SCIENCE

Blog Carnival, Edition #4: Texas Troubles, Big Dinosaurs, and a Danny McBride Interview

January 29, 2009

Name that Fossil! Dinochick challenges readers to identify this specimen found in central Tennessee. Smart money suggests that it’s either a Cruziana or Larry King.

Lone Star Dispute: Bob’s Dinosaur Blog reports that the official state dinosaur of Texas is experiencing an identity crisis. “According to the University of Minnesota's Peter Rose…the current Texas state dinosaur, Pleurocoelus, has been misidentified.” Rose says the bones are different enough to merit their own genus, Paluxysaurus, named after the Paluxy River near Glen Rose, Texas. (Hey, be thankful it wasn’t found near the Devil’s River in Sonora.) Wikipedia has the complete list of official state dinosaurs.

All Dinosaurs Great.… One of the Everything Dinosaur members of staff was asked the other day: "how big is Brachiosaurus and why when I look this dinosaur up in two books, different size estimates are given"? Found out the answer over there.

...and Small: As we’ve noted before, the mighty T. rex had arms that were so small that some early theorists even suggested they were vestigial organs. To get a sense of just how small the T. rex forearms were, check out this photo of David Hone at Archosaur Musings, posing with the humerus (upper arm bone) of a Tarbosaurus, the Asian cousin of Tyrannosaurus and very similar in size and shape: “As you can see, it is essentially the same size as my own upper arm, yet I am notably not an 8 meter and 6 ton theropod dinosaur.”

Trilobytes: Flying Trilobite has joined the Twitter community, and he’s pondering ideas for new paleo-appropriate labels. Trilotwitobite or Twitobite? (Just a suggestion— you might consider an anagram of “Flying Trilobite Twitter,” such as “Be Loftier Trying Lit Twit”)

Pulp Fiction: Atomic Surgery has uncovered a Golden Age comic book that reveals what really killed the dinosaurs: Not enough meteorites!

Playing Hard to Get: Sci-Fi Wire has posted an interview with Danny McBride, one of the stars of the upcoming Land of the Lost movie, which will reportedly feature high-quality, CGI dinosaurs. Money quote:

How does it feel to see yourself running from dinosaurs? McBride: It's pretty weird. You know, I've never seen that before. No, that was really my main reason for wanting to do it. I was like, "I want to see what I look like being chased by a T-rex." And it looks pretty cool. Yeah, I like it.

Read the Fine Print: How can you be sure that large law firms are carefully reading legal documents? One lawyer has a solution: When drafting the Force Majeure clause (better known as “Acts of God”) that excuses parties from liability, he lists war, earthquakes, floods…and “the return of predatory dinosaurs.”