TetZooCon 2015

There can't be many conventions that have spun off from a popular zoology-themed blog and equally popular podcast about new tapirs and charging for rambling answers to questions about bipedal combat in deer, so it was very heartening that the first TetZooCon was such a success. Successful enough, in fact, to spawn a successor event, once again host to an impressive array of speakers covering an eclectic range of topics. Only at TetZooCon will you be so well informed about legendary pygmy elephants, bizarre ichthyosaurs, condom-inflated pigeon carcasses and the right circumstances to ask to use your very wealthy friend's Rolls for promotional purposes. It was, once again, a resounding success. (All photos by Niroot unless otherwise stated.)

Darren Naish once again kicked things off, this time with a brief history of the cryptozoology of sea monsters and, in particular, how it evolved during the 20th century. While the 'prehistoric survivor' paradigm was popular earlier in the century, as time and science progressed, so such creatures were ditched in favour of more imaginative beasties, often with their own highly elaborate (and quite bonkers) phylogeny. The Belgian-French author Bernard Heuvelmans, prone to all sorts of flights of fancy regarding poorly documented sightings, is regarded as the 'father' of modern cryptozoology, and rightly occupied a sizeable section of Darren's talk. All very entertaining stuff.

Next up was author and waistcoat wearer Matt Salusbury and the tiny elephants which, it transpires, probably don't exist. One might detect something of a theme, but, quite unlike the likes of Cadborosaurus, the Yellow-Belly and Bighoot, it's quite plausible that a tribe of tiny elephants could exist, and the idea has captured the imagination of explorers, scientists and circus charlatans for centuries. In fact, there are many people who still maintain that there are dwarf heffalumps out there, and when one such individual contacted Matt it spurred him on to an envy-inducing journey to exotic locales and - ultimately - to write his latest book. Matt's was a fascinating tale of the endless, slightly puzzling quest to find miniature proboscideans (non-fossilised), of specimens submitted to museums, dubious sightings rebuffed comprehensively by experienced field guides and mahouts, and PT Barnum's filthy, filthy lies.

Jessica Lawrence Wujek's favourite animals certainly did exist, but definitely aren't alive today - the ichthyosaurs. This was a very entertaining talk, taking a look not only at the bizarre anatomy of the marine reptiles in question, but also the lengths that researchers go to in attempting to collect, study and even categorise them. (Marine reptile phylogeny is quite up in the air, it would seem.) Those of us who are more into dinosaurs and, at a push, if you insist, plesiosaurs, had our 'you know, those daft dolphin ones' perception completely dashed. Who ever knew just how utterly crazy ichthyosaurs' flippers were? (Well, apart from Jessica and the three other ichthyosaur researches in the world, of course.) A pavement of tiny bones, sure - but how about 10 digits, often forking into extra digits, or even digits splitting then being subsumed into other digits? Not to mention the giant eyes and sheer variety in shape, size and dentition, from serpentine early forms to later ones with shell-crushing flattened teeth. Brilliant.

Last year, Darren discussed speculative zoology, and just had to mention the 2002 TV series The Future is Wild, a program chock full of hypothetical futuro-beasts. This year, series writer Victoria Coules was on hand to inform us in entertaining detail just how the program was made. Unsurprisingly, this involved dealing with a fair number of irritating TV network middle-management types, and attempting to make a fun family show for the Americans and a more, you know, serious programme for Europeans at the same time (as the networks demanded). An especially amusing anecdote concerned Animal Planet's demand to know exactly where all the humans had gone, something the programme makers thought didn't really matter. (In the end, Animal Planet decided quite of their own accord that they had all left for planets new on some sort of Space Ark.) The show's CGI hasn't aged especially well, but the scientific thinking behind some of the future creatures was certainly intriguing. If you haven't seen the show, in 100 million years mammals will be reduced to being farmed by spiders, and in 200 million years they'll be entirely extinct, while gigantic squid roam the forests. Of course. I hope PZ Myers hasn't seen it.

