We have many times been in the position of having the reference for a paper and wanting to find the full text. But I think this is a first: I have the full text of a paper, and I want to find the reference!
The paper is a short one — just two pages — so I will reproduce it in its entirely right here in the blog-post:
As you can see, it’s by Billie R. Untermann and her husband G. Ernest Untermann — both important figure in the history of the Utah Field House museum whose history they were chronicling. The report doesn’t have a running header with the journal title, date, volume or issue, or even page number. We know nothing except that we can guess the date is 1970 or 1971 because of the closing statement that “1971 will be one of its greatest years”.
How can the source be tracked down?
I tried asking around on Twitter, but that didn’t pan out. A couple of people there suggested the G. Ernest Untermann papers collection, at Archives West. But John Foster kindly went through those boxes without turning it up, so our best hope struck out. John also had the had the University of Utah library go through the State Parks newsletters, which seemed the most likely venue, but again without success.
So over to you, dear readers. Can anyone come up with a route to track down the source of this report? To whoever comes up with the reference, I offer the shiny prize of formal acknowledgement in a forthcoming paper.
I’ve been in contact recently with Matt Lamanna, Associate Curator in the Section of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History — which is obviously the best job in the world. Among a batch of photos that he sent me recently, I seized on this gem:
Tyrannosaurus rex, Diplodocus carnegii, Apatosaurus louisae and multiple mostly juvenile individuals of Homo sapiens. Photograph taken between 1941 and 1965. Courtesy of Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
There’s so much to appreciate in this picture: the hunchbacked, tail-dragging Tyrannosaurus; the camarasaur-style skull on the Apatosaurus; the hard-to-pin-down archaic air of Diplodocus.
But the thing I love about it is the 1950s kids. (Or, to be fair, maybe the 1940s kids or early 1960s kids, but you get the point.) They way they’ve all been asked to look up at the tyrannosaur skull, and are obediently doing it. How earnest they all appear. How they’re all dressed as tiny adults. How self-consciously some of them have posed themselves — the thoughtful kid one in from the left, his foot up on the plinth and his chin resting on his hand; the cool kid to his right, arms crossed, interested but careful not to seem too impressed.
Where are these kids now? Assuming it was taken in 1953, the midpoint of the possible range, and assuming they’re about 12 years old in this photo, they were born around 1941, which would make them 81 now. Statistically, somewhere around half of them are still alive. I wonder how many of them remember this day, and the strange blend of awe, fascination, and self-consciousness.
This is a time-capsule, friends. Enjoy it.
Lydekker’s (1893) illustration of Xenoposeidon
November 19, 2018
Matt’s drawn my attention to a bizarre fact: despite 17 separate posts about Xenoposeidon on this blog (linked from here and here), we’ve never shown a decent scan of Lydekker’s (1893) original illustration of NHMUK PV R2095, the partial mid-to-posterior dorsal vertebra that since Taylor and Naish (2007) has been the holotype specimen of Xenoposeidon proneneukos — and since Taylor (2018) has been known to represent a rebbachisaurid.
Well, here it is at last!
That’s Xeno on the left, of course. On the right, we have one of the various Wealden titanosauriform dorsal vertebrae that were constantly getting referred back and forth between taxa in the late 1800s. I think it might be one of the NPMUK PR R90 vertebrae, perhaps the one that, for disambiguation purposes, I’ve informally named R90a.
Lydekker — or, more likely, an uncredited illustrator — did rather a good job on this, as we can see by juxtaposing the illustration with the now well-known left-lateral photo that’s launched a thousand blog-posts:
The main differences here seem to pertain to how Lydekker and I perceived “lateral”. I think he has the vertebra rotated slightly away from us, so that it’s leaning into the page, and that’s why the centrum appears slightly taller and the arch slightly less tall than in my photo. He seems to have a bit more matrix stuck on the front of the centrum — perhaps because slightly more prep has been done since 1893 — but, worryingly, slightly less bone around the cotyle. I think that can only be illustration error, since that bone is definitely there.
References
- Lydekker, R. 1893. On a sauropodous dinosaurian vertebra from the Wealden of Hastings. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, London 49:276-280.
- Taylor, Michael P. 2018. Xenoposeidon is the earliest known rebbachisaurid sauropod dinosaur. PeerJ 6:e5212. doi: 10.7717/peerj.5212
- Taylor, Michael P., and Darren Naish. 2007. An unusual new neosauropod dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous Hastings Beds Group of East Sussex, England. Palaeontology 50(6):1547-1564. doi: 10.1111/j.1475-4983.2007.00728.x
Should we still give taxonomic authorities?
