Theropods in flight

I'm the "Top Creator Pick" Feature on Spore!

2009-03-27T03:37:28Z

I'm this weeks "Top Creator" on Spore.

http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/17851.page

Damn this game is addictive...although definately not the scientific marvel they were originally advertising it as.

If any of you are on Spore, stop by and say hi!

2009-02-27T06:05:23Z

Visit Spore.com

Thesis reeled, gaffed and bagged

2009-02-26T14:26:09Z

My thesis entitled "Revision and description of the Actinopterygian fishes of Devonian Eastern Gondwana" is in the bag. Came out as a gargantuan 8 chapters, 320+ pages, 12 colour plates, c.70,000 words plus c20,000 word appendices. Took 48 hours to print 6 volumes - ran out of toner and found it was cheaper to throw away the old printer and buy a new one instead of buying a replacement cartridge? Wheres the logic in that!?

Anyhow - the last 3.5 years of work has paid off. 3 Papers in print, 1 in press and 2 in revision. 6 new species/2 new genera described. Before Gondwana was a ray-finned backwater of the Devonian with just 3 species - now it has at least 8, comparable with northern hemisphere diversity at the time.

This salmon has completed its spawning run. I can feel my body coming apart...(after typing non-stop since time immemorial). Now the waters will gently deposit my tattered carcass onto the shore.

Need sleeeeep.

Back to Gogo!

2008-07-24T05:24:44Z

Well...

Its off to WA for 2 weeks of fossil fun in the Gogo Formation. Given what a motherlode of dead fish greeted us in 2005, we have high hopes of squeezing a few more Nature papers out of the site! Be back on the 9th.

Materpiscis - the worlds oldest Mum

2008-06-05T03:11:34Z

From the 375 million year old Gogo Formation comes the worlds oldest hard evidence for live-birth and internal fertilization (ie. real sex). The specimen - a pregnant placoderm fish with an embryo inside complete with permineralised umbilical cord (and possibly even the yolk sac). It also provided the opportunity for my second painting to be featured in Nature!

Long, J.A., Trinajstic, K., Young, G.C. & Senden, T. 2008. Live Birth in the Devonian. Nature 453, 650-652.

For more information (with CGI fish with my colour scheme) =

http://museumvictoria.com.au/About/MV-News/2008/Mother-fish/

Every home needs a house-goanna!

2008-04-10T03:22:30Z

This is what every home needs - a house-goanna! Its just like having a house-cat, but without the fleas, furballs or stench of urine. His/her (can't determine gender as juveniles) name is Dash and s/he is an eight week old Ridge-tailed Monitor (Varanus acanthurus). S/He will get to a maximum adult length of about 70cm. S/He like sleeping, scuttling and tormenting crickets.

Feathers for Velociraptor

2007-09-22T04:31:25Z

While this has been known for years among fossils of its Chinese cousins, we finally have hard evidence that Velociraptor itself was feathered.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/317/5845/1721

Swedish museum crawl

2007-08-19T17:57:28Z

My feet are killing me...Got up at 6 in the morning and jogged to the subway, taking the train to central station. I walk out and see a street second-hand book sale that stretches down the mall for what must have been a kilometer! The vendors had practically everything, even 1960s black and white pornography being peddled by an appropriately fat and pimply, StarTrek shirt-wearing Nerdmeister. Didn't buy anything though since it was kind of all in Swedish (how am I supposed to read untranslated porn?)...

1st stop was the Vasamuseet, a place I've wanted to visit for decades! Yes, the Vasa is everything its cracked out to be and completely blew me away.

Then it was off the the Skansen open air museum. An enchanting place to relax and explore, with antique buildings from all over Stockholm maintained in their original state - even period actors in costume inhabiting some of them! The park is a celebration of pre-industrial Sweden yet they somehow pull it off without being cheesy! Went to the zoo and saw my first Wisent! Patted a moose! Nearly retched when I saw the wolverine feeding!

The next place I wanted to see was the Aquaria Water Museum - given the limited amount of space I was astounded at what they had done! First was a tropical walkthrough South American rainforest exhibit. In the middle of Sweden!? You're surrounded by jungle vegetation and have to walk over a rickety bridge with real RED-BELLIED PIRANHAS in the water beneath you. Arowanas! Amazon River Rays! Arrow-poison frogs! At one point everything went dark and they simulated a jungle thunderstorm with lightning and sprinkler-generated rain. Then there was a small mangrove exhibit with real mangrove trees followed by one of the most stunning coral reef exhibits I've ever seen in a non-tropical climate. Given that the Melbourne aquarium features plastic coral and plastic mangroves, seeing these thriving live examples in a country that experiences snow gave me a profound respect for their custodians.

