Ben Creisler
I think there was some misunderstanding here over my comment about more "substance" in the DAWNDINO online videos. My intent was I was not to compare them to a nationally broadcast PBS television show, which is something completely different. I was thinking of the many short videos that are currently being posted online by museums and institutions (Museum of the Rockies, Royal Tyrrell Museum, etc.), which I have posted to the DML as well. These short videos seem mainly done as a way to keep in touch with the public or as part of online teaching (or entertainment) for school kids stuck at home. While these videos are appreciated and enjoyable, they are often a bit light on science and substance for adult paleontology buffs on the DML.
There is currently a spectrum in terms of depth of content for online only videos that are posted by museums and educational institutions.Â
I have enjoyed the popular PBS Eons online videos, which are generally accurate and informative, but intentionally avoid some of the more technical details.Â
By contrast, there are online talks from official meetings that are often highly technical with content not always easily accessible to non-specialists.
The Royal Tyrrell Museum speaker series talks (suspended because of the pandemic) have nearly always hit the sweet spot between substantial content and need for more technical knowledge, and I more than often learn something I didn't know or didn't understand in detail before, especially for non-dino presentations. I think the DAWNDINO videos also hit this sweet spot. There are also interviews with experts online that often provide substantial information on paleo topics. Â
To the racism issue, I am currently working on a post for the DML and VertPaleo list about generic and specific names that honor earlier paleontologists and other researchers who have legacies of racism, eugenics, and other objectionable ideas (including Georges Cuvier, Louis Agassiz, Edward Drinker Cope, Henry Fairfield Osborn, etc.).
For example, I was taken aback to see the newly published fish taxon Agassizilia in the August 2020 issue of Cretaceous Research, named in "honour of Swiss palaeontologist and pioneering palaeoichthyologist Louis R. Agassiz" for his work on fossil fishes.
As people should be aware, Agassiz (famous for recognizing the ice ages and as an opponent of evolution and Darwin) was also a virulent racist who argued that different races had been created separately, with superior and inferior races, justifying slavery. He conducted "scientific" studies on black slaves from plantations in South Carolina in 1850 to show the inferiority of Africans, using daguerreotype photography that included people shown completely naked and displayed more like animals.
In recent years, there have been many efforts in both Switzerland and the United States to remove statues and other monuments representing Agassiz and to change place names originally meant to honor him. There was also a lawsuit against Harvard for displaying Agassiz's slave photos without permission of the living relatives of the people depicted.
To completely ignore his appalling legacy outside of paleontology and name a new fish Âto "honor" Agassiz is major disconnect with recent developments such as the renaming of the journal Copeia to Ichthyology and Herpetology, based on Edward Drinker Cope's published racist, white supremacist, and sexist views against full rights for African Americans and for women. I've also posted some recent news stories and blogs about efforts to remove items and names honoring slaveholding early paleontologist Henry De La Beche.Â
Unfortunately, zoological names, once validly published, are forever--unlike names of journals, organizations, institutions, buildings, or official prizes, which can always be changed. Paleontology will have to stomach Agassizilia.
Samuel L.A. Cooper and David M. Martill (2020)
A diverse assemblage of pycnodont fishes (Actinopterygii, Pycnodontiformes) from the mid-Cretaceous, continental Kem Kem Group of south-east Morocco.
Cretaceous Research 112: 104456
doi:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cretres.2020.104456 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195667120300136
Pycnodont fishes (Actinopterygii, Pycnodontiformes) contributed a major role to many ichthyological assemblages in the Mesozoic, however their occurrence in the continental mid-Cretaceous Kem Kem Group of Morocco was only briefly noted by Sereno et al., 1996, but were not described. Here we describe the first diverse pycnodont assemblage in the Kem Kem beds of the Tafilalt region, based mainly on recent collecting. Pycnodont remains are represented by rare, mostly incomplete fragments of vomerine and prearticular dentitions, but despite their rarity, they are surprisingly diverse with four morphotypes represented, including two new taxa: Neoproscinetes africanus sp. nov. and Agassizilia gen. nov. From a sample of eight specimens, four species are recorded, three of which are new. The palaeoecology, taphonomy and biostratinomy of the specimens is discussed in the context of their occurrence in a predominantly freshwater sequence. Comparisons are made with the pycnodont assemblage of the approximately coeval Santana Group (Brazil) which contains taxa with similarities to the new Moroccan pycnodonts. These new pycnodont taxa increase the already diverse assemblage of the Kem Kem Group ichthyofauna.
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