September 18, 2016
I have before me the reviews for a submission of mine, and the handling editor has provided an additional stipulation:
Authority and date should be provided for each species-level taxon at first mention. Please ensure that the nominal authority is also included in the reference list.
In other words, the first time I mention Diplodocus, I should say “Diplodocus Marsh 1878″; and I should add the corresponding reference to my bibliography.
Marsh (1878: plate VIII in part). The only illustration of Diplodocus material in the paper that named the genus.
What do we think about this?
I used to do this religiously in my early papers, just because it was the done thing. But then I started to think about it. To my mind, it used to make a certain amount of sense 30 years ago. But surely in 2016, if anyone wants to know about the taxonomic history of Diplodocus, they’re going to go straight to Wikipedia?
I’m also not sure what the value is in providing the minimal taxonomic-authority information rather then, say, morphological information. Anyone who wants to know what Diplodocus is would be much better to go to Hatcher 1901, so wouldn’t we serve readers better if we referred to “Diplodocus (Hatcher 1901)”
Now that I come to think of it, I included “Giving the taxonomic authority after first use of each formal name” in my list of
Idiot things that we we do in our papers out of sheer habit three and a half years ago.
Should I just shrug and do this pointless busywork to satisfy the handling editor? Or should I simply refuse to waste my time adding information that will be of no use to anyone?
References
- Hatcher, Jonathan B. 1901. Diplodocus (Marsh): its osteology, taxonomy and probable habits, with a restoration of the skeleton. Memoirs of the Carnegie Museum 1:1-63 and plates I-XIII.
- Marsh, O. C. 1878. Principal characters of American Jurassic dinosaurs, Part I. American Journal of Science, series 3 16:411-416.
A couple of weeks ago, I said I was going to toss out my hardcopy issues of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology unless someone wanted them and was prepared to pay for shipping.
The good news is that Andrew Stuck did want them. We got in touch and arranged shipping, and they arrived at his house a few days ago. Here they are in their new home:
Andrew apologises that “they may not have the best bunkmates, as they fit best next to my collection of old creationist children’s literature. I think my shelf might spontaneously combust.”
But I’m glad to see that (on the lower shelf) he has both the Thunder Lizards edited volume and Gerhard Maier’s definitive book on the Tendaguru expeditions, African Dinosaurs Unearthed. (If I ever get the Archbishop description done, I will cite the heck out of this!) Also, Mark Witton’s Pterosaurs, the Normanpedia, and more.
I’m really glad that these journals ended up somewhere they can do some good, rather than recycled as paper pulp or dumped in a landfill somewhere.
Next up: I am going to get rid of nearly all my printed journal articles — I am guessing about 7500 pages. (I’ll keep a few that don’t seem to exist in electronic form, and a couple of others that have really nice print quality in the illustrations, such as my Janensch 1950.)
I’m trying to free some space in my office, and I’m going to let my run of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology go:
It covers everything from 25(4) to volume 29(2) — a run from December 2005 to March 2009) — and also includes the lone issue 29(4) for December 2009 and the SVP meeting abstract volumes for 2006 and 2008 (i.e. issues 26(3s) and 28(3s)). (I don’t know what happened to the 2007 and 2009 SVP abstract volumes, sorry.)
All in all, they make a stack about 25 cm tall, and weigh just a little short of 17 kg.
Does anyone want them? Let me know within a week if you do. You either come and pick them up yourself from our home in the Forest of Dean, or pay for me to send them to you by your preferred method.
If no-one wants them within a week, they’re going in the bin.
(Note to self: size of package: 33x25x27)
It was ten years ago today: my first published paper
September 15, 2015
Ten years ago today — on 15 September 2005 — my first palaeo paper was published: Taylor and Naish (2005) on the phylogenetic nomenclature of diplodocoids. It’s strange to think how fast the time has gone, but I hope you’ll forgive me if I get a bit self-indulgent and nostalgic.
I’d applied to join Portsmouth University on a Masters course back in April 2004 — not because I had any great desire to earn a Masters but because back in the bad old days, being affiliated to a university was about the only way to get hold of copies of academic papers. My research proposal, hilariously, was all about the ways the DinoMorph results are misleading — something that I am still working on eleven years later.
In May of that year, I started a Dinosaur Mailing List thread on the names and definitions of the various diplodocoid clades. As that discussion progressed, it became clear that there was a lot of ambiguity, and for my own reference I started to make notes. I got into an off-list email discussion about this with Darren Naish (who was then finishing up his Ph.D at Portsmouth). By June we thought it might be worth making this into a little paper, so that others wouldn’t need to do the same literature trawl we’d done.
In September of 2004, I committed to the Portsmouth course, sending my tuition fees in a letter that ended:
On the way to SVPCA that year, in Leicester, I met Darren on the train, and together we worked through a printed copy of the in-progress manuscript that I’d brought with me. He was pretty happy with it, which meant a lot to me. It was the first time I’d had a legitimate palaeontologist critique my work.
