Re: dracrorex and National Geographic

[Adrienne Mayor <afmayor@aol.com>]

The article is an essay musing on dinosaurs by a famous 75 yr old  
novelist, John Updike (b. 1932).
I don't think it is intended as a scientific piece, and I'm sure  
Updike wrote it before the SVP meetings.


On Nov 27, 2007, at 7:14 AM, Jerry D. Harris wrote:

> I just saw this month's National Geographic magazine. Isn't it a tad
embarrassing to see "Dracorex hogswartsia" on the cover, and in the  
article?:
when "Dracorex" was recently outed (along with "Stygiomoloch") as  
growth stages
of Pachycephalosaurus (Horner et al, SVP2007): not even mentioned in the
article. I find it pretty surprising that National Geographic would  
sit so
behind the times like this.

   Since it's not a news magazine and therefore isn't really  
expected to update itself merely days before hitting print, I suspect  
that _NGM_ gets its articles lined up for future issues several  
months in advance.  Thus, I suspect that the "Bizarre Dinosaurs"  
article was written and laid out before SVP came around.  I know for  
certain that at least one NG person was at the meeting, but I don't  
know that said person had any power to change the article after the  
meeting (if indeed said person saw Horner's talk -- I myself missed  
it).  Maybe the talk wasn't reported.  Maybe it was, but the editors  
said "Too late to change it."  Maybe the editors said "We could  
change it, but that's the kind of thing that would require some  
discussion and we don't have room for that."  Who knows?  I agree it  
would have been nice to have the newest, most up-to-date info in the  
article, but given the nature of the magazine, I'm not positive that  
was feasible...just a happenstance of poor timing -- if SVP had been  
a few months earlier, or the _NGM_ article a few months later, I bet  
the change would have been in there.