Paleontologist Profile: Louis R Purnell

 

We live in a discouraging world. How many kids dream of goals like paleontology and never can because of socioeconomic factors? It’s especially hard with the racial segregation based on socioeconomic barriers that still exists in the United States.  It’s hard enough to get a paleontology career as it is thanks to the money and time and lack of positions and pay. Our society doesn’t reward science that doesn’t provide more money for other people. It’s especially hard for racial minorities-job barriers and discrimination have always been a major barrier to life goals.

So it’s nice to find some hope somewhere, and to find heroes. An unsung hero in all senses of the word was Louis Rayfield Purnell. He was the son of a railcar painter in Maryland, but managed to make it to the Smithsonian. How? A little bit a luck, but with a lot of perseverance, talent, ingenuity, and a wide skill set. 

Paleofest Report 2019

Welcome back! It’s this time of year again where I go down the annual Paleofest Symposium, held every March at the Burpee Museum in Rockford Illinois. There’s always new discoveries, new experiences, and a lot of great talks about paleontology research. For further details, I once again recommend our MC Scott Williams, for tweets check out Dr. Thomas Holtz’s twitter, and for images ask Todd Johnson. Once again there’s no particular theme, but once again younger researchers and women researchers take the foreground on a wide variety of topics.

New Year Special: Year of the Pig

Happy New Year! In China, it’s the Year of the Pig. Pigs have long been a mainstay of Eurasian societies since they were domesticated, proving critical protein for relatively low cost, and allowed for the Polynesians to conquer the Pacific and the Europeans to thrive in the New World.   The Egyptians considered them evil and diseased, and the Jewish and Muslim examples followed their example.   But it says something the Romans loved them so much they refused to adopt that dietary law. 

Pigs have been a success story in history.  It’s time to talk about their evolutionary story.

Pigs are basal artiodactyls-their closest relatives are the similarly Suine Peccaries, more basal camels, and more derived ungulates such as hippos, whales and extinct entelodonts, followed by camels, then by ruminants. 

 

So where do Suines come from? 

Happy Birthday, OC Marsh.

With apologies to Lin-Manuel Miranda:

I see what's happening here
You're face-to-face with genius and it's strange
You don't even know how I looked.
It's adorable!
Well, it's nice to see undergraduates never change

Open your eyes, let's begin
Yes, it's really me,
It's O.C.! Breathe it in
I know it's a lot:
The brain, the beard!
Being me can be kinda weird

What can I say except "You're welcome"
For all the dinosaurs you know?
Hey, it's OK, it's OK. You're welcome
I'm just an ordinary kind of Joe!

Hey, what has two thumbs and found Pteranodon
When you still learning about Iguanodon?
Me, son!
 
When some horns got turned up, who found the Trike?
You're looking at him, spike!

Oh, also I found the first horse
—you're welcome—
And mapped its evolution of course
Also, Apatosaurus is mine
—You're welcome—
Brontosaurus too if you’re kind

So what can I say except "You're welcome"
For the quarries you’ll use a century from now?
This isn’t a play, it's OK,
You're welcome
I just was the first one to learn how

You're welcome, you're welcome
Well, come to think of it

Kid, honestly the honor is mine
I’ve dug in strata in every layer of time
Mammal, reptile and birds
I’ve even invented some new scientific words
I found out Kansas was a sea
Found all its fish with my lunch tea
What's the lesson? What is the take-away?
I leave Cope in the dust when I’m on the break-away

And the Zallinger murals here in my U
Are filled with the genera I have found too
Look where I've been. I found fossils galore
They’ll have to come back to my quarries if they want more
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, hey!
Well, anyway, let me say you're welcome!
For giving you a dinosaur bash

Hey, it's OK, it's OK. You're welcome!
Well, come to think of it, I could use the cash
Hey, it's your day to say you're welcome!
'Cause I'm gonna need some funds
I'm specimen myself. You're welcome!
Cope and I have long been moribund!

You're welcome, you're welcome
And thank you!

Dragon Day 2018: Top Ten Prehistoric Animals named after Dragons

Happy Dragon day, the fourth Sunday in October!  

