The biggie this year, of course, is that the Field Museum is going to be the new home of "Sue" the T. rex.

But in addition to that, lots and lots of kewl new stuff happened. The D.I.G. team of Dino Sleuths infiltrated S.V.P. posing as paleo types. (Well, maybe they are actually paleo types!) Anyway, they found out the real skinny. Here are their reports.

Oh, yeah. Vera Velociraptor (possessor of pince-nez eye glasses and a Voracious Vocabulary) has been ever so kind and added little definitions here and there.
 

Thurssday, 9 October 1997, Chicago, Illinois, United States.

I spent the morning in the Great Hall where there were many phylognetic talks (about where specific fossils belong in terms of relationships and classification - Vera).

The first talk was about a primitive bony fish. The scientist took a cast of the inside of the skull to produce what the brain must have looked like and discovered that the animal had very large optic lobes and should be reclassified.

Another study involved putting fossilized eggshell in acid and heating it up to sequence out individual amino acids and technique used in eggshell identifications.

One footprint study looked at the footprints of a recent bird, Emu, and discovered that there was more space between the toes of an juvenile than between the toes of an adult,now they can look a fossil bipedal dinosaur tracks for similar differences. (They must have had to wear weird sneakers - Vera)

During the break I notice a well known paleontologist with an allosaur left arm sticking out of his back pack!

The Dinosaur Society luncheon ran from 12:30 to 2:30 and anyone who wishes to support dinosaur research participated in this event. It was announced at this meeting that the society's Jurassic Park exhibit was able to raise $950,000 dollars for dinosaur research, but that the grad support program was suspended at the moment because the exhibit is no longer traveling between museums and funding has dried up.  The society is looking for new ways to help raise funds for dinosaur research.

Thursday afternoon most of us milled around the poster/demonstration sessions between 2 and 4 pm, where hundreds of presentations were posted in separate rooms. (People put up pictures and charts and diagrams and all kinds of stuff on little cork boards then stand there until their knees ache answering all sort of questions about what on earth they are doing! - Vera)

At 6 pm, I departed the Ramada-Congress hotel by taxi with a group of paleontologists who were going to Chicago China Town for dinner.  This group had participated in a science cultural exchange with China years before, and they like to meet at good chinese restaurants to remember old times and share new ideas with their friends.

From 8pm to 11pm there was a dessert reception in the Gold Room, this is where new students can meet other researchers in their field and paleontologists can network their ideas and thoughts with others.

Day one is done and may I say that the host committee has done a spectacular job.  The conference was organized extremely well and it was easy to reach any lecture from yoru room and the collections at the field musuem were within walking distance of the hotel. Great planning Field Museum Staff!

Friday, 10 October 1997, Chicago, Illinois, United States.

I spent the morning listening to fish talks (It was really hard getting microphones into the fish tanks so that everybody could hear what the fish said! (NOT) always helpful, Vera) in the Florentine room.

I hooked up with a specialist in fossil sharks with whom I spent the afternoon at the Field Museum systematically going through all the Xenacanth shark material we could find. The collection manager was most helpful in providing us with a microscope and space to work. The shark specialist, who was  from North Dakota, had brought his camera along to photograph specific specimens, and he was kind enough to help me photograph and identify shark remains I had brought from the state of Michigan.  The whole process took five hours to do because there were notes to take and the lighting for the pictures had to be just right.  We discovered some co-types with two different names from the same locality that probably belong to the same animal, since these were first figured in 1899. It is important to keep collections in good shape for future generations to review work that has been done before and try to fix the mistakes.

Friday evening, we had the silent and live auction (It's a good thing they didn't have a Loud and Dead auction - Vera) in the Great Hall. A T.rex skull was part of the live auction; a very large external skull cast.  This donation went for $4,000.00 and the auction itself pulled over $21,000.00 dollars this year to help support the Society of Vertebrate Paleontologist.

--
Saturday, 11 October 1997, Chicago, Illinois, United States.

Poor T.rex, a recent article in Nature listed multiple pathologies (diseases - Vera) for this beast, including gout because it ate red meat; who could have guessed that his or her sick old bones could have raised so much money for the society for profit.

Sue the T.rex recently purchased at an auction in New York City was partially on display at the Field Museum, that is, one tooth was under glass for us to see and it looked to be at least a foot long or 30 cm. in length, quite an impressive size!

On Saturday morning there were a series of talks on Archeopteryx, some speakers supporting the idea of an aboreal (lived in trees - Vera) bird with a digitigrade stance (up on its toes) and others insisting that this animal was a ground bird with a plantigrade stance (flat footed). While I tend to agree with the evidence supporting a ground habitat for Archeopteryx it is nice to know that everyone's ideas are heard and examined.  One speaker suggested that the arms were used on the ground to gather prey in a forward movement and that this type of movement gradually evolved into the forelimb mechanism needed for flight.  The Field Museum just happen to have a visiting exhibit of Archeopteryx specimens and two beautiful restorations, one by the Field and one by the Milwaulkee Museum.  The Milwaulkee curator used the teeth from a fish and feathers from recent birds to help reconstruct what this animal must have looked like.