David Lindo was up next - birder, broadcaster, writer, naturalist and all-around Superb Bloke. David was full of memorable stories, from his childhood love of birding, his alarming flirting with the twitcher side, his rather poor flirting with women (who didn't much agree to being taken to bleak, windswept islands), and much more besides. Best of all, David was behind the campaign to vote for a national British bird, and had plenty of very funny tales to tell about the campaign - promoting it and people's reactions to it. And to him. Because there are a fair number of racist morons in Britain (thus also explaining the Daily Mail's sales figures). Not that that mattered - with the backing of cor-blimey celeb chef Jamie Oliver and well-meaning friends in PR with a penchant for semi-naked women in masquerade masks, not to mention the birdy NGOs, the campaign was a huge success. David's aim was to increase awareness of the wonderful birds that surround us even in what would appear to be our otherwise quite mundane, grey surroundings in urban and suburban Britain, and he succeeded with aplomb. But which bird won the contest?

This is why democracy is a bad idea.

Palaeontologist David Unwin was due to speak next, but unfortunately had fallen ill. Thus, we moved straight to the palaeoart workshop. This time, the audience were split into 4 teams, guided by Johnway, Mark Witton, Bob Nicholls and Darren. The task was to restore Pterodactylus (represented by John's quite terrible fossil casts), but each table had to do it with a particular preconception in mind; namely, that it was a mammal, lizard-like reptile, or bird. The final table could just draw whatever the hell they wanted.

Photo by Darren Naish.

Niroot and I were on the 'bird' table, which mainly produced a variety of alarming gannets and cormorants with mutant wing-supporting fourth digits (as per Niroot's artsy drawing below). Elsewhere, the mammal table largely produced bat-like creatures, while the lizard table produced sprawling, scaly monstrosities. From the freestyle table, one of the submissions appeared to simply satirise mid-20th century views of pterosaurs; in fact, as I only discovered later in the pub, it was Katrina van Grouw's quite honest attempt at guessing what the animal must have been like. You could write an article on the implications of that, I'm sure...

Speaking of Katrina, she was the final speaker, discussing her magnum opus The Unfeathered Bird, as very favourably reviewed on this blog by someone who is, I'm sure, a delight to meet in real life (and will definitely buy you a drink). I'd heard many of Katrina's tales pertaining to the making of the book before but, honestly, they'll never get old. It's a story of triumph over adversity, how the best meetings happen in pubs (true that), and why it's worth marrying Dutch people...who are good at assembling skeletons. With infectious enthusiasm, Katrina flicked effortlessly from boiling bird carcasses and inflating pigeon crops with a condom to discussing the preposterous anatomy of some of the birds covered in the book. Consider the trumpet manucode; among the birds of paradise, it may appear rather drab, with is business suit of iridescent black-blue plumage. But it can't half make a racket. How so? Why, it has an absurdly long trachea that is coiled up in its chest. Or how about the (multiple) birds with ultra-long tongues that wrap around their heads? You'd never tell from looking at them in the wild, and that's just one of a very many reasons why The Unfeathered Bird is so superb. As I was saying to people on the day, you need this book.

Photo by Darren Naish

Then we went to the pub. The same one as last year, where they have Fuller's ESB on cask. Consequently, I am now broke. Please send tins of beans and the latest dinosaur toys of respectable quality.

All in all, it was another excellent day and a credit to everyone involved. I'm very happy that not only is this evolving into a regular event, but that Darren and John have grand plans afoot to turn the whole thing into a multi-day festival of the TetZooniverse. Now that would be totally awesomebruh.

Mesozoic Miscellany 80

In the News

A new big hadrosaur is on the loose, showing off a wee crest hypothesized to be transitional between the non-crested and crested members of the family. Read the description of Probrachylophosaurus bergei and gawk at John Conway's gorgeous portrait.

There's a new feathered Ornithomimus specimen from Canada, and Brian Switek and Everything Dinosaur both covered the discovery. And, yes: gawk at Julius Csotonyi's gorgeous illustration.

