Anatomical directions (land vertebrates)

 Another of my old articles from my previous website. This one is about the names of the basic anatomical directions. Albeit confusing at first, this jargon is actually pretty useful once you get the hang of it! 

(I introduced the topic with a silly short poem...)

Right is wrong. 

It should be left. 

Left right there. 

Hehe, no, seriously...

There are four main contrasting pairs of terms of directions in anatomy. Note that these apply mainly to tetrapods, or four-limbed vertebrates, to which dinosaurs do belong, but many animals such as molluscs, insects and spiders do not. However, since this site is about dinosaurs, these are the most relevant ones. 

These terms rely on the fact that tetrapods have a distinct head, trunk and tail, four limbs, and clear up and down sides. 

Dorsal means toward and beyond the animal’s back, and ventral means toward and beyond the animal’s belly. Note, however, that most tetrapods have their trunk lying horizontally, unlike in humans (and kangaroos!), meaning that their back faces upward, and their belly downward. Therefore, dorsal and ventral may loosely refer to up and down. So, the ribs would be located ventrally to the spinal column. We could apply this to the skull too, for example by saying that the upper jaw is dorsal to the lower jaw, or that the tooth sockets lie ventrally to the eye sockets. Moreover, stegosaurs are characterised by large plates on their backs, which we could call dorsal plates (in this case, maybe the word dorsal refers more to the fact that the plates sit on the actual back of the animal, but they are nevertheless the most dorsal part of the stegosaur).  

Anterior refers to structures toward the tip of the snout, while posterior is used for things toward the tip of the tail. In simple terms, this means forward and backward, since most tetrapods have their snout facing forward, and so on. Thus, the forelimbs are located anteriorly to the hindlimbs, and the hip region lies posteriorly to the rib cage. Ceratopsians, including Triceratops, have a special beak-like bone (called the rostral bone) attached anteriorly to their upper jaw. Stegosaurs had formidable spikes on the posterior end of their tails. 

Proximal and distal apply chiefly to the limbs (and sometimes to the tail). Proximal means closer to the trunk, while distal means further away from the trunk. Thus, the fingertips are the distal ends of the forelimb, and the femur (thigh bone) is proximal to the knee cap. Many theropods had the distal end of their pubis (a bone in the hip region facing ventrally, or downward) formed like a boot.

Tetrapods, like many other animals, have a clear midline that separates the body from top to bottom into two identical but mirror-imaged halves (the line of symmetry). Referring to this so-called sagittal plane, we use the terms lateral, meaning away from the midline, and medial, meaning toward the middle. The shoulders are generally lateral to the skull, while the tail would be medial to the shoulders. Some nodosaurs (a type of ankylosaur), eg. Edmontonia, had enormous spikes extending forward and laterally from their shoulders. 

These terms can of course be combined. The two subgroups within Dinosauria, Saurischia and Ornithischia, are usually distinguished by the former having the pubis facing anterioventrally (i.e. forward and downward) and the latter having it oriented posterioventrally (i.e. backward and downward). The characteristic neck frill of the ceratopsians can be said to be facing posteriodorsally (backward and upward), while it is also expanded laterally (broadened). In addition, one can refer to structures running along a bone or an axis: theropod teeth had serrations running proximodistally along the edge – that is, they extend from the proximal to the distal part of the tooth. 

How would you describe the direction of Edmontonia's shoulder spikes, using the combined formal terms? 

This system is rather useful, being fundamentally simple (although the words may be confusing if you are not used to them) and concise, and understanding these will surely help you understand more formal texts, especially descriptions. Trust me: once you get the hang of it, you will find it very convenient! 

Making better world members – the IB learner profile

On Boxing day and close to a new year, I think a little self-reflective post is in order. The end of a year is always a good time to enjoy what has passed, and dream of what is to come, and I feel it is a shame that I never really take the time to think enough about what has changed – around and within me – in the year. We should all give a few moments to think back on what we have achieved, what we have gained, and what we have lost.

Now that I have (two) blog(s), I have a good excuse to sit down and do this thoroughly and share it with anyone who might feel the same, or different – likewise, I urge you all to do the same! The best way to search your soul could be to tell others about yourself, explain your thoughts, describe your history, and illustrate your dreams.

In this post, I will not torture you by going through all or most of my calm, not very eventful life. I only want to focus on a single thing: my development as person in this world. So, this will be both about how the way I view the world has changed, and how this new perception has influenced me as a person.

The University of Bristol (where I began to study this semester) has a barely noticeable tab on its student webpage that encourages students to pursue what they call a Personal Development Plan (PDP), which aims to – through rigorous reflection and self-evaluation – evoke the student’s strengths and weaknesses and to produce a plan to help the student promote his/her talents and work on his/her shortcomings. This all sounds very good, but the whole purpose of it, they say, is to enhance the student’s employability – to make one more attractive on the job market.

I wouldn’t object to that! But, I have had a hard time motivating myself to go through all that paperwork to tick squares, rate my confidence in a set of skills from one to five, make up some sort of plan of how to improve a prioritised bunch of my weaknesses. I have never been much for reflection, I admit, and this system is not helping at all.

Dinosaur discussion or essay topics: examples

This is another of my articles from the abandoned webpage, one that sought to inspire young students to explore the wealth of unanswered questions on the subject of dinosaurs.

