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.