the month in snapshots

It turns out Maggie is obsessed with snowmen.

The many faces of Mad Mags.

They're fans of our Charlie Brown Christmas tree.

Ainsley likes hanging with Naomi in her crib.

a random evening snapshot

junk photos found on my phone (courtesy of Chloe)

Maggie turned two years old!

Walk of Joy's Jingle Mingle was a success.

Making gingerbread houses.

Ainsley and I snuggling.

Ainsley was ready for Christmas.

Naomi's had four Christmases and has been sick for three of them.

the year in books [XI]

The last of 2022's 'Books Read' collection has arrived!

the reformation: four years in

It's been four years - give or take - since I got serious about getting healthier. I started out around 200 pounds - my healthy BMI is 156 pounds - and just this morning I clocked in at 155.9 pounds, which means I've finally reached my healthy weight. For 2023 I hope to drop another ten pounds, to 145#, and to continue focusing on muscle growth. I really need to get to work on my chicken legs, but my knees hurt so damned much I can't bring myself to it. Observe below the progress I've made!

this is from June 2018, around 200 pounds

clocking in at 156 pounds

another 156 pounds collage!

I still have a lot of work to do, but I'm excited about the progress so far!

Dino of the Week: Tianyulong

Type Species: Tianyulong confuciusi

Classification: Dinosauria - Ornithischia - Heterodontosauridae

Time Period: Late Jurassic

Location: China

Diet: Herbivore   

Tianyulong was a Late Jurassic heterodontosaur that lived during the Oxfordian stage of China. Its remains were discovered in the Tiaojishan Formation of China. During prehistoric times, this mountainous landscape was overshadowed by brooding volcanoes that had a penchant for erupting; the area was cut by mountain streams and deep sapphire lakes choked by dense gymnosperm forests. The jungle-like forest consisted of ginkgoes and conifers, lycopsids and horsetails, cycads and ferns. Many creatures called this place home: small feathered dinosaurs, numerous pterosaurs, salamanders and insects and arachnids. There were early mammals – including the earliest gliding mammal Volaticotherium and an aquatic protomammals Castorocauda. Tianyulong skittered among the jungle-choked ravines and waterways of this prehistoric Chinese environment. It was descended from the earlier heterodontosaurs of the Early Jurassic, and though it had classic heterodontosaur characteristics – in particular its mixed collection of teeth and large tusks at the front of the mouth – it had evolved distinct differences. Its head was large, and its legs and tail were long, but its neck and forelimbs were unusually short. Tianyulong’s diverse array of teeth indicate that it was capable of eating meat, but it was likely herbivorous; nevertheless, the possibility of an omnivorous diet remains. 

Tianyulong had a row of long, filamentous integumentary structures on its back, tail, and neck. The similarity of these structures with those found on some theropods suggests their homology with feathers and raises the possibility that the earliest dinosaurs and their ancestors were covered with homologous dermal filamentous structures that can be considered primitive feathers (often called ‘proto-feathers’). The hollow filaments are parallel to each other and are singular with no evidence of branching. They also appear to be relatively rigid, making them more analogous to the integumentary structures found on the tail of Psittacosaurus than to the proto-feather structures found in avian and non-avian theropods. Among the theropods, the structures in Tianyulong are most similar to the singular unbranched proto-feathers of Sinosauropteryx and Beipiaosaurus. Because such structures had previously only been seen in derived theropods and ornithischians, their discovery in Tianyulong puts the existence of such structures further down the phylogenetic tree (as heterodontosaurs were rather ‘primitive’ ornithischians). The presence of these structures on Tianyulong is thus explained in one of two ways: either the common ancestor of both saurischians and ornithischians were covered by feather-like structures, and some branches of the dinosaurian lineage ‘lost’ them to become ‘secondarily featherless;’ or these structures evolved independently in saurischians and ornithischians, as well as in other archosaurs such as the pterosaurs. The precise ‘genesis’ of proto-feathers is hotly debated and there remains no consensus.