Here follows a couple of examples of topics for discussion, for fun, or for a school essay, if you like. But, first I wish to distinguish between different ways of analysing a topic (I focus on analysis, since topics for mere description should not be hard to find, in addition to the fact that texts that only describe rarely make good essays, and it is impossible to build a debate on descriptions). To discuss means both to give a detailed account of an issue, but also to consider more than one perspective. Consequently, a topic for discussion must be a topic where there are, or could be, several different, sometimes completely opposite points of view. Moreover, as in any debate or essay, you wish to reach some form of conclusion, so it is essential to actually compare and evaluate the different perspectives, rather than just stating them. To compare and contrast strictly means only to describe (or maybe discuss) similarities and differences, but usually implies assessment of their importance and/or implications (implication in this sense refers to the results or effects of an argument, discovery or revelation). To evaluate is to assess something, usually an argument, a piece of evidence, or a model. When you evaluate, you usually point out strengths and weaknesses, and weigh them against each other to reach a conclusion to whether the argument or evidence is strong or weak overall.

As you might notice, the distinctions between these forms of analysis are very fine: a discussion does not exclude comparison or evaluation, and evaluation is in essence a comparison. However, it can be worth its weight in gold to be clear about what these terms imply. If you are asked to write a comparative essay, you are not expected to evaluate evidence; you would probably not loose points for doing so, but you might well be wasting precious time. Knowing exactly what kind of answer is expected is, of course, even more crucial for exam writing, where you are under considerable time pressure and need to give precise answers. Moreover, not answering the demands of a question does not impress the examiner, while giving a strictly focused answer shows that you know what you are doing.

Let us move on to the more fun part: the topics. In some cases, I provide brief examples both to show why this is a topic worth looking into, and to aid you in your search for more information. The idea is for you to dig deeper on your own, and discover the myriad of different views and explanations, and to realise why this is or was a topic of controversy.  

How/why did the dinosaurs grow so enormous? Here, you can discuss advantages and disadvantages of having a large body, and evaluate which you believe would have been the main advantage(s). (Given that the dinosaurs did grow enormous suggests that the advantages did outweigh the problems.) There are several examples of advantages, including invulnerability from smaller animals, lower rate of heat loss (larger bodies give off heat much slower, so it is easier to keep warm), and the ability to travel farther. Some disadvantages would be restricted movement (especially in places like a dense forest; this is why most large dinosaurs lived in the open plains), higher food requirements, and several physiological constraints. Moreover, you could spice your discussion with an investigation into why some dinosaurs did not grow so large; a handful of dinosaurs weighed less than a kilo (e.g. Compsognathus, Archaeopteryx, Sinosauropteryx), and a great deal of theropods and some ornithopods weighed under a tonne (e.g. the dromaeosaurids, or “raptors”, ornithomimids, most oviraptorids, and the hypsilophodontids). Understanding why these preferred a more modest size may shed some light on why other dinosaurs favoured gigantism instead.

Last day

Yesterday was the last day of term. Most of us have gone home, though I will stay over the weekend (the flights were cheaper on Monday!) and finish off some studying. Of course, I felt really sad about leaving this place and these wonderful people, but we all had happy goobyes, and I come closer and closer to fully realise I will see my family and friends again when I go back to Sweden! (I have known that for a loooong time, but as usual with me, it takes time for it so sink in and for me to really realise it... Sounds a bit daft, I know! hahaha!!)

So what I will be up to these two days before departing is basically packing and studying. We have so-called Progress Exams in January. I thought I would write a short post on study tactics – how to think about and organise your studies so that you cover both as much width and depth as possible with hopefully minimal effort. I give these tips to anyone who might be in a similar situation and in need of some ideas of how to make the most of one's time.

Our Progress Exams are all multiple choice questions, which means that we are given about five or more alternative answers to each question and must choose the correct one to receive the mark (one per question). Usually, some of the questions are really tricky, where the several alternatives makes you more unsure of what to think, and may thus sometimes be harder than clear short-answer questions. Multiple choice questions are meant to test understanding of main concepts and factual knowledge. The questions may be considerably specific on a narrow topic; rarely, they address major concepts – you are expected to be able to use your understanding of the subject to figure the more detailed problems out!

I love multiple choice questions! They are generally easy and fun; I enjoy in particular the trick questions. The norm is to be given at least one minute of time per question (we have fifty questions in an hour), so answering the 'easy' ones quickly gives you more time on the harder problems. This sounds obvious, but evoking that thought gives you a clue on how to study for multiple choice questions: (1) make sure you really understand all major concepts; (2) revise details. If the 'way of thinking' of the subject is your second nature, and if you have an additional set of detailed facts fresh in your head, you should be able to complete the examination smoothly and painlessly!

Our exams at the end of the year, however, will be both multiple choice questions and essay questions. The essay part will consist of several long-answer questions, out of which we will choose a given number and answer in essay form.

Preparing for essay questions is quite different from for multiple choice questions: indeed, the need to understand all major features and terms is essential, as are details – they make your essay more impressive. However, essay answers demand substantially more indepth and exhaustive knowledge on a subject. You definitely need broadth of knowledge, since you do not know what subtopics the given questions will relate to, so if you study only a few topics, there is a great risk of not having enough questions that you can answer! However, to make a really good essay, you also need deep and detailed knowledge. The more you have to say about the subject the better, and the more precise and appropriate your examples are, the more you will show that you know what you are doing.

How could I do this without going to too much trouble, then? My suggestion is to think about what topics to spciallise in! Assess each topic on (a) how much you have to say about it/how interested you are in learning more about it; (b) how likely it is that there will be a question on it; (c) how many other topics this one may relate to. The first point determines the depth, the second tells you how useful it could be to speciallise in this topic, and the third determines the broadth of questions you may be able to answer from that single topic. This is how you can minimise effort: by making sure you pick topics there is indepth knowledge easily available, by making sure you enjoy the work, by not reading (much) on topics that are unlikely to be of use, and finally by choosing topics that may relate to several larger areas and/or specific examples that can be used for many different topics.

