Re: [dinosaur] Message from Nizar Ibrahim re: the new Spinosaurus paper

[Jaime Headden <jaimeheadden@gmail.com>]

Let us not forget that Ibrahim did something we might regard today as
commonplace in the west (tracking down a site well after a fossil was
first recovered from it), but that he did so in a country with
entrenched commercialization and from which decades of exploration has
only ever recovered bits and pieces; to then find a nearly intact,
large specimen of a large vertebrate is *extraordinary* in that
environment. Such specimens, large skeletons, are so very rare.

Cheers,

On Sun, May 3, 2020 at 7:24 AM Thomas Richard Holtz <tholtz@umd.edu> wrote:
>
> Good morning, all!
>
> Nizar Ibrahim asked for me to post the following to the DML:
>
> I know you are on the DML, and a number of people are having difficulties 
> accessing the paper, so I was wondering if you would be happy to share this 
> (apparently the article has been made available in full?):
>
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://twitter.com/OtavioVulcao/status/1255965350656606208__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!_TuazcTW1FNla-j62c7e50DsLSVyhoG-UVPrSpORSMVlcdWptHhjT-LYvGOaeDrt