Liz Martin-Silverstone wrote about her recently published research into the relationship between skeletal mass and total body mass in birds and how useful it may be in estimating body mass in critters outside of Neornithes. John Tennant also covered the paper at PLOS Paleo.

How wide could theropods open their mouths? New research explores the question.

Around the Dinoblogosphere

Hat-tip to reader David Landis for letting us know about The New Yorker's recent look at Virginia Lee Burton's Life Story, which we covered for a Vintage Dinosaur Art post five years back.

Lisa Buckley's got a new blog, so head over and say "howdy."

Asher recently had another fantastic paleontology article published, about the journey of a Clidastes specimen in Alabama.

At the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History blog, Antoine Bercovici writes about the end-Cretaceous (or close to it, at least) dinosaurs of France.

Jason Brougham covered the challenges of reconstructing the mysterious Benettites.

Everything Dinosaur shows off the new CollectA Spinosaurus.

Speaking of spinos, Duane Nash wrote more about Spinosaurus lifestyle and about the and the recent Sigilmassasaurus paper.

The Dinosaur Toy Blog showed off the winners of this year's Dinosaur Toy Forum Diorama Contest. I always love checking out the entries.

Adventures in fossil prep: Daspletosaurus ilium edition! Brought to you by Anthony Maltese.

Andy Farke interviews Justin Adams about a new project to archive fossil mammals at Ditsong National Museum of Natural History in South Africa. Check out part one and two.

Fernanda Castano wrote about a new species of pollen grain from Argentina, including Darwin's puzziling over the appearance of dicots in the fossil record.

Chris DiPiazza made a sequel of his fun illustration from last year: check out his new line up of monstrously-named taxa for Halloween.

A bit more about SVP: Francois Gould wrote about how the conference remains his home even as he shifts from the paleontological research he pursued as a student. Palaeocast's Caitlyn Colleary filed a three-part report focusing on outreach, new research, and the history of the conference.

Paleoart Pick

The Cartoon Guide to Vertebrate Evolution by Albertonykus is freakin' sweet and now you can buy it at his new Redbubble shop!

The Cartoon Guide to Vertebrate Evolution by Albertonykus, shared with the artist's permission.

Mighty Bones: Museum f�r Naturkunde Berlin

Berlin's a fascinating city and all, drawing people for its rich, tumultuous history as much as its present-day reputation for 'cool' (whatever that is. Like I'd know). But in the end, dinosaur enthusiasts will only have one destination in mind upon arriving in the city - the Museum f�r Naturkunde, home of the certified Tallest Mounted Dinosaur Skeleton in the World�. I visited on my second day in the city, and let me assure you, man-sized humeri were just dancing in front of my eyes before that. No amount of refreshingly inexpensive beer was going to distract me on my pilgrimage to the holy hall of bones on the Invalidenstra�e. It doesn't disappoint.

Two skeletal dinosaurs compete for the status of the museum's 'icon' in the public imagination - and it's amusing to think how they are near opposites of each other. On the one hand, there's the towering mounted Giraffatitan - in reality a composite, not that most people will ever know. It feels almost industrial in its massive sturdiness, like it was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel with the purpose of allowing express trains to traverse a canyon while simultaneously flaunting the engineering prowess of the Saurian Empire. In short, it's every bit as breathtaking as you might expect.

Of course, the glorious setting helps enormously in showing the beast(s) off. The dinosaur hall is uncommonly bright and airy, and spacious enough to allow views of its centrepiece attractions from virtually every angle. It's one thing to finally be able to size up the museum's Giraffatitan mount in person, but quite another to be able to wander around it and take in the sheer size of its columnar forelimbs, the breadth of its ribcage, and just how high its (comparatively) tiny head cranes over the puny primates below. Yes, it's awesome. Poor old Dippy nearby can't help but be overshadowed.

Just because you'd otherwise require a decent pair of binoculars to view it, there's a cast of the skull mounted at ground level. It's a nice idea, particularly because one can forget the broadness of the muzzles on these animals when one's only viewing two dimensional skeletals. It probably didn't have a terribly pretty face, but then at least it wasn't Camarasaurus.

