News from the 1998 SVP meeting

From: "Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <th81@umail.umd.edu>

I'll give a longer update later, but here are just some dinosaur highlights:

LOTS of new ankylosaurs coming out of the woodwork... er, sediments. The nodosaurid-ankylosaurid distinction is very subtle, and much has to be revised. Many characters once thought derived (i.e., triangular hornlets) in Ankylosauridae seem instead to be primitive to Ankylosauria as a whole. There is NO evidence for a polacanthine tail club: this is an example of the importance of on-site specimen examination. Several new taxa proposed (here and at the on-going Early-to-mid K symposium).

Dino lung talks: a lot of them.

A fair number of histology papers, including why you should NOT use LAGs as "tree rings" in aging dinosaur specimens (as Padian et al. showed, you can get different answers from different bones in the same specimen). Kristi Curry presented three different histological lines of evidence which dovetailed on the same answer: Apatosaurus may have taken only ten years or so to reach adult size.

Taxonomic/systematic things: Hypsilophodontia seems destined for the wastebasket; Probactrosaurus may (Norman) or may not (Sereno) be the sister group of Hadrosauridae; Oliver Rahut's poster on the deconstruction of Ceratosauria was (sadly) not present; there is no positive evidence demonstrating "Dilophosaurus" sinensis IS Dilophosaurus.

New data on Velociraptor, oviraptorids, and ornithomimids from yet more astonishingly great specimens from Mongolia. Alcober et al. presented a new carcharodontosaurid form Argentina, including the first carch furcula: these guys were very pneumatic. Sereno et al. presented a giant new spinosaurid from Niger (more details later, but suffice it to say for now: there are even more croc-like features in these guys skulls than just their teeth and shape). Scipionyx: new photos.

How secure IS the evidence for dino lips or dino cheeks? Not very, on morphological grounds. The cheek part, though, is bound to be the most contraversial: expect some rebuttals next year.

Announcment on the Ostrom Symposium at Yale on Feb. 13-14, to coincide with the arrival of the Liaoning fossils at the Peabody.

Oh, and Josh Smith mentioned something about the forthcoming feathered therizinosauroid from Liaoning: more on this in the near future...

From: MKIRKALDY@aol.com

The Jurassic Foundation, headed by Phil Currie and funded by Universal's Jurassic Park movies and paraphernalia, was announced at a special luncheon on Saturday. The foundation will give small grants of $1000 to $5000 to fund worthy paleo projects--more information on this is forthcoming. Don Lessem's involvement in this non-profit venture was a source of much controversy at the luncheon, with Paul Sereno questioning how this project would avoid what happened at the Dinosaur Society.

From: "Ralph Chapman" <Chapman.Ralph@NMNH.SI.EDU>

Hi all, I'm back after a moderate hiatus. I was kicked off the list due to problems with our e-mail system and used the lack of input as an excuse to prepare for SVP. Now that's over and I can be more of a human being and have thus resubscribed.

SVP was a very interesting meeting this year. It was easily one of the most beautiful locations you could imagine - the Snowbird ski resort outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. Without the 10 foot base of snow it was very difficult to imagine skiers hurling themselves down those angular cliffs but it obviously is one of the best resorts for such here in North America. Linda deck and I got there on Sunday so we could get acclimatized and I could get the remaining ducks in order for the symposium I was running on Wednesday. We took the tram up to the top of the main mountain on Monday (base = 8100 feet elevation, top >11,000 feet) and were enjoying the view when Dave Norman came huffing up the trail. He walked it and looked a bit worse for wear. He took the tram down in a fit of sensibility.

The host committee did a fine job and adapted to needed changes due to weather - we got 6 to 8 inches of snow the last Saturday and temps dropped a good bit. However, the base elevation caused many members lots of problems. The two main venues for talks were separated by a hill that seemed trivial but was incredibly exhausting to walk at that elevation for most. I found it very bothersome despite the fact that I never have had problems when in Denver (>5,000 feet) or other elevations that I recall. The dryness seemed to produce a communal sinus infection among the members - sinus/cold medicine was more common than dino t-shirts. Saw lots of mammal people at the archosaur talks on top of the hill because they didn't want to walk down to the mammal talks at the bottom (or more accurately, walk up after). I was on a talk with Kay Behrensmeyer that I skipped because the round trip would have made me miss 4 dino talks. All-in-all it was a nice meeting but also a physically demanding one. I don't know how some of the more elderly members made it up the hill, frankly.

