Re: dracrorex and National Geographic

["Jerry D. Harris" <jharris@dixie.edu>]

> I just saw this month's National Geographic magazine. Isn't it a tad
embarrassing to see "Dracorex hogswartsia" on the cover, and in the 
article?:
when "Dracorex" was recently outed (along with "Stygiomoloch") as growth 
stages
of Pachycephalosaurus (Horner et al, SVP2007): not even mentioned in the
article. I find it pretty surprising that National Geographic would sit so
behind the times like this.

   Since it's not a news magazine and therefore isn't really expected to 
update itself merely days before hitting print, I suspect that _NGM_ gets 
its articles lined up for future issues several months in advance.  Thus, I 
suspect that the "Bizarre Dinosaurs" article was written and laid out before 
SVP came around.  I know for certain that at least one NG person was at the 
meeting, but I don't know that said person had any power to change the 
article after the meeting (if indeed said person saw Horner's talk -- I 
myself missed it).  Maybe the talk wasn't reported.  Maybe it was, but the 
editors said "Too late to change it."  Maybe the editors said "We could 
change it, but that's the kind of thing that would require some discussion 
and we don't have room for that."  Who knows?  I agree it would have been 
nice to have the newest, most up-to-date info in the article, but given the 
nature of the magazine, I'm not positive that was feasible...just a 
happenstance of poor timing -- if SVP had been a few months earlier, or the 
_NGM_ article a few months later, I bet the change would have been in there.

   Plus, as Tom said, it was an _abstract_, not a published paper 
(although, like Tom, I think argument is an interesting and good one!).  I 
myself am very curious about what function the supratemporal fenestrae 
served in juveniles that could afford to be lost in adults, which would be 
the case if _Dracorex_ really is a juvenile _Pachycephalosaurus_.  I'm also 
curious about whether Horner et al. discussed sexual dimorphism as a 
possibility for _Pachycephalosaurus_ and _Stygiomoloch_.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jerry D. Harris
Director of Paleontology
Dixie State College
Science Building
225 South 700 East
St. George, UT  84770   USA
Phone: (435) 652-7758
Fax: (435) 656-4022
E-mail: jharris@dixie.edu
and     dinogami@gmail.com
http://cactus.dixie.edu/jharris/

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