I have been a fanboy of prominent animal physiologist Knut Schmidt-Nielsen for a long time. I first encountered his papers back in the late 90s, working on my MS thesis at OU. I realized that vertebral pneumaticity in sauropods implied, among other things, that I had better get to reading about birds.

Drawing is how I understand things best, and it’s one of the ways I teach myself new subjects. My top advice for anyone wanting to be a paleontologist is “learn how to write” and “learn how to draw”, which really boil down to, “practice writing and drawing”. You only get better by doing.

I put these Book Week posts into sequence with a level of forethought about one notch above pure randomness, but a felicity emerged. It’s useful for me to cover The Last Days of the Dinosaurs after the previous three books, each for a particular reason.

Otherlands is unlike any other book I’ve encountered.

This book is squarely at the intersection of being an objectively great thing to have in the world, and a subjectively great thing to have on my gaming shelf. I’ve been playing tabletop RPGs since I was 16, and running Dungeons &

This one starts with a personal note. I’ve never blogged much about the media whirlwind that accompanied the announcement of Sauroposeidon. Rich Cifelli and I did tons of interviews, separately and together, for local and national television news, newspapers, and magazines.

I would like this book just for being funny. I would like this book just for being well-illustrated. I would like this book just for covering lots of different dinosaurs and other Mesozoic critters, some familiar and many others only recently described, from more dinosaur-bearing formations than I was previously familiar with.

I was on the road for most of August, September, and October, and in particular I made a ton of museum collections visits. When I visit a museum collection, I bring a specific set of gear that helps me get the photos, notes, and measurements that I want.

Confession time: I have yet to find a satisfyingly regular and repeatable method for measuring neural canal diameters. A LOT of dinosaurian neural canals are not cylindrical but flare out on either end, like two trumpet bells set back-to-back.

Three weeks ago, I posted three colour photos of the “Ultrasaurus” excavation at the Dry Mesa Quarry, provided by Tyler Holmes from an old dinosaur encyclopedia. Here’s the third one again: I wrote: This can’t be right.

I’ve now heard from several early-career folks some variant on this statement regarding manuscripts they intend to publish as papers: “I give the AI all my notes and it gives me a draft that isn’t perfect, but it’s easier to massage that draft into publishable shape than it would be to write it myself.” I […]