Pterosaur Meeting 2nd Circular

["Unwin, Dr D.M." <dmu1@leicester.ac.uk>]

Dear All,
 
Dave Hone asked me to forward the second circular for the pterosaur meeeting 
scheduled for September 2007 in Munich to the vrtpaleo list. So, here it is:
 
 
Dear Pterosaurologists,

My apologies for the delay in the second circular. I had intended that 
this go out a month ago, but various deadlines etc. have got in the way 
and held things up. This circular is designed to bring everyone up to 
date with the developments of the meeting and to invite those who have 
expressed an interest in confirming their attendance and to ask for 
more abstracts.

For those who missed the original announcement the meeting will be held 
in the Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und Geologie 
(Bavarian State Collection for Palaeontology and Geologie) in Munich, 
Germany. It will be held from the 10th to the 14th of September, 2007. 
This will include 2 days of talks (in English), a day of open 
discussions and a field trip to the famous Jura Museum in Eichstätt.

1. Exhibition. Each year the museum arranges a small special exhibition 
on some aspect of palaeontology. With the plans for our meeting in full 
swing, naturally the pterosaurs have been selected and thus there will 
be a small bonus to your attendance as you will have an opportunity to 
see the display. In practical terms this is of course a nightmare as I 
can expect 50 experts to come in and criticise what I have written!

2. Peter. I was able to catch Peter Wellnhofer at our Christmas party 
and he confirmed to me that he is coming to the meeting (which is 
good). He was delighted to hear that many of his old friends and 
colleagues will be coming and said he looks forward to seeing you all. 
As far as I can tell he is still not aware that it is being done in his 
honour. For those of you who know him, please feel free to contact him 
and mention that you hope to see him at the 'pterosaur meeting' but 
hopefully we can keep this a secret until he arrives!

3. Abstracts. Many of you have confirmed you will be speaking, but I 
have had few talk title or abstracts. Please do send them in as soon as 
possible. The closing date for submission is the 31st of May. This is a 
hard deadline and will not be extended. We are operating on 
first-come-first-served so if you wait until the end of May we are 
likely to have no more speaking slots left.
We are taking abstracts and title for both talks and posters. The 
latter is effectively unlimited (we have space for about 60 at a push) 
but we are limited in our numbers of talks.
Although the meeting is focused on pterosurs, the meeting is also to 
celebrate Peter's work so talks and posters on Archaeopteryx, the 
Solhnofen or other areas of his research are also welcome.

4. Special volume of Zitteliana. As stated, this is scheduled for mid 
2008 and will be edited by Eric Buffetaut and myself. We are willing to 
entertain any papers on pterosaurs whether the authors attend the 
meeting or not, however, priority will be given to attendees. Please 
let us know if you wish to contribute to this volume. We expect to 
receive funding for its publication, meaning that we are able to keep 
the registration fees to a minimum (see below).

5. Meeting structure. The meeting will take place from the 10th to the 
14th of September 2007. Monday (the 10th) will just be registration and 
an 'icebreaker' party. The 11th and 12th will be dedicated to talks 
with the conference dinner on the evening of the 12th. The 13th is 
dedicated to open forum discussions in the morning with the afternoon 
left for an extended poster session and a chance for people to examine 
many of the museum pterosaur collections and other specimens. The 14th 
is reserved for the optional 'field trip' to Eichstätt.

6. Registration fees. Sadly we are still waiting to hear the costs of 
the field trip transport and the conference diner so we are unable to 
fix the registration fees at this time. However, we *hope* that this 
will come to less than 50-60 Euros and this will include the field trip 
and dinner as well as registration. We will announce the price as soon 
as possible, though obviously we expect it to be cheap compared to many 
other meetings.

7. The website. http://flugsaurier.blogspot.com 
<http://flugsaurier.blogspot.com/>  is still running. I 
shall put this circular on it today. All major announcements will come 
by e-mail but quick updates and various bits are on the site and is a 
good source of reference.

8. I will be away from the office on holiday and at a meeting from the 
20th of February until the 19th of March. I will therefore be unable to 
respond to e-mails sent at that time. If you are desperate to contact 
me then I can be contacted on dwe_hone@yahoo.com 
<https://appel.rz.hu-berlin.de/squirrelmail/src/compose.php?send_to=dwe_hone%40yahoo.com>
  but please be patient 
for replies as I am on holiday and away from the office.

9. Accommodation. Many of you have asked about accommodation. A large 
number of hotels and hostels are listed online. You can make 
significant savings my booking double rooms. For those who wish to 
share, please let me know and i can put your names and contact details 
on the website so that you can get together to make arrangements for 
yourselves.

10. Attendees. In an effort to drum up a little more interest I would 
like to mention that so far we have confirmations from the likes of 
Chris Bennett, Dave Unwin, Dino Frey, Eric Buffetaut, Alex Kellner, 
Dave Martill, Helmut Tichlinger and around 20 more. For those with any 
interest in pterosaurs (as well as flight mechanics, cladistics, 
evolution and palaeoecology) this promises to be a very interesting 
meeting.

Thanks again to those who have assisted in the preparation and planning 
of this meeting, I look forward to seeing you all in September.

Dave Hone


PS My apologies. Due to some e-mail difficulties some of you may 
receive this twice, sorry. Again, if there are people missing from this 
list, do please circulate the e-mail to them.


_______________________________________________
Dr David W.E. Hone
Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und Geologie
Richard-Wagner-Straße 10
D-80333 München
Germany

Tel: +49 / (0)89 / 2180 6613
Fax: +49 / (0)89 / 2180 6601