Re: Dinosaur papers in the latest Nature (joke)

[Marilyn Wegweiser <mdwegweiser@bsuvc.bsu.edu>]

At 2:05 PM -0600 2/22/01, Mark Perew wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Feb 2001, Marilyn Wegweiser wrote:
>
> >  Vertebrate Vomit Lags (VVLs) <grin> preserve as lovely more coherent
> >  mis-shapen flattened globs of very nasty looking etched and partially
> >  digested bits and pieces of other less fortunate vertebrates and
> >  invertebrates. They smash out lusciously when the next sedimentation
> >  event occurs. Preservation that I am most familiar with is in the
> >  marginal marine to paralic realm.
>
> I was wondering if there was a term for these things.  Gastrolites (ala
> coprolites) came to mind, but is perilously close to gastroliths, which are
> something else, of course.

I have a paper around here somewhere on them...... they are Devonian, 
mind you. Not dinosaur. Placoderms (arthrodires)  are the likely 
contributors. 

>   Is VVL the correct technical term or is that
> soemthing you made up?


It is one I made up. Let me muse on that for a while. I just called 
them "vertebrate vomit lags" during my defense. One of my committee 
members (Dr. Marine Geology; Larry Krissek) thought that I should 
perhaps us a less descriptive expression for them, although he said 
that his 7 year old thought it was very cool and asked him what they 
looked like. Guess I better pull this section out and publish on it 
separately from the rest of the stratigraphic descriptions, eh?

:)
-M