To give an example, one of our biology courses, Diversity of Life, covers evolutionary theory, and the evolution and classification of unicellular organisms, land plants, fungi and most types of animals. It is highly likely that at least one question will be on evolution, since it is such a debatable area. Thus, to prepare for a question on evolution, I will look for and learn examples from as many of the different types of organisms we are taught about, and relate those to ideas on evolutionary theory. These examples will also prove helpful when discussing questions regarding these organism groups only, and I will make sure that is extract examples that relate to as many different possible questions there could be on the exams.

I hope these tips can ease some study pain for you, and wish you all a merry christmas, and a weird and wonderful new year!!

When life gives you lemons...

... make lemonade!

Sharing a small refrigerator with a bunch of careless students who prop it full of their food, and leave dripping liquids and open packages of sandwich spread (they don't even have the sense of putting a plastic bag around it) can be hellish when it gets to the extreme.

Luckily, it has not been awfully bad in our frigde yet, but I am still reluctant to keep my lunch food stored in it. Another funny thing is that the heater in our room does not work. We keep it warm solely by floor heating – which is not ideal, since the English heating systems seems to work in bursts of extreme warming and periods of rest for the temperature to cool down, instead of maintaining an even temperature...

... Anyway, my point is: if our room is freezing, why bother putting my food in that horrendous fridge? I just leave some of the stuff on my windowsill! (Although, most of it won't fit there, so it has to go in the fridge.)

Not quite what I meant, but a similar principle, haha...

Image from http://salls-country-life.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/simple-peachy-pleasure.html

A new blog!!

I just created and designed a new blog! The Bluest Ice will be about current issues related to environment preservation and international development. The blog is still incipient, but I hope to give it a good kick start this week (if my workload permits), so please do check it out any time soon!

I made The Bluest Ice a separate blog in order to keep the topics apart and so avoid confusion – I want this blog to remain centered around paleontology, and The Bluest Ice to be focused on topics related to the problems of today. However, I will probably make cross references between the blogs to keep the viewers of either alert for other potentially intersting texts, and, if any topic overlaps the two, I will of course write a coupled posts for both.

The other reason I decided to create an additional blog was to more effectively promote awareness of various charitable groups and organisations that work toward a better world for us. In this way, I hope to be able to reach out to a wider audience, which is what these types of organisations need. (Thus, I apologise if such inclusions to this paleoblog will cause dustirbance, but please understand I do this with good intentions.)

Ever heard of the MSC? Want to know what it does? Then look out for the coming post on The Bluest Ice!

A note on the taxonomy post!

I just realised when revising plant biology that I forgot to mention that the typical taxon name endings I descrbed in the post on taxonomy rules only apply to animals!! Plant (and probably other organisms) have different conventions for ending names of orders, families, subfamilies, etc. This is because Linnaeus, who engineered the basics of the texonomic system, initially classified all life as either plants or animals (he also tried to classify minerals in a hierachical system...), so he probably intended the different norms of nomenclature to make distinction clearer.

In plants, the order tends to end with -ales and families with -aceae. There may be more conventions, but these are the ones I am aware of.

I apologise and hope my unclearness has not caused any inconvenience!

Dinosaurs (more posts from my old website)

I have been looking through more of my old articles for DinoLore, the website I had before this blog, but which I decided to shut down. Some of them were pretty nice though, and, in times when I don't have much time to write new 'informative' posts, I thought I could revive some of these articles.

This one is about dinosaurs! It is a pretty brief, general overview of their main characteristis. There is of cours much much much more to each and every of these subtopics. If you find any bit particlarily interesting, please tell, and I can write something new and more in detail about that.

(Note: ignore all the bits about other articles and sections – they refer to such in the old website, and some do not even exist; I had planned to create them, but never got to it.)

Dinosauria

Most of us could easily recognise a dinosaur. But what features characterise all dinosaurs? And what makes them different from all other animals?


Size

The perhaps most apparent characteristics of dinosaurs is that they were big. Although there were a few species weighing around a kilo (e.g. Compsognathus), dinosaurs generally weighed more than a tonne. The largest animals on land – the sauropods – were dinosaurs, with the world record being held by Amphicoelias (it is only known from a single vertebra, or spine bone, and a femur, or thigh bone, but those were huge!), estimated to have weighed more than 100 tons!
Note, however, that this giant is still dwarfed by the now-living, marine blue whale, weighing close the the double! It is much easier for aquatic animals to grow large, and there is a simple reason why – can you think of it? Nevertheless, dinosaurs were not less spectacular for achieving such gargantuan sizes on land!


Limbs

Dinosaurs are characterised more specifically by having an erect stance: their limbs are held beneath their bodies, unlike lizards, crocodiles and amphibians, which have their arms and legs in a sprawling posture. Such a stance is also called a parasagittal limb posture, because the legs lie on the sagittal plane of the body (the line that separates the body into a left and right half).

A parasagittal stance is generally much more efficient, partly because the body puts less weight on the limb muscles (we all know how strenuous it is to do push-ups!). Furthermore, a sprawling stance requires the whole body to move from side to side with each step: the left side of the trunk contracts to move the right forelimb forward, followed by the right side contracting, dragging the whole body forward. This way of moving has a serious disadvantage: when any side of the body contracts, doing so also compresses the lung on that side. Therefore, animals with a sprawling limb posture cannot breathe while running, and therefore tire very quickly. However, in a parasagittal stance, the limbs can move independently of the rest of the body, enabling breathing during exercise.

Dinosaurs are not the only animals with erect limb posture. Today, birds and mammals also have a parasagittal stance. The fact that birds and mammals are the only modern animals with a parasagittal stance, and are the only warm-blooded, or endothermic, animals today, suggests that dinosaurs also may have been warm-blooded. This correlation does have a biological explanation, which is outlined in the article on breathing and erect limb posture in the section Warm-blooded?