Christmas 2022

 

a rare family photograph

Christmas shenanigans #1

Christmas shenanigans #2

Dino of the Week: Shunosaurus

Type Species: Shunosaurus lii

Classification: Dinosauria – Saurischia – Sauropoda – Gravisauria - Eusauropoda  

Time Period: Late Jurassic

Location: China

Diet: Herbivore 

The sauropod Shunosaurus is famous for the ankylosaur-like club on its tail, likely used to exact crushing blows to attacking predators or between rival males ‘squaring off’ for the right to the pluckiest females. Shunosaurus lived during the Oxfordian stage in the early part of the Late Jurassic some 160 million years ago; as it provides ninety percent of the fossils in the Dashanpu fossil beds, we can extrapolate that it was a successful dinosaur. This was a rather small sauropod, stretching only thirty feet long snout-to-tail and weighing in at just over three tons. It was one of the shortest-necked sauropods (bested only by Brachytrachelopan), so it was likely a low browser who swept its neck in wide arcs before taking a few plodding steps forward to eat another crescent-moon shaped swathe of vegetation. Fossilized skull remains are disarticulated or compressed, so whether its head was broad, short and deep or narrow and pointed is unknown. Its upper and lower jaws curved upwards so that the front of its mouth acted like garden shears to clip tough vegetation. Its cylindrical-bodied teeth were strong and elongated and ended in a spatulate tip. The end of Shunosaurus’ tail bore a cluster of two-inch long conical osteoderms that could be swung at predators. 

Dino of the Week: Scansoripteryx

Type Species: Scansoriopteryx heilmanni

Classification: Dinosauria – Saurischia – Theropoda – Coelurosauria – Maniraptora – Paraves – Scansoriopterygidae

Time Period: Late Jurassic

Location: China

Diet: Carnivore 

The paravian Scansoropteryx lived in southern Laurasia (China) during the Oxfordian stage of the Late Jurassic. The sole specimen belongs to a hatchling, so the adult size is unknown. The hatchling was sparrow-sized and was likely arboreal (tree-dwelling) due to the unusually large first toe of the foot that may have been reversed in life, giving it a grasping ability for perching on tree limbs. Its elongated third finger is nearly twice as long as the second finger, and this may have supported a membranous ‘bat-like’ wing. It had short legs, and the specimen preserves pebbly scales along the upper foot. The presence of feathers in the same area may imply ‘hind wings’ similar to those of Microraptor and other paravians. The tail ended in a fan of feathers. Its jaws were wide and rounded; the lower jaw contained at least twelve teeth, and they were larger in the front of the jaws than in the back. The lower jaw bones may have been fused together, a feature otherwise known only in the oviraptosaurs. 

Dino of the Week: Mamenchisaurus

Type Species: Mamenchisaurus constructus

Classification: Dinosauria – Saurischia – Sauropoda – Gravisauria - Eusauropoda - Mamenchisauridae

Time Period: Late Jurassic

Location: China

Diet: Herbivorous   

The sauropod Mamenchisaurus had a remarkably long neck that made up half its body length and was longer than a school bus. Mamenchisaurus was wildly successful during the early Late Jurassic, as multiple species have been identified. While most species ranged between fifty to eighty-five feet in length, the largest species, M. sinocanadorum, reached 115 feet in length and weighed up to eighty tons. Mamenchisaurus’ neck vertebrae had long struts running between them that would’ve limited its ability to turn its neck too sharply. It had spatula-shaped teeth designed for chewing coarse plant material. Scientists believe that Mamenchisaurus was primarily a low browser; it would’ve swept its long neck across a wide area of vegetation, cutting a crescent-moon-shaped swathe of destruction before walking a bit forward to continue eating. Once Mamenchisaurus reached a good locale, it could feed for several hours without having to expend too much energy. A discovery of another species of Mamenchisaurus in 2001 allowed for more accurate reconstructions of this dinosaur, one part of which was the tip of the tail where the vertebra was more robust with taller neural spines. Current thinking for this construction is that the tip of the tail was modified to be a weapon as seen in some other Asian sauropods like Shunosaurus. Such a weapon may have been used in dominance competition between two males, although it may have been a defensive weapon against an attacking predator.

the month in snapshots

Halloween '22 was a hit

some scattered snapshots

Maggie and Naomi love the leaves falling from the trees

enjoying the first snow of the season

we were grateful to see Grandma Matlock one more time before she passed

enjoying some morning toons

Maggie celebrated her second birthday!

