Various things

[Ralph Chapman <MNHAD002@SIVM.SI.EDU>]

Hey gang: I've just heard from Tony Thulborn who has made the radical
suggestion that we actually read the paper (he did this incredibly nicely
by the way) and I have finally obtained a copy I can read this weekend,
so will do so and report on how he addressed many of the things we've
talked about. Read the paper - what a concept!

I hope Ken Carpenter will be feeling better, twould be nice to hear
his view on some of the discourse. Again, testing hypotheses within even
such difficult paleo/history cricumstances is quite possible and can be
done in examples such as the mimicry one. Proving is not in the cards,
but you can't really do that in most of physics, for example, either
and that's why that and all our sciences continue to evolve.

We are now blessed with a bunch of excellent sculptors who are doing
lots of stuff and many are evolving towards casting. I have a few things
by Paul Sorton including an early anky (it's too skinny, but Paul did this
real early and has since done amazing and big ankylosaur stuff -
Mike Brett-Surman has one as well as an Iguanodon), a deinonychus that's
wonderful and about 6" or so high, a cast of a dimetrodon sculpture he
did which is great, and a pair of head-butting Stegoceras (sorry Ken -
actually did this for historical reasons although we certainly can
talk about head-butting some time in the future - not for a while though).
I would suggest people just see if they can worm into the hearts of a
good dino sculptor near them and patronize them. Sometimes they are
more reasonably priced than you would think. Paul has a huge sauropod that
is incredible and the best T. rex sculpture I've ever seen - which I
think he is casting.

I talked to Mike Triebold who collected the articulated pachycephalosaur
and it sounds great, although we'll have to wait until Dale Russell
finishes what he's doing. There are possible big implications for
both Pachycephalosaurus and Stygimoloch.

The Dinosaur Society does indeed have a product review board which
right now is Mike Brett-Surman, Jim Farlow (chair) and myself. It
makes for interesting times. I hear the Society's catalog is coming out
soon. All three of us get some input from this list, by the way.

Ray mentioned getting dinos to a good forensic person to see what they
can do. There are three answers to that. 1) would indeed be ineteresting,
2) actually paleo people are great forensic people and ahead of their
forensic counterparts in many ways, and behind in others, and 3) some
of us have done forensic work - I've worked with a forensic guy here in
the NMNH, which traditionally has a great forensic tradition and interacts
with the FBI a lo. Doug Owlsey is the guy, and he and another of ours
Doug Ubelaker (the Dougs) were the guys who pulled out much of the stuff
in Waco. Owlsey and I were able to identify Dahmer's first murder victim -
the one he bashed up multiple times and scattered on his familial yard
way before going to Wisconsin. We combined Doug's expertise with my
morphometric expertise and techniques I've been working on to try and
identify dinos with very partial remains. We were able to nail it with
half a molar and one cervical vertebra. Was neat. One paper's out and two
others are in the works from this. Forensic stuff is incredibly paleonto-
logical and is like being home to me while doing it. Although most dinos
don't smell as bad as some of things the Dougs get.

Finally - trilobite models. There are ways to cast nicely without
destroying the original. We used to have chocolate trilobites at the
paleo Christmas parties here (Phacops, of course). I'm going to be
experimenting with a 3-d laser surface scanner soonish and hope to
progress from computer modelling of the results to prototyping - making
casts of the results. The ability to change scales, etc.  and still
do it non-destructively are too tempting not to explore.

I'll shut up now. Ralph Chapman NMNH