Personal Account - Darren Naish
Returned on Saturday from the 47th SVPCA (Symposium on Vertebrate Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy), perhaps the best conference I have ever attended thus far, held at the National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh. One of the most picturesque and historically aware cities I have ever seen. The museum itself was also stunning with truly astounding dioramas of reconstructed fossil fishes and Scottish wildlife as it was prior to the agricultural revolution. As I mentioned before, I was looking fwd to meeting a number of people who haven't been at SVPCA before. Sadly, Hans Sues couldn't make it (leaving Dave Martill to do the Irritator skull talk - see below), nor could Tony Thulborn or Steve Salisbury. Paul Davis couldn't do his talk on avian endothermy, and S. Hua couldn't make it to talk about crocs. Never mind.
As goes the talks, there was so much stuff I will try my very best to summarise. Do ask me if I mention something but don't follow up on it as much as you might like (I will be at SVP, so grab hold of me there if possible). Here we go...
MARINE REPTILES
David Brown gave a lively talk about 'Hugh Miller's plesiosaur': a new Jurassic taxon that was first discovered in the late century (at Eigg, south of Skye). Lots of new material: appears to be an elasmosaurid.
Leslie Noe told a tangled tale of synonymy and taxonomic referral concerning Kimmeridge Clay pliosaurs. Halstead (mostly writing as Tarlo) referred a number of species to genera, yet lacked the diagnostic elements needed to support the generic allocations. A messy subject that I will not attempt to summarise.
Olivier Rieppel gave a stunning talk on cyamodontoid placodonts. Lots of new discoveries, new specimens and new interpretations. Placodontoids were found to be paraphyletic and a new skull reconstruction of Paraplacodus was shown; new data on Henodus shows that it had strange grooves in the jaw bones, perhaps for a baleen-like structure! Cyamodontoids have now been found in CHINA and Rieppel suggested that placochelyids may have probed soft sediments and inhaled water thru nostrils for olfactory clues. The cyamodontoid carapace may have meant that they were very tolerant of salinity, as are some extant turtles. Loads more stuff besides all this - will have to stop there.
NON-ORNITHODIRAN ARCHOSAUROMORPHS
Max Langer spoke about heterochrony in rhynchosaurs. Derived hyperodapedontines have maxillary tooth rows remininscent of juvenile basal rhynchosaurs, and might be 'recapturing' their phylogenetic youth, if you like.
M. Waldman: a new tiny crocodile from the Isle of Skye. Jurassic in age, preserved with what might be stomach contents. Could be a goniopholidid.
PTEROSAURS
David Unwin: Quetzelcoatlus is no longer the biggest pterosaur!! THE SOLANA GIANT (from La Solana, Spain) is a gigantic azhdarchid known from a cervical vert three times bigger than that of Q. n. and a giant 'cricket bat' radius. It is different from both Q. n. and Arambourgiania, and most both like the Spanish azhdarchid just described by Buffetaut, and Azhdarcho. Solana animal comes out as 10-30% bigger than Q. n. : Unwin puts the latter at 10 m, so therefore the Solana giant at 11 m+. He suggested that giantism in these animal may have been an 'accidental consequence of indeterminate growth'.
David Martill and Dino Frey spoke about a new soft tissue Santana pterosaur (probably another azhdarchid) that has a complete hind foot with tremendously recurved pedal claws and a big scaly sole pad that enclosed metatarsal V. Preserved wing membrane reaches the ankles and, in the hand, webbing stretches between all the fingers (as proposed before in the Riess and Frey wing model). Some pterosaur trackways (e.g. Croysac ones) match this animal, others (Morrison) don't.
Mark Wilkinson spoke about wing motion possible in giant pterosaurs. He couldn't actually get much movement out of any of the joints - made it look like pterosaurs couldn't really fold their wings at all.
SAURISCHIAN DINOSAURS
SAUROPODOMORPHS
Michael Benton spoke about Thecodontosaurus: rumour has always had it that nearly all of the Bristol thecodontosaur material was destroyed in WWII, but this is not true! The juv. skeleton described by Diane Kermack may not even be the same species as the type stuff, and lots of the adult (including a braincase, which Cope had apparently taken to Yale) is known: very interesting proportions. Full description is going into JVP.