Finally I came to a showcase of the local freshwater fish. Given how low the diversity was they made a stunning display including a rippling simulated mountain stream with bright red alpine char. And geez, check out the size of that pike. And those Wels catfish are about the size of U-boats!

Was getting late when I finally stumbled out but somehow summoned the strength to check out the Nordiska Museet. It was well worth it, full of all manner of stunning cultural heritage items from the 1500s onwards. But I was still too geeked out at all the cool fish I'd just seen...

Uppsala and beyond!

2007-08-18T18:22:47Z

The Uppsala Early Vertebrates Conference is over and I can categorically state that it was one of the most rewarding weeks of my life, both in terms of friends made, sights seen and astounding scientific discoveries revealed. And all set in the stunning Uppsala University, halls which have felt the footfalls of scientific giants with names like Linneaus, Celsius and Angstrom.

Notable presentations include a transitional proto-flounder from the Eocene (the eye has only just started to migrate across the head), a new complete specimen of the fishapod Panderichthys (first time the back legs/fins preserved), the first comprehensive description of the skeleton of the Great White Shark and superlative specimens from Yunnan Province, China (complete sharks and the oldest ray-finned and tetrapodomorph fish).

I myself presented a new genus and species of Devonian ray-finned fish from the famous Gogo Formation of Western Australia.

As this year marks the tricentennial of Linneaus's birthday I could not leave without paying homage to the man who gave us our binomial method of classifying life. First to his tomb at the grand Uppsala Cathedral, then a look at his life and times at his restored residence.

Now am in Stockholm, it is 8:20pm and I am all alone in the Geology collections building of the Natuhistoriska Riksmuseet with tens of thousands of fossils ranging from anomalocarids to glyptodonts. I intend to spend the night here...

Hello from Sweden!

2007-08-13T09:27:43Z

Here I am in the land of ABBA and Ikea catalogues.

After over 20hours of flight time I can catagorically state that I intend to never sit in economy on intercontinental flights. Am now at the University of Uppsala attending the 40th Anniversary Symposium on Early and Lower Vertebrates and will be presenting a new taxon of Devonian Fish on Wednesday. Uppsala is a beautiful tiny city with immaculate gardens and stunning archetecture. It is also the old stomping ground of a certain Carolus Linneaus who amongst other things gave us our binomial system of nomenclature for naming living things (ie. genus and species).

... am getting a bit peckish now. See you later.

Drake the Snake

2007-06-06T07:22:11Z

Thought I'd introduce you to Drake who has been my housemate since April. A young male Centralian Carpet Python (Morelia bredli) and probably the friendliest reptile I have ever met.

50cm long when he first hatched in February, 2 sheds later he is growing rapidly on a weekly pinkie rat diet. He is now well over 80cm long. Adult size = 180-240cm.

Juvenile bredlis like Drake have a rich brown colouration but within a year his scales should get the spectacular fiery red-orange sheen as seen in the adult below. (Photo by Darren Whittaker)

The ultimate magic mushroom.

2007-05-01T03:21:50Z

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/bigphotos/2664113.html

The enigmatic plant fossil Prototaxites from the Silurian-Devonian has been confirmed by isotopic evidence to have been a gigantic fungus. At over 8m tall this would have been the tallest thing on the planet at the time. To see the ancient otherworldly landscape dominated by these giants would have seemed a bit like living through the hallucigenic effects of some of their modern-day cousins.

Off to the ACT

2007-04-18T04:37:02Z

This Friday I will be driving myself and a pair of visitors from the Beijing Academy of Sciences off to ANU, Canberra, taking some time to take in Koz. National Park along the way. Intend to be back the Friday after that!

See ya

CAVEPS and billabongbugs

2007-04-13T06:53:54Z

Heh, its been about a bazillion years since I've had the time to update my journal. Currently in an exhausted state after a SUPERLATIVE 11th CAVEPS (Conference on Australasian Vertebrate Evolution, Palaeontology and Systematics). The whole con was a palaeo-geeks dream come true with incredible new data on Devonian fish (my presentation on the Gogo ray-fins was well received), stem-tetrapods (Jason Down's with the branchial skeleton of Tiktaalik, Jenny Clack with new Ventastega material), Mesozoic reptiles (Queensland pterosaur with a 12.5m wingspan) and early whales (Oligocene New Zealand had Sabertooth dolphins!)

