the month in snapshots

Maggie likes taking selfies with da-da

I loved spending my 35th birthday with my tribe

goofball

the girls with Pepaw and Memaw

carseat antics

the year in books [VIII]

These four books advocate what's been called the Young Earth Creationism viewpoint, in which Genesis 1-11 is taken as literally as possible. By dating backwards through the Bible (and assuming no genealogical gaps), they put the date of creation (which occurred over the time-frame of six solar days) around 6000 years ago. Shortly after creation, Adam and Eve fall in Genesis 3, and 1,656 years later, the Lord floods the entire earth. Noah's Flood was global in extent, and it caused the rifting of the continents and created new mountain ranges. After the Flood, mankind began rebuilding, and about 120 years later, they tried to build a tower into heaven and were scattered throughout the earth with different languages. This would've been around 2350 BC. Three hundred years after Babel, the Lord calls Abram out of Mesopotamia.

I used to mock Six Day Creationism. It's funny, too, because up into my senior year of high school, I was a staunch Young Earth Creationist. I started having doubts about the literal interpretation of Genesis - my biggest hang-ups were, and continue to be, the nature of the fossil record and geological strata - and was comforted when I discovered during college that the creation accounts needn't be read absolutely literally. You can disagree with Six Day Creationism and still be an orthodox Christian, since the biblical text can be interpreted in a different manner. It was around this time that I began cozying up to Theistic Evolution, the idea that evolution certainly happened but that it was directed by God and not by random processes. The evidence for macro-evolution is scant, however, and it's filled with all sorts of problems and holes, raising more questions than it answers and generally making a mess of things. On top of all this, macro-evolution is mathematically impossible. As I began to see this in clearer detail, I shifted more towards Old Earth Creationism, in which the earth is billions of years old and God has been creating through that time - not by 'working through' evolution but by creating different species according to His whims. This is what the fossil record seems to entail.

All this aside, I still have my doubts. Genesis 1-11 is sort of an enigma for me, and I've never come to 100% certainty in any opinion on the matter. While I believe theistic evolution is bankrupt for the simple fact that the theory of evolution is incompatible with physics, mathematics, and the knowledge we've accumulated, I find both Young Earth Creationism and Old Earth Creationism to be justifiable interpretations of the creation accounts and scientific data. Both have their own host of problems. As for the moment, though I find the idea of Young Earth Creationism fascinating, I'm leaning more towards the Old Earth interpretation of Genesis 1-2. That being said, I still believe in a rather recent special creation of humankind, an historical Adam and Eve, an historical Flood - whether global or regional, I'm still on the fence about - as well as an historical Tower of Babel. When it comes to Genesis 1-11, then, my take is like a quasi-historical approach. I'm an odd duck. 

the year in books [VII]

These six short books - amounting to about a 500-600 page book all its own - are excellent introductions to various native American wars in our nation's history (though some of these wars, such as King Philip's War, the French and Indian War, and Pontiac's War extend farther back than 1776). Henry Freeman's Hourly History series has a whole slew of books on native American history in North America and Mesoamerica, and so I've decided to dedicate some time this year to refreshing my knowledge. 

While reading native American histories, it's always good to pair the reading with corn liqour and Marie Sioux. Her Buried in Teeth blooms with nostalgia for the days of my (relative) youth:

the year in books [VI]

My renewed interest in the Bronze Age Hittites a sparked a desire to rehash my knowledge in general Bronze Age history. These little books - from two editors, one Hourly History and another Charles River - are only about a hundred pages long and serve as great reviews of vast swathes of material. Sometimes you want to refresh your intellect on ancient Egypt, but you don't want to read a 450 page book - that's where these gems come in. Here are a few snapshots of what the Mesopotamian city of Ur would've looked like during Abram's day around 2000 BC:

Dino of the Week: Isaberrysaura

Type Species: Isaberrysaura mollensis

Classification: Dinosauria – Ornithischia – Thyreophora – Stegosauria 

Time Period: Middle Jurassic

Location: South America (Argentina) 

Diet: Herbivore 

Isaberrysaura was an early stegosaur of South America that had yet to be regulated to fully quadrupedal locomotion. It grew to sixteen to twenty feet in length, making it slightly longer than its Laurasian contemporary Lexovisaurus. Its teeth were heterodont (of different types), and similarities in dentition with modern iguanas indicates that Isaberrysaura may have been omnivorous. We know for certain that it ate plants, because the type specimen was discovered with its stomach contents fossilized for science’s delight. Within the rib cage, a mass of fossilized seeds was discovered, the first preserved meal uncovered in a basal ornithischian. Two types of seeds were present: the largest were preserved in three layers (an outer fleshy sarcotesta, the sclerotesta, and an inner layer that may have been the nucellus); these larger seeds belonged to a cycad of the Zamiineae family. The origin of the smaller seeds are unknown. Because the cycad seeds were swallowed whole, rather than chewed, we can infer that they were in the first stages of digestion in Isaberrysaura’s gut. Scientists speculate that its gut contained enzyme-producing bacteria that aided in the digestion of the tougher seed material. 