Wait a minute, you ask yourself, why are you talking about mythical animals? Isn’t this blog about real animals? Why haven’t you posted more often? 

First of all, yes, I do need to post more often. Second, I will talk about real animals. And finally, in reverse order, dragons are still awesome and I still feel compelled to talk about mythical animals. Dinosaurs have basically become the dragons to the 20^th century. Watch a dinosaur movie, look at a piece of art-these real animals get their most bizarre and fearsome qualities played up. Dinosaurs fulfill the same narrative device. Authors like Adrienne Mayor, Don Glut, and Allen Debus have all made the parallel. Dinosaur bones were indeitifed with dragons, and dinosaurs have been given dragonish qualities in art and literature from the very beginning. A big scary reptile is going to look like a dragon, period.

So, in honor of dragon day, inspired by Christopher dePiazza’s amazing blog and art, http://prehistoricbeastoftheweek.blogspot.com/2015/04/here-be-dragonsor-dinosaurs.html , I am going to give you my top ten prehistoric animals named after Dragons! 

Species That Don't Get Enough Publicity #14: Achillobator giganteus

Dromeosaurs are one of the last dinosaur groups to really become superstars. In the 80s, Deinonychus was the most popular dinosaur: a unique sprinter, jumper, kicker, gangster. A well-armed social hunter, Deinonychus mobbing and dismembering their prey became a defining image of the new “hot blood” look of dinosaurs as science finally came to terms with dinosaur endothermy.  When Michael Crichton gave them the name of Velociraptor and Steven Spielberg put them on screen in the most terrifying depiction of any dinosaur, they became superstars.

Immediately after the release of the film, a new giant dromaeosaur was discovered: Utahraptor. Utahraptor showed that Deinonychus was no longer the earliest or largest dromaeosaur. Earlier dromaeosaurs have since been found, but not larger ones. At over 1,000 lbs, Utahraptor remains the largest (and most famous) of the dromaeosaurs. In the 2010s, a new giant raptor has made headlines. Extremely rare, Dakotaraptor finally allows for the fantasy “Utahraptor meets Tyrannosaurus” scenarios dinosaur fans have dreamed of for 20 years.  

But there are two other giant raptors, two big dromaeosaurs that have been found and ignored by popular culture. One I will deal with later along with its family, but today I will talk about Velociraptor’s giant predecessor in Mongolia: Achillobator.

Movie Review: Dinosaurus! (1960)

Today’s movie review is about an odd little 1960 film. At first glance, it’s a typical kid’s adventure film mixed with some horror elements. On the other hand, it’s a pile of tired clichés with many depressing and dark moments. It’s an odd little movie, and it’s worth a look.  It’s not part of my childhood, but it certainly was for a lot of people.  This is the Jack Harris-Irvin Yeaworth collaboration Dinosaurus! (the exclamation point is theirs). Thankfully there is a rifftrax for this film, so I’ve added their best jokes when appropriate. 

Pictures At An Exhibition 4

Today I’m returning to my Pictures At An Exhibition. In case you haven’t read part 1, here’s the link http://davidsamateurpalaeo.blogspot.com/2015/03/pictures-at-exhibition-part-1.html

This time we’ve moved on to the late Silurian, specifically in Chicago in Cook County Illinois about 425 million years ago. It’s only fitting that the paintings depict one of the few faunas known from the area of the museum itself, and the very brief Silurian period is well-represented in the Field Museum’s fossils. Indeed, the fossil collection began with mostly local geology from this period, and until 1990 there was a hall of Paleozoic fossils and dioramas in the museum.  As of now, they still have a corner in the Evolving Planet exhibit. Above the fossils of the Chicago region and a diorama of a Silurian reef is Charles Knight’s depiction of the city to which he dedicated this work of art. 

Like the previous Ordovician mural, this depicts a coastline, with both land and sea depicted and no animals seen swimming.  However, as the Ordovician mural, marine animals are nevertheless present. In this case, it’s the coral reefs. Despite the massive extinction event that began the Silurian and the three minor extinctions that followed, the last two during the Ludlow epoch, corals still prevailed.  In these extinctions, the temperature dropped, and with it the sea level. This is depicted in the mural as the reefs protrude from the surface, exposed to the air.

