21 posts · 10,570 views
Ramblings on the role of open source software in paleontology, the latest and sometimes not-so-greatest ways in which we reconstruct the past, and the occasional bits of career advice and paleo news.
Andrew Farke
21 posts
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- April 8, 2011
- 02:02 PM
- 418 views
Life After Death At Yellowstone: An Interview with Josh Miller
by Andrew Farke in The Open Source Paleontologist
In my last post, I introduced a ground-breaking study recently published in PLoS ONE, that shows how we can infer long-term trends in animal populations just from their bones. This work has big implications for ecology, conservation, and public policy, and is also a really neat piece of science. For this post, I talked to the author of the study, Josh Miller, about his work and some of the tidbits that didn't make it into the paper.Yellowstone NP gets a lot of visitors, and you surely must have ........ Read more »
Miller, J. (2011) Ghosts of Yellowstone: Multi-Decadal Histories of Wildlife Populations Captured by Bones on a Modern Landscape. PLoS ONE, 6(3). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0018057
- April 8, 2011
- 10:13 AM
- 441 views
Life After Death at Yellowstone
by Andrew Farke in The Open Source Paleontologist
Taphonomy - the study of what happens to an organism after it dies - is integral to reconstructing the past. Perhaps the most important lessons come in inferring ecological interactions. Did that group of animals live and die together, or were they jumbled long after death? Were all of those shark teeth with the plesiosaur bones from a feeding frenzy, or just a fluke of currents? How closely does a set of fossils represent the relative abundance of the different species in the quarry? Such examp........ Read more »
Miller, J. (2011) Ghosts of Yellowstone: Multi-Decadal Histories of Wildlife Populations Captured by Bones on a Modern Landscape. PLoS ONE, 6(3). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0018057
- December 13, 2010
- 12:24 PM
- 288 views
Back to the Late Jurassic, With Chris Noto
by Andrew Farke in The Open Source Paleontologist
If you ask the average person to imagine the Age of Dinosaurs, odds are quite good that they might envision a scene from the Morrison Formation. This Late Jurassic-aged (156 - 147 million year old) rock unit of the western United States has given us such dinosaur greats as Stegosaurus, Apatosaurus, Allosaurus, and more. Many of these animals are known from exquisitely-preserved, complete skeletons - and thus their anatomy has been described in pretty ridiculous detail. The functional morphology ........ Read more »
Noto, C., & Grossman, A. (2010) Broad-scale patterns of Late Jurassic Dinosaur paleoecology. PLoS ONE, 5(9). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0012553
- November 22, 2010
- 07:00 AM
- 238 views
Big Pterosaurs Really Did Fly: Interview with Mark Witton Part II
by Andrew Farke in The Open Source Paleontologist
A new paper in PLoS ONE, by Mark Witton and Mike Habib, re-evaluates claims that big pterosaurs were too big to fly. To make a long story short, multiple lines of evidence suggest that giants like Quetzalcoatlus really did take wing! One of my previous blog posts summarized the paper and featured the first part of an interview with senior author Mark Witton. That part of the interview focused on many of the scientific aspects of the research. Today, we'll highlight some of the other highlights. ........ Read more »
Witton, M., & Habib, M. (2010) On the size and flight diversity of giant pterosaurs, the use of birds as pterosaur analogues and comments on pterosaur flightlessness. PLoS ONE, 5(11). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0013982
- November 19, 2010
- 01:09 AM
- 251 views
Big Pterosaurs Really Did Fly: Interview with Mark Witton
by Andrew Farke in The Open Source Paleontologist
Pterosaurs - winged denizens of the Mesozoic skies - get a bum rap. It's bad enough that their name is smeared by the general public, when animals like Pterodactylus are confused with dinosaurs in the news media and in just about every cheap set of plastic dinosaurs. Lately, some scientists have suggested that the largest of these animals just couldn't fly. Is it true that Quetzalcoatlus (pictured here; image from Wikimedia Commons), with its 10 meter wingspan, had wings that were too narrow, a ........ Read more »
