Show your love!

Some of the Burpee Museum folks and PaleoFest speakers visited the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago after the 2020 ‘Fest. I hadn’t been there since 2012, and a lot had changed. More on that in future posts, maybe.

These things just catch my eye, I can’t help it. Note that the corkscrew features a distinct medially directed femoral head, the bulge in the lateral margin of the proximal portion that is characteristic of titanosaurs, and a straight shaft.

Here’s how I got my start in research. Through a mentorship program, I started volunteering at the Oklahoma Museum of Natural History in the spring of 1992, when I was a junior in high school.

{.size-large .wp-image-15750 .aligncenter loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“15750” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2019/02/07/bone-cancer-in-a-triassic-stem-turtle/pappochelys-osteosarcoma-haridy-et-al-2019-fig-2/” orig-file=“https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/pappochelys-osteosarcoma-haridy-et-al-2019-fig-2.jpg” orig-size=“704,1035” comments-opened=“1”

The week before last I was fortunate to be the Science Guest of Honor at Norwescon 41 in Seattle (as threatened back when). I had a fantastic time.

By contrast to the very delicate pelican humerus and ulna in the previous post, here is the left femur of Aepyornis OUMNH 4950 — an “elephant bird” from Antolanbiby, Madagascar.

Several drinks later, they all die and somehow become skeletonised, and that’s how they all land up on a table in my office: {.aligncenter .size-large .wp-image-13338 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“13338” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2016/04/14/a-fox-a-badger-a-pheasant-and-a-monitor-lizard-walk-into-a-bar/2016-04-14-11-12-52/” orig-file=“https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/2016-04-14-11-12-52.jpg” orig-size=“2560,1920”

I was a bit disappointed to hear David Attenborough on BBC Radio 4 this morning, while trailing a forthcoming documentary, telling the interviewing that you can determine the mass of an extinct animal by measuring the circumference of its femur.