Re: Dinofest Report #2 (and final)

[Jonathon Woolf <jwoolf@erinet.com>]

Ralph,

There were a few other interesting points -- well, a _lot_ of other interesting
points, but these stand out as especially good:

Paul Olsen gave back-to-back talks about bone fossils and ichnofossils from the
Newark Supergroup.  Both very good.  I thought the high point came in the second
talk, about ichnofossils, where he both described and showed an unnamed, 
previously
undescribed theropod footprint that had well-defined digits III and IV, and a 
very
odd looking digit II that made the whole thing look suspiciously like a 
dromaeosaur
footprint.  In Latest Triassic rocks, mind you.

Rene Hernandez-Rivera gave a spellbinding talk on some shockingly productive
dinosaur sites currently being worked in eastern Mexico.  Peter Dodson followed
that with a talk on the Madagascar dinofauna.

Not dinosaurian but certainly evolution-related was the very last talk of the 
whole
symposium, on a type of fossil fish from the mid-Carboniferous that appears to
preserve the primitive jaw for all gnathostomes.

In his Saturday talk on North American oviraptorosaurs, Hans-Dieter Sues said 
his
research implied that arctometatarsaly arose multiple times, and that
Arctometatarsalia is not a valid taxon.

Bruce Mohn gave a short talk that efficiently killed any notion that 
compsognathids
like _Sinosauropteryx_ were adapted for an aquatic or semiaquatic existence.

-- JSW