The first thing that struck me about the Metro's coverage of the new dinosaur discovery was that they had *shock* *horror* actually called the authors palaeontologists. Not "boffins", not "dino-detectives", but palaeontologists (although they did sneak in "experts"). The second thing that struck me was that they still hadn't bothered to capitalise or italicise Gryposaurus monumentensis (I give them the benefit of the doubt on the italicising because I'm not sure how easy it is to do so in a newspaper). Once my anal retentiveness was out of the way I could focus on the exciting new species.
And the good news is, that (at least for the time being) the journal article is free - click here for the PDF. I've started to notice a lot of journals making the big story paper free, at least for a few days after the release of the press release. So for those of us without much institutional access to journals, being the early theropod is the way to go.
First off, I'm really excited to see lots of photos, and the BBC website has an awesome one in full colour:
The authors have revised the diagnosis for Gryposaurus and been able to add more synapomorphies distinguishing it from Kritosaurus (it was designated a nomen dubium by Lull & Wright in 1942, but was later found to be quite distinct). All referred material for the new species was recovered from Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, hence the specific name. Paul showed a little more interest in this than he normally does, because we've actually been to Grand Staircase, albeit very briefly. G. monumentensis has a much more robust skull than G. nobilis, and a "large patch of rugose bone [...] on the midline at the anterior limit of the interpremaxillary contact", which is not seen in any other Gryposaurus species.
I have no problem with the phylogenetic analysis, which looks really thorough (I tend to use DELTRAN more than ACCTRAN optimisation, but that really depends on what an author wants to show with the data). There's good support for the clade formed by the four species. All in all, it's a solid piece of work, and I much prefer seeing full descriptions of new species like this than a hurried Science or Nature article (which doesn't always lead into a more substantial paper later).
But I'm really really excited about this, because this is more data for my ornithopod morphometrics paper (which, along with Cetiosauriscus and the fossil record stuff, is the only other bit of research I've done worth publishing). I'll post the abstract I wrote for SVP in 2004 in the comments of this post so I don't disrupt the flow. When I gave the talk I had only used line drawings (I had neither money, nor time, nor the support of my PhD supervisor to look at specimens), and I was very honest with the audience and said I'd need actual photos to compare with the diagrams. I have a fair few from the NHM, and hopefully Terry and Scott will be happy for me to use the photos in their paper - especially as there is a beautiful juvenile jugal on page 358.
Also, there is a photo of the skull and a line drawing of the same. I also spoke of how I hoped to use the dataset to assess the accuracy of palaeontological illustrations - this generated guffaws from the audience, but a few palaeoartists did volunteer their diagrams. I don't know if that would constitute a separate paper or not, but I'd love to compare the illustrations with the photographs to see how they compare.
There's a nice illustration of Gryposaurus monumentensis in the BBC News article. And this new paper (and the list of references that I should have a peek at before I try to write up my own research) has given me a bit of a boost to get on with things. Now if I only had a computer...
Gates, T. A. & S. D. Sampson. 2007. A new species of Gryposaurus (Dinosauria: Hadrosauridae) from the late Campanian Kaiparowits Formation, southern Utah, USA. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 151: 351-376. doi: 10.1111/j.1096-3642.2007.00349.x
And the good news is, that (at least for the time being) the journal article is free - click here for the PDF. I've started to notice a lot of journals making the big story paper free, at least for a few days after the release of the press release. So for those of us without much institutional access to journals, being the early theropod is the way to go.
First off, I'm really excited to see lots of photos, and the BBC website has an awesome one in full colour:
The authors have revised the diagnosis for Gryposaurus and been able to add more synapomorphies distinguishing it from Kritosaurus (it was designated a nomen dubium by Lull & Wright in 1942, but was later found to be quite distinct). All referred material for the new species was recovered from Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, hence the specific name. Paul showed a little more interest in this than he normally does, because we've actually been to Grand Staircase, albeit very briefly. G. monumentensis has a much more robust skull than G. nobilis, and a "large patch of rugose bone [...] on the midline at the anterior limit of the interpremaxillary contact", which is not seen in any other Gryposaurus species.
I have no problem with the phylogenetic analysis, which looks really thorough (I tend to use DELTRAN more than ACCTRAN optimisation, but that really depends on what an author wants to show with the data). There's good support for the clade formed by the four species. All in all, it's a solid piece of work, and I much prefer seeing full descriptions of new species like this than a hurried Science or Nature article (which doesn't always lead into a more substantial paper later).
But I'm really really excited about this, because this is more data for my ornithopod morphometrics paper (which, along with Cetiosauriscus and the fossil record stuff, is the only other bit of research I've done worth publishing). I'll post the abstract I wrote for SVP in 2004 in the comments of this post so I don't disrupt the flow. When I gave the talk I had only used line drawings (I had neither money, nor time, nor the support of my PhD supervisor to look at specimens), and I was very honest with the audience and said I'd need actual photos to compare with the diagrams. I have a fair few from the NHM, and hopefully Terry and Scott will be happy for me to use the photos in their paper - especially as there is a beautiful juvenile jugal on page 358.
Also, there is a photo of the skull and a line drawing of the same. I also spoke of how I hoped to use the dataset to assess the accuracy of palaeontological illustrations - this generated guffaws from the audience, but a few palaeoartists did volunteer their diagrams. I don't know if that would constitute a separate paper or not, but I'd love to compare the illustrations with the photographs to see how they compare.
There's a nice illustration of Gryposaurus monumentensis in the BBC News article. And this new paper (and the list of references that I should have a peek at before I try to write up my own research) has given me a bit of a boost to get on with things. Now if I only had a computer...
Gates, T. A. & S. D. Sampson. 2007. A new species of Gryposaurus (Dinosauria: Hadrosauridae) from the late Campanian Kaiparowits Formation, southern Utah, USA. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 151: 351-376. doi: 10.1111/j.1096-3642.2007.00349.x
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