The parasagittal limb posture was achieved by making the process (bump) on the head of the femur (thigh bone) that articulates with the hip socket (or acetabulum) protrude at a right angle from the rest of the femur, which as a result will point directly downward.

However, this process is cylindrical, not ball-like as for most vertebrates. This means that the femur cannot roll around along the joint, but is restricted to rotating only. As a result, the leg can only be swung forward and backward, and not to the sides as, for example, we humans can. In addition, the ankle joint of the dinosaurs was relatively simple: in humans, there are seven ankle bones (or tarsals), and they form a synovial joint, a highly flexible joint that allows movement in several planes; dinosaurs, however, only have two ankle bones, and the joint (referred to as the mesotarsal joint) forms a linear hinge joint, which only enables movement in a single plane only, in this case back and forward. Consequently, the dinosaur hindlimb had a highly restricted range of movement: it could only move along the sagittal plane – the line parallel to the body. Thus, dinosaurs would not have been very agile regarding sidewise movement; they were specialised for running forward.

Uni life – some practical tips and tricks

I have now been living the student life in Bristol for more than two months, so I have accumulated a fair amount of experience about the practicalities of studying at university and passing the days in a new country. I though I might share a few useful notes and tips for those who might be thinking about embarking on a similar adventure!

Studies

Perhaps the central aspect of student life is managing your studies. Normally, you would not go to university unless you want a degree. Some people take the studies more seriously than others, though, so how much time and effort you spend with them depends entirely on you – how much you like the subject; how badly you need to achieve good grades; how much time you need to understand and absorb the material.

Therefore, there is not much I can say about this, except that it is important to find a balance between studies and life: pay attention in the lectures, process the material and finish your assignments on time, but do not lose yourself in the workload.

The degree of self-studies relative to the time you spend in school (“contact hours”) varies between programmes. In Paleontology and Evolution, we have 18 contact hours per week, but are expected to spend at least the double amount of time on self-studies. This means that our mandatory timetable is mild – our average day consists of two one-hour lectures and a three-hour practical, usually with a multi-hour lunch break. I know of others, engineers for example, who have days full of lectures from 9 am to 5 pm with only an hour of lunch break. With such a timetable, it is difficult not to take the studies seriously – the work is harder to ignore/postpone. 

Food

I live in a catered university hall – Badock Hall – where the students are provided breakfast and dinner on weekdays and breakfast and lunch on weekends. There are other types of student accommodation for first-year students in Bristols (see The first days in Bristol), but a catered hall might be a more relaxed option for students new to the city/country, since one does not need to worry about food except for one meal a day. The accommodation fees for catered halls are higher, so whether it pays off depends on your own food requirements (quantity and quality).

I, then, only have to fix lunch for five days and dinner for two. The problem is that there is no fully equipped kitchen in hall for that purpose. In our floor, we have a microwave, a kettle, a toaster (I think…) and a fridge. Now, think carefully for a second: most of the lunches will be eaten during the lunch breaks in town, not at hall. Thus, to prepare transportable food is ideal. The most apparent solution is sandwiches. Bread is cheap and filling, and, depending on your spread preferences, it can make a tasty and healthy meal that is not difficult to prepare and bring to school – a sandwich will not go bad for lying in a bag your backpack for a couple of hours; I even make them the night before and keep them in the backpack so I have them for the next day (I do this for several reasons, the to main ones being that I do not have time to prepare the sandwiches in the morning because breakfast begins rather late in relation to how long time I need to eat and walk to school, and that my roommate has sleepin every day, so I try to minimise the amount of disturbance in the mornings by fixing everything I can the night before; more about that below).

For the dinners in the weekend, I usually have slightly more elaborate food: instant noodle soup and/or powder soup, usually accompanied by a sandwich or two. The instant noodle soups are incredibly cheap (11 pence each at Sainsbury’s! even if I eat two in one sitting, it is extremely economical), albeit not the most nutritional foods. Still, soup is not bad food in a fairly cold country infamous for copious amounts of rain – a cup of warm, creamy powder soup is just so good in dark, rainy days. Both these soup types only require boiling water to be added, so I am perfectly fine with a lunchbox that can handle hot water (for the noodle soup) and a cup (for the powder soup).

Not long ago, I also realised that couscous (grains of durum wheat, I think, treated in some special way… I’m not really sure of exactly what it consists of, but it is a good substitute for pasta or rice) does not require a stove – unlike pasta, rice, polenta and potatoes, etc. – so I can make delicious salads for days when I really feel like varying my diet. To make couscous, simply add some oil and salt to the grains, pour boiling water over them (roughly one part couscous two parts water), cover with a lid and leave for a few minutes; stir around with a fork to loosen the grains and see if all water has evaporated or been absorbed by the grains (they expand quite a lot, so be careful! I made the mistake of making so much couscous I could hardly put anything else in my lunchbox). To make a good, fresh salad, I recommend adding onion, pepper and tomatoes (all raw), plus chicken, meatballs and/or tuna (meats that are great eating cold).

This might sound a bit like the equivalent of living on scraps, but it is an economical and reasonably healthy solution to the problem of balancing food and money. Richer students may afford to eat out often, or buy pre-made food every day. However, I figure most need a cheaper alternative. This does not mean that one cannot treat oneself to a dinner out once in a while!

