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The Evolution of Tyrannosaurus rex
The terrible lizards of your childhood have changed quite a bit, despite having been dead for millions of years. Perhaps nowhere is that more evident than in ol’ Sharptooth: T. rex
Many folks without strong paleontology backgrounds (which, let’s face it, includes most people … including me) don’t appreciate how little we really know for sure about these prehistoric forms. We go to a museum, we see a fossil reconstruction of an immense dinosaur, and we assume that’s how it came out of the ground. That’s not the case.
While the Field Museum’s famous T. rex ”Sue” was 80% complete upon excavation, the first specimen ever constructed was done so with just a suitcase’s worth of bones. See the shaded regions in the upper left drawing? That’s the 108-year-old first reconstruction of T. rex done by W.D. Matthew. And it’s very wrong.
Even into the 1940’s, when Rudolph Zallinger painted The Age of Reptiles mural (top right) for Yale’s Peabody Museum, T. rex was still a clumsy, chubby, upright tail-dragger that looked more like a drunk Godzilla than king of the dinosaurs. By the 1970’s it was clear to scientists that T. rex could not have have held its body that way, and instead moved holding its head and tail nearly parallel to the ground.
But the tail-dragger myth persisted, and in 1988’s The Land Before Time (which, let’s face it, is where most of us first formed our images of dinosaurs) Sharptooth was frustratingly upright (see middle left). Combine that with the ridiculously impossible, ninja-like aerial assault on Littlefoot’s mom, and we have a real dino science stinker on our hands. Stan Winston’s Jurassic Park finally got the head-down pose right (middle right). Yet children and college students still overwhelmingly draw T. rex as upright.
Modern paleoartists (like Raul Martin, lower left) get it consistently right, but the public doesn’t. It shows you just how important it is to deliver good science to kids, because even today I can feel the upright pose of my T. rex dinobot calling me back to wrongville.
And as we continue to learn more about Tyrannosaur relatives and the feathery frills they sported, we are beginning to see many artists add them to the great hunter (lower right, by pheaston). Plumage rarely shows up in fossils, and scientists and artists have to be careful not to make errors of incompleteness like we saw 108 years ago. But considering how good Velociraptor looks with that fancy outfit on, I think we’ll see more and more feathery fury on T. rex in the future.
At least none of YOU will ever draw it incorrectly again, right? :)
For more cool dino illustration, check out Fuck Yeah Dino Art.
Another one for Aidan.
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We never sit here under the weight of all this air, the 5 x 10^18 kg of atmosphere that sits above everyone on Earth, and say “Gosh, that sure is heavy!”
You don’t realize just how powerful that 1 bar (~100 kPa) of pressure is until a train car is filled with steam, allowed to cool, and then implodes ohmygod did that just happen?
For more implosion goodness, check out this awesome video from Veritasium.
Aidan would probably like this.
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Comet Panstarrs captured in gorgeous time-lapse above the skies of Boulder, CO by Patrick Cullis. Lovely stuff.
Comets are mysterious frozen chunks of stellar and planetary debris, these dirty snowballs that wander in darkness until their tails are blown bright and wide by solar winds. Some follow paths so random and eccentric that they may pass a star only once, or perhaps not at all, instead floating through interstellar space, never to be known. But for those fleeting moments, like Panstarrs’ current passage, they are like icy candles lit for our enjoyment by the breath of the sun.
A song of ice and fire, indeed.
Something for Aidan about stars and space.
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—Marie Ponsot, “Simples”
Marie Ponsot has won the 2013 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.Me too.
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Inspiring Space Art Gallery: Space Foundation’s Student Contest Winners 2013
The 2013 Space Foundation International Student Art Contest invited PreK through 12th grade students from around the world to submit original artwork depicting the theme, “If I were going …” The foundation received more than 4,700 entries representing 45 countries, including 38 U.S. states and territories – the largest contest yet since it began three years ago. The 36 winners, selected by a panel of distinguished art professionals from the Colorado Springs area, came from 12 countries including 9 U.S. states.
Credit: Space Foundation
First, create the future in your mind, then create it in the world.
For Aidan, interested in space lately
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Dinosaurs vs. People
Just stumbled upon a fantastic gallery on WIkipedia of illustrated size comparisons between humans and dinosaurs. So many tiny dino-chickens!
