I have too many toys

Also: what the hell was happening all through the middle? After a fascinating opening, BotE quickyl degenerated into (IMHO) an undisciplined mess, in which the author repeatedly paints himself into a corner, then "escapes" by opening yet another random trapdoor. I was very, very disappointed.

Well, sure, but *I*'m in it! And the first scene is in Ralph Chapman's old Smithsonian office (complete with Elvis clock). And Ralph's wife Linda has a nice cameo at the end.

Oh, so maybe I'm not the most unbiased of critics...

Ah, Bones of the Earth. I remember that one -- some really awesome parts, some "Bwuh?" parts.

I really liked the way the stuck-in-the-Mesozoic stuff was handled (except some of the excessively soap-opera talk surrounding the pregnancy). His seems a much more realistic take on it, not so much "everything will kill us on sight". Some of the Telezoic Era ideas were good, too.

That whole end part, though -- I was never really clear on whether all the changes made by time travel got erased or not. It seemed like they did, but Susan (IIRC) stayed in the future ... Huh?

The "ringing earth disrupting dino migrations" was interesting, but almost certainly wrong. Wouldn't everything else that got killed disrupt the ecosystem enough?

That's quite some menagerie you have. Impressive. But do I detect a slight, erm, pro-archosaur bias there?

Once upon a time, I used to have lots of small plastic animals too. (Come to think of it, I probably still do have them, somewhere.) In my days, we had none of this 'Made in China'-stuff. It was 'Made in Hong Kong', period.*

*) With the exception of the excellent 'Made in England'-toy animals of the Britains series. But they were so dang expensive compared to the rest!

I remember how I wanted ecological realism and how annoyed I used to be at the fact that certain groups of organisms were severely under-represented in my toy animal fauna. Very few birds, almost no fish, too few South American and Australian animals, too few different kinds of trees... And don't get me started with the horribly skewed sex ratios and the fact that juvenile animals were almost non-existent.

Dartian: look carefully to the centre and towards the lower left. Virtually all of those creatures are Britains. I have pretty much all of them, with the exception of the two baby crocodiles and the platypus. The platypus (only about 30 mm long) retails at about £25 and is hard to get.

And... it's true, 'old Tom Holtz' stars in BotE. But he isn't involved in the mass-orgy that happens on p. 199. I think at the moment that Gertrude (= parallel-line Salley) was retained by the bird-people in the future as a zoological specimen, but that her timeline was erased... which meant erasing everything that Griffin had set up from the beginning, and hence that the whole Lost Expedition never happened. But didn't Griffin et al. already stop that by arresting Robo Boy before (= after) he detonated the time beacon? And if Lost Expedition never happened, how could Leyster see his own Science paper on infrasound and the 'tyrannosaur as farmer' hypothesis?

Creationists as terrorists: plausible or not? And, shame of shames, I never remembered who 'the Old Man' was. Was it just Griffin from the future? If so, I must have lost concentration at that bit. Any ideas on who Leyster was based on? Unfortunately I could only imagine him looking like Sam Neil.

Darren, you're a boy. Boys can never have too many toys.

And, since this post is tagged "frivolous nonsense", anyone got any views on the article in New Scientist that is (mis)headlined 'Were Pterosaurs too big to fly?'? The headline seems to be the usual headline writer's exaggeration since the bit of the article that is free indicates it's just talking about them being too heavy to be albatross-like soarers. Is it frivolous nonsense?

I recall the azhdarchids didn't have the wings of soarers but there were other large pterosaurs that did have the long narrow wings of dynamic soarers, or am I misremembering (and too pushed to get off to work to find Unwin).

There article was an article in the Telegraph (UK) whose headline inflated it to: "Pterodactyls were too heavy to fly, scientist claims" in a bit of headline-writing worthy of being knouted.

Dartian: look carefully to the centre and towards the lower left. Virtually all of those creatures are Britains. I have pretty much all of them, with the exception of the two baby crocodiles and the platypus.

I looked at the larger images. By Odin, what a collection! Apparently my childhood was much more deprived than I ever realized...

Re: big pterosaurs too heavy to fly...

