Help me find this notebook
January 30, 2017
TL;DR: if you know where I can get a notebook just like this one, or from the same manufacturer and made to the same specs, or have one of your own that I could buy off you (provided it’s mostly unused), please let me know in the comments.
Long version:
This is the best notebook I’ve ever used. The cover is 7.25 x 10 inches, made of some kind of dense and probably recycled paper board. It’s twin-loop wire bound, has a button-and-string closure and a separate loop of board inside the back cover to hold a pen or pencil. Heavyweight cream paper. Has a fossil fish, Eoholocentrum macrocephalum, embossed on the cover, with the Linnean binomial properly capitalized and italicized.
I’ve used loads of other notebooks, including several sizes and designs of Moleskine and Rite-in-the-Rain, and this one is by far my favorite. Why? It lies flat when open or folded back on itself, the wire binding has never hung up, torn a page, or otherwise malfunctioned in over four years of travel and heavy use, and the pen holder and button string closure are perfect for my purposes. I’ve never had a notebook with an elastic band that didn’t wear out, and I usually have to build my own pen loops out of tape.
The one I have was a gift from Mark Hallett, who picked it up at SVP some years ago. Neither of us know who made it. But I’d really like to have another one, because mine is almost full. So far all of my searching online and off has failed to turn up a notebook like this, either another original or one with the same features made to the same specs. So if you know something about this, please pass it on!
2000 AD’s bizarre fin-handed Compsognathus
October 2, 2012
Here’s a blast from the past:
This alleged Compsognathus is a card from the “Flesh” card-game that was printed across several progs (issues) of the comic 2000 AD in 1977. This one is from the back cover of Prog 9. (Click through the picture for the whole back cover.)
“Flesh” was one of the half-dozen or so stories that appeared each week in those early months of 2000 AD. It was the story of how cowboys of the future travelled back to the Mesozoic to harvest dinosaurs for their meat, and was the subject of Jeff Liston’s chapter in the recentish Geological Society volume on the history of dinosaur research.
Compsognathus made another pop-culture appearance in The Lost World: Jurassic Park, of course, as the cute little “compys” that tear one of the nastier human characters to pieces.
Why does the 2000 AD Compsognathus have actinopterygian-like fins for arms? According to Wikipedia, The idea comes from Bidar et al. (1972), who supposed that the French specimen had webbed forefeet, which would look like flippers in life — an idea illustrated as part of a larger scene by Halstead (1975):
John Ostrom’s (1978) Compsognathus monograph showed that this was nonsense, but of course that was too late for the early issues of 2000 AD.
References
Bidar, A.; Demay L., Thomel G. 1972. Compsognathus corallestris, une nouvelle espèce de dinosaurien théropode du Portlandien de Canjuers (Sud-Est de la France). Annales du Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle de Nice 1:9–40.
Halstead L.B. 1975. The evolution and ecology of the dinosaurs. Eurobook. ISBN 0-85654-018-8.
Ostrom, J.H. 1978. The osteology of Compsognathus longipes. Zitteliana 4:73–118.
Update 1 (the next day)
In a comment below, Andrea Cau points to this post on his blog Theropoda (“the most inclusive blog containing Allosaurus fragilis but not Saltasaurus loricatus) which contains two more flippered-Compsognathus illustrations. Here they are: one from David Lambert’s book Dinosaur! …
… and one from David Norman’s Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs.
Update 2 (two days later)
Silly me, I should of course have posted Bidar et al.’s (1972) own life restoration of Compsognathus. It’s not great art, but it’s … actually, I’m not sure what it is. But anyway, here it is:
Attempted reconstruction of attitudes of Compsognathus corallestris nov. sp. A, erect stance (walking); B, sitting (inspired by O. Abel); C, Swimming; D, Diving. (Bidar et al. 1972:figure 21)
Sauropod hands: the manus of “Morosaurus” sp.
May 1, 2012
Probably everyone who reads SV-POW! already knows that the manus, or forefoot, or sauropods was very distinctive. The metacarpal bones, rather than being splayed out horizontally as in the forefeet of most animals, were arranged more or less vertically in a horseshoe shape, hence the characteristic shape of sauropod manus prints.
This was first recognised by Osborn (1904), a paper which contains the greatest single sentence in any scientific paper:
My previous figures and descriptions of the manus are all incorrect.
Here is the rather beautiful illustration from that paper (fig. 1):
It depicts the right manus, in anterior view, of AMNH 965, “Morosaurus” sp. As described by Osborn and Mook (1921:376-377), that genus was subsequently synonymised with Camarasaurus by Mook (1914), following the earlier suggestion of Osborn (1898), and this synonymy is universally accepted — for now, at least.
If anything, trackway evidence suggests that this illustration shows the metacarpals insufficiently vertical, resulting in the manus being too splayed out.
I have nothing more to say about that; just wanted to post the illustration because it’s beautiful and out of copyright (so feel free to use it however you want!)
References
- Mook, Charles C. 1914. Notes on Camarasaurus Cope. Annals of the New York Academy of Science 24:19-22.
- Osborn, Henry F. 1898. Additional characters of the great herbivorous dinosaur Camarasaurus. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 10: 219-233.
- Osborn, Henry F. 1904. Manus, sacrum and caudals of Sauropoda. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 20:181-190.
- Osborn, Henry Fairfield, and Charles C. Mook. 1921. Camarasaurus, Amphicoelias and other sauropods of Cope. Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History, n.s. 3:247-387, and plates LX-LXXXV.
Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week 