The symposium I organized and ran with Weishampel on 3-dimensional scanning, digitization and modeling of vertebrate fossils went wonderfully and we got tremendous feedback. I, with Dave Weshampel, gave a talk on pachycephalosaur domes and glancing blows approached using modeling and I believe the final version will show conclusively that, regardless of whether pachys banged heads or not, that glancing blows were not a problem at all. Chris Brochu gave a great talk on the visual alligator project he did with the U Texas group - CT and other morphological stuff on a CD for educational use. Was wonderful. Celeste Horner gave a nice talk on the plethora of scanning projects she is doing at the MOR. Stephen Gatesy gave a wonderful talk on modeling footprint formation with anatomical reconstructions of feet that are walking through matrix. Really neat. Art Anderson and Hans Larsson gave a nice talk on scanning and prototyping (making three-d hard copy) of sauropod and other bones, at any scale. John Kappelman gave a nice talk on using this technology for education. Weishampel gave a nice summary of a project he had a art student do on combining some of Gatesy's cine-radiographic work on walking crocs with three-dimensional models of the bones, so you could see the bones walking as the croc did. Very effective. Larry Witmer gave a nice talk on the detailed cranial scanning he is doing on various dino skulls, and Kent Stevens updated us on his incredible DINOMORPH package which was discussed in Discovery magazing a short while ago. The symposium generated lots of excitement and will lead to some neat publications.

It's getting long, so I just add a few things. Holtz's talk was typical of Tom, detailed enthusiastic and excellent. I'll let him summarize. Brochu gave another great talk on phylogenetic work. Sereno discussed new spinosaurid material. Josh Smith finally publicly dropped the bombshell that many of us knew and were waiting for - that the Chinese apparently have a feathered segnosaur that's also pretty large (15 foot maybe). Obviously the devil will be in the details here but it means these continue to be exciting times

Horner and Goodwin gave a talk on what they saw was strange bone histology of the pachy dome and suggested this meant it could not withstand head-banging. I was totally unmoved by it because the histology was apparently strange but did not imply to me that this necessarily removed head-banging as a possibility. I'm working with Dave on my paper and will be answering many questions as it develops in detail on the subject. each point takes very detailed functional analysis and quantification rather than just observation and prediction which everyone has just done so far. I think it was quite clear from three-dimensional work, however, that the glancing blow problem that seemed so daunting to Ken Carpenter and Tracy Ford based on two dimensions basically evaporated instantaneously in three-dimensions. Will lead to some interesting research on the nature of glancing blows and their dependence on the contact surface area and the smoothness and/or roughness of the butting surface. looking forward to it.

Harvard student Leon Claessons gave a nice talk on theropod respiration that showed, in my opinion, something similar with some of the Oregon group's model of theropod respiration relative to modern reptiles. In two-dimensions the latter show great similarities between the two, but the third dimension that Claessons added just blew their argument totally away. Great talk. R. Motani gave a great talk on ichthyosaur swimming performance.

I've run out of steam. I'll let Tom continue and Mary summarize the list gathering there. If I get more steam, I'll add more. I'll get more refs going as well. Saw Brian and others there but more when I'm fully oxygenated

From: luisrey@ndirect.co.uk (luisrey)

Two exhilarating paleontological weeks, two field trips, two symposiums... what else can we ask from life? I know... a feathered Therizinosaur.

I've been out all this time from the list and I suppose there have been long talks about the SVP and Cretaceous Symposium issues... but I couldn't resist the temptation to sent a brief comment and mind you I'm still in jet-lag 'zombie state'.

There were great highlights and a warm-to-hot atmosphere at the Snowbird meeting (being isolated in a very expensive luxury resort WAS NOT one of them, despite the dazzling landscape that suddenly turned into a-more-than-a-foot of snow hazard) and I think all of those moments were related in one way or another to the dinosaur physiology debate and the dino-bird link.