This may be the most colorful of the Paleozoic murals-the corals are maroon and white, with drifts of algae and seaweed adding green to the bright blue ocean. My knowledge of corals is limited, so I cannot comment on which species are being represented.  The background has rock formations, sea, and a cloudy sky, with a peninsula on the horizon, much like the Ordovician mural. The geological evidence does suggest that Chicago was a tropical bay with a coral reef, so this depiction is still accurate. 

It is interesting that in the Paleozoic murals, the coast is depicted and not marine ecosystems. It’s not a question of knowledge-by 1930 the fossils of the Midwest marine faunas were well-known and catalogued. It’s not a question of ability-Knight repeatedly depicted these faunas in other murals for New York and National Geographic.  It might have been time constraints-on the other hand, he had the time to depict the sea creatures of the Ordovician and the coral reefs of the Silurian. It could simply be a creative choice-there are no underwater scenes at all in this series, and he wanted thematic continuity to match stylistic and palette continuity.

One more note- the Silurian seen here represents the Thorton Quarry Reef site, dating to the Niagara formation in the late Silurian.  This quarry has provided a great deal of stone for the local area, and so local collectors have found thousands of specimens from this region, including the aforementioned collection in the Field Museum.  For more on the reef, the Milwaukee Public Museum has a website on it: https://www.mpm.edu/content/collections/learn/reef/thornton-front.html

I apologize for the short essay-it comes down to my ignorance of the subject matter.

Paleofest 2018 Report

Two months ago, I had the privilege of attending Paleofest, the yearly Paleontology symposium at the Burpee Museum in Rockford, Illinois. The Master of Ceremonies remains Scott Williams, now at the staff of the Museum of the Rockies, and once again there was an excellent variety of speakers. There was no particular theme this time, predominantly dinosaurs but with a fair amount of other paleolontology.  While there was mostly American paleontology, other continents were represented in some talks. Unfortunately, my camera malfunctioned, so if you want pictures, please contact my and Scott’s friend Todd Johnson for his excellent photojournalism.

 

Top Ten Dinosaur Movies Never Made

As you’ve noticed, dinosaurs have been featured in a lot of terrible movies. From Lost Continent to Jurassic World, from King Dinosaur to Ice Age 3, not to mention any Asylum movie on the Sci Fi Channel, it’s easy to put a dinosaur on screen, but it’s hard to make the experience worthwhile. Sometimes the effects are terrible. Sometimes the dinosaurs are cliched. Sometimes the film is just plain badly written and shot.  So it’s a shame to find out about great movies that were never made. 

In Hollywood, it takes a lot of luck for a project to see work, especially one with an ambitious 

 premise or one demanding expensive special effects. Even filmmakers like Kubrick or Spielberg have had projects die before seeing light.   Fortunately, big ambitious projects are remembered, especially if they’re by people who have made other hit films but somehow were thwarted other times.  In this case, Mark Berry’s excellent Dinosaur Filmography came very much in handy.

These projects all sound like a lot of fun-it’s not often dinosaur movies get made, simply because of the limitations in budget, writing ability, and marketability inherent in the genre. Frankly, if we had these made, they would have turned out far superior than most dinosaur films that actually saw light. These were dream projects, vast in scope and ambition. Some of them were salvaged and recreated into excellent films. Some of them turned out into disasters. But it’s fascinating to learn about them, and dream about what could have been. Who knows? We may see them someday even after their originators have long been dead. Anything can happen in Hollywood, and they love to remake and revisit. Maybe someday these will be made. 

Happy 30th: The discoveries of 1988

This weekend, I turned 30 years old. It’s a milestone for me, of course, but it reminded me about how much can change in 30 years.  30 years ago the dinosaur film was Land Before Time, when dinosaurs were inspired by the works of Charles Knight and William Stout before the Jurassic Park paradigm took over.  30 years ago,  the Berlin Wall still stood dividing Germany, the first Bush became president coasting in on Reagan’s popularity, and computer graphics in film were limited to a short by Pixar. 

