Clik here to view.
It's #SciArt week on Twitter!
I think we often downplay or take for granted the role that art plays in science. High quality art is obviously a hugely important aspect of public science communication. A paper describing a new...
View ArticleClik here to view.
What's up at Wapiti River?
The world can always use some more Pachyrhinosaurus bonebeds. So hooray to my friends and colleagues Federico Fanti and Mike Burns, and my PhD supervisor Phil Currie, for publishing a description of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
#MuseumWeek Retrospective!
Last week's #MuseumWeek tweetstorm was an awful lot of fun, especially following the #SciArt event just a few weeks earlier. I thought I'd share a couple of photos and thoughts for each day's theme – I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Brontobyte of Sauropods
Palaeontology emergency alert! This is not a drill! Brontosaurus is back!YES I FINALLY GOT TO USE THIS ON THE BLOG. Success!I mean, Brontosaurus never really left. That's the nice thing about taxonomy...
View ArticleClik here to view.
May your mountains dark and dreary be.
Just wanted to give a quick shout out to some old fossil friends of mine. Horton Bluff/Blue Beach is a pretty cool place and I have fond memories of field trips out there during my Dalhousie days....
View ArticleClik here to view.
On Surprises
I love surprises. Which is unfortunate for me, because I am extremely bad at being surprised. And it's hard to be surprised by things as you get older, and as easier access to more and more information...
View ArticleClik here to view.
On Failures of Imagination
Yesterday I talked about 'expected surprises' with regards to Yi qi. Yi qi is a surprise because its anatomy is so unlike other theropods, and it suggests that dinosaurs were experimenting with flight...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Crystal Geyser Quarry Quest
I just got back from my first stint of fieldwork for the year, and my first time doing fieldwork in the States. This was just a brief jaunt out to Utah and Colorado for two weeks, but it was a nice...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mad Max: Fury Quarry
There's a hadrosaur underneath this cliff. (Probably.)For the second week of our field expedition, we drove from Utah to a site near Rangely, Colorado, to help the Colorado Northwestern Community...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Cornelius says hello
Say hello to Cornelius! I got to meet him during a brief visit to the ROM last week, and he seems like a pretty nice guy.This cool new ceratopsian is on display in the Age of Dinosaurs gallery in an...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why does Jurassic World hate dinosaurs?
I have some Thoughts and Feelings about Jurassic World! Spoiler alert, I'm going to talk about details and plot points and this post is really for people who have seen the film. Also, while I'm going...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Dinosaurs Unearthed!
Growing up in Nova Scotia, despite its many excellent and significant palaeontological treasures, meant that there weren't many dinosaur fossils for me to gawp at regularly. The Nova Scotia Museum of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Woe betide those who summon the Galactic Coelacanth
A couple of years ago I had an existential crisis when I realized that, in the time one of my papers had been in review (almost 8 months!), I could nearly have physically created an entirely new human...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Know Your Ankylosaurs: China Edition
I'm in Utah digging up dinosaurs! But also, one of the last big chunks of my PhD thesis has just been published online at the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. They are generously allowing free...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Know Your Ankylosaurs: Gondwana Edition
Last time, I talked about the ankylosaurids of China, and today we're talking about Gondwanan ankylosaurs. Gondwana basically refers to the continents of today's southern hemisphere; when the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Know Your Ankylosaurs: North American Odds and Ends Edition
I've covered many of the North American ankylosaurs in my previous papers and blog posts. In 2013, I argued that what we thought was Euoplocephalus was more likely 4 taxa– Anodontosaurus, Dyoplosaurus,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Know Your Ankylosaurs: Mongolian Odds and Ends Edition
I'm back in civilization, so let's get back to ankylosaurs! Ready Set Go!Gobisaurus, Zhongyuansaurus, and ShamosaurusShamosaurus is a really interesting ankylosaurid from the Zuunbayan Formation of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Know Your Ankylosaurs: Everybody's in this Together Edition
So with all of those posts about ankylosaur taxonomy over the last few weeks, what have we learned about the evolution of this group? Over the course of my PhD research, I was able to identify a bunch...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How the ankylosaur got its tail club
Ankylosaur tail clubs are odd structures, odder than they are usually given credit for. They represent substantial modifications to two different skeletal systems – the endoskeleton, in the form of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Snapshots from the Field Museum
Last week I got a chance to visit the Field Museum in Chicago for the first time! It's a great big museum with lots of cool stuff, so I figured I'd share a few impressions from my lunchtime jaunts...
View Article