Witton, M., & Habib, M. (2010) On the size and flight diversity of giant pterosaurs, the use of birds as pterosaur analogues and comments on pterosaur flightlessness. PLoS ONE, 5(11). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0013982
- November 17, 2010
- 10:21 AM
- 323 views
Ancient Beavers in PLoS ONE: Interview with Josh Samuels
by Andrew Farke in The Open Source Paleontologist
An earlier post here detailed a study just published in PLoS ONE, which focused on unraveling the relationship of an extinct Chinese beaver, Sinocastor, to its modern cousins in the genus Castor. Using a combination of morphometrics (shape analysis) and good old fashioned description, a team led by paleontologist Natalia Rybczinski concluded that Sinocastor is indeed quite distinct from today's Castor.Yesterday I caught up with one of the co-authors of the study, Josh Samuels. Josh is an expert ........ Read more »
Rybczynski, N., Ross, E., Samuels, J., & Korth, W. (2010) Re-evaluation of Sinocastor (Rodentia: Castoridae) with implications on the origin of modern beavers. PLoS ONE, 5(11). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0013990
- November 16, 2010
- 09:05 PM
- 293 views
Re-Evaluating Ancient Beavers
by Andrew Farke in The Open Source Paleontologist
Beavers are some of the most distinctive (and largest) rodents around today. Two species of the extant beaver, Castor, are found throughout the northern hemisphere, and these animals have an enormous effect on their landscapes. Beavers are perhaps most famous for their dam-building activities, altering the flow of streams and generating valuable wetlands used by other animals. Surely, the impact of this group extends far back in geological time.Many early beavers were fossorial, or burrowing, wi........ Read more »
Rybczynski, N., Ross, E., Samuels, J., & Korth, W. (2010) Re-evaluation of Sinocastor (Rodentia: Castoridae) with implications on the origin of modern beavers. PLoS ONE, 5(11). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0013990
- September 22, 2010
- 11:31 AM
- 296 views
Horned Dinosaurs: When It Rains, It Pours
by Andrew Farke in The Open Source Paleontologist
2010 will surely go down as the annus mirabilis of horned dinosaur research. Between the publications of the horned dinosaur symposium volume (with its myriad new taxa and other exciting pieces of research), a "bagaceratopsid" in Europe, a true ceratopsid in Asia, the hypothesis that Torosaurus and Triceratops are growth stages of the same taxon, and more, it's really tough for a "ceratophile" (to borrow Peter Dodson's term) to keep up!Today continues the embarrassment of ceratopsian riches. Wit........ Read more »
Sampson, S., Loewen, M., Farke, A., Roberts, E., Forster, C., Smith, J., & Titus, A. (2010) New horned dinosaurs from Utah provide evidence for intracontinental dinosaur endemism. PLoS ONE, 5(9). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0012292
- May 6, 2010
- 10:05 AM
- 361 views
Tony Martin Interview, Part 2
by Andrew Farke in The Open Source Paleontologist
Yesterday, I ran the first part of this two-part interview with Anthony (Tony) Martin, senior author on a new paper in PLoS ONE. The research details a rare trace fossil (figured below) left behind by a bottom-feeding fish over 50 million years ago. Yesterday's questions focused on the science - in the final installment, we'll learn more about the publishing process. (Full disclosure: I am an editor for PLoS ONE, and was the editor who handled this manuscript.)Why did you choose PLoS ONE as a ve........ Read more »
Martin, A., Vazquez-Prokopec, G., & Page, M. (2010) First known feeding trace of the Eocene bottom-dwelling fish Notogoneus osculus and its paleontological significance. PLoS ONE, 5(5). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0010420
- May 5, 2010
- 08:56 PM
- 354 views
Something Fishy in PLoS ONE (and it's pretty neat!)
by Andrew Farke in The Open Source Paleontologist
The open access journal PLoS ONE has published a lot of neat paleontology articles over the last few years (see here for a reasonably comprehensive listing). Charismatic, terrestrial vertebrates (whether dinosaurs, Ice Age mammals, or prehistoric humans) seem to dominate. But what about the poor, neglected fish?