Mark Witton and I discussed Sato's work the other day. The general feeling is that it is, to be polite, completely wrong. There is no peer-reviewed paper here: most sources are quoting a news piece that appeared in New Scientist (I wish that more journalists would realise that New Scientist is but a magazine, not a place where peer-reviewed technical articles appear), and this reports work that Sato and colleagues discussed at the Third International Biologging Science Symposium, held at Stanford University [abstracts here; the relevant abstract is on p. 72].

Mike Habib may show up and say a few things about this research, as he's quoted in a few of the press reports.

Regarding BotE: Some good sections, but after a while it just gave me a headache. Especially the ending, which for me simply got too painful. I'd rather take the Neanderthal Parallax series anytime.

Funny how Soto's work should be discussed in the same thread as another work of fiction (boom tish!). New Scientist spoke to me about Soto's work a few weeks back and I was amazed to hear the results of his study: it really seems to lack any common sense at all. I mean, seriously, has he seen the size of the biggest azhdarchids? There's simply no way in Hell that they weighed 40 kg. I estimated a burly Pteranodon at something like 30 - 35 kg, and that's lighter than you would expect for a 6 - 7 m pterosaur. 40 kg is nothing, man: eight year-old kids weight 40 kg. Eight year olds. The length of the Quetzalcoatlus humerus is almost half-as-long as an eight year old. Why, dear God, why, don't people think about what they're saying before they run to the likes of New Scientist? Maybe Soto has the maximum weight of an animal that flies in a specifically albatross manner, but he's barking up the wrong tree with other flying animals.

Grr.

Whoops: that should be Sato et al., not solo-'Soto'.

I've learned something today: always double-check author names before starting a rant, folks.

I have only read the Sato press releases, but would hope he's responded to Chatterjee et al. (Chattergee, S, Templin RJ, Campbell KE Jr. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2007;104:1239812403.) and their analysis of 70 kg Argentavis as well, which was undoubtedly a flyer, no matter what big weird pterosaurs might or might not have been doing.

Also, he claims a wandering albatross weighs 22 kg. If he can produce one that big, I'll eat it in front of him. They're about 10 kg. Perhaps a journalist converted units to pounds but didn't change the units, and it got converted a second time?

A little while ago I was trying to think up names for a new palaeo/geology gallery at our museum, and came up with "Bones of the Earth", which I thought had potential. A quick google turned up the highly-esteemed novel of the same name, so that name bit the dust.
I've since been wondering if it was worth reading or not...

Of BotE Mark says...

I've since been wondering if it was worth reading or not...

Well, whatever its problems, I still enjoyed reading it*. But I'm not exactly culturally sophisticated. As I type we have Revenge of the Sith on the TV, cringe.

* One more thing: where did all the money come from? Leyster stood up at a meeting early on and asked where the huge injection of governmental funding came from. This is never answered, time-travelling smart birds from the future or not.

On the topic of big dead flying critters, a somewhat unrelated question, that i don't where else to ask, but am sure Darren will know...

I saw a discarded page from a tabloid on a train recently. On it was a story about extinct "giant ducks", which had a picture of something that looked like a big-ass merganser with an even "toothier" bill and albatross wings, soaring across an ocean. Unfortunately i didn't have time to read the article (and being a tabloid, probably the Mirror or the Sun from the look of it, it probably wasn't very informative anyway). What the hell was it?

This was a news story about Gerald Mayr's new paper in Palaeontology on the pelagornithid (bony-toothed bird) Dasornis emuinus. I printed the paper yesterday and haven't read it yet, but it looks good. Dasornis is from the Eocene London Clay and, says Mayr, is outside of the clade that include the big Neogene taxa.

Pretty odd to see that the media (and/or the press release) have gone with the 'giant goose' thing - so far as I recall, Mayr is non-committal on the Galloanserae vs pelecaniform issue. Mayr also has a paper on pelagornithids in the latest JVP.

"Dasornis" sounds like a bird named after somebody called "Darren" ("Daz" for short, for those unfamiliar with British nicknames).

