I was putting a new card in my camera and needed some test photos, so I shot what was on my desk: some random doodles from discussions with various folks, and an ostrich cervical. I love my job. Bonus SV-POW!bucks to the first person to decipher the diagram on the lower left.

Lots of love from the SV-POW!sketeers, and best wishes for 2012!

This is how Vanessa’s SO, Lane Medina, wraps a Christmas present. The young man shows promise!

As previously reported, the lot of us are in Bonn for the sauropod biology workshop. Last night we met up at the welcome reception at the Goldfuss Museum.

Here at SV-POW! we are ardently pro-turkey. As the largest extant saurischians that one can find at most butchers and grocery stores, turkeys ( Meleagris gallopavo ) are an important source of delicious, succulent data. With Thanksgiving upon us and Christmas just around the corner, here’s an SV-POW!-centric roundup of turkey-based geekery.

…a master and an apprentice. Here’s how the Wedel Lab rolls on Halloween: Check out that padawan braid. It’s official, I have the world’s coolest grad student. Although Vanessa’s choice of lightsaber is a bit worrying. Great danger I foresee in her training.

Folks.  Just don’t do this.  Just don’t. McMenamin and Schulte McMenamin’s crack-smoking GSA abstract Triassic kraken: the Berlin ichthyosaur death assemblage interpreted as a giant cephalopod midden isn’t going to do anything for them except attract well-deserved ridicule; and it’s not going to do anything for the field of palaeontology except attract un deserved ridicule.  It’s a lose-lose.

Not always solemnly.

Something about this photo from the last post has been bugging me all week. It’s the expression on my face. The set jaw, the thrust forward chin, the cocked eyebrow…I knew I had seen these things before. It took me a while, but I was finally able to place it. My doppelganger: If this is an omen, I have no idea what it means. Science will resume shortly.