Today, PLoS ONE published a nifty article by Anthony (Tony) Martin [pictured at left] and colleagues, discussing a 50 million year old fish feeding and swimming trace fossil from Wyomin........ Read more »
Martin, A., Vazquez-Prokopec, G., & Page, M. (2010) First Known Feeding Trace of the Eocene Bottom-Dwelling Fish Notogoneus osculus and Its Paleontological Significance. PLoS ONE, 5(5). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0010420
- March 23, 2010
- 10:11 PM
- 383 views
Welcome, Seitaad!
by Andrew Farke in The Open Source Paleontologist
I am pleased to announce the publication in PLoS ONE of Seitaad ruessi, a new sauropodomorph dinosaur from the Lower Jurassic Navajo Sandstone of southern Utah. Sauropodomorphs are (mostly) herbivorous dinosaurs that lived from the Triassic all the way until the end of the Cretaceous. Although most people know the giant quadrupedal sauropodomorphs like Brachiosaurus and Apatosaurus ("Brontosaurus"), many of the early sauropodomorphs were bipeds smaller than humans. Seitaad fits in the latter cat........ Read more »
Sertich, J.J.W., & Loewen, M. (2010) A New Basal Sauropodomorph Dinosaur from the Lower Jurassic Navajo Sandstone of Southern Utah. PLoS ONE, 5(3). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0009789
- February 13, 2010
- 04:21 PM
- 381 views
Four-Winged, Psychedelic Dinosaurs
by Andrew Farke in The Open Source Paleontologist
When many of us think of viewing things under a "black light," we either think of those psychedelic posters from the 1960s or else the displays of fluorescent minerals that nearly every science museum has. It's also virtually mandatory to have a scene involving the use of "black light" in the popular CSI television programs - many bodily fluids show up nice and pretty under these conditions. "Black light," more properly known as "ultraviolet (UV) spectrum light", is just outside the visible ligh........ Read more »
David W. E. Hone1, Helmut Tischlinger, Xing Xu, & Fucheng Zhang. (2010) The extent of the preserved feathers on the four-winged dinosaur Microraptor gui under ultraviolet light. PLoS ONE, 5(2). info:/10.1371/journal.pone.0009223
- January 28, 2010
- 10:41 AM
- 353 views
Where is paleontology?
by Andrew Farke in The Open Source Paleontologist
Last week, many of the leading journals in evolutionary biology - including The American Naturalist, Molecular Ecology, Journal of Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, and a number of others - announced a data archiving policy. In short, this policy states that the data behind the results of a paper should be publicly archived in well-known respositories such as Data Dryad, GenBank, or TreeBASE. Do you notice anything missing in this illustrious list of publications?Not a single one of those journal........ Read more »
Whitlock, M., McPeek, M., Rausher, M., Rieseberg, L., & Moore, A. (2010) Data Archiving. The American Naturalist, 175(2), 145-146. DOI: 10.1086/650340
- October 28, 2009
- 10:18 AM
- 470 views
A Happy Family of Pachycephalosaurus
by Andrew Farke in The Open Source Paleontologist
Distinguishing the skulls of juveniles and adults of the same species, and sometimes different species, can be a prickly thing in the fossil record. The result is that paleontology is littered with juvenile fossils that have been considered adults at some time or another. The crested duck-billed dinosaur Corythosaurus has also been known under names like Procheneosaurus, the famous Monoclonius is actually a juvenile of adult Centrosaurus, Styracosaurus, and kin, and the debate still continues on........ Read more »
Horner, J., & Goodwin, M. (2009) Extreme cranial ontogeny in the Upper Cretaceous dinosaur Pachycephalosaurus. PLoS ONE, 4(10). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0007626
- July 3, 2009
- 02:34 AM
- 722 views
An Australian Dinosaur Extravaganza
by Andrew Farke in The Open Source Paleontologist
The Cretaceous of Gondwana - the formerly connected southern landmasses of Antarctica, Australia, South America, Africa, India, Madagascar, and Arabia - is a sticky problem. The terrestrial fossil record is spotty at best in most locations, and tremendous geographic and temporal gaps remain. As a consequence, there is considerable debate about the sequence of the tectonic breakup of Gondwana and even the very identity and relationships of some of its dinosaurs and other Mesozoic beasts. Once in ........ Read more »
Hocknull, S., White, M., Tischler, T., Cook, A., Calleja, N., Sloan, T., & Elliott, D. (2009) New mid-Cretaceous (Latest Albian) dinosaurs from Winton, Queensland, Australia. PLoS ONE, 4(7). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0006190