There were many milestone in paleontology as well-new species were described, that would become iconic many years later.  So, I’ve decided to showcase all the fossil tetrapods described in 1988.  I can’t go into any depth about each, but there will be quite a few of them, so hold on your butts.

Book Review: Starring T.rex

As you’ve probably guessed by now, I’m fascinated by pop culture’s views on dinosaurs. Fortunately, I’m not alone. Allen Debus, Don Glut, and many others have documented our obsession with prehistoric creatures, and today I’m going to look at one of these documents.

Species that don't get enough publicity #13: Bison

Today’s overlooked species is rather paradoxical; it’s not really overlooked as the genus has become a symbol of an entire continent. People of that continent can recognize one instantly. Empires have risen and fell because of them. Their meat is expensive but delicious. Their herds range over thousands of miles, and only centuries before covered the entire continent in a thick swath. They are the last American megafauna, and they escaped the fate of their neighbors by the skin of their teeth. That’s right, we’re talking about American bison. Yesterday was Bison Day, and I’m going to celebrate our last great mammal before it too is lost to human hunger and short-sightedness.

Prehistoric Warfare Episode 6: Carcharodontosaurus vs Spinosaurus

Now for something different. In 2004, Animal Planet showed as new series called Animal Face Off, a series reconstructing conflicts between coexisting animals. While the execution was clumsy and lacking, the concept is strong and I think easily applied to prehistoric fauna.  Ideally, there would be professionals discussing the situations, but unfortunately, you have only me. First I will compare the animals, and then depict their behavior, before concluding with the final battle.  The outcome will be my personal opinion; and there would be many times when the outcome would be decidedly different. This is not a scientific consensus, but one researcher’s opinion.

We all love dinosaur battles. They’re always a high point in a film. It’s childish, but it’s just plain fun. So, I’m hoping to use this opportunity to use this almost-universal appeal to get people thinking and talking about ecology, biomechanics, and behavior. Only one or two of these stories will be based on actual fossils-the rest are likely possibilities that must have happened sometime or another. In real life, animals usually don’t fight on even terms, but it does happen. Sometimes prey turn the tables, sometimes predators quarrel between themselves, but it can happen. I hope you enjoy this. Again, first I will have two scenes, one for each animal showing them in their habitat and showcasing their particular skills, then finally concluding with a battle between the two.


I MUST WARN THAT  THIS WILL BE VIOLENT. IF YOU HAVE A PARTICULARLY VIVID IMAGINATION, OR HAVE AN AVERSION TO GRAPHIC NATURALISTIC VIOLENCE, I STRONGLY SUGGEST NOT CLICKING ON THE CUT

Paleofest Report 2017

It’s time for my annual report of Paleofest in the Burpee Museum in Rockford. Last year I skipped the report considering the high amount of unreleased data as part of it, which is a shame since it was quite good. This year there are fewer spoilers, but I did wait a month after the event. For more on Paleofest itself, please check out my first report here: http://davidsamateurpalaeo.blogspot.com/2015/04/paleofest-2015-report.html

Movie Review: Gorgo 1961

I’ve featured the first two of Eugène Lourié’s “Sea Monster” films, so it’s time to talk about the last and most spectacular of them. It’s the one with the biggest budget, but surprisingly the most kid-friendly of them. While not a stop motion film, it made up for it with one of the most elaborate suitimation monsters and sets. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you 1961’s British kaiju epic Gorgo.

Gorgo was not only third and last of Lourie’s directorial efforts, but also the last and third time a dinosaur wrecked London.  The transition from stop-motion to suitimation didn’t phase Lourie’s eye for art, but it was a sign of the times. While King Kong’s re-release and the Beast From 20,000 Fathoms ignited Ray Harryhausen’s career, their progeny Godzilla’s success showed that it could be done with a smaller budget with the right kind of effects team and director.

Paleoanthropology vs Sasquatch: the obligatory cryptozoology post

Two of my inspirations for this little blog are Dr. Darren Naish’s Tetrapod Zoology  and youtuber Treytheexplainer  If you follow them (and you really should), you’ll notice they’re interested in the quasiscience of cryptozoology. Cryptozoology is the analysis and speculation on evidence of previously unknown species of organisms. It can also apply to the study of out-of-context finds of known taxa in new times and places.  “Cryptids”, known from all forms of inconclusive evidence, include everything from mythical monsters to prehistoric survival speculation to simply animals of known clades that can’t be verified as a specific taxon.  Like the aforementioned personalities, I think cryptozoology does deserve attention, albeit critical. In college, I was trained in anthropology, and that combines with my knowledge of zoology and paleontology to provide a pretty unique perspective I would say. 

