise brewing. A gorgeous new digital camera! It’s a Sony Cybershot DSC-T2 and it’s packed with weird features that may or may not fall into the category of “useful,” like a smile sensor, face detector and “beach” setting. Really, though, the camera is great. It’s got 8.1 megapixels, a seriously long-lasting battery, shoots video in full HD and has a 4 GB internal memory, which means I don’t have to ever worry about filling my memory card. And the best part is the size; it fits easily into my coat pocket so I can carry it everywhere, unlike my last camera, which fit easily into a backpack and was quite cumbersome. I still wouldn’t let my new little toy get into a bare fist fight with Brian’s, but I couldn’t be happier with it.


J's Squidmas wrapping paper.

I got some other nice things for Squidmas as well, all quite nerdy but quite useful, such as the Planet Earth series on DVD, a TI-83 calculator and a tee-shirt featuring Tuojiangosaurus. The tee shirt was a perfect gift, given my history with the dinosaur. *story below

Anyway, today I decided that I just needed more stuff and I took a little trip to Borders and bought myself the following:

· Mozart’s Requiem
· Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World
· Stephen Jay Gould’s Ever Since Darwin
· Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion

I’ve spent a large portion of the day listening to the Mozart album and reading Not in Our Classrooms, which is a collection of essays on Intelligent Design and why it’s not appropriate for our nation’s schools. I’m hoping to finish it soon so I can move on to the books I bought today.




*When J and I went to the Miami Science Museum, I took a lot of pictures of fossils with accompanying voice recordings, so I could correctly label the pictures at home. When it came time to pronounce Tuojiangosaurus’s name, I had a hard time. When I put the pictures on my computer, the voice recordings got saved into Windows Media Player. One night, during dinner with J and a few friends, my voice came on, loud and clear, saying “Tu…Two…Two…Tuo-jango…” It was embarrassing. In a hunt to find me a nice dino shirt, J happened upon Tuojiangosaurus and now I’m forced to pronounce it every time someone looks at the shirt and asks, “How do you say that.” What a clever gift. Ha ha ha. Really, though…it was quite funny.

Okay, okay...

Sorry about the lack of posting. I've been out-of-town this past week on holiday and while I've had access to the internet, I've also had a lot of stuff to do and people to see and a short amount of time to fit it all into! But I'm home now and have a few days off, so I'll try and catch up.

Vacation was (and is) great. I went to NYC for a few days to visit my father, and to Connecticut to visit my mother. While in NYC, I got a chance to meet fellow paleoblogger, Brian "Laelaps" Switek, at the American Museum of Natural History. He was excellent company (and a good tour guide, as he knows vastly more about paleo-stuff, especially related to AMNH, than I do). J and I had a great time lurking the halls of the 4th floor with Brian. We were really happy with the whole experience, which was nice, given that we both tend to have a high level of social anxiety and were afraid we'd be really shy and awkward).


I experienced a lot of camera envy as Brian's camera was scores cooler than mine, but my trusty little Canon held up well, and I got a lot of neat pictures. Here are a few:




From the top...J gaping at some extinct mammal that I can't remember the name of (yes, he's embellishing a bit...he wasn't that amazed), a mammoth skull, Brian checking out Triceratops, and the hips of Apatosaurus.

There's more to come, later....it's funny...the less I have to do, the busier I seem to be.

Pteranodon Jeebus and the Triceratops...

I've been promising pictures of my triceratops painting so, last night, I pulled out the camera and took some teaser pictures. The painting is not, by any means, original. It's actually a painting of a photograph by Chad Shier of the Royal Tyrrell Museum that appears in John Acorn's Deep Alberta. Either way, a lot of time has gone into it (maybe 15-20 hours) and I'm pretty happy with it so far.

Also, below are some photos of J's painting, which I from now on dub "Pteranodon jeebus." J is in an oil-painting class this semester and he had to make a shadow box and use it to paint something abstract. He used our Pteranodon toy and our LED Jesus statue in the shadow box, as well as a bowl and a piece of wood, which you can see in the lower right and left-hand corners. It's rad.

And of course, I couldn't resist posting this fun photo of me as a little girl. I was so cool back then...*sigh* That chubby little hand trying to steal my video game belongs to my little brother, Tyler.

Polar stuff...

There's been a lot of media attention surrounding polar dinosaurs lately. Nature News recently featured an article called "Paleontology: Tunnel vision" about Thomas Rich's attempt to tunnel into the Alaska permafrost to access polar dinosaur fossils. The article, written by Alison Abbot, focuses mostly on the trials and tribulations of the field crew and film crew and reads more like a docu-diary than anything else. If you check out the comments at the end of the article, you'll notice a letter to the author by Roland Gangloff, rebuking her for giving his research and publications such little attention.