- June 5, 2009
- 02:13 AM
- 785 views
How Big (Dead) Mammals Respond(ed) to Global Warming: Paleontology and Our Climate Crisis
by Andrew Farke in The Open Source Paleontologist
After all of the commotion over "Ida," I'm happy to point out a new, thought-provoking paper in PLoS ONE that perhaps has more relevance to modern humans than any old primate of debated affinity. This new contribution ties two rather cool issues together: charismatic megafauna and global warming. And what might they have to do with each other?Within the scientific community, our current cycle of climate change ("global warming") is pretty well-supported by numerous lines of evidence. In light of........ Read more »
DeSantis, L., Feranec, R., & MacFadden, B. (2009) Effects of global warming on ancient mammalian communities and their environments. PLoS ONE, 4(6). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005750
- May 19, 2009
- 09:33 PM
- 746 views
About That Adapid. . .Or, Hype In the Digital Age
by Andrew Farke in The Open Source Paleontologist
Today's PLoS ONE includes an article on a new primate from the Eocene of Germany, Darwinius masillae. Poor Darwinius has suffered heaps of abuse over her existence (we know the specimen is probably a she, based on the lack of a baculum). She died young, possibly suffocating during a belch of noxious gas from a volcanic lake. She got squashed ("lightly crushed," as her describers euphemistically say) under tons of rock, and then was rudely given a split personality upon her discovery. Each half o........ Read more »
Franzen, J., Gingerich, P., Habersetzer, J., Hurum, J., von Koenigswald, W., & Smith, B. (2009) Complete Primate Skeleton from the Middle Eocene of Messel in Germany: Morphology and Paleobiology. PLoS ONE, 4(5). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005723
- April 29, 2009
- 11:28 PM
- 776 views
Albatross vs. Pterosaur
by Andrew Farke in The Open Source Paleontologist
Today, there was a paper tangentially related to pterosaurs in the open access journal PLoS ONE. A team of investigators wired up albatrosses and petrels with accelerometers, in order to measure the percentage of time these animals spent flapping their wings and soaring. They found two main styles of wing flapping (as inferred from the accelerometer measurements): 1) high frequency flapping during take-off; and 2) low-frequency flapping during soaring. Interestingly, the frequencies scale with b........ Read more »
Sato, K., Sakamoto, K., Watanuki, Y., Takahashi, A., Katsumata, N., Bost, C., & Weimerskirch, H. (2009) Scaling of soaring seabirds and implications for flight abilities of giant pterosaurs. PLoS ONE, 4(4). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005400
- March 24, 2009
- 10:52 PM
- 908 views
Bone-ing Up on Allometry
by Andrew Farke in The Open Source Paleontologist
Allometric scaling - roughly defined, when different parts of an organism grow at different rates - is an important factor in biology. In part, allometry describes how babies have relatively larger heads than adults (we exhibit negative allometry in this trait, because our skulls don't grow as quickly as the rest of the body) or how some crabs have gigantic claws (an example of positive allometry, in which the claw grows much faster than the rest of the body). Allometry (and its counterpart isom........ Read more »
Doube, M., Conroy, A., Christiansen, P., Hutchinson, J., & Shefelbine, S. (2009) Three-Dimensional Geometric Analysis of Felid Limb Bone Allometry. PLoS ONE, 4(3). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0004742
- March 4, 2009
- 12:50 AM
- 924 views
Crouching Theropod, Hidden Dragon
by Andrew Farke in The Open Source Paleontologist
Fossil footprints (falling in the general category of "ichnofossils") reveal a wealth of information about dinosaur biology, such as speed, posture, and behavior. These traces are particularly useful when offering information independent from, but consistent with, hypotheses derived from purely anatomical studies.Today, a new paper in the open access journal PLoS ONE presents an unusual set of theropod (meat-eating dinosaur) ichnofossils from the Early Jurassic-aged Moenave Formation of southwes........ Read more »
Andrew R. C. Milner, Jerald D. Harris, Martin G. Lockley, James I. Kirkland, & Neffra A. Matthews. (2009) Bird-Like Anatomy, Posture, and Behavior Revealed by an Early Jurassic Theropod Dinosaur Resting Trace. PLoS ONE, 4(3). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0004591
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