Exercise

I could not find any suitable karate clubs in Bristol. By “suitable”, I mean in terms of location relative to where I live, training times and price. So, I figured I need to do some other form of exercise, but…

The university’s sports and exercise facilities have a weird (weird bad) system, where you can only pay for a one-year or three-year membership. Also, the payment must be made over the internet. Since my Swedish bank card does not work with most internet payment thingies here (something that has caused me immense trouble with paying accommodation fees, for example), and the process of obtaining a bank card took about a month (I’m not joking! – apply for a new bank account and card as soon as you set foot on English soil if you intent to live here), and since I made the mistake of assuming it would take less than a week and therefore waited for about three weeks before I sat down and looked through the available banks and made my choice (here comes the point about exercise, which is the topic of this section), it was already too late to purchase a one-year membership (they refused to allow me a trial session to test the gym, and I am not willing to pay for three years if I don’t know the facilities are good) without needing to go at least three or four times a week for it to be worth the money, and I simply don’t have that time, especially as the cheap membership is only for off-peak hours, i.e. times when people usually don’t go, so early weekdays and late weekends. So, you see, it is just too complicated…

Instead, I go student style: the free option. I go to the drying room – where people in our building are supposed to hang their clothes to dry – and work out with my own exercises there. I cannot do it in my room since it is shared (more about that later), so the drying room is a great alternative – no one ever comes there, so no one will bother!

I have also been thinking of picking up climbing (indoors). There is a climbing centre somewhere in Bristol, but I am a bit too lazy to find it… Some day, I hope I will move my butt there, because I know climbing is great fun and great training once you get started!

Living in a shared room

Sharing a room is cheaper, but can be detrimental if your roommate is mental (I know a friend whose roommate was!). Luckily, Patrick is really great! Albeit something of a heavy partyer, he respects that I am not and doesn’t have parties in our room, even though it is colossal and thus ideal for a minor pre-party drinking session. He does go out clubbing until late in the night, but rarely wakes me up when he comes back. In return, I try my best not to wake him when I have to wake up at 7.30 every morning while he has sleep-in every day (he studies music; his time table is even more relaxed than mine). In the weekends, when Patrick sleeps in until lunch, but I want to get up for breakfast (which is slightly more luxurious in the weekends, and which I already have paid for anyway) and get some work done, I get up quietly, and, when I come back, I take my things and go to the drying room where I can sit and study or whatever I intend to do. It is warm and nice, although hard to sit on the floor for hours. (I use a towel as cushion.) We both make our sacrifices for the other’s well-being.

This, I would say, is the single most important thing for people sharing room in student accommodation: mutual understanding and respect. Patrick and I are not best friends, but we do get along very well! Imagine living with someone you cannot talk to, or that you don’t trust, or that makes a complete mess in the whole room (Patrick is the messier of us, but he has managed to confine the ‘mess’ to his side).

Finances

Um… I was intending to write something about managing your finances as a student for last, but I realised I do not have much to say as yet. I have not made any thorough budget calculations yet. What I have done so far is to record the most of my weekly spending in different categories to have a feel of how much I spend and on what. When the term is over, I will sit down and think about whether I need to cut back the rest of my time here or if I will manage as I am going now.

I would also like to talk about scholarships and other ways of student funding, but searching for them is immensely tedious, and I have not even been successful in finding and applying for a single one yet. Once I have my studies under full control, however, I will make a serious effort to explore as many possibilities as I can find. Maybe I will write some tips for you then!  

Taxonomy rules (nomenclature)

I was quite surprised to hear when many of our teachers and tutors gave feedback regarding the rules of taxonomic nomenclature (i.e. how to write the names of animal goups) – apparently, a significant few have difficulties with those norms. I recall having written a text going through the essential principles and the framework for how you write these formal names for my old website, which I shut down in favour of this blog. So, I thought I could post that text here as well, hoping it can clarify some confusion.

The taxonomic system for the hierarchical (ranked) classification of living organisms (and initially also of rocks, but that failed) is very simple. Organisms are assigned into different groups based on their characteristics, and these groups are hierarchical. The figure below shows the seven main types of groups. Kingdom is “higher” than phylum, while class is “lower”, and so on.

For some, but not all groups there are subdivisions of these group types, such as subclass (subdivision within a class), infraorder (subdivision within a suborder; i.e. infra- is “below” sub-), and grouping of groups – e.g. superorder (group of orders).

Since the system is hierarchical, organisms belonging to the same class also belong to the same phylum and kingdom. For instance, all animals belonging to the class Reptilia (reptiles, then) also belong to the phylum Chordata (animals with a notochord, or backbone) and the kingdom Animalia (animals).

Now, the order Primates (primates), although belonging to the class Mammalia instead of Reptilia, also belongs to the phylum Chordata and kingdom Animalia. This might complicate things, but it is simply due to that the two classes Reptilia and Mammalia both belong to the same phylum and (therefore) kingdom. 

Notice that the name of the class is written with a capital first letter when you refer to the actual group. If you instead write “carnivorans” (belonging to the mammalian order Carnivora; not equal to “carnivore”, which refers to a feeding strategy – not a taxonomic group), you are really referring to the members of the group, and you do not use capital letters. This rule is useful for distinguishing between, for example, Primates and primates.

While on the subject of formal rules, the genus and species are special. First, both are always written in italics. Always. Second, the genus name is written with capital first letter, but the species never has a capital. Third, you may refer to the genus alone, e.g. Tyrannosaurus, but never ever write only the species name. Never. This is because there may be several different species with the same name, (for instance, they may be named after the same discoverer) but they never belong to the same genus (if they do, they are simply not allowed to have the same species name). In this way, we get an endless variety of specific names for an endless variety of species. Finally, you may shorten the genus name to only the first letter (capital) followed by a dot and the species name (if you do not include the species name, you may not shorten the genus name ­– it would be silly to write something like “T. had remarkably short arms”). For example, we take the genus Tyrannosaurus (species name is excluded, since I refer to the genus), which has one species: Tyrannosaurus rex – although some researchers argue that Tarbosaurus bataar really belongs to Tyrannosaurus; in that case, we would also have Tyrannosaurus bataar  (the species name is the same, but is assigned to a different genus). Notice that I should not shorten the genus name here, since it may be unclear what I mean by T. bataar.