Check them all out here. Lots of them look like the blue waving guy is about to get chomped Jurassic Park “lawyer in the bathroom” style, but that’s probably pretty accurate.
(via Kyle Hill)
For Aidan.
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Let’s go on fun dates. Once a month, a new adventure.
Agreed. I asked Jeff for babysitter recommendations, remind me to follow up.
Thanks for last night. I like walking with you.
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Obit of the Day (Historical): St. Valentine (270)
St. Valentine has become the missing element of the day that honors his name. Then again much of what we know about him is sketchy at best. According to tradition, in AD 270 a priest named Valentine, who may have also been a physician, was beheaded by Emperor Claudius II Gothicus. A church was built in Valentine’s honor and in 496 Pope Gelasius named February 14, St. Valentine’s Day.
The love imagery surrounding the day is not directly related to the saints works but likely came from Lupercalia, a Roman festival in February that not only honored wolves (lup-, lupus) but involved a tradition of maidens putting love notes in a box that young men would then draw out at random and begin courting.
(Image of the martyrdom of St. Valentine from Speculum historiale, French (Paris), ca. 1335, Bibliotheque national de France, MS Arsenal 5080, fol. 197 courtesy of Ad Imagenem Dei)
Ze Frank is partly right. It’s a weird holiday. I love you anyway.
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Some adorable valentines inspired by nature, from the always wonderful Bird and Moon comic.
That middle one is especially cool. Certain species of ants “milk” sweet sap from aphids in order to get a sugary meal. It’s a biological relationship called “mutualistic symbiosis”. Maybe not love, but certainly a tight-knit bond.
A prelude to a valentine
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Obit of the Day (Historical): Catherine Howard, 5th Wife of Henry VIII (1542)
On February 13, 1452 Catherine* Howard became the fifth of six women to have their marriage to King Henry VIII ended. Unfortunately for the Queen consort (a title held by royal spouses who were not crowned) she was part of an even more elite group: beheaded former spouses of Henry.
Howard, who was the first cousin of Anne Boleyn (beheaded in 1536), was lady-in-waiting to Anne of Cleves, the king’s fourth wife. Howard caught the king’s eye and they had an affair, while he was still married to Anne.
When Henry found out that Catherine was pregnant, presenting the possibility of another male heir, he pushed for the annulment of his marriage with Anne of Cleves^. He received it, as the head of the English church it was rather easy, and Anne was to live on treated as “the king’s sister.
Henry VIII and Catherine Howard married on July 28, 1540.
By November 1541, she would be accused of treason and adultery. It was discovered that Catherine was in a relationship with Thomas Culpepper, an aide to the king. She was also accused of having sexual relations with Francis Dereham - and in a boldness most often associated with Henry, she appointed Dereham her personal secretary.
By early 1542 Culpepper and Dereham admitted to the queen consort’s infidelities under torture and a letter was discovered in Culpepper’s position, written by Catherine in 1541, that exposed her feelings for him.
She was beheaded on February 13, 1542. According to legend she stated before she was executed, “I die a Queen, but would rather have died a Culpepper.” It is not believed to be true.
Catherine Howard was between the ages of 18 and 26 when she died. Birth records are unavailable.
Sources: Harlots, Harpies, and Harridans: Infamous Women in History, Tudorhistory.org, Historic Royal Palaces, and Wikipedia
Image, left: Portrait miniature by Hans Holbein the Younger. “The portrait, believed to be Catherine Howard, has been persuasively identified through the jewels on her dress, which match those in her inventory.” - courtesy of Wikipedia
Image, right: Catherine Howard’s letter to Thomas Culpepper, apparently written in her own hand, which was used as evidence against her for adultery and treason. It was written in 1541. Courtesy of Infamous Women in History
* Her name is spelled Catherine, Katherine, or Kathryn in various sources.
^He had already had one marriage annulled to Katherine of Aragon in order to marry Anne Boleyn causing a religious schism and creating the Anglican Church. Read Wolf Hall by Hillary Mantel for an excellent fictional portrayal of that period in Henry’s reign.
Some of the Henry the VIII story. The part about annulment is why he broke from the Catholic church and formed the Church of England, which I believe is the Anglican Church in Canada. More research necessary before I’m sure.