Hehe. I loved dinosaur toys as a child but now (even at 15) I can no longer stand the things. In fact, just recently, my mom cleaned up all of mine so that the neighbor kid could play with them, or something along those lines. After googling Bones of the Earth, it certainly sounds interesting and I may just have to read it.

There's a Britains platypus? Where can I see a picture of it? Are there any fan sites that list all the models, with pictures? I fondly remember them, but we never got a tapir, but there is a long story involving one...

There's no such thing as too many toys. Will, don't let your mom throw 'em away. You'll miss 'em some day.

Thanks for the comments on Sato's albatross stuff.

At least, it does make a nice example of headline inflation.

One cannot have too many toys...

The important question is, how many of the packages came with figures that were inappropriate? Not just dimetrodons, but such oddities as hook horrors, rust monsters, and owl bears?

OMG.

If we're waterboarding Darren into reading sfnal fiction, I say we make him read _Evolution_ by Stephen Baxter.

I. Really. Want. His. Response.

O:)

I am always amazed how people who claim that giant pterosaurs would not be able to fly today or were even not able to start from the ground (or like in this case were not able to fly at all) completely ignore the giant teratorn Argentavis. This monster of a bird with its wingspan of 7m+ weighed surely well over 40kg, and it rivaled easily most of the largest pterosaurs (okay, not giant Azhdarchids). So if such a huge bird was able to fly only about 2 Mio years ago, why is it so hard to believe that pterosaurs which were not that much bigger at all had problems to fly?
Perhaps we´ll hear about a terrestrial way of Argentavis in the next time too...

I'm always a little envious of, and mystified by, people who manage to keep their childhood toys and books well into adulthood. My mother was the director of the play therapy programs at a large children's hospital, and therefore my outgrown toys, games, books, and records (and those of my younger sister as well) all ended up in the playrooms at the hospital. From the playrooms, toys often went home with a patient or a patient's sibling(s). I managed to hang onto a few Breyer horses, a Matchbox Land Rover, and a couple of Golden Nature Guides (Pond Life and Mammals, in particular; Birds disintegrated long ago, as did Fishes), but that's about it. I don't think I'm scarred for life or anything, though ... but I might buy myself a few of those cute little Schleich farm animals. ;-)

I was sure that the NS 'Were Pterosaurs too big to fly?' nonsense would be raised here, and sure enough . . . .

My simple question to Sato et al would be: "If pterosaurs couldn't fly, why did they have those sodding great wings that persisted undiminished for millions of years?"

I suggest this affair is best thought of as similar to the old "according to the laws of aerodynamics, bumblebees can't fly" episode. What it actually meant was that, since bumblebees demonstrably could fly, aerodynamic theory and its application were not yet sufficiently understood. Similarly, Sato et al are really saying (whether or not they realise it) not that pterosaurs really couldn't fly - they almost certainly could - but that we don't yet understand fully how they did so.

In the bumblebee case, popular prejudice twisted the conclusion to something like "ivory-tower long-hair scientists would rather deny observable facts than give up their silly theories", and maintained the factoid for decades after it became meaningless: i.e. after it was realised that fixed-wing aerodynamics were inapplicable to moving flexible aerofoils.

Since we are regrettably unable to observe large pterosaurs flying around today, this latest episode doesn't provide the same degree of misplaced ridicule-fodder. It does however point up the popular press's eternal preference for a good story over the boring facts. I don't blame New Scientist so much: it merely (though perhaps too briefly) reported Sato et al's case, its headline was only a question (to which one can roundly reply "No!"), and NS's house style leans towards further discussion in future issues rather than immediate counter-argument (cue for one of you more knowlegeable and qualified types to submit a letter). However the Telegraph (which will almost certainly not follow up any further) appears to have ducked its responsibility to check the story by consulting independent experts, and has compounded this by introducing its own exaggeration and inaccuracy with the "Pterodactyl" headline. Another case of "after all, its only science, not anything important."

dino toy for a well-read boy:
the saurus

Terry,

I see where you're coming from on the press prefering an interesting story over an accurate one, but, in this case, Sato and chums are pretty clear in their conclusions. They quite clearly state their hypothesis:

"The minimum and maximum stroke frequencies of geometrically similar birds are expected to be proportional to mass-1/6 and mass-1/3, respectively. This scaling relationship imposes restrictions on the maximum size of flying animals."

