Saurophaganax/SVP/CMF

["Thomas R. Lipka" <trlipka@directvinternet.com>]

Hi All,

Sorry to be so aloof (on the other hand it's probably a godsend to others)
;-)
but to comment on two recent threads...

First OMNH/SVP. Since about 1997 OMNH has been essentially my second home as
far as plaeo is concerned and this year's SVP is thus _extra special_one for
me! The bulk of my collaborative work is with Rich Cifelli and his fine crew
(stay tuned for another Arundel paper resulting from that collaboration).
Also, a very good friend from childhood actually lives in Edmund (north of
OKC) and teaches at the medical school in OKC. Thus when I am in town, I
don't have to take hotel money (just beer money). This year is no exception
and the money saved gets put into going on the EK trip! I strongly urge
everyone who has an interest in the EK to sign up for the tour; of the
Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas localities of the EK. I have only been to the
main site in Atoka on a 1997 field trip with Cifelli where _Sauroposeidon_,
_Acrocanthosaurus_, Deinonychus_ and Tenontosaurus_ have been found, which
incidentally are on Oklahoma State Prison grounds!. And as I have yet to
experience Trinity/Twin Mts. Fm. sites in Texas and correlatives in Arkansas
(watch out Bubba!) I am eager to get my hands dirty. Oh yes, and there is
the stop at the diamond pipes in Arkansas.

The following are from the DML archives, from moi, and rather long but
detail the new OMNH  prior (ca. late 1999) to and just after (early 2001)
coming on line. I have no doubts that the assembled mind will revel in it's
beauty! As to further details, sorry!  You'll have to read the archives for
more. The latter URL goes into some detail of the mounts - especially that
of the _Saurophaganax_ attacking an _Apatosaurus_ mount and the really cool
"Dinovator".

http://www.cmnh.org/dinoarch/1999Sep/msg00371.html

http://www.cmnh.org/dinoarch/2001Apr/msg00026.html

Also, my good friend Matt Wedel's anecdote about the old OMNH.... As I
mentioned previously, I first visited Rich at the old lab where the
gymnasium was used to temporarily house specimens earmarked for the new
museum. At this point in time, _Saurophaganax_ was just a disarticulated
skull and mandible lying upside down on a table along with a partial
_Pentaceratops_ mount nearby. And I also remember a _Tenontosaurus_ fully
mounted but with red flagging tape through its nostrils so workers would not
bump into it during the course of their work! Come to think of it, I have
pictures of all three stages of OMNH's evolution. One of these years I'll
get around to putting up a web page...
 And yes, the then yet to be named _Sauroposeidon_ cervical verts were still
in their jackets. We all pretty much knew then that this was no
_Pleurocoelus_ or _Astrodon_ despite the fact that "Astrodon" like teeth
were found at the same locality. In fact, they were essentially  identical
in both size and morphology to some Arundel Astrodon teeth I had brought
along for comparison, so much so that had the Antlers and Arundel material
somehow become mixed up, I would be hard pressed to tell which ones came
from which horizon!

And as to the CMF's age (or at least the parts I am interested in) click on
the theropod URL below for an on line version of my 1998 Arundel theropod
paper. In it I go into a tad bit of paleobiogeography and correlation of the
Arundel Clay with other important EK horizons. See also refs cited therein
as I don't have them handy to cite here. Roughly the late Early Aptian
Arundel Clay (or the Aptian-Albian Potomac Fm.) of Maryland _seems_ to
correlate with the Yellow Cat and/or Ruby Ranch Mbr (IIRC) of the CMF; Units
IV-VII of the Cloverly Fm, Antlers Fm (Oklahoma) and lower part of the
Trinity Grp/Twin Mts. Fm. (TX). There are a number of other EK deposits but
it seems that for the Aptian _vertebrate_ faunas, these are the main ones.

That's about it for now.

Thomas R. Lipka
Geobiological Research
Baltimore, Md. USA

http://www.glue.umd.edu/~lfsxdth/lipka/theropod.html

http://www.glue.umd.edu/~lfsxdth/neoceratopsian/index.html