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Greetings all,
I haven't seen a summary of the North American Paleontological
Convention at Berkeley on the list yet (and if it has, my apologies for
duplication). It finished a week ago, but I'm finally settled back in at home so
that I have time to pound out this summary.
The conference was an absolute blast! I met a number of very
fun paleontologists (professors, graduate students and undergraduates) and saw
many excellent presentations/posters. It was very nice to have everything in one
central area on the Berkeley campus.
Vertebrate paleo stuff was only a small portion of the
program--I sat in on a number of the trace fossil and paleobotany sessions. Nick
Pyenson of Emory University described a new Carboniferous track fauna;
amphibians and other beasties. His advisor Tony Martin was also there,
describing insect burrows associated with Troodon nests in the Two Medicine
Formation. The Hymenoptera were going strong even during the Cretaceous. . .
Tony's new dinosaur textbook was also on display--very meaty, with lots of great
pictures!
Friday, June 29, had the bulk of the dinosaur talks. The
morning VP session was almost entirely Mesozoic stuff, ranging from ceratopsids
to therizinosaurids to dinosaur nests.
Mine was first--I discussed my observations on the cornual
sinuses of Triceratops and relatives. I also gave a cautionary note on
the overuse of mammals in determining dinosaur functional morphology and
behavior (in particular, the bovid/ceratopsid problem).
List member Rob Gay followed, with a short talk on the unusual
form of the caudal vertebrae in Coelophysis. Those guys were doing
funky stuff with their vertebrae. . .it greatly restricted vertical movement,
analogous to what we see in Deinonychus.
David Gillette discussed new therizinosaur material from Utah,
with a number of spectacular pictures. There is no doubt that these weird
critters were in North America! Preparation continues. . .they have a good chunk
of the hind quarter of this animal, among other things.
Gerald Grellet-Tinner presented information on a possible
Deinonychus egg found with the Deinonychus/Tenontosaurus
quarry that Barnum Brown excavated in the 1930s. He showed that the egg was very
near what appears to be the Deinonychus gastralia. Gerald suggests this
may be evidence that the egg was being brooded. However, I think it could just
as easily have been washed together with the rest of the bones. Unfortunately,
Brown wasn't known for his spectacular field notes, and it is unlikely that the
quarry will be revisited in the near future.
Spencer Lee discussed the possibility that some sauropod
"nests" may actually represent fluvial accumulations of eggs. Based on
sedimentological studies, he suggested (convincingly, in my opinion) that at
least one site in Patagonia preserves a number of eggs that were washed
together.
Peter Sheehan discussed sampling procedures for tracking
dinosaur diversity within the Hell Creek Formation--a good review of the
Milwaukee Public Museum's work to date.
Mark Goodwin presented his work with the supposed
"unmineralized" dinosaur bone from Alaska. Using PIXE, a state-of-the-art
analysis tool, he demonstrated that even this well-preserved material was
heavily fortified in iron and other important vitamins and minerals (just
kidding on the last part. . .but the iron-enrichment shows that these aren't
quite as pristine as some people thought).
Natalia Wideman of the Raymond Alf Museum presented her poster
on a partially articulated hadrosaur from the Hell Creek Formation of
Montana--this is the sort of fossil that dreams are made of (for us
ornithischian buffs, at least)!
That's about it for dinosaur stuff--the abstracts are
published as follows:
North American Paleontological Convention 2001: Paleontology
in the New Millenium. PaleoBios 21: 1-148.
The abstracts are also available on-line at http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/napc/mainabs.html.
Congratulations to all of the presenters, and a big thank-you
to the organizers of this convention!
Best, Andy
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Andrew A. Farke South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Box C308 501 East St. Joseph Street Rapid City, SD 57701 (605) 394-2784 andyfarke@hotmail.com |