I'm Back!!!

[tlford@ix.netcom.com]

Well, I can get my e-mails now. Yehh!!! I got the new CD program the day 
before I was going to go to the Tuscon, Fossil, Rock and Gem show, so I had 
to wait and install it when I got back.


I talked to Peter Larson for a bit, glad he's out. Funny thing about that 
hole thing, the people who proscuted him, well, one has died from a heart 
attack, another hit a tree skiing, yep died, another one is doing something 
else in land buying and nobody likes him, and the judge has been been 
judged by attornies and other judges as the WORST judge.

Ok, what did I learn? There are more skull elements to Stan, if you can 
believe that. There is a bone connecting the? well I can say no more, Neal 
Larson will be giving a poster on it at Dinofest. 

There was a Big Ass (T.H. Tradmark) Tylosaurus, nearly 6 foot skull and is 
44 or so feet long. Mike Treibold casted it and will be at the Sternberg 
Museum.

Ok, the really kool thing, a dorsal vertebra of a Spinosaurus from Morocco. 
Yes a dorsal, nearly complete, just missing half of the neural spine, and 
you know how long that is. It's 61 cm tall, with the neural spine 44cm, and 
the front of the centrum is 13 cm. The really strange this is that the 
transverse process is nearly horizontal!!! It measures 41cm from tip to 
tip. It really looks like a crocodilian. I asked Peter about it and he said 
it sure does, but so does the skull, but he was referreing it as a theropod 
mimicking a crocodile. Also, a tip of a dentary, etc.

Some friends of mine have a store and they have a bunch of stuff from 
Morocco, not the Spinosaurus. They have a skull of a possible pliosaur, 
(new as far as I can tell), but it's in negative releif. Would it be 
possible to describe it and name it even though it's not in really good 
shape and a negative mold? I'll ask Ralph to see what he says.

Tracy