SVPCA LOOMS

[darren.naish@port.ac.uk]

America has the SVP meeting: we here in Europe have SVPCA - the 
Symposium of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy. This 
year's SVPCA is the 46th, and is being held at Bournemouth 
University, 9-12th September. Obviously it's too late to make 
bookings, and this email is just to inform everyone interested as to 
what will be going on. 

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your workload:)), SVPCA 
does not produce a proceedings or abstracts volume. I suppose this is 
kind of unfortunate because a lot of work goes into very interesting, 
original talks that often take a lot of preparation (those of you 
wondering where I have been - here is a big part of the reason).This 
year's roundup of talks is superb, and I'm thoroughly looking forward 
to the event (but not to 15-00 on the Thursday afternoon:)). Check it 
out...

The following is a taxonomically arranged list of talks that >I< am 
especially interested in: they do not reflect the full variety of 
talks, nor are they arranged in the order in which they will be 
presented.

**CROCODYLOTARSANS**

Axel HUNGERBUHLER: Aspects of the cranial morphology of the phytosaur 
_Mystriosuchus_.
Dino FREY and Steve SALISBURY: Locomotion of metriorhynchid 
crocodilians: - 'no gallop' is the only consensus.
Steve SALISBURY: The long-lost crocodile of Mr. Willet.

**PTEROSAURS**

Eric BUFFETAUT: A new crested pterosaur from the Kimmeridgian of 
Normandy.
Jean-Michel MAZIN, M-C. BUCHY, F. METAYER, G. METAIS and P. 
HANTPERGUE. New occurence about pterosaurian stance and gait from 
the trackways of Crayssec (Tithonian, France).
David UNWIN and Don HENDERSON: I don't believe it! Another paper on 
the terrestrial locomotion of pterosaurs.
Don HENDERSON: Kinematics of terrestrial locomotion in a pterosaur: a 
computational approach.
Dino FREY and Dave MARTILL: The pterosaur predicted by the toy 
industry.

**DINOSAURS**

Mike BENTON, S. BOUAZIZ, E. BUFFETAUT, D.M. MARTILL, M. OUAJA, M. 
SOUSSI and C.N. TRUMAN: Dinosaurs from the mid-Cretaceous of Tunisia.
Paul UPCHRUCH: Drifting continents and dinosaur cladograms: 
biogeographic patterns in the Mesozoic.
Paul BARRETT: Dinosaur-angiosperm coevolution revisited.

 - THEROPODS (incl. BIRDS)

Oliver RAUHUT: _Elaphrosaurus bambergi_ and the early evolution of 
theropod dinosaurs.
Emily RAYFIELD: Finite element analysis of the snout of _Megalosaurus 
bucklandi_.
Steve and Penny HUTT: A new small theropod dinosaur from the Isle of 
Wight.
Darren NAISH: The diversity of small theropods within the Wealden 
Group rocks (Lower Cretaceous) of England.
Jean-Paul BILLON-BRUYAT: A strange didactyl trackway from the 
Tithonian of Crayssec (south western France).
Paul DAVIS and Dave MARTILL: Do dinosaurs come up to scratch?
David GOWER: Braincases, bird origins and homology assessment.
Gareth DYKE: The anatomy of _Shuvuuia_ and _Mononykus_: implications 
for the phylogeny of early birds.
Annette KRISTOFFERSEN: Avian remains from early Tertiary deposits of 
Denmark.

 - SAUROPODS

John MARTIN and Dino FREY: M Michelin's sauropods: pneumatics of 
necks

 - ORNITHISCHIANS

David NORMAN: _Probactrosaurus_ and the origin of hadrosaurs.

**MARINE REPTILES**

Chris MCGOWAN: Giant ichthyosaurs of the Late Triassic and Early 
Jurassic.
Mark EVANS: Oxford Clay plesiosaurs: the necks generation.
Leslie NOE: Cranial anatomy of the Callovian (latest Middle Jurassic) 
pliosaurs.
Colin MCHENRY: Cretaceous short-necked plesiosaurs.
Arthur CRUICKSHANK: Heterochrony and the evolution of the 
Plesiosauria.
Richard FORREST: An analysis of bite marks on sauropterygian bite 
marks.

------------------------------------------------------

There are also lots of talks on fishes and mammals, but if I try to 
write these out as well, I'll never get home tonight. There's also 
plenty of posters on display, including on such intriguing topics as 
stomach contents from _Grippia_ (BUCHY et al.), Jurassic ichthyosaurs 
from Argentina (FERNANDEZ) and a late Cretaceous aquatic bird from 
Hokkaido, Japan (KAKEGAWA). It should be great fun, and I'll post all 
the details when I return. 

DARREN NAISH
darren.naish@port.ac.uk