Names can be discarded or invalidated, usually by showing that two very similar species actually are the same, in which case the name given first is the one that remains valid. Rejected names are written within quotation marks, and never italicised. A classical example is that "Brontosaurus exelsus" and Apatosaurus ajax were shown to be the same species (and therefore also belonged to one and the same genus); Apatosaurus, being the first to have been described and named, was kept (both genus and species name).

Another notable convention is that families tend to end with -idae, superfamilies with -oidea and subfamilies with -inae (their members would then be -ids, -oids, and -ines, respectively). For example, we have the Hadrosauroidea (superfamily), Hadrosauridae (family) and Hadrosaurinae (subfamily).

Nowadays, the taxonomic system has been overshadowed by phylogenetic systematics, or cladistics. Cladistics is favoured because it systematically investigates evolutionary relationships, rather than just putting the organisms into different groups; cladistics tries to work out how they evolved, and how closely related different organisms are. Taxonomy, on the other hand, merely groups similar-looking organisms together in order to make some sense of the overwhelming chaos of life we have out there.

The groupings can differ quite a lot between taxonomy and cladistics, since cladistics has a predilection for groups that include all the descendants within an evolutionary line (i.e. monophyletic clades). Therefore, cladistics disregards the group Reptilia, as it does not include birds (class Aves) and mammals, both which have their origins in the reptilian evolutionary line. Instead, cladistics just group them all together as Amniota.

Bristol Aquarium

This Sunday, I visited the Bristol Aquarium with a couple of friends from school. I had never been to an aquarium before, so it was quite an experience!

It was frustratingly difficult to take even decent photos through the glass tanks of the fish that just wouldn’t stay still. Consequently, most pictures were something like this:

Of course, I will only show the least blurry photos in this post. For that reason, the post will also be quite short – for better or for worse.

Among the animals that were easy to photograph was the colossal lobster that seemed too large to be bothered to even move. You can see the camera casing I placed outside the tank as a scale.

As my friend Joe pointed out to me: note that the lobster has two different claw types, probably adapted for different forms of food manipulation – the more robust one may be for crunching hard shells, and the more slender claw could have a flesh-cutting function.

Fluorescent invertebrates made rather spectacular sights. Here is a medusa (medusozoans) called Aurelia (looked it up on Wikipedia).

 

And here are some sea anemones (anthozoans):

Both are cnidarians, invertebrates with a radial symmetry (which more or less means that they are symmetrical along various different planes round the centre of the organism); most have tentacles with sting cells (called cnidocytes; hence the name) that are used to capture prey. The group also includes corals, within the subgroup Anthozoa – so they are put together with the sea anemones. If memory serves, the characteristics that define the group has to do with their reproductive cycle, but I have not looked much into it yet…

Corals there were plenty of in the coral reef tank.

Dragons, hippogriffs and other mythical creatures – if they were real, what would they be?

Among my fantastic friends here in Bristol, there is one particularly peculiar: Shirin [shirine]. Apart from being generally wonderful, she is also weird in many ways, so a blog post on a few of her ideas is a must.

She is completely obsessed with dragons, having collected hundreds of models, trinkets and whatnot throughout the years. Since we are both paleontology students, naturally, we discussed the potential phylogenetic position the dragon lineage would occupy in the tree of life, were they real. I had recently been thinking about that, and was leaning toward them being an offshoot of the Rauisuchia – an extinct group of land-living relatives of modern crocodiles, though much larger. Like dinosaurs, birds and mammals, the rauisuchians had an erect limb posture – a feature also depicted in many dragons, and characteristic of highly active predators or grazers. I will not dwell into details here, but an erect limb posture is associated with a more efficient respiratory (breathing) system, which enables the animal to use energy more efficiently to sustain a high-rate metabolism, something that likely is needed for a creature capable of breathing fire. In other words, the similar limb postures, and the sense this similarity makes in terms of  its associated function, hints toward a connection between dragons and rauisuchians.

An artist’s impression of the rauisuchian Postosuchus. Image from http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Postosuchus

Now, do not forget that there are other animals with an erect limb posture. However, there are other morphological similarities that make the Rauisuchia a good candidate for the ancestors of dragons. Most dragons have scaly skin, which rules out a mammalian origin, though not the therapsids (advanced members of the Synapsida, more colloquially called mammal-like reptiles, since they are a sort of transition group between reptiles and mammals), which also had an erect limb posture, though no fur. The skull morphology of most dragons is very reminiscent of that of modern crocodiles, with the anteriorly flattened snout and anteriolateral nostrils. In addition, dragons are often depicted with conical teeth, just like those of modern crocodiles.

Left: an artist’s impression of a dragon; right: a modern crocodile. Notice the similarities in snout morphlology. Pictures from – left: http://www.chrisscalf.com/Sci%20Fi%20Portfolio/SciFi%20Html/Dragon%20Fire.html ;
 right: http://ozmagic.homestead.com/australiancrocodileaborigine.html

That skull form is close to that of rauisuchians, although their skulls are deeper and flatter, but also similar to that of some carnivorous therapsids, in particular the gorgonopsids.

Left: a model of the head of the rauisuchian Postosuchus; right: a gorgonopsid therapsid, a creature not far from the first true mammals, and another possible precursor or dragons, based on superficial skull similarities. Pictures from – left: http://www.cmstudio.com/postosuchus.html ; right: http://wonjae.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/gorgonopsid_2.jpg

However, Shirin made a good point: some dragons are depicted with feathers, which has only been found in the dinosaur lineage. The rauisuchians diverged from the dinosaur ancestral lineage at the very base of the archosaur group, which unifies dinosaurs, pterosaurs and crocodylians, around the early Triassic period, about 20 million years before the dinosaurs first appeared; the therapsids are separated from the dinosaurs by around 100 million years of evolution. Feathers are thus unlikely to be found in descendants of either of these groups, since the relation to the feathered dinosaurs is remote.

