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.