Of course, Giraffatitan is famously joined by other stars of the Tendaguru formation. To its right sits Dicraeosaurus, it of the curiously short neck and tall neural spines. I'm very fond of this mount of this compact sauropod - I think it's because it seems to be bending down to greet us, and smiling with it.  (You'll note that all of the Berlin sauropods sport just the single thumb claw on their hands. It makes me happy.)

To the left and slightly behind the Giraffatitan sits Kentrosaurus, which while looking notably more dynamic than before its overhaul (that super-spiny tail is almost being brandished at passers by), it still sports curiously sprawling forelimbs. Huh. There's also the matter of that much-disputed pair of spikes, which sit on the shoulders...for now.

Oh, and there's also Dippy. Why the American Diplodocus carnegii among all these African animals? As was explained to me by a certain highly talkative German scientist (let's call him 'Dr M'), diplodocid material is known from the Tendaguru, but not enough to mount anything near a complete skeleton; therefore, Diplodocus is used as a stand-in. Also, the museum were given that cast back in the day, and it's just too cool not to use.



Ahead and to the left of Dippy, Elaphrosaurus is mounted as if pursuing Dysalotosaurus. For those more used to seeing Morrison formation animals, the latter is quite obviously a Dryosaurus-alike, and has indeed been sunk into that genus in the past. However, Elaphrosaurus is an altogether stranger proposition. This mount, posed as if running, emphasises the theropod's unusual legginess; it was probably quite fleet of foot for its size. However, what's truly bizarre is the combination of long legs with a very long, shallow torso. The arms and head on this mount are necessarily speculative and distinctly predatory in appearance. One can't help but wonder if, had these parts been sculpted following the publication of beak-mouthed Limusaurus, some rather different decisions would have been made. Still, it remains impossible to say exactly what this animal's dietary habits were.

A view from behind really helps emphasise how long and lean Elaphrosaurus was.

Adjacent to Elaphrosaurus is another Morrison stand-in - Allosaurus fragilis, which looks like a real bruiser next to the lankier African animal. Apparently, this mount was deliberately made as 'generic as possible' and is not intended to represent a single specimen, simply because it is really just a substitute for fragmentary Tendaguru allosaurs (and you thought his shoes were made of leather). A real Tendaguru allosaur femur is displayed in a case nearby. In spite of this, it can't help but draw attention to itself because of the stunningly detailed fleshed-out model head that somebody saw fit to affix to the front. Some have argued that it doesn't really work, but I'd argue that it does, if only because of the dividing glass partition (the head juts out into the admission kiosk/cloakroom area). It's also really gorgeous, and I'd like a copy for my living room, please. I'll update this post with a link to the Kickstarter campaign shortly.

I haven't yet mentioned that other iconic dinosaur; you know, the one that's the polar opposite of a gallumphing great sauropod to gaze upon, ye mighty, and despair. It's Archaeopteryx, of course; a delicate little fellow sequestered away in its own special alcove, an impossibly dainty and beautiful specimen treated quite justifiably like a masterful work of art. Cue heavenly chorus*.

The Urvogel isn't the only Solnhofen specimen on show of course; consider this beautiful Rhamphorynchus, just one among a huge number of stunningly preserved examples of the Solnhofen fauna. There is an emphasis on the contemporaneous (or near-as-damn-it) nature of the Solnhofen and Tendaguru ecosystems - helping to build a wider view of the Jurassic world, rather than one limited to one locality.

There's a lot more to the museum than this one hall, of course, including some sublime award-winning taxidermy featuring Archaeopteryx's extant relatives. And I may well get to all that in a future post. For now, however, let us close on a photograph of what Brian Switek tastefully referred to as 'dinobutt' over on our Facebook page. Enjoy.

*Credit to Peng.