Dragons must then have come from dinosaurs, Shirin argued. The reason why I was doubtful about that is because of the quadrupedal stance of dragons – dragons are definitely carnivorous, or perhaps omnivorous, but the only four-legged dinosaurs were (more or less strictly) herbivores – no one was adapted for a meat-based diet. Dragons ought to have emerged from the theoropod group, if from any. When I later thought about it, the idea makes sense in many ways: the Theropoda is where most known feathered dinosaurs belong to; they had highly pneumatised bones – hollowed-out with air holes – making them very light-weighted, something important for flight; it gave rise to flight at one definite point, so it had the potential for possibly generating another. However, the theropods are strictly bipedal, and show no signs of reversal to the (not directly) ancestral quadrupedal posture.

After some more thinking, I thought of the spinosaurid family, a rather odd type of theropods with crocodile-like snouts bearing conical teeth and rather long, powerful arms. The snout and tooth shapes drew my mind to dragons, and the well-developed forelimbs could be a start to developing a four-legged stance. What characterises at least Spinosaurus is the long sail on its back, supported by greatly elongated upward projections from the dorsal (back) vertebrae. Could the development of this membrane between roughly parallel bone outgrowths be the forerunner of the flight membrane on the dragon wings? Could those long vertebral processes have been to anchor strong back muscles used for flight? It may seem vague, but there might be a connection here.

Leaving the dragon riddle unresolved for now, let us turn to another one of our discussions: Shirin’s hypothesis that hippogriffs – majestic beasts with the hind part of the body (trunk, tail and hindlimbs) being of a horse and the front, covered in feathers, resembling an eagle’s – are close relatives of the platypus, a modern member of a primitive mammalian group – Monotremata – which has fur, but a duck’s bill and lays eggs. Half of the platypus is a mammal, and half is a bird; the same goes for the hippogriff.

An interesting observation, but the respective mammals and birds they are a chimera of are not closely linked at all. Ducks and eagles are possibly remotely related – I’m not sure of bird evolution, but it is not an unreasonable assumption that they are only distantly related – and the mammalian part of the platypus – a large, elongated trunk with short, stubby limbs sticking out from the side of the body and with webbed feet – is not reminiscent of any other mammal I have ever seen, and certainly not to a horse. If the hippogriff and platypus are sister taxa, one would expect at least some similarity in the animal groups their respective body parts mimic.

Left: the platypus; right: an artist’s impression of the hippogriff. Images from – left: http://troghead.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/platypus.html# ; right: http://hogwartsrpg.wikia.com/wiki/File:Hippogriff_drawing.jpg

Still, Shirin’s important observation deserves an explanation, and it can be found in convergent evolution – when unrelated organisms develop similar traits as a result of adapting to similar conditions. The main problem with this idea is that the platypus is amphibious (living both in water and on land), while the hippogriff flies: they have adapted to two completely different media – water and air, respectively. An analogy to how improper an argument of convergent evolution between the platypus and the hipogriff can be found in comparing the fish fins with bird wings.

These are the kind of things that go through our heads…

Admit that it is awesome! Hahaha

Coming soon... I think...

Right... so the workload of the courses is starting to become more and more evident, so there will probably be little time for major blog posts in the near future. I might occasionally throw in some text about a topic I find particularily fascinating and important enough to share here, but that would be sporadically only.

However, I have been completely entranced by the early evolution of land plants, so I might make a decent post on it in the near future. I live right next to the botanic garden, which has a display of the evolution of plants using extant (non-extinct) species to represent the main groups at different time periods. I went there on a sunny (!) day and took a bunch of photos; next, I will learn as much as my actual, curricular workload permits, and then use those as illustrations. I hope that will turn out good.

The first days in Bristol

Soon a week ago, on Friday the 28^th of September, I arrived late in the night with my parents at a hotel near Temple Meads, one of the main train stations in Bristol. The journey from Sweden had been alternately stressful – hurrying to make sure we were on time for everything – and calm – during which I was growing increasingly nervous about this big move, this new life that awaited on the other end of the trip.

Up until some weeks earlier, moving to Bristol had been so far away in the future that I did not think much about what it would be like. I was accepted on the programme Paleontology & Evolution (MSci) [the British spell paleontology with an additional “a” before the “e”, one of the few British spellings I just cannot stomach] sometime in March, and as information and instructions for pre-arrival preparations were sent to me, I processed it all a bit at a time, but sort of absent-mindedly: it still felt like some kind of dream– at any time, some problem could surely arise that would ruin everything and prevent me from going – or maybe it was all a practical joke thrown on me by fate.

As the date of moving came closer, however, I realised that this actually was going to happen. When I started packing for the move, it was definite: my life would start over. Yikes.

After that realisation, my stomach made a few somersaults here and there. But, my nervousness was nothing in comparison to my mom’s, whose little boy was leaving her after all these years.

After an internally tumultuous journey, we arrived just in time to get a late meal at the hotel before taking a shower and preparing my bag for the excursion to Somerset Coast.

The thing about the excursion is that the others met in Bristol and departed together around mid-afternoon on the Friday, which was problematic for me as I arrived around 9.30 pm. However, I had planned this out together with the excursion leaders beforehand, and would go to the excursion site myself on Saturday morning. I was to take a train from Bristol Temple Meads to Bridgwater, wherefrom I would ride a bus to Watchet, where I would meet the others.

I made plenty of mistakes in the morning, though. I had been told that breakfast was served at 6.30 am; the train departed from the station (about five minutes away) at 7.18. Thus, if I ate quickly, I could make it to buy the ticket and get on the train. However, I made the false presumption that my phone alarm would adjust to the time zone change automatically (England is one hour behind Sweden)… which it did not. When I came down to the lobby at 5.15, having slept less than four hours, I was told that breakfast was one and a half hour away: breakfast begins at 7.00 am on weekends.