Paul Upchurch: prosauropod phylogeny. Prosauropods and sauropods are monophyletic sister taxa. Kotasaurus was found to be a basal sauropod (more basal than Vulcanodon): Camelotia was controversial and might be either the most basal sauropod, or a melanorosaurid. In the prosauropod tree, Riojasaurus and Melanorosaurus were primitive compared to sellosaurs and plateosaurs.
Kent Stevens showed, via 3D computer modelling and analysis of articulation angles in Euhelopus, Camarasaurus, Brachiosaurus and others, that giraffe-necked sauropods result from a death pose and all evidence points to near-horizontal necks in the live animals (even in Brachiosaurus).
THEROPODS
Angela Milner spoke about the distribution and biogeography of spinosaurs. Her main, and most interesting, contention was that Suchomimus is a junior synonym of Baryonyx. In fact, Dr. Milner seems to be saying that Suchomimus is little more than a well grown, old mature individual of B. walkeri. Incidentally, she also reiterated that 'Cristatusaurus' is simply indistinguishable from Baryonyx.
Donald Henderson gave a run down of what his phd thesis had shown about theropod locomotion. Includes work on mass estimates, centre of gravity and lots more. Tyrannosaurus was put at just under 7 tons weight and had femora held more subvertical than subhoriztonal AND Don couldn't get it to move faster than 17kmph (at breakfast we spoke about Per Christiansen's new estimate of 47kmph in T. rex [mentioned in Erickson's Sci. Am. article]. Don is sceptical).
David Martill talked about Irritator and what the new preparation showed. Surprise surprise, looks almost nothing like previous skull illustrations (and reconstructions) now that all the bones have been prepped out. The thing is unbelievably narrow, and virtually flat on the dorsal surface. The big crest over the frontal area proved to be a relocated bit of maxilla. Lots of braincase detail. Throw away all of your previous Irritator skull drawings.
Emily Rayfield: finite element analysis of Allosaurus. Emily's work implied that Allosaurus had a relatively weak bite, perhaps corresponding with suggestions that it was more of a slashing predator than a biter or crusher. But more work is underway.
Debbie Wharton focused on the bird-theropod.. whoops, theropod-bird transition from the POV of brain evolution. There is no marked jump in encephalisation or anything else in the earliest birds as compared to their non-bird outgroups: instead, brain evolution in the theropod tree appears to have been step-wise and gradual.
Darren Naish (me) gave an historical review of arboreality/ scansoriality in theropods. Ideas that theropods may have climbed go back to 1866, and were mentioned in reviews from the 1930s. Predictive models based on morphology and behaviour in extant animals suggest that smaller coelurosaurian theropods might have climbed, but none were arboreal. Am getting a few papers out of this.
Gareth Dyke: new work on London Clay birds. Dammit couldn't take notes as I was recovering from the physiological trauma induced by my own talk, but lots of new London Clay coliiform, apodiform and coraciiform specimens and cladograms that incorporated the relevant taxa. Sandocoleiformes found to be paraphyletic basal coliiforms IIRC.
Stig Walsh - Mio-Pliocene bone bed locality in Chile extends the range of sulids, pelagornithids and other bird taxa deeper south than previous South American records show. Possible new taxon of penguin is abundant at the site - might be the same thing as the very numerous but underdescribed Pisco Fm. penguin.
Eric Buffetaut: Gastonis and Diatryma are congeneric (meaning that the latter must be sunk) and both 'genera' already had overlapping stratigraphic and geographical ranges (though Gastornis has not been reported from outside of Europe, Diatryma has long been regarded as a denizen of Eocene France and Germany). Means that Gastornis now extends from the late Palaeocene to the late Eocene. Gargantuavis is not the same animal however.
ORNITHISCHIANS
Paul Barrett spoke about new dinosaurs from Lower Cretaceous Japan. A skull - Japans's most complete dino specimen to date - is very like Hypsilophodon; there were also velociraptorine and tyrannosaurid teeth and a possible oviraptorosaurian ungual.
There were also talks and posters on many synapsids, including desmostylians, odontocete cetaceans, dicynodonts, basal carnivorans and assorted ungulates. Loads on fishes and a fair bit on basal tetrapods. Thanks to a talk about new Aussie Palaeozoic tetrapods given by Susan Turner, we learnt that Adam Yates really can draw! Her talk figured Adam's reconstruction of a colosteid and a bunch of fishes. Congratulations on your new position in the UK Adam. Looking forward to meeting you.