Mesozoic Miscellany 79

In the News

Dakotaraptor has stepped into the limelight. A giant Hell Creek dromaeosaurid with prominent quill knobs and wicked sickle claws, Dakotaraptor would have been a stout competitor for juvenile tyrannosaurs. More from A Dinosaur A Day, Theropoda, and Krankie. Beautiful paleoart has also been popping up, with particularly stunning work from RJ Palmer and Emily Willoughby (which is hardly surprising).

Gorgeous fossils are coming out of an important fossil site in Utah colorfully called the "Saints and Sinners Site." Learn more about it from this interview with Dan Chure of Dinosaur National Monument at KUER. Honestly, I want a large framed print of "the triplets" for my wall.

Mesozoic mammal news! A new spiny critter, aptly dubbed Spinolestes xenarthrosus, has been described. Brian at Laelaps and Liz at Musings of a Clumsy Paleontologist, and Amar Toor at The Verge have the skinny.

The story of the spinosaurs continues to twist and turn as more research comes out. New work on Sigilmassaurus brevicollis and Spinosaurus maroccanus has been published, responding to last year's major-publication-slash-National-Geographic-media-event. Jaime Headden at the Bite Stuff and Mark Witton both have good takes on the research.

Help out Phylopic and nab a spiffy tee shirt! Mike Keesey, creator of the site, is holding a campaign on Booster.com to support the costs of maintaining the site as well as further development. Providing free-to-use, Creative Commons licensed silhouettes of a huge variety of lifeforms, it's a terrific source of images for scientists and other science communicators.

Around the Dinoblogosphere

We'll start with a roundup-within-a-round up of posts about the annual Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting that went down a couple weeks ago in Dallas, TX.

At the Theropod Database Blog, Mickey provided four days of commentary: day one, two, three, and four. Duane Nash wrote about the meeting at Antediluvian Salad. Victoria Arbour chimed in at Pseudoplocephalus. John Tennant wrote about his experience at Green Tea and Velociraptors. Albertonykus was there for the first time ever, and wrote about it at Raptormaniacs.

Speaking of Victoria, she talked about ankylosaur evolution on a recent episode of the great Palaeocast.

Fossil Day 2015 has come and gone, and Chris DiPiazza shared his personal fossil collection at Prehistoric Beast of the Week.

Curious about what we will see when the revamped dinosaur hall at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, opens? Ben Miller has something that may interest you.

At Dinosaur Postcards, Denver Fowler shared Iguanodon footprint casts.

Want to explore the Triassic via computer simulation? Head to Everything Dinosaur to learn about a new project that aims to do just that.

Not terribly recent, but I missed sharing it back in April. Brian Engh talks paleoart at a Bay area Nerd Nite event.

Paleoart Pick

Finding Julio Lacerda's recent painting of Pteranodon and Hesperornis squaring off underwater was a breath-taking moment. Golden Age of Paleoart, folks! Enjoy.

"Fish Theft: Subaquatic Edition," � Julio Lacerda. Shared here with the artist's permission.

Vintage Dinosaur Art: Purnell's Find Out About Prehistoric Animals - Part 2

Because I can't in all good conscience review a book with 'Prehistoric Animals' in the title and only cover the dinosaurs, behold various non-dinosaurs from Purnell's 1976 guide to long-dead beasties. (There's also a tiresomely long section on how MAN evolved to DOMINATE the Earth by being SUPERIOR to the other creatures by virtue of having a large brain, dextrous hands, and other noted attributes of MANLINESS. It's as 1970s as an brightly-coloured Ford Cortina, which you'd be far better off looking at. Here you go.) Where better to start than with a pterosaur being munched? Stupid pterosaurs.

As I mentioned last time, none of the illustrations in Purnell's are credited, which is always a real shame. However, it seems a fair bet that the above piece is by Sibbick - just check out that minute detailing. While the pterosaur fuzz is commendably up-to-date for 1976, the plesiosaur's head is way off; it somewhat resembles that of a generic theropod dinosaur. Of course, it could have the mop-haired, bulbous noggin of the Mayor of London stuck on there for all it matters - the sheer Sibbickness of it all makes every last skin fold completely believable. You could take a fuzzy photograph of this, send it to a cryptozoology periodical and become famous. Among a very select group of people. Now there's a thought...