In other news, tonight is the long-awaited GWAR concert. I'll try to post some pictures tomorrow, though I have to rush from my Calculus class to the concert venue, so I'm sure I'll forget the camera. That, and it's freakin' cold outside, and I don't know how I'll feel at 1 a.m. when I'm drenched in fake blood and other body fluids and have to shower and get up in 6 hours. Oh, poor me.

A post for Zach...

Zach from When Pigs Fly Returns left a comment on my blog a while ago and we got to talking about the Jurassic Park action figures. In the spirit of our conversation, I wanted to post a few pictures of those figures. Unfortunately, I only took one picture of the action figures and then took a zillion pictures of my apartment (mainly the dinosaur living room) and a few of J. Still, I wanted to share them all... So, without further ado, a montage of images from my life, as of this morning and a picture of my old Jurassic Park toys:




First: This is our bookshelf. Notice the PostSecret books, which I am completely addicted to. Displayed are my old JP toys. There's a juvenile T rex, a couple of Dilophosuarus, "Velociraptor," Procompsognathus, Stegosaurus, and a Pachycehpalasaurus. I was about 11 when Jurassic Park came out (the movie) and I was so in love with it.

Second: This is the dinosaur living room. It's where we hide all of my nerdy dinosaur paraphernalia. Notice my cat, Emily. She can't NOT be in a picture, especially in the morning when she hasn't been fed. We have a huge "dinosaur" panorama poster on the wall (we like picking out the non-dinosaurs). You can see the bookshelf and my dinosaur coasters (in the window). The bottom picture is a close-up of them. My friends Christy and Alex made them for me for my birthday. I talk about them in my birthday post. They're beautiful!

Third: This is the cast that J and I made at Dinosaur State Park on Labor Day. It's from a trackway made by a Dilophosaurus-like dinosaur called Eubrontes. We still have to put some polyurethane on it and paint it.



J hesitantly agreed to let me take a picture of him even though he had woken up only seconds before. In the second picture, Emily is trying frantically to get off of J's shoulder, while it takes me a million hours to snap the picture. She scratched him pretty good. J's got some really nice tattoos (the mirrors on his forearms and Celtic knot on his wrist). My favorites are his ammonites (which he says are just shells, but I call them ammonites anyway) and his birds. The birds are on his chest and they point down and in towards his sternum. I've thought it might be a good idea to get two Quetecoatulus northropi on my chest...

Hello New Sauropod, Goodbye State Dinosaur

Peter Rose examined "Pleurocoelus" fossils from Jones Ranch and found that they actually belong to a new basal titanosaurifom of the lower Cretaceous, differing from previously described Pleurocoelus "in the shape of the caudoventral margin of the maxilla, the shape of the distal scapular blade, and the shape of the proximal condyle of the tibia"(Rose 2007). Rose named the new sauropod Paluxysaurus Jonesi.

The paper is available at Palaeontologia Electronica at the following url: http://palaeo-electronica.org/2007_2/00063/index.html

References

Rose, PJ. 2007. A New Titanosauriform Saruopod (Dinosauria: Saurischia) From The Early Cretaceous Of Central Texas and its Phylogenetic Relationships. Paleontologia Electronica, 10: 8A

Weekend Re-cap

What a wonderful birthday! I woke up at 6:30 as usual, thinking I was going to drive J to work. He didn't seem to be in any hurry so I asked if he was going to work and he told me he'd gotten the day off. It was so nice to spend the morning with him. He got me a great oil paint set, SmartWool socks, and two packages of gummy bears. Naturally, we stayed in bed eating the gummy bears and watching Dr. Who for a good portion of the morning.

Later, the dojo threw me a surprise party. A bunch of people gathered on my porch and we had vegan pizza, vegan chilli, cornbread and vegan chocolate cake. I got some more neat gifts; a piggy bank that says "Saving up for therapy," a book called T-rex and the Crater of Doom, a Diva Cup, a few gift certificates and art. The art was beautiful. My friends Christy and Alex cut out pictures of "dinosaurs" from an old book and fit them to tiles, covered them with a sheer coating of polyurethane and VOILA!: dinosaur coasters. There's a Coelophysis, a T-rex, a "Brontosaurus," a Dimetrodon and an Archaeopteryx. So...they're not all dinosaur coasters, but still...beautiful. J was so amused by the Dimetrodon that he made up a song about it. It goes like this: "Oh Dimetrodon, how come you show up where you don't belong?..." I couldn't date a guy who thought Dimetrodon was a dinosaur!