Dino of the Week: Lexivosaurus

Type Species: Lexivosaurus durobrivensis

Classification: Dinosauria – Ornithischia – Thyreophora – Stegosauria

Time Period: Middle Jurassic

Location: Europe (England, France)

Diet: Herbivore

Lexivosaurus is the first of the ‘standard-looking’ stegosaurs that would rise to prominence in the Late Jurassic. It’s been found in England and France, though it’s more common in England. The first discoveries were made near Lyons, France, and the fossil remains belonged to three individuals and included isolated bits of bones, plates, and spikes. The three individuals were a range of ages, from juvenile to adult, indicating a family group. Lexivosaurus’ name comes from the Lexovix people, one of the ancient Gallic tribal groups from what is now Lyons, France. 

Lexivosaurus was smaller than later stegosaurs, but it was ‘small’ only in comparison: it reached sixteen and a half feet long and weighed around two tons. It was a low-browsing herbivore that roamed the wooded islands that were scattered throughout the shallow seas of prehistoric Europe. Lexivosaurus has back plates that run from its neck to its tail; these plates are narrow and short rather than broad and angular, and it had several pairs of long spikes on the tail. These were likely defensive weapons used against attacking predators such as Magnosaurus, Poekipleuron, and Megalosaurus. Another defensive weapon was the meter-long shoulder spikes that projected from the upper rear part of the front limbs, below the characteristic twin rows of bony plates along the top of its neck and back. While older reconstructions of Lexivosaurus place the spines on the hips, modern paleontologists tend to put them on the shoulders. These spikes may have been used as visual displays – for courtship, fighting rival mates, or species identification – or they may have been defensive weapons, like the tail spikes. If a predator were attacking from the front, Lexivosaurus could thrust itself forward, driving the spikes into the flesh of its assailant. 

Dino of the Week: Bellusaurus

Type Species: Bellusaurus sui

Classification: Dinosauria – Saurischia – Sauropoda - Gravisauria - Eusauropoda - Neosauropoda - Macronaria

Time Period: Middle Jurassic

Location: China

Diet: Herbivore

Bellusaurus’ name is derived from the Latin bellus, meaning ‘small, delicate, beautiful.’ Seventeen individuals of this sauropod were found in a single quarry, suggesting that the herd had been killed in a flash flood. While this is tragic in its own right, the tragedy is compounded by the fact that they all appear to be juveniles. They measured only sixteen feet long, and bone studies indicate that they weren’t fully grown. One must wonder where the adults were when tragedy struck. Because there were no such things as ‘sauropod day cares’ (at least according to our understanding of sauropod social behavior), we must assume that the juveniles traveled with a much larger herd. One explanation is that when the flood hit, the larger adults were able to ‘weather the storm,’ but the lighter and smaller juveniles were swept away underfoot, only to be deposited miles away in a jumbled, rotting mess. A tragedy indeed. 

Dino of the Week: Magnosaurus

Type Species: Magnosaurus nethercombensis

Classification: Dinosauria – Saurischia – Theropoda - Carnosauria - Megalosauroidea -  Megalosauria - Megalosauridae - Eustreptospondylinae

Time Period: Middle Jurassic

Location: Europe (England)

Diet: Carnivore

Magnosaurus used to be classified as an early species of Megalosaurus. Along with many other as-yet-unidentified theropods, it was part of the ‘Megalosaurus Wastebin,’ a drop-off for disarticulated theropod remains that look a lot like Megalosaurus but may be other creatures. In 2010 a Cambridge University paleontologist Roger Benson took a detailed look at the remains of a juvenile theropod and realized that, because the jawbone had a number of characteristics unseen in any other dinosaur (including Megalosaurus), they must belong to an entirely new genera. Thus Magnosaurus, its own kind of theropod, came into existence. Magnosaurus reached about thirteen feet in length and weighed between five hundred pounds and half a ton, and it hunted among the wooded islands of prehistoric England. It may be one of the first ‘stiff-tailed’ tetanuran theropods, making it a distant ancestor of the better-known Cretaceous theropods Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor. 

Dino of the Week: Lingwulong

Type Species: Lingwulong shenqi

Classification: Dinosauria – Saurischia – Sauropoda – Gravisauria - Eusauropoda - Neosauropoda - Diplodocoidea - Flagellicaudata - Dicraeosauridae 

Time Period: Early Jurassic

Location: China

Diet: Herbivore

Lingwulong was a sauropod that lived in southern Laurasia sometime between the late Toarcian stage of the Early Jurassic and through the Bajocian stage of the Middle Jurassic. The fossils discovered belong to seven to ten individuals at different stages of growth, indicating that they belonged to a family herd. These sauropods had U-shaped snouts and grew up to fifty feet in length. Lingwulong is considered a ‘neosauropod’ (or ‘new sauropod’), the group to which most sauropods belong. The neosauropods are composed of two subgroups: Diplodocoidea and Macronaria. The neosauropods were the largest land animals to have ever lived, and Lingwulong is the earliest known of the group. It’s considered a dicraeosaurid, a ‘sister group’ to the diplodocids. Dicraeosaurids are differentiated from the diplodocids by their relatively small body size and short necks.