On a somewhat different tangent, one animal I've longed to keep is the shield-shrimp Triops, an ancient 3-eyed crustacean found in ephemeral desert pools. Their eggs are dessication proof and widely available in US petstores but I've had no success in locating a source in Australia... until now!

http://www.billabongbugs.com/

Will definately be getting some of these babys!

Happy 2007!

2006-12-31T16:34:18Z

Wow... in these last two years I've probably seen and felt more weird and wonderful new sights, sounds and emotions than in the last two decades. This new year has some big shoes to fill...

Happy gnu year!

Gogo fish and the origin of tetrapods

2006-10-19T04:59:47Z

I was there Tim Senden picked up the fossil in Paddy's Valley, July 2005. When I heard John Long yelling out expletives, I knew this was something big... now it's in Nature!

for a summary of why this fish is globally importatnt =
http://www.geocities.com/ozraptor4/gogonasus.html

Read the abstract Nature advance online publication =
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nature05243.html

I may be unworthy, but once she regenerates she'll have the hots for palaeontologists!

2006-09-21T05:49:06Z

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Minmi Grows Up!

2006-09-21T05:40:27Z

A few sneak rehearsal peeks from Museum Victoria's new stage childrens production "Minmi Grows Up!", a tale from Cretaceous Gondwana! Its a mix of puppetry and on screen drawing, the latter provided by me!

If you're not doing anything else, why not come to the Age Theatre and take a look - after all, its free!

(Minmi Grows Up - on from Sept 18 - 29 at the Age Theatre, Melbourne Museum. Performances start at 11am, 12pm and 1am. My days are on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday if any of you want to catch up!)

10 days in the Simpson Desert.

2006-08-25T06:15:13Z

In case you don't already know, I got back from my ffield trip to the Qld/NT border in more or less one piece! It was a truly life changing experience and at some time in the hopefully not too distant future, I will hammer together a webjournal of my experiences. Until then here are a few sneak peeks.

Incidentally, we found a motherlode of fossils...

Gentle filter-feeder this thing was not...

2006-08-16T03:33:14Z

Meet Janjucetus hunderi, a newly described 25 million year old fossil whale from Victoria. It's a baleen whale, but with whopping great teeth, ...and no baleen.

Find out more on my website =

http://www.geocities.com/ozraptor4/janjucetus.html

Photo of the skull at =

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1715433.htm

About to head off...

2006-07-07T05:18:15Z

Hey all.

For the next 2 weeks I will be unavailable - am about to participate in a Museum Victoria/ANU expedition to the Qld/NT border in search of fossil fish. We will be camping out in the desert, c.150km from the nearest settlment. This particular site (Early Devonian - c.390-400 million years old) represents Australia's oldest freshwater fish fauna and has produced some truly bizarre forms not known from elsewhere -

http://tolweb.org/Pituriaspida

If we have time we may go fossiking for dinosaurs/marine reptiles in nearby Cretaceous sites.

Big Picture nabs the Golden Platypus!

2006-06-23T05:59:34Z

The Big Picture Book has landed the 2006 Wilderness Society's Environment Award for Children's Literature! This has got to be the nicest trophy I've ever seen!

I challenge you all!

2006-06-13T04:27:33Z

I challenge you mortal weaklings to a duel!

My Kimberley Odyssey is complete!

2006-06-01T07:38:40Z

Ack...about 9 months after I was hoping to finish it, my online webdiary detailing my adventures in the Gogo Formation of the Kimberleys is fully up and running!

http://www.geocities.com/ozraptor4/kim0.html

Note that this is a no-fee geocities site so theres an hourly data transfer limit of 4 meg - as the whole saga spans 10 meg you won't be able to view the whole thing in one hit, wait an hour and try again!

Big Picture Book accolades!

2006-05-29T07:23:40Z

The Big Picture Book -

(http://www.allenandunwin.com/Shopping/ProductDetails.aspx?ISBN=1741143284)

- seems to be getting some critical acclaim!

So far its been shortlisted/nominated for -

Children's Book Council of Australia Eve Pownall Award for Information Books
http://www.cbc.org.au/notables055.htm

WA Premier's Book Awards (Best Children's Book)
http://www.liswa.wa.gov.au/pbk05shlst.html

Plus one other whos shortlist is currently embargoed.

I hope it wins at least one of them! In fact I'll be back in Perth from 3rd-11th June to attend the WA Premier's Book Awards ceremony.