Vomiting dinosaurs of SVPCA 2013
September 6, 2013
If your museum doesn’t look like this, you should reconsider your existence.
We’re just back from SVPCA 2013 in Edinburgh. The first part of the meeting was held at the Royal Society of Edinburgh, but on Friday we moved to the National Museums Scotland. Which is awesome. And free to the public. The design process for the museum seems to have been, “Okay, let’s get one of, oh, every interesting thing in the world, and put it right here.” We have tons more photos of amazing things from the museum, and maybe we’ll get around to posting them sooner or later, but today I have other things to do.
This pathetic, racially senescent freak is destined for evolution’s dustbin. And he knows it.
Like make fun of Mike. And talk about vomiting dinosaurs.
Dude, this party totally ro-BLAAAUUGGH!!
This groovy stuffed fulmar, Fulmarus glacialis, is shown in the act of puking, which it does to dissuade predators. And probably everyone else. I am reliably informed by Darren that this is unrealistic fulmar vomit, and that the real thing is more of a thin stream, like the world’s nastiest water gun, which can be directed with considerable accuracy. Note to self: don’t piss off the fulmars.
Last year cemented “drawing goofy sauropods down at the pub” as a regular SVPCA Thing. So one night I was out with Mike and Darren and paleoartist Bob Nicholls, who is famous around these parts as the creator of the Greatest. Paleoart. Ever. I did a goofy sketch in my notebook illustrating the “defensive vomit” hypothesis, which Brian Engh and I cooked up during this alligator dissection. More on that another time, maybe. Anyway, after bashing out a fairly pathetic sauropod-puking-on-theropod scene, I passed the notebook to Bob and said, “Make this not suck”. Which he did. (Seriously, if you could see my original scrawl, you’d be the one throwing up.)
So now I have an original Bob Nicholls sketch–heck, the world’s first Wedel-Nicholls artist collaboration!–in my notebook, of one of evolution’s most majestic successes responding appropriately to a vulgar, overstudied theropod. Bob drew it right in front of me and I got to drink good beer while I watched him work.
And that, more or less, is why I attend SVPCA.
I couldn’t sign off without giving you another version of Giant Irish Mike, with the background cropped out so he can be dropped right into posters, slide shows, and other works of science and art. I really, really hope that he turns up in conference talks and other presentations in the months and years to come. If so, send us a photo documenting his miraculous apparition and we’ll show it to the world.
Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week 
September 6, 2013 at 9:26 pm
I came across this on Twitter, re-tweeted by Sciam. Most interesting headline so far this year…by far :-)
Loved it!!!!
September 6, 2013 at 11:01 pm
With your permission, I could do something cool with Giant Irish Mike. Let me know…
September 7, 2013 at 5:10 am
Bryan, you don’t need my permission. Like everything on this blog (except for a handful of copyrighted museum images), Giant Irish Mike is released under the CC BY license, so you can use him, remix him, datamine him, etc., so long as you credit the blog (and it’s not like we expect credit for an obviously goofy image like this). So go nuts.
September 10, 2013 at 10:52 am
I should follow up on the fulmar comment. I’m sure that fulmar oral ejections vary a bit in appearance: that is, maybe some individuals do spew out mighty splurge-waves as per the taxiderm specimen at Edinburgh. However, based on what I’ve seen (in real life, on TV, and in photos), the ejection event normally proceeds as a forceful jet, sometimes with a spray-like quality. Google will show what I mean. I also used one of the best images in the Tet Zoo article here. So now you know.
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