Plesiosaurs may be the most famous non-dinosaurian long-necked reptiles, but Triassic weirdo Tanystropheus has surely made quite a name for itself, too. Given its preposterous proportions, I've got to commend the artist for taking on such a tricky perspective; you've also got to love those bulging red eyes. "This very peculiar animal must have led a difficult life," the accompanying text intones, but the example illustrated here looks like it's having a ball.

Back to plesiosaurs, although Kronosaurus was of the short-necked, big-headed variety. Beautiful shading, but the artist may have given the animal an unduly long neck and tail - the eyes are also misplaced, although at least the nostrils are commendably retracted [EDIT - in fact, the eyes and nostrils are in the wrong holes, as pointed out by Adam Smith in the comments! Can't believe I missed that one]. (Famously, a Kronosaurus skeleton was once reconstructed with far too many vertebrae, leading to hyperbolic size estimates in kids' books that the real animal can't quite match. It was 6 or 7 metres long, akin to Liopleurodon, which itself was once restored as a kaiju, but that's another story.) There's an enjoyable sense of motion about this piece, particularly where the animal is swinging its head around to snap at passing fish.

The same artist (seemingly) also illustrated the giant mosasaur Tylosaurus in full old Chaz Knight mode, complete with darling dorsal crest. Yes, the head is...a bit weird-looking, but, blimey, what a dramatic image. The big old lizard looks positively terrifying as it lunges after Archelon, the only extinct turtle anyone's ever heard of, here depicted seemingly as a skeleton with fins and a face. The deranged look in the mosasaur's eyes as it lunges forth is just fantastic.

While mosasaurs are almost always given a full set of luscious lizardy 'lips', there's a strange tendency in palaeoart for the infamously serpentine whale Basilosaurus to be drawn without them, even to the point of having completely exposed teeth, croc-style (as above). As I understand it, there's no evidence that Basilosaurus had a 'melon' or similar organ, but there's also no reason to suspect that it didn't have lips (readers are welcome to chime in). In any case, this is otherwise a fairly decent reconstruction with a very Burianesque feel, especially with the swirling, inky gloom surrounding the animal.

Purnell's makes plenty of room for extinct mammals of all sorts, of course, and here we have a fine example of an illustrastion of Paraceratherium, aka Indricotherium, aka Baluchitherium, etc. etc. There's a faintly terrifying sinewy muscularity about this beast, somewhat reminiscent of certain '70s illustrations of sauropods, only here it makes rather more sense. Clearly an animal suited to professional wrestling and appearing on the cover of certain...very specialist magazines. Rippling, glistening, and very well shaded, actually. Not that you'd dare insult it, anyway.

Lovely as the monochrome plates are, there comes a time when one cries out for a little colour. So here it is, in the form of the slightly strange not-rhinoceros, Arsinoitherium. Although superficially rhino-like, and normally illustrated as such (as above), it was actually more closely related to modern-day elephants; unlike rhinos, its horns had bony cores. While the above piece is probably modelled on modern-day rhinos a bit too closely, the use of perspective is marvellous, as is the quite impressionistic foliage; one feels like it's possible to reach out and touch that wrinkly grey flesh. At which point you'd probably be horribly gored. I don't like the look in its piggy eyes.

And finally...a dinosaur! Because I'm just a terrible, terrible liar. On the other hand, it is Archaeopteryx, which was always filed away under 'non dinosaur' in kids' books back in the day and the Natural History Museum's dinosaur gallery right now. Anyways, this is fairly typical of the genre, what with the individual with outstretched wings and misplaced digits, although I very fond of the rufous red colouration of the plumage, and the animals' wings are quite beautifully drawn otherwise. Not too much of a lizardy git face going on, either, which is always pleasing to see. A salute to you, uncredited illustrator, wherever you are.

Coming up next time: I'm not sure. But I'm off to Berlin next week (finally!), so perhaps I'll write something about that...