Once again I could see that politics and manipulation of data lumbered over the talks. Yes, after a slide of a Messel mammal followed by a slide of Sinosauropteryx showing both virtually the same external integument imprints, Geist seemed to ignore the fact that in his interpretation he will [now] have to recognize that mammal hair traces are in reality muscle collagen fibers [traces] (?!) ... isn't life a joke? History repeats itself. Of course the Oregon team still insisted in comparing the pelvis of a crocodile and a dinosaur... just sideways. When Hicks replied rotating both pelvises and showing them in front view, demonstrating that the side view is only superficially similar, I could feel the gasp of the audience.

Ruben continued to capture us with his great sense of humor, trying this time to demonstrate that Caudipteryx is not a dinosaur, based on just one tiny supposed 'mistake' on Phil Currie's skull reconstruction (the rest of the skeletal characteristics did not seem to be important to him... he spent almost half the talk attacking Currie) and later tried to sell us a 'flying' Megalancosaurus as a 'possible' bird ancestor. Sorry... didn't buy it.

I found Jacques Gauthier's talk on the solution of the Avian Digit Homology specially compelling... does anybody know if there's been a more in depth paper published so I can study it in detail?

Paul Sereno stole the show with the amazing new reconstruction of the skull of Spinosaurus... weird among the weirdest, I hope he publishes it soon.. Also impressive were Ken Carpenter's dazzling nodosaur reconstructions, the brooding oviraptorid by James Clark and best of all the new Velociraptor by Mark Norell... superb! Phil Currie's presention was surprisingly low key, but then... he doesn't need very much. Caudipteryx and Protarchaeopteryx descriptions were more than enough.

Among the many people that also impressed me this meeting were the very kind Ruben Martinez from Argentina and his new Titanosaur (Brachiosaurid) skull, Gerard Gierlinski (who convinced me that there is something really hairy about those resting dilophosaur tracks) and above all Cristiano del Sasso and his dazzling Scipionyx presentation (a breath of fresh air and a really serious researcher, that avoided the 'divo' status). It was a privilege to spend so much time with him... his Scipionyx cast (yes, he brought THAT for everyone to see!!) and astounding magnified photographs of the original specimen (which had everyone, including Greg Paul, drooling). I was also impressed by the excellent sculptures of Fabio Fogliazza, who brought the original life size restoration of 'Ciro' (NOT 'Skippy')... astounding... only the feathers were missing!

From: "George Olshevsky" <Dinogeorge@aol.com>

Chapman.Ralph@NMNH.SI.EDU writes:

Josh Smith finally publicly dropped the bombshell that many of us knew and were waiting for - that the Chinese apparently have a feathered segnosaur [therizinosauroid] that's also pretty large (15 foot maybe). Obviously the devil will be in the details here but it means these continue to be exciting times.

Heard about this some time ago but didn't know size of creature. The feathers do seem to put the segnosaurs into the theropod clade after all, don't they? (Unless ornithischians and prosauropods turn up with feathers, that is.) Maybe it's time for me to rethink segnosaur phylogeny.

From: "Ralph Chapman" <Chapman.Ralph@NMNH.SI.EDU>

Actually, it sort of fits that the next odd beast with feathers, or some sort of featheroid structure - I'll wait and see it for myself - would be a perplexing group like the segnosaurs. Makes me think there may indeed be a Creator of some sort and she/he/it is really having fun at our expense. Couldn't dump some real pretty ones on a tyrannosaurid, no, but let's pick out those oddballs and keep the debate really complex.

A fun thing.

I had heard this from at least 5 sources months ago and, despite Josh's otherwise fine and, in my opinion, really straightforward and honest discussion of the age of the Chinese beds with Sino[sauropteryx], it actually generated little reaction because I didn;t know any paleo person who didn't know by now. Looking forward to the eventual publication.

From: smithjb@sas.upenn.edu (Joshua Smith)

OK. Here is the deal. I let out about as much as Nature will allow prior to publication. They have a rather strict stance on this non-disclosure point of theirs and have been known to retract accepted papers when data from those papers have been released prior to publication. They also violate this point whenever they see it fit. They have not yet done so. I will see whatever else I can drop, but it may not be much. This isn't MY paper and I don't want to see the authors get screwed because Nature finds out that some idiot (me) went around babbling about some critter before he should have. Not that my stance would be different if it WERE my decription, mind you...(grin).

Just to be a bastard, though, I WILL say that boy are you guys going to want to read this paper when it comes out...wow. I would say that it adds some support to Ji et al. 1998's hypothesis that feathers have little to do with the diagnosis of birds, eh?