During a talk about a marine snake with legs from Israel we were invited up to a private suite to see the actual fossils..

A woman working with the BLM is trying to use the computer to correlate various types of mapping information so as to be better able to target which areas under their protection will yield the most fossils.

A paleontologist just discovered a sink-hole deposit in Missouri that may be Campanian in age, more dinosaurs west of the Mississippi!

Saturday night was the annual award banquet and reception at the Field Museum in Stanley Field Hall.  Despite air conditioning difficulties, the evening was a delight.  It was held near the "Life Through Time" exhibit - with its articulated sauropod and carboniferous forest.  A traveling animated exhibit of duckbilled dinosaurs( and T.rex was also on display.

On the main floor where we ate one could see the elephants and dinosaurs from our seats. Many deserving individuals received  awards and our keynote speaker was a local radio personality with a great sense of humor.
 

Dr. J. Gail Armstrong-Hall is a vertebrate paleontologist and earth science teacher in the Troy Public Schools.  She has published journal articles on the Cretaceous of New Mexico.  She has three teenagers and a six year old for whom she has just written a book about Triceratops.

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The 57th Annual Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) at the Ramada Congress Hotel proceeded without a great deal of controversary over recent fossil discoveries.  This was a major contrast to 1996 when a small Chinese dinosaur with feathers practically stole the show.

This year, the major topic of conversation seemed to center around the recent $8.3 million acquisition of a dinosaur named “Sue the T.rex” by the Chicago Field Museum, with lots of help from McDonalds and Disney.  It was sort of a re-make of an old cowboy movie called “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” depending of which side of the issue you happen to be on.  One common comment seemed to center around the fact that the price tag for this one fossil was larger than the combined totals budgets of all of the paleontology programs in the United States.

On Friday, the first piece of Sue, a large tooth, arrived  at the museum and was immediately placed in a display case in the main hall for public viewing.  The many other boxes that contain the most complete skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex in the world will be delivered to their new home over the next several weeks.
 
In addition to the newly refurbished “Life Over Time” fossil exhibit at the Field Museum, visiting exhibits included “Dinosaur Families”, which showed how several species of dinosaurs, including Maiasaurs, raised their young, and Archaeopteryx, which included the seventh and most
recent “Munich” specimen from Germany, as well as reconstructions of Acheopteryx as a very bird-like creature.  This was the first time that Archaeopteryx had visited the United States, at least since the Jurassic
age.

Phil Currie, John Horner and many other well-known (and little known, such as the author) paleontologists attended the meeting.  On Friday, Bob Bakker, with his full beard and distinctive cowboy hat,  was seen between meetings carrying a case over his shoulder with what appeared to be the well-clawed front leg of a large Allosaur hanging over the side.Photo: J. Gail Armstrong Hall

Over five hundred paleontologists from all over the world took the opportunty to report on their work in platform and poster sessions Thursday, Friday, and Satuday.  Although many of the presentations were about dinosaurs, there were lots of papers about all kinds of fossils from all over the world, from sharks to mammals and from the Devonian to the Pleistocene. If it had a backbone, someone in vertebrate paleontology seems to be studying it.

On Friday night, there was an auction held by the SVP.  Many items, including casts of fossils (raptor claws and skulls, etc), old and new publications on paleontology, model dinosaurs, tee-shirts, dinosaur art, and fossil preperation supplies were donated by members, institutions, and businesses. In all, over $21,000 was raised by the auction.  It will be used for grants and scholarships for students and others to continue their studies in paleontology.

The “really big item” at the auction  was a six-foot long reconstruction and cast of a Tyrannosaurus rex skull (not Sue) from the Museum of the Rockies. Bidding started at $2500 on this really neat skull cast, and it sold for  $4000.  John Horner said that a private individual bought
the replica for his young daughter. He also added that the man’s wife was not too pleased with him.  With gaping jaws and 6 inch teeth, it would seem to be a rather unusual decoration for a child’s bedroom.

The meeting was concluded with a banquet in the very large, and historic Stanley Field Hall (300 foot long, four stories high) of The Field Museum.  The main course of the dinner was baked breast of a small, feathered dinosaur, Gulasaurus domesticus, stuffed with spinach. It was very tasty and enjoyed by all. [Hmmmmm. I wonder what kind of dino that was? - Vera]

Next year’s SVP meeting will be in Salt Lake City, Utah, and the 1999 meeting will be in Denver, Colorado.

Mike Everhart has written for D.I.G. before and survived the experience. His article on a Prehistoric Sharks is still available.

Here is a photo of T. rex who was auctioned Saturday Night.



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Wednesday, 8 October 1997, Chicago, Illinois, United States.

 
The first day was filled with meetings and almost every person you know who's written a dinosaur-related book or worked in the field.