Pictures At An Exhibition 3

Today I’m returning to my Pictures At An Exhibition. In case you haven’t read part 1, here’s the link http://davidsamateurpalaeo.blogspot.com/2015/03/pictures-at-exhibition-part-1.html

The mural discussed this time is off-exhibit, as the space in both the Paleozoic and Cenozoic sections of the Evolving Planet exhibits is limited. It’s not a very spectacular mural, but it’s a big one that requires a lot of space. The corresponding gallery is relatively small, forming up part of a larger room transitioning to another gallery. This is too bad-there’s not much in the mural itself, but it’s still a haunting piece by a master artist. 

Movie Review: Behemoth the Sea Monster/The Giant Behemoth

One of the most interesting filmmakers when it comes to dinosaurs was Eugène Lourié. A Franco-Ukranian who fled the country after making the anti-Revolutionary film The Black Crows,  he revived his career in France as an artist for the film industry, acting as production designer for directors Jean Renoir and Rene Clair, and art designer for Rene Sti, Georges Marret, Jean de Limur, Marcel L’Herbier, Georges Lacombe, and fellow exile Viktor Tourjansky. As a director from 1953-61, he dabbled in American television, the high concept sci-fi film Colossus of New York, and three films about prehistoric sea monsters.  After his brief directorial stint, he returned to art direction, this time in Hollywood, doing such films as The Battle of the Bulge, Crack of the World, Confessions of an Opium Eater, and more TV work. His interest in special effects led him to work in the spectacular Krakatoa, East of Java. He retired after 1980’s Bronco Billy, and his only speaking role was as a doctor in the 1983 erotic thriller Breathless. He died in LA in 1991. 

His first, best, and most successful of the three Sea Monster films was The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. I’ve already discussed it but needless to say, his excellent eye combined with amazing effects by the master Ray Harryhausen to make a blockbuster. Godzilla was born of both the Beast and King Kong (the favorite film of both Harryhausen and his Toho counterpart Eiji Tsuburaya), proving to be just as successful as his parents. Both Godzilla and his Beastly progenitor proved to be decisive for Lourie’s next films.

The epic producer Ted Lloyd partnered up with thriller-focused David Diamond with Lourie to make a new science fiction epic. The rising interest in science fiction about atomic radiation prompted writers Allen Adler (who also wrote Forbidden Planet) and the obscure playright Robert Abel  to consider making a film about an amorphous bloblike being resembling a flying, glowing ball of light, that ravaged London with horrifying radiation. However, the distributors Eros Films and Allied Artists knew of Lourie’s dinosaur blockbuster, of course, and the 1956 Godzilla was an international smash as well. So, they insisted to change it to the more visually interesting, kid-friendly, ever popular dinosaur. 

Species that Don't Get Enough Publicity #12: Barylambda

The Field Museum is home to many holotypes-Brachiosaurus, the Southwestern species of Parasaurolophus, Cryolophosaurus, Cacops, Secernosaurus, Varanops and Thylacosmilus (more on them later). However, one prominent specimen is a complete skeleton that puzzles visitors and scientists alike. It’s the first thing visitors see exiting the theater that in turn exits from the dinosaur hall. It’s mounted next to the tusked skulls of Coryphodon and Eobasileus in a glass case, facing across from another showing extant orders of mammals under Charles Knight’s depiction of Uintatherium and Orohippus.  It’s been displayed outside the exhibit on the gallery, and when Life Over Time opened in 1992, the mount was heralded, like the others, by a colorful circus banner by Glen C. Davies. I distinctly remember the hairy mammal in a boxer’s robe and gloves, raising his first Ali-style over a fallen dinosaur in the ring, a symbol of mammalian success as the dinosaurs fell to the mass extinction. This is Barylamdba.