Favourite dinosaur?

Everyone, shout out which is your favourite dinosaur!

I have been thinking and thinking and thinking about which dinosaur I like the best, but I can never come up with a definite answer. There are so many that are so fascinating in their own ways, that it is impossible to settle for just one.

My favourite dinosaur group is definitely the sauropods – the long-necked, colossal herbivores – for so many reasons I can’t even start to name them. But all sauropods were pretty similar to one another – what distinguishes them are mostly details in small holes or depressions in their skulls and vertebrae – so I would say my fascination belongs more to the group as a whole (the homogeneity being one of the characters that fascinate me), not any individual sauropod.

Previously, for some time, I was all about Iguanodon – the one with the thumb spikes – because it was such an intriguing creature – sort of a transition between ornithopods with primitive dentition (teeth) and the hadrosaurs (the duck-billed dinosaurs; ornithopods with perhaps the most advanced chewing apparatus in the animal kingdom) – and because I misinterpreted what I read in a book about their success: the book said that the igunanodontids (a group containing Iguanodon, its close relatives, hypsilophodontids [a group of really small ornithopods] and hadrosaurs) were spread across the globe, but I read it as if it was Iguanodon itself that had been so successful.

Now, however, I am quite blank. I am pretty into Spinosaurus and Therizinosaurus, because they both are so utterly weird – in a great way! But I cannot decide…

So please help me out : tell me which is your favourite, and why, and that might give us some good ideas!

The Museum of Evolution

I took my uncles on a tour through the paleontology part of the Museum of Evolution in Uppsala. It was quite nice going back there, and, as always, you discover new stuff everywhere!

First, however, we went past Geocentrum, the geological department at Uppsala University – the place where I studied geology – where I heard they had mounted a mosasaur skeleton in the ceiling. This is awesome, since the paleontologists in that department mostly work with invertebrates, so they sure needed some real vertebrate fossil stuff. Sure, trilobites and brachiopods are nice, but they bleach in comparison with a voracious vertebrate predator!

The Museum of Evolution, I have been told, is one of the finest museums of natural history in Europe. It might not be as fancy as the Natural History Museum in London, but the actual fossil specimen are far more spectacular.

But there are not only fossils. They also have a room full of incredible minerals and rocks.

It is crazy how many weird and wonderful rocks there are in this world!

Seeing the skeleton of a familiar animal is usually a strange experience. They can look so different, usually more vicious. Take a hippo for instance.

Snakes are usually dull-looking creatures, but their skeletons are truly amazing.

When I try to read about dinosaur vertebrae, I usually end up on the verge of falling asleep and not understanding anything. They are just so complicated (and I have not yet stumbled upon a text that explains the stuff well)… That is why I prefer the vertebrae of aquatic animals: the water gives a lot of support for their bodies, so they do not need the vertebrae to interlock in complex ways, but can look pretty much like a flat barrel. Take these whale vertebrae for example.

A museum without a Tyrannosaurus rex is kind of futile, because it is such an iconic dinosaur. The Museum of Evolution has an only slightly deformed skull of T. rex.  

And some adorable T. rex toys – not even adult paleontologists can resist these things.

Another skull belongs to Pachycephalosaurus wyomingensis, which I think has one among the most awesome-looking heads in the animal kingdom.

There is also a replica of the famous Berlin specimen of Archaeopteryx – a significant link between dinosaurs and birds – where you can see both reptilian and avialan features: feathers like a bird; hands, teeth and a bony tail like reptiles. This specimen could be seen as the spark to the realisation that birds were the direct descendants of theropod dinosaurs.

Another world-famous dinosaur – but this time it is the original – is the unique specimen of the sauropod Euhelopus zdanskyi. Being the only specimen of this species in the world, it is quite a prize!

But there are also mesmerizing wax models of live interpretations of dinosaurs, including Deinonychus (picture) and Velociraptor.

There is also a large section of mammal fossils. Among them, the ones I found most curious today were the giraffes, whose horns I noticed were a bony part of the skull, and not fleshy appendages as I had always thought they were – they just look so… I don’t know… cushy.

This was contrasted to rhinoceroses, whose fierce-looking horns are in fact not bone, as you can see on the skeleton, but made of roughly the same substances as our hair and nails (keratin).

Also, rhinoceros teeth are pretty weird. In an interesting way.

Some mammal-like reptiles (or, formally, synapsids) – creatures intermediate between reptiles and mammals – are also rather impressive.

Naturally, the museum has a section of marine vertebrates as well. It includes many spectacular ichthyosaurs and mosasaurs, and even fossil rays. 

On one of the ichthyosaurs – the more fish-like of the marine reptiles – you can even see impressions of the outline of the body in real life. (The ribs seem to stick out through the belly, but that is because the fossil has been flattened out by heavy rock layers.)

The mosasaurs – snake-like marine lizards – don’t need to be described in many words. They are just plain wicked.

And the ray. No words need to be said here either.