Now, it seems to me that this is a bit contradictory: in the first sentence, they specify that their discussion of mass and flight stroke rate is only relevant to 'geometrically similar birds', which is fair enough. However, they then suggest that the same birds can reveal the maximum flight masses of all volant critters, regardless of their body shape. Giant birds and pterosaurs are not mentioned, but are included through implication.

Shooting down to the end of the abstract, they close with:

"This scaling relationship agrees with the previous theoretical predictions, and implicates that the maximum size of flying animals would be 52 kg."

Now this could be followed with a disclaimer about how their equations could represent a misunderstanding of aerodynamics (as you suggest) or, at very least, merely predict the size of giant procellariiformes rather than all flying animals. Indeed, the use of the word 'would' suggests that they don't necessarily agree with the results of their own equation. However, there is no follow-up to this last statement - that last full-stop (or 'period' if you live over the Pond) is the last character of their text. Thus, their concluding statement pretty much says that no animal over 50 kg can fly, which is what the press has picked up on.

Maybe a letter to NS is in order, then. I could send them a picture of an azhdarchid next to an albatross: then let's see someone say the maximum size of a flying animal is 50 kg.

Nice toys! I love plastic animals (especially dinosaurs) but regret that the skeleton kits available tend to be either limited in their accuracy, or (if accurate) unavailable ata reasonable price. The stegosaur skeleton kit the BMNH shop sells for a fiver is much less realistic than I'd hoped for (wrong number and arrangement of plates; skull too big, assuming it's meant to be an adult; etc).

Re Pterosaurs: I hadn't seen the controversial NS issue in question, but noted in a following issue a letter-writer raising the same question I'd raised myself, at May's London conference (Dinosaurs: A Historical Perspective): was the air significantly different in pterosaurs' heyday, facilitating larger flying creatures then?

Re calculations, I would stick my neck out rashly here (admittedly on an gut feeling) and say 'try twice the atmospheric density, and see what difference that makes'.

Is there any indicator of pressure/density, as distinct from gas mix, in ancient air?

I am guessing that major impact events (Chicxulub plus lesser companions in a near-simultaneous shower, and re-entrant debris therefrom; and mass volcanic events triggered thereby) might have altered the atmosphere significantly.

It would be interesting (though perhaps expensive) to try raising a varied ecosystem, including flying creatures, in a large enclosed habitat under conditions of different pressure, and/or with varied compositions of atmospheric gases. And to see what occurred.

Has this ever been done?

was the air significantly different in pterosaurs' heyday, facilitating larger flying creatures then?

Perhaps, but that was not necessary. Azhdarchids could have flown, and even taken off, in today's atmosphere without problems.

Is there any indicator of pressure/density, as distinct from gas mix, in ancient air?

AFAIK not.

I am guessing that major impact events [...] might have altered the atmosphere significantly.

No evidence of that happening, though.

(Chicxulub plus lesser companions in a near-simultaneous shower, and re-entrant debris therefrom; and mass volcanic events triggered thereby)

No, no, no, no, no! The main episode of Deccan volcanism ended 100,000 years before the impact!

G. Ravizza & B. Peucker-Ehrenbrink: Chemostratigraphic Evidence of Deccan Volcanism from the Marine Osmium Isotope Record, Science 302, 1392 -- 1395 (21 November 2003)

Abstract:
"Continental flood basalt (CFB) volcanism is hypothesized to have played a causative role in global climate change and mass extinctions. Uncertainties associated with radiometric dating preclude a clear chronological assessment of the environmental consequences of CFB volcanism. Our results document a 25% decline in the marine 187Os/188Os record that predates the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary (KTB) and coincides with late Maastrichtian warming. We argue that this decline provides a chemostratigraphic marker of Deccan volcanism and thus constitutes compelling evidence that the main environmental consequence of Deccan volcanism was a transient global warming event of 3° to 5°C that is fully resolved from the KTB mass extinction."

Too many toys indeed! What took you have so much toys? Are you collecting them?