Well… there was not much to do… I knew I would not manage to go back to sleep, so I sat on my room, watching the morning news.

It all sorted out eventually. I made it to the train in good time (dad had gone to the station to buy the ticker while I had my breakfast – a brilliant idea that would not have had crossed my mind at that point). However, here came the next problem: they did not call out the names of the next stop in the speakers, so I had to be alert all the time – on a journey of more than an hour, having had only a few hours of sleep last night – and read the signs at the platforms.

None of this had been foreseen, which is why it made such a mess for me. However, I had looked up the way to the Bridgewater bus station from the train platform very carefully before leaving home, and that trip went perfectly well, despite my inherent talent for getting lost.

When I joined the rest of the excursion group, I was shocked by meeting some good seventy students; I had imagined we would be between ten and twenty only. I was greeted with many strange looks – of course, they had got to know each other the night before and already formed small groups. It would be trickier to get to know people than I had expected. I just don’t function socially in such large groups – naturally, I did not dare approach anyone yet. 

Update coming soon

I am currently mid-way through Fresher's Week – the first week for new undergrauates at univeristy ("freshers"), which is basically a week without teaching, dedicated to sort out formal matters such as registration, instructions and information about the course, content, assesment, life at the university, social life, societies, etc. etc. It is a fantastic way to get your uni life started before it is submerged in heavy studies.

I have truly had an epic time, and I will write a post on it (including the journey from Uppsala to Bristol and pre-sessional field trip to Somerset Coast, which was special for us new students as the Department of Earth Sciences, and gave us a head start on making friends!), updating you about how I am doing right now, and how drastically my life has changed (for the better, I think!). I will try to have it done by the end of Fresher's Week, so that I can focus on the lectures on Monday.

(If you were misled by the title of this post, raise your hand. If you resented being misled, please do not bother...)

The best iPhone app

I just found what must be the most amazingly genious free iPhone app: Taking Pictures With Dinos!!

With it, you can add a dinosaur to pictures you take with your ordinary phone camera (I don't think it works on pictures you already have taken, though)!

Just to try it out, I took a shot at my laptop, which now has a T. rex on top of it :)

 The free version comes with four dinosaurs: Tyrannosaurus, Diceratops, Argentinosaurus and Suchomimus. You can get additional collections of dinosaurs (dromaeosaurids, ceratopsids, sauropods, theropods, and segosaurids) for about $1, I think. Given the infinite possibilites this app gives for any nerd, it shure is worth it!!

Boy, am I going to have fun with this at the airport tomorrow! (I'm leaving for Bristol then!!!!!)

A Mineral Marvel

At last, I have finished my last big project for this year: my rock collection slideshow – A Mineral Marvel. Enjoy!

My plan for the rest of 2012 is to write more about practical and social subjects, now that I am moving to Bristol – a completely different life and with new people to get to know!

The first days before term start, there will be a fun fieldtrip to the Sommerset Coast, and there will probably be more excursions throughout the term, but please understand that I will be much more busy and I expect it to take even longer to get posts finished. Of course, I will try to use as much free time as possible to write all about this exciting transition, which most prospective paleontologists are bound to face.

The fell hiking trip

My most sincere apologies for being so slow with the post about the fell hiking trip we made the first week in August, but I have had plenty of things to do, preparing to move to Bristol (only nine days left! iiiiiiih!!), working on the rock collection slideshow (which kind of was more fun that writing this post, so it got priority during days when I was less motivated), and so on... 

But here it is, finally! I hope you can enjoy it anyway!

 

(But first, a reminder about the slideshow of this trip, to help you get into the mood and all… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxfIBqfIqeA)

We travelled by train (a six-hour journey) from Uppsala to a village (whose name I have forgotten completely) close to Vålådalen, which was our starting point. A taxi minibus brought us the rest of the way there.

We started off from the fell station of Vålådalen, a small community of buildings including hotel rooms, a restaurant, a small grocery store. As I have mentioned earlier, there are different approaches to hiking in the fells. Many hikers spend the nights in such stations across the fell, either wandering from station to station or having one as a base point and make shorter daily trips back and forth. We, however, brought tents to sleep outdoors, and supplies for a week to wander around as we wished, camping where we found suitable – more freedom, but more demands.

Setting out, I was in a mixed state of mind: drowsy after the long journey, but high in spirits from the excitement of what to come. You could already see the snow-covered mountains in the distance.

With my hopelessly bad sense of location, I thought it best if I stay away from the map and out of the discussions of where-are-we-now and where-do-we-go-next.

We were not walking around at will, but stuck to a trail, a pre-set path marked both on the maps and in life. There are two main types: winter trails, marked by tall poles with large red crosses on top (so that you can see them when everything is covered by snow), and summer trails, marked only with occasional flecks of red on a rock, tree or sometimes on a bush. The path to our destination – the resting cottage of Lundörrspasset – involved winter, summer and combined trails (with both types of markings, where you can go both in winter as well as in summer).

A winter trail, clearly marked with large, red crosses on poles.

The summer trail markings were only red dots of paint, more or less conspicuous than this one.

The first ten minutes of walking were through a regular, sandy mud terrain with typical vegetation around. However, soon enough, we reached a large bridge over a broad stream.

The water was crystal clear! Even though it probably was less than waist-deep, in normal Swedish lakes or streams, the water is so full of dust and microbes that you can’t see the bottom at that depth, yet, here, the stony riverbed was perfectly visible.

More fantastic, though, was the view to the sides.

It was a perfect place to stay for a while and just enjoy the natural splendour. But we were soon on the move again.