At one of the evening events of that SVPCA, I fell into conversation with micro-vertebrate screening wizard Steve Sweetman, then on the Portsmouth Ph.D course, and he persuaded me to switch to the Ph.D. (It was my second SVPCA, and the first one where I gave a talk.) Hilariously, the heart of the Ph.D project was to be a description of the Archbishop, something that I have still not got done a decade later, but definitely will this year. Definitely.
On 7th October 2004, we submitted the manuscript to the Journal of Paleontology, and got an acknowledge of receipt<sarcasm>after just 18 short days</sarcasm>. But three months later (21st January 2005) it was rejected on the advice of two reviewers. As I summarised the verdict to Darren at the time:
It’s a rejection. Both reviewers (an anonymous one and [redacted]) say that the science is pretty much fine, but that there just isn’t that much to say to make the paper worthwhile. [The handling editor] concurs in quite a nice covering letter […] Although I think the bit about “I respect both of you a great deal” is another case of Wrong Mike Taylor Syndrome :-)
This was my first encounter with “not significant enough for our journal” — a game that I no longer play. It was to be very far from my last experience of Wrong Mike Taylor Syndrome.
At this point, Darren and I spent a while discussing what to do: revise and resubmit (though one of the reviewers said not to)? Try to subsume the paper into another more substantial one (as one reviewer suggested)? Invite the reviewers to collaborate with us on an improved version (as the editor suggested)? Or just revise according to the reviewers’ more helpful recommendations and send it elsewhere? I discussed this with Matt as well. The upshot was that on 20th February Darren and I decided to send the revised version to PaleoBios, the journal of the University of California Museum of Paleontology (UCMP) — partly because Matt had had good experiences there with two of his earlier papers.
[Side-note: I am delighted to see that, since I last checked, PaleoBios has now made the leap to open access, though as of yet it says nothing about the licence it uses.]
Anyway, we submitted the revised manuscript on 26th May; and we got back an Accept With Minor Revisions six weeks later, having received genuinely useful reviews from Jerry Harris and Matt. (This of course was long before I’d co-authored anything with Matt. No handling editor would assign him to review one of my papers now.) It took us two days to turn the manuscript around with the necessary minor changes made, and another nine days of back and forth with the editor before we reached acceptance. A week later I got the proof PDF to check.
Back in 2005, publication was a very different process, because it involved paper. I remember the thrill of several distinct phases in the publication process — particularly sharp the first time:
- Seeing the page proof — evidence that I really had written a legitimate scholarly paper. It looked real.
- The moment of being told that the paper was published: “The issue just went to the printer, so I will send the new reprints […] when I get them, probably sometime next week.”
- Getting my copy of the final PDF.
- The day that the physical reprints arrived — funny to think that they used to be a thing. (They’re so Ten Years Ago now that even the SVPCA auction didn’t have many available for bid.)
- The tedious but somehow exhilarating process of sending out physical reprints to 30 or 40 people.
- Getting a physical copy of the relevant issue of the journal — in this case, PaleoBios 25(2).
I suppose it’s one of the sadder side-effect of ubiquitous open access that many of these stages don’t happen any more. Now you get your proof, then the paper appears online, and that’s it. Bam, done.
I’m kind of glad to have lived through the tail end of the old days, even though the new days are better.
To finish, there’s a nice little happy ending for this paper. Despite being in a relatively unregarded journal, it’s turned out to be among my most cited works. According to Google Scholar, this humble little taxonomic note has racked up 28 citations: only two fewer than the Xenoposeidon description. It’s handily outperforming other papers that I’d have considered much more substantial, and which appeared in more recognised journals. It just goes to show, you can never tell what papers will do well in the citation game, and which will sink without trace.
References
Arrogance, elitism, paternalism
June 29, 2015
I just read this on The Scholarly Kitchen and nearly fell out of my seat:
In an era with more access given to less qualified people (laypeople and an increasingly unqualified blogging corps presenting themselves as experts or journalists), not to mention to text-miners and others scouring the literature for connections, the obligation to better manage these materials seems to be growing. We can no longer depend on the scarcity of print or the difficulties of distance or barriers of professional expertise to narrow access down to experts with a true need.
I think this may be the most revealing thing ever written on The Scholarly Kitchen. It’s hard to see a way of reading it that isn’t contemptuous of everyone outside the Magic Circle. Ideally, the great unwashed should be excluded altogether; but if we can’t do that, then at least we must tell when what to read and how to use it. Heaven forfend that we let Ordinary People make such decisions for themselves. That is for the priestly caste to do.
Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week 