These phenomenal fossils, and much, much more, are to be found in the paleontology part of the Museum of Evolution in Uppsala, Sweden. If you want to visit – and I urge you to do so! – their website is http://www.evolutionsmuseet.uu.se/indexeng.html

Amendment

I have recently begun to have serious doubts about whether all those rocks I have been calling pegmatite were not in fact simple granite. The only ones I know for sure are pegmatite are those from the excursion to Väddö, where the teachers explicitly identified them as pegmatite. The rocks I have found in the forest around my home were similar in colour and had pretty large grains – pegmatite is mainly distinguished from granite by its extremely coarse grains – so I called them pegmatite without more thought to it.

But, eventually, I came to wonder whether those grains really were that large. I recall vaguely that a pegmatite has a grain size of about 2 cm or more. I checked with some sample rocks I have collected, and their grains are closer to 2 mm. Moreover, I read now that pegmatite usually appears as an elongated tongue (it is a gångbergart – a Swedish term referring to igneous rocks that readily form in subterranean tunnels), while granite is more common as massive chunks like the ones I have seen in the forests.

Thus, I wish to announce the following amendment: all rocks I have identified as pegmatite since the excursion to Väddö are most probably actually granite. My sincerest apologies for the misconception, and for any troubles it might have caused. Errare humanum est…

Stupid cold

I have had a weird cold the last few days, so I have not been feeling good enough to work on the blog.

But yesterday I watched the brilliant dinosaur tv-show Planet Dinosaur, and so I thought to write about it today, now that I am feeling much better. So, the Tv-tips page is updated (I also added some pictures to the Walking With Monsters review).

I hope to get going with more stuff soon enough. Until then, enjoy!

Recovered or Omnomnomnomnom...

Now, two weeks after the return from the fell hiking trip, I finally feel recovered from the physical fatigue and the mental laziness. (As I said, it took quite a long time!) I will explain why.

Already from the first day on the hiking, I was dreaming about all the pastry I was going to gobble up when we were back: at least four danish pastries with custard, two regular doughnuts and two ball-shaped doughnuts (I think it is a special Swedish thing) with custard filling. But, on the final day, the store had only one danish and plenty regular, plain doughnuts. Even though my friends were kind enough to let me have the danish, and I had three additional doughnuts (two round, filled and one plain), it was hardly satisfying.

It was not until I had excessive amounts of pastry for two consecutive days – two chunks of pinocchio cake (pastry base, covered with whipped cream and topped with crisped meringue and almond) and a Cuban vanilla pudding the day before yesterday, and three pieces of kladdkaka (a Swedish chocolate cake, the name literally meaning “gooey cake”, because the consistency is kind of sticky; but the taste is glorious!) with whipped cream yesterday – that my subconscious cravings were satiated.

If you are curious about the kladdkaka, there is an excellent recipe on YouTube: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTUfr-if3V0

It is in Swenglish (a mix between Swedish and English), but the Swedish words are quite similar to the English: kakao = cocoa; ägg = eggs; vaniljsocker = vanilla sugar; salt = salt; smör = butter; strösocker = normal, white, refined sugar; vetemjöl = wheat flour; majonäs  = mayonnaise (not an actual ingredient!). Anyhow, it is the method that is important, so observe and learn!

What's so interesting about...?

Yesterday, I had an idea about something new for this blog. I remember vaguely having said that I wanted to write short posts about different types of extinct organisms and concepts and controversies in paleontology, and now know how I want to do it.

I will create a new page called What’s so interesting about…, where I will put all texts, storing them for easy access; I will also make each text as a post on the normal flow, so you can see when there is something new! Otherwise, texts on other pages do not appear among the posts.

For example, the first text will probably be about dinosaurs. Then, I will write a post called “What’s so interesting about dinosaurs?”, and put the same text on the page What’s so interesting about… under the title “… dinosaurs?”. This way, followers can see when there is a new text, and, later, as time goes and subsequent posts make that text tiresome to find, new readers can see it under the What’s so interesting about… page.

The whole point of calling them “what’s so interesting about…” is to give the texts something to focus on: what makes that particular subject fascinating. It should prevent me from babbling endlessly about topics I am too passionate about, and it might help me reflect about what I really do like about these things. 

However, I will probably not initiate this idea yet. I need to focus on writing the fell hiking post, and on my stone collection slideshow. That might easily take most of my time before I am off to Bristol (yay!), and there I expect that there will be a lot to write about in the first month(s). But we’ll see…  

Self-trip III

Again, going through some old photos, I recalled that I made a third “self-trip” about a month ago (the 13^th of July, to be precise), and completely forgot to write anything about it. Therefore, I thought I would write something short about the two main things of note.

First, I found nice examples of “rundhällar” (see Quaternary geology in Uppland) on a slope.

Many even had clear cracks and glacial striations.

Standing downslope, you could almost imagine the glacier ploughing toward you. Scary thought…

Second, I heard two squirrels fighting in a tree, somewhere above me.

I could hardly see them, less take pictures of them, but, eventually, one of them won, and (it seems) the victor stayed put in his/her tree, still enough for me to take some pictures. However, it was very difficult to get any good shots through the pine branches, so I took tons of photos, hoping that at least some would turn out ok by sheer luck.

And lucky was exactly what I was.