Shortnecked Pliesiosaur Gastroliths

[MBell16766@aol.com]

On Friday 15 Aug 1997 Mickey Rowe relayed Kenneth Carpenter's reply to what
(I guess) was my posting about plesiosaur gastroliths. Carpenter states,"No
short neck have them and only long necked do." I was able to contact Dr.Bruce
Schumacher out in the field near Oacoma, South Dakota, last night, and he
confirms that we have several taxa of "short necks' with gastrolith packages
in situ. He has one from the Belle Fourche Shale he excavated from downtown
Rapid City and another one from the Greenhorn Limestone that is very likely a
new taxon that will rock the boat a little bit. I also believe that Martin
and Kennedy published on stones from a Polycotylus/Dolichorhynchops from the
Gammon Ferruginous/Sharon Springs contact that also had another polycotylid's
tooth impaling a finger bone published in _The Proceedings of the South
Dakota Academy of Science_ 7 or 8 years ago. They may not be the pickup truck
load of rip-rap that was in one of our Alzadosaurs, but they are perfectly
good gastroliths nonetheless. And, weren't there gastroliths in the type
specimen of Peloneustes? At any rate, I'm not out to flim-flam anyone. I try
to deal only in the straight poop as I see it (what a motto!). Karen Chin
deals in straight coprolite.

As an added, and unrelated, note I have recently received a very nice letter
from Mauricio Anton, the illustrator of the magnificent _The Big Cats and
Their Fossil Relatives_. He tells be that a number of drawings for the
article about cats that he did for the National Geographic weren't used but
are avalable at NatGeo's website: www.nationalgeographic.com. I'm going nuts
because AOL gives me the hook before it can completely download.

Thanks, now it's back to a summer's idyll in New Jersey, Dan Varner.