Grandma Barnhart loved our spontaneous visit; she provided the ice cream.

the celebration of Grandma Matlock's life was a somber but festive occassion
with all the extended family coming together

the year in books [X]

If this batch of books were thrown in a box, you'd grab a Sharpie and label it westerns. Johnstone's The First Mountain Man and Johnston's Carry the Wind take place in the Rocky Mountains during the beaver frenzy, around the 1830s. McMurtry's The Last Kind Words Saloon and Estleman's White Desert are set fifty years later in the post-Civil War Wild Wild West. Johnson's Another Man's Moccasins and Box's Savage Run bring us to the present time, a modern West that is no less wild for it. My least favorite book in this batch was McMurtry's The Last Kind Words Saloon, which surprises me, as I've become a fan of his work (I read through his Benderberry Quartet earlier this year and loved it). My favorite would be Johnson's latest installment in his Longmire Series. Another surprise in this batch was the fact that I didn't enjoy Johnston's Carry the Wind as much as I did his earlier works. That was a big bummer for a 600-page book.

the year in books [IX]

The latest collection in my 2022 Reading Queue has some solid reads and some not-so-solid reads. Clive Cussler's Pacific Vorftex! is the first book in his Dirk Pitt series (I want to say it's Dirk Pitt, but it may be another series, and I'm too lazy to check); it was a great read, unlike his Corsair, which was a book in his ongoing Oregon Series. The Oregon Series tends to focus more on militaristic themes whereas his other series are more focused on undersea adventures; I definitely prefer the latter. Bobby Akart's Geostorm: The Shift held promise, but his writing style was jerky; I hate jerky writing, as it demolishes the 'rhythm' of reading. Gerard Brittle's The Demonologist was an interesting recap of Ed and Lorraine Warren's career fighting demons (popularized in several fictional novels and movies, such as The Amityville Horror). The Mark and Desecration are two books in Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins' old-timey Left Behind Series; I totally disagree with their premillennial and rapture theology, and the writing is pretty crappy at times, but it's interesting nonetheless. Those books are good reads when I'm multitasking. 

Dino of the Week: Limusaurus

Type Species: Limusaurus inextricabilis

Classification: Dinosauria – Saurischia – Theropoda – Ceratosauria – Neoceratosauria – Abelisauroidea – Noasauridae – Elaphrosaurinae 

Time Period: Late Jurassic

Location: China

Diet: Omnivorous to Herbivorous   

The theropod Limusaurus was a slender animal about six feet long in adulthood. It had a long neck and legs and very small three-fingered hands. Its name literally means “impossible to extricate from mud,” in reference to the Shishugou Formation mud pits in which these specimens died. Limusaurus is fascinating in that this dinosaur underwent a dramatic morphological transformation as it aged: while juveniles were toothed, these teeth were completely lost and replaced by a beak as they reached adulthood! The change to toothlessness in adults likely corresponded to a dietary shift from omnivory to herbivory, a theory bolstered by the fact that gastroliths (stomach stones) were found in adults. Since many specimens were found together, it’s possible that Limusaurus lived in groups. These theropods were similar to the Cretaceous ornithomimids as well as the Triassic non-dinosaurian shuvosaurids; thus at least three times within the archosaur lineage, these herbivorous adaptations evolved separately in instances of convergent evolution (in which different organisms, unrelated, evolve similar traits to deal with similar environmental pressures). 

Dino of the Week: Hualianceratops

Type Species: Hualianceratops wucaiwanensis

Classification: Dinosauria – Ornithischia – Marginocephalia – Ceratopsia - Chaoyangsauridae

Time Period: Late Jurassic

Location: China

Diet: Herbivore 

Though the ceratopsians of the Cretaceous would reach phenomenal sizes, their beginnings were rather austere. Hualianceratops lived one hundred million years before Triceratops, and it’s one of the earliest primitive ceratopsians. It was only three feet long, the size of a spaniel. It was a low browsing herbivore that likely ran on its two legs. Speed would be needed in an environment prowling with large theropods. Hualianceratops had a beaked mouth that it used to clip vegetation. One specimen is known, and it consists of a partial skeleton with skull and lower jaws. The rear sides of the skull, some sacral vertebrae, the right lower hind-limb, the left calf bone, and the left foot were preserved. 