On the school front, I got my first Chemistry test back today. I was really worried about it because I've spent EVERY spare second I have doing chemistry homework and if it didn't pay off, there wasn't anything more I could possibly do. I was also worried because the test consisted of very basic questions, which was the last thing I expected. I had gone over all of the complex problems and have actually woken up at night with them in my head, but I just ignored the simple stuff. Of course, the test was on all the simple stuff. Anyway, I did well. In fact, according to WebCT, I did better than was possible: 142 points out of 140! I'm really proud of myself. I've put a lot of work into school and it's paying off.

Labor Day Weekend

Aside from the usual family drama, my trip home to Connecticut for Labor Day weekend was a success. As usual, J accompanied me on the 4-hour drive. We met my mother for dinner at her favorite bar, talked about my pressing need to see a dermatologist and lit a bee hive on fire...a normal evening with mom.

The point of the trip was to get in one last weekend of fun before school began (well, before school began for J...I started in August). I've been keeping a folder at work called "Stuff I Want to Do," and inside was a printout of instructions on how to make a plaster cast of Eubrontes footprints at Dinosaur State Park. In a last-minute attempt at doing something out of the ordinary, J and I decided to do dino stuff...which is not out of the ordinary...for us. We also decided to spend an afternoon in West Stafford at Diamond Ledge, digging for quartz crystals.

Prior to Labor Day weekend, I don't remember when my last visit to Dinosaur State Park was. I do remember being slightly disappointed about the size of the museum, but that was probably because before that, my last museum experience was at the Peabody, which is huge.

Anyway, I was REALLY impressed with Dinosaur State Park. It's small, for sure, but it's got a lot of good information about the Eubrontes trackway that was uncovered at the site. They had a "garden" with varieties of trees descended from those of the Mesozoic. The museum also had a really impressive gift shop and book store.

J and I spent a good amount of time there, reading all the information the museum had to offer, deciding which fossil replicas to buy, making a cast of a footprint and walking on the various trails behind the museum.

Diamond Ledge was perfect, too. We met a family from Rhode Island in the parking lot and hiked out to the dig site with them. They were wonderful company and we all found a lot of nice specimens to take home.

Lame blogger...Jack Horner...and a random Triceratops

I am an utterly lame blogger. I have failed my duties as a blogger and have ignored my blog for far longer than any decent blogger would. For this, I am sorry.

I have done some cool things in the last few weeks, especially dino-related things!

1. I have finally read Jack Horner's "Digging Dinosaurs." It was just what I needed...a little pick-me-up before school starts...a little 'hey, you can look forward to this' thing. The book is old...like, twenty years old. I'm sure much of the information is outdated...but it's perfect! There's not so much emphasis on the science...well, there's not so much emphasis on scientific language...it's all science in layman's terms. It's fascinating. I never considered that field work could mean contending with black widows and scorpians (which I would have considered had I not been blinded by love). There's subtle humor throughout...the kind I've become so familiar with since joining the Dinosaur Mailing List. And of course, the discoveries...I have a new respect for Maiasaur...for dino babies...for the amazing conclusions that can be drawn from a few bones and a quick study of the geology of an area. It's SO COOL!!!!!

2. I discovered that OPU (Over-Priced University) has a Triceratops! Turns out one of the professors is working on a Triceratops skeleton. I don't know much about it...there's literally no information on the OPU website...anywhere. I have contacted the professor, however, to ask if I can get my hands dirty with the project. I'm sure, as a brand new geology student with no experience, that I won't get to do much more than watch...but that will suffice. Currently, the Triceratops is resting peacefully in a plaster jacket, enclosed in a rock matrix, inside a preparation room in the geology museum. I usually walk over there on my lunch breaks and press my face up to the glass, trying to pick out the bone fragments from the rocks (yeah...I'm THAT new to this). I get chills when I go in there...it's like my dream of working with dinosaurs is sitting on the other side of a window and I can almost touch it!

3. Miss Emily and Jordan have become best of friends. He's been documenting their relationship on his cell phone. Apparently, she's not the easiest company:


First Picture Caption reads: Emily drank all my water and she won't refill it.
Second Picture Caption Reads: Now she keeps changing the channel.

Oh, Florida

I've spent the last week in Fort Lauderdale, Florida with J. We flew down on the 23rd and drove back on the 30th. It was a great trip, but for a few minor setbacks.

Some highlights included our trip to the Miami Science Museum where dinosaur skeletons from China were exhibited, some for the first time. I tried to take National Geographic-quality photos, but all I got were these crummy pics:

(from left top to right bottom: Lufengosaurus (2 species); Sinraptor; Omeisaurus and Tuojungosaurus; Shunosaurus; Confuciusornis; um...I think it's spelled Longistravus; and Yangchuanosaurus)


(Jordan and Mr. Anatamically Screwed Dinosaur on the dino couch)

The exhibit was pretty small, but a lot of the skeletons were on exhibit for the first time in the States, and many were nearly complete.