Scientists were talking about phylogeny (the evolutionary development - Vera) of life-forms as well as ontogeny (how each adapted to environments) - how they lived and what happened to them. All the four- and five-syllable words were enough to make your head spin!

Some of the meetings were so technical even I had trouble following everything. There's a lot of emphasis and talk about cladistics (how dinosaurs are related to each other and to non-dinosaur life) This is shown by diagrams called phylogenic trees. But it's not just about how they are related, it's also about the proper ways to figure out which dinosaurs are related to which.

This cladistics business has been around for awhile, but it's still not settled. Basically, cladistics has been based on the critter and the way it is biologically built and shaped. But now those paleo-guys are talking about other things that ought to be considered along with cladistics, such as the rock formation (stratigraphics) where they are found and what that can tell us. This combination is called strato-cladistics. They also discussed a third factor, which also involves statistics, such as how likely or probable something is to have happened.

There were also some special reports, such as Karen Shin's on her work with coprolites. (Hey, kids, you all know what that is, don't you? Shhhhhh. It's sometimes called "dino-p**p") Anyway, she said that about 65% of the coprolites are found in mudstone, and about 74% contain bone -- mostly fishbone. This seems to indicate that it is usually found along the rivers, streams and ponds and that the dinos might have eaten fish! But there seems to be an absence of coprolite from plant-eaters. What does it mean? No conclusions, yet.

There were also some interesting statistics on the work in East Africa where they are studying the types of bones that have been found recently. Most common bones dug up over there are cranial skulls. The small limb bones are rare. Even vertebrae and ribs aren't common. [On a personal note, this is considerably different than what we're finding at our sites in Wyoming.]

Oh yeah, Gary Ganglov, who's working in some of the worst possible conditions up in two sites in Alaska and above the Arctic Circle, has unearthed some very interesting stuff. The far-north of the Arctic Circle stuff appears to be Cretaceous: they find small therapods, such as hypsilophodon (you know, the guy with the "thumbs"). But he's also turned up what appear to be crocodile and terrasaur. What's interesting is most appear to be juveniles, and they appear to be in formations that indicate the climate was cold but not as cold as it is today. The big question is: how did they get there?!!! And why are so many juveniles? And have these shifted from some other part of the planet or was there a major difference in climate at the time?

And what about that T-rex tooth found in the conglomerate rock in Alaska?!!!

Nobody's got the answers on these, so it's going to be up to you guys who are reading this to start thinking about these things. Then maybe, when you're the one out there digging in the field or working in the lab, you'll be able to come up with some answers!

Bill
Bill Stein is a geologist working on the Warm Springs Ranch dig sites in Wyoming.
 
 

One of the things you learn really quick is that science is not exact -- and no matter how big an expert is or how many years he/she has been working in the field, the expert can be wrong. That's because each bit of knowledge adds to the jigsaw puzzle that we call prehistoric life, and sometimes a new piece can change what we thought was the puzzle picture.

It's been great watching some of the big names (like Bob Bakker, Jack Horner and John McIntosh) arguing with each other over a bone -- particularly when it was one we'd dug up on the Warm Springs Ranch site. At least we don't feel so bad about not having a positive identification. Neither do they.

There were a couple of really interesting developments.

Madagascar first: Back in the 1800s, there were reports of findings of Titanosaurus on this island off the coast of Africa. But the lack of actual specimens made scientists discard the reports. Now, paleontologists have found a juvenile skeleton on the island, and it's about 85 percent complete, with a fairly complete skull.

This discovery does two things:

1. The skeleton clearly shows "osteoderms" (bony plates) on the body. Until now, it was assumed that large sauropods did not have plates on the body.
2. It may change our ideas of the shape of the continents during the Cretaceous. The Saltosaur (found in Argentina) and the Alamosaur (found in Texas) are both in this family. How did the Titanosaur show up in Madagascar, on the far side of Africa -- since none are now known from Africa? Maybe there was a land bridge that joined Madagascar (then part of India) and went through the Antarctic and back up around to South America. That's a really neat idea! (Now why didn't I think of that?!)
China: There is a major debate over the sinosauropteryx found in China. This animal appears to have been a small raptor and similar to compsagnathus dinosaurs. The fossils show a strange "filament" (like a long string) from the neck to the tail and on around on the underside of the tail. There was a lengthy panel discussion on the meaning of this filament. Some speakers believed it was internal collagen tissue that could have supported some type of fin structure. If this were true, it would have been a swimmer.

On the other hand, another group claim this is a clear sign of feathers, proto-feathers (primitive feathers before there were feathers), or perhaps a hair-like structure or some type of insulation. Phil Currie from the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Canada stated that this filament was clearly outside the body not inside. Currie said three specimens had been found with this filament; another three of proarcheopterix were also found and they had feathers. If it is feathers, this clearly ties birds and dinosaurs together.
 

Bill "Mr. Dino Party" Stein

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created October 8, 1997
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