Dino of the Week: Haplocheirus

Type Species: Haplocheirus sollers

Classification: Dinosauria – Saurischia – Theropoda – Coelurosauria – Maniraptora - Alvarezsauroidea

Time Period: Late Jurassic

Location: China

Diet: Carnivore 

The six and a half foot long Haplocheirus is not only the oldest known alvarezsauroid theropod but also the largest. Prior to Haplocheirus’ discovery, the alvarezsaurs were thought to have emerged in the Cretaceous; but Haplocheirus predates these other alvarezsaurs by sixty-three million years. The alvarezsaurs were strange little theropods, and they’re identified by their strange hand morphology in which all digits but the thumb were reduced. More derived alvarezsaurs had large, clawed thumbs that seem designed for digging. Because of their small size and peculiar hand morphology, scientists believe they were insectivores that used their thumb claws to search for grub behind tree bark. Another theory is that they used their claws to break into ant and termite colonies. This insectivorous nature is bolstered by their long, elongated snout and small teeth. Haplocheirus retained two more functional fingers, giving it a three-digit claw, that would’ve enabled it to seize prey. This theropod had long legs and was likely a fast runner. It would need to be, for it lived in an environment with much larger predators than itself – such as Sinraptor and Yangchuanosaurus – that might find a little Haplocheirus to be a tasty treat. 

Dino of the Week: Guanlong

Type Species: Guanlong wucaii

Classification: Dinosauria – Saurischia – Theropoda – Tetanurae – Coelurosauria – Tyrannosauroidea - Proceratosauridae

Time Period: Late Jurassic

Location: China

Diet: Carnivore

The ten-foot-long theropod Guanlong was discovered in the Shishugou Formation of China and lived during the Oxfordian stage of the Late Jurassic. The Shushugou Formation is peculiar in that it’s comprised of ‘traps’ of vertically-stacked skeletons of numerous non-avian theropods in 3-6 foot deep pits. The pits are filled with a mix of alluvial and volcanic mudstone and sandstone, and they appear to have been created by the trampling and wallowing of large dinosaurs. In the image above, a flock of Guanlong navigate around the sauropods whose heavy pressure created depressions in the soft earth. These deep depressions filled with sediment, creating tarpit-like traps. Theropods mired in these traps would be easy prey for scavengers, and many were trampled underfoot the behemoth sauropods for whom the pits posed no threat. The high quality of preservation indicates a rapid burying of the carcasses, and evidence for scavenging of the bodies is seen in the dispersal of body parts. The area in which these pits existed was largely marshland adjoined by a small volcanic mountain range. Guanlong lived among numerous dinosaurs, small crocodilians, amphibians, and pterosaurs. Guanlong likely hunted smaller dinosaurs, early mammals, and other small animals – and it was likely preyed upon by larger theropods like Yangchuanosaurus. 

Guanlong’s name means ‘five colored crowned dragon,’ and it comes from the elaborate crest on its skull. Two specimens are known, one a juvenile and one an adult. Bone analysis indicates that Guanlong reached adulthood at seven years. The adult specimen died at twelve years of age, and the juvenile died at six years and was still growing. Guanlong had three-fingered hands; the ‘staple’ two-fingered hands of tyrannosaurs wasn’t a staple until the Cretaceous Period. Guanlong’s distinctive crest was made from fused nasal bones. It was thin as a tortilla and just over two inches tall. The crest was filled with air sacs and reminded the discoverers of the ornamental features found on modern cassowaries and hornbills. The crest rose up from the snout between the nostrils and eyes and curved rearwards in an arc above the back of the skull. These crests were certainly for ornamental display purposes, as they were far more delicate and elaborate than those found in dilophosaurid crests (in the case of dilophosaurs, the crests were likely for species-recognition and sexual display). In the juvenile specimen, the crest is restricted to the snout and is thus shorter than the crest of the adult. As Guanlong neared adulthood – and thus sexual maturity – the crest grew to its full size, and in life it was likely colorful to attract mates. Because Guanlong resembles in many ways the Early Cretaceous feathered theropod Dilong, most scientists believe it, too, was covered in feathers. 

the month in snapshots

four snapshots taken in eight minutes

kids sleep in the damnedest ways 

pre-naptime snapshots

Sunday Snapshots

Mischievous #1 and #2

Naomi wanted Ainsley to have her favorite toys

goofy girl

Ainsley sure is chunking up!