Remember I picked up those three sheep skulls (and some other bones, including a complete neck) from a shallow pit in a field near where we live? Here is first of the skulls, cleaned up and photographed in orthogonal views.

Just over a year ago, in his write-up of the Edinburgh SVPCA, Matt included a photo of me standing in front of a Giant Irish Elk ( Megaloceros ), positioned so that the antlers seem to be growing out of my head. Matt finished his post with a background-free version of that photo, and commented: It has come to pass.

Just a quick photo-post today. A couple of months ago, walking around the fields near our house, I found a broad shallow pit with a lot of a sheep skeletal elements in it. I took my youngest son out on an expedition, and we rescued the good material. I’ve cleaned up the first two (of three) skulls. Here is the smaller of the two — which is also more complete, and the big one has lost its nasals.

A couple of times now, I’ve pitched in an abstract for a Masters project looking at neck cartilage, hoping someone at Bristol will work on it with me co-supervising, but so far no-one’s bitten.

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I was skim-reading the Political Studies Association’s evidence submitted to RCUK’s review. I was struck by one part that perpetuates a common but completely unfounded misapprehension: There may be concern, but it’s misplaced. Using CC By does not allow your work to be misrepresented.

I’ve always thought of SVPCA as a pretty well gender-balanced conference: if not 50-50 men and women, then no more than 60-40 slanted towards men. So imagine my surprise when I ran the actual numbers. 1. Delegates. I went through the delegate list at the back of the abstracts book, counting the men and women. Those I knew, or whose name made it obvious, I noted down;

In the last post I pointed out some similarities between Davide Bonadonna’s new Spinosaurus painting and Brian Engh’s Spinosaurus *painting from 2010.

UPDATE the next day: Since I published this post, it’s become clear that the similarities in the two images are in fact convergence. Davide Bonadonna got in touch with Mike and me, and he has been very gracious and conciliatory. In fact, he volunteered to let us post the making-of images for his painting, which I will do shortly.