Re: New Nanotyrannus specimen?

["Robert G. Tuck Jr." <tuckr@digital.net>]

When the July air temperature reached about 120°F in southern Fars Province,
Iran, far south of Persepolis and Shiraz, I learned to crawl under the shade
of my Land Rover and rest, exhausted, until the sun set. The only local
water available turned out to be an alkaline potion that not only failed to
quench the thirst but also proved to have rather dramatic gastrointestinal
effects.

To this day, I fondly remember the seemingly miraculous arrival of a
dust-cloud headed by a lorry bearing small Pepsi-Cola (Persian:
"Peepsi-Koolah") bottles and ice on its way to the Persian Gulf. I've been a
partisan of the brand ever since.

Needless to say, the local southern Fars vertebrate fauna long ago had
figured all this out and had adapted accordingly.  So had  the ancient kings
of the Persian Empire, who had summered in the cool mountain recesses of old
Ectbatana (present-day Hamadan) in the Zagross Mountains. Characteristically
(it seems), I was found myself in Hamadan in mid-*winter*, when the
temperature dipped to -30°F and nearly killed me (my Land Rover had no
heater!). A pot-bellied stove in a roadside tea house (to which I was
carried by my comrades and concerned Iranian villagers), and a
London-educated Iranian physician with modern antibiotics in Abadan saved my
life.

Some years earlier, I had collected Permian Texas Redbed vertebrate fossils
at midday during July.

But, of course, I was younger then, an undergraduate, and even dumber in
those days. I also wanted to impress my professor, the late vertebrate
paleontologist Dr. Richard J. Selton, Michigan State University.
Unfortunately, his star student at the time was some upstart named Robert J.
Carroll.

-= Tuck =-

----- Original Message -----
From: <Danvarner@aol.com>
To: <dinosaur@usc.edu>
Sent: Thursday, August 08, 2002 11:40 AM
Subject: Re: New Nanotyrannus specimen?


> In a message dated 8/7/02 9:40:57 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> dino.hunter@cox.net writes:
>
>
> << Ever been collecting in 100 and up degrees? I have, but if you start in
the
> cool of the morning and keep going till the hot afternoon, it's not that
bad
> because you've become acclimated to the heat. I've gone in from 115
degrees
> to an air-conditioned building and then came out and that was when I felt
> the heat! So I don't know why they're digging at night. You'd have to have
> lots of lights to do so. >>
>
>         Just before the heat exhaustion strikes the world turns a milky
blue
> color. Hot black shale at 115F is fun, but to my mind nothing beats
Niobrara
> Chalk when it gets oven hot. How the Sternbergs did it for all those years
in
> Kansas where it gets humid too is way beyond me. Plus that horrible water
> they had to drink. But they lived to ripe old ages. Tough people.
>        I wonder if the Burpee crew wasn't using the night hours for
scalping
> overburden. The website shows folks digging in daylight. DV
>
>