Mesozoic Miscellany 78

In the News

The center of the paleontology universe this week has been the 2015 Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting in Dallas, TX. Check out the official conference hashtag on Twitter. LITC's own Asher Elbein is there, and will be filing a report about his experience soon. Asher recently joined Twitter, and has been tweeting from the conference, including some wonderful sketches.

Speaking of SVP, those lucky devils get to see a newly prepped centrosaurine skeleton, which appears to be a new species of Avaceratops. It was discovered amid a pile of hadrosaur bones in 2012, and even had a bit of skin associated with the pelvic area. Anthony Maltese has the full breakdown over at the RMDRC Paleo Lab Blog, with great photos, so scoot!

We have a new giant in the North. The "Edmontosaurus" fossils of the Price Creek Formation have been reassessed, and the team of Hirotsugu Mori, Patrick Druckenmiller, and Gregory Erickson have dubbed the new taxon Ugrunaaluk kuukpikensis. Read more from Brian Switek at Laelaps and Tanya Basu at Time.

Andy Farke writes about the publication of a new juvenile Saurolophus specimen at The Integrative Paleontologists.

Around the Dinoblogosphere

RJ Palmer drew a toon version of the Saurian T. rex we featured in the last roundup, and it sort of makes me think a toon version of Saurian would be the best idea. After the team wraps up Saurian itself, of course.

A couple of reviews of the recent book British Polacanthid Dinosaurs have hit the web: Everything Dinosaur gave it a read, as did Stu Pond at Paleoillustrata.

The Guardian is looking to recruit a new paleontology blogger, who will work under the Guidance of Dr. Dave Hone. The call for submissions will last until November 2. Read more about the opportunity here.

I loved this adorable felted Parasaurolophus at Needled by Nella.

Herman's back with another pair of dinosaur book reviews at ART Evolved. He looks at Dinosaur Parents, Dinosaur Young: Uncovering the Mystery of Dinosaur Families and Dinosaurs: Living Monsters of the Past.

For Ada Lovelace Day, Liz Martin-Silverstone paid tribute to the women who have brought so much to the field of paleontology.

It is the 100th anniversary of Dinosaur National Monument, and a major new project has been launched: The Digital Quarry Project. The interactive site allows visitors to explore the jumble of bones in the famous quarry wall by way of simplifies silhouettes. It's not complete yet, but the project site promises that "it will contain all 5000+ fossil specimens from the quarry, including those that have been excavated and now reside in museums far and wide." It's pretty cool, check it out!

I Know Dino celebrated Dinosaur National Monument's anniversary as well.

Paleoart Pick

Easily my favorite scene from Raptor Red, Robert Bakker's novel about a female Utahraptor, is the "snow sledding" scene. It was a bracingly fresh look at dinosaurs, from the play behavior to the snowy environment. Paleoartist Zubin Erik Dutta recently completed a beautiful rendering of the scene. Of it, he writes:

This is one of the most iconic scenes from the book thanks to Luis Rey's rendition of the scene years ago. I tried my best to make mine as different as possible and looked to Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes snow sleigh strips for ideas. Calvin and Hobbes crashing into the snow was the first thing to come to mind when I was figuring things out.

This piece brought the memory of reading that scene for the first time rushing back.

"The Raptor Red Snow Sled," � Zubin Erik Dutta. Shared here with the artist's permission.

Help Support the Jurassic Foundation

I've been wanting to do something to help out The Jurassic Foundation for a while. They are a nonprofit that supports dinosaur research worldwide by offering grants to paleontologists, many of whom are from developing countries or are early in their career.

To celebrate the fifth National Fossil Day, half of all Mammoth is Mopey hardcover and ebook sales this week will be donated to them. That's $7.50 of every hardcover sale and $3.50 from every ebook sale going straight to the Jurassic Foundation. The promotion will last until midnight on Friday the 16th.

Here are a few adverts I whipped up to spread the word. Feel free to share them if you'd like. Jennie and I appreciate any help you'd like to give, and so does the Jurassic Foundation, we're sure!