Dinofest Report #1

[Ralph Chapman <CHAPMAN.RALPH@NMNH.SI.EDU>]

Hey gang - just got back from the Dinofest symposium and wanted to
reflect on some stuff. I started by seeing Eric Clapton on Wednesday in
Philly so how bad could things be.

It was a massive, chaotic and neat exhibition area with zillions of people,
especially kids, all over the place. There seemed to be only a few toilets
so chaos reigned at time. Don Wolberg did an amazing job to get this
together. I would have preferred to see more and better signage on
much of the stuff but that depends some on the where the specimens
come from and I know the public was carting some of it off every day.
Chaos when thousands of kids are around.

Highlights include Dolph Seilacher's artsy set of huge slabs with invert
fossils and, especially, trace fossils. Dolph was there and gave a nice
talk. He is among the most brilliant and imaginative paleontologists alive
and started the school on Konstructionsmorphologie - an approach to
studying the biology and function of extinct organisms that has
influenced a whole batch of us paleontologists. I hope my spelling is
close enough. My favorite part was the art show assembled by Tess
Kissinger which included lots of great stuff from lots of great artists -
many of which were there. There was a whole track of artist/art related
programming in the symposium which is a first for this type of thing. I
hear it was great but there were so many things going on at once, I
missed most of it.

Lots of great artists there. Bob Walters has some great stuff there and
was great to talk with. Mark Hallett is always a joy to see, as is Brian
Cooley, Mike Skrepnik (I don't have a way to spell check Mike's last name
here so I apologize if I've missed), Mary Parrish, Bill Stout, Greg Paul, of
course, and Doug henderson made a rare appearance. Sculptors
included Paul Sorton, Bruce Mohn and Steve Czerkas. I'm sure I've left
out half of the artists but I missed much of this, unfortunately, and the
weekend was too full.

As for the symposium, there were lots of neat people there, including a
batch from the list.

It was wonderful to see Dong Zhiming again, he is an incredible guy and
had many nice conversations with him. He gave me a copy of the small
book he edited on the Sino-Japanese Silk Road Dinosaur expedition. Will
summarize for the next newrefs entry. He had a cast of the skull of
Archaeoceratops with him - a neat beast. Dong and I hopefully will be
doing some work on material together and I'm looking forward to it. I first
met him at the Dinosaur Systematics conference in Drumheller and it
wasn't long after he was able to return to paleo after the Cultural
Revolution side-tracked him and lots of other academics for years. He's a
real delight to talk with.

Dave Weishampel gave a nice talk on ghost lineages (an interesting term
within a paleontological context) and their use in examining diversity
trends. His student Brenda Chinnery also gave a very nice talk on
ceratopsian paleobiogeography. I didn't hear the talks by Peter Dodson
and his students because they were here for a Penn-Smithsonian
conference and I heard them there. I suspect they went quite well, as
they did here.

The biggest in-fighting came associated with Sinosauropteryx - no
surprise. Lots of I say this, you say that stuff. Of all the various talks, the
people I talked with named Currie as the most effective regarding the
feathers. Had a nice long chat with an old friend - ornithologist Alan
Brush who was one of the "Dream Team" that went over to look at the
specimens and stuff. He has some of the most rational approaches to
the problem and seemed to think Currie's observations were right on for
most things related to the proto-feathers. Interpretation from those
observations are another thing and we still have lots of discussion to go.

Which leads me to what I will call Ralph's Rule #1 - inserted here for no
particular reason except that I just thought of it.

    If you intend to make detailed observations on the anatomy of
structures such as feathers or organs  then, until there is massive
photographic and descriptive documentation available, it probably is best
to see the actual specimen first before making grandiose statements
about it.

This, to choose Sinosauropteryx as a random example, would then
include the dream team, including Larry Martin, Ostrom, and Alan Brush
(and others that were part of it) for example, Currie, and, of course,  the
relevant Chinese paleontologists as well. I suspect the taphonomic
subtleties of these specimens make it difficult for those who haven't
examined the specimens to be really convincing to me. Unfortunately this
excludes Greg Paul, who I know, like, and admire for many things, and
those wanting to relegate potential protofeathers to sea-snake land.
Once detailed documentation of structures and their morphology and
micromorphology are available, then it's an open house. Just a thought.

Mary Schweitzer gave a nice talk on claws and other similar structures
and their chemistry. Despite some good-ole-boy grousing by some,
especially some molecular and biochem types, Mary does some very
careful and conservative work and I think deserves much more credit for
her deliberate conservative approach in these areas. Others have
jumped to Science with sensationalistic statements that have
subsequently fallen apart but Mary has always tried to do it right and I
think this should be recognized even by those who disagree with her
conclusions. Her chapter in Farlow & Brett-Surman is great too.

Horner was his usual self. I wish we could get more talks based on the
massive work he does on less sensationalistic stuff. I frequently
disagree with Jack's theoretical stuff but like him a lot and recognize his
great worth. He gave an interesting, useful and intuitive talk on dino bone
and endothermy type stuff. Celeste horner is starting some very
interesting research using modelling and I'm looking forward to working
with her on an upcoming symposium.

Speaking of Jack,  Our own Tom Holtz pretty much removed Trex as an
obligate scavenger as a viable theory. I've been waiting for this because
allometric analysis should allow testing of most of the points used to
support that assertion and, lo and behold, Tom did this nicely and
showed that these lines pretty much fall apart. An allometric analysis of
eye size, for example, not only shows Trex to be right on the theropod
size/eye size trend but actually to have a positive residual (from my eye -
must get Tom to actually calculate the reduced major axis on log data and
do the residual). This means that Trex actually had a little bit bigger eye
than you would predict for its size for a theropod. It was a nice talk clear
to professional and non alike.

Bob Bakker was in his usual form and gave a talk about allosaur social
behavior that I missed most of because of an interview. I wish I could get
Bob into some more detailed quantitative stuff because from personal
discussions I know he has a nice intuitive facility with morphometrics and
quantification in general and it would be interesting to see him jump in a
bit. However, he has developed his own niche and had a following
wherever he went.

There was lots of media buzzing around.

I also managed to obtain all but one issue of the journal Archeopteryx -
for a chunk of money. This is one of the few journals I have trouble
getting here and this should help considerably. Had to dig deep to do ti
though. Also got a new book on Chinese fossil beasts I'll mention in
newrefs (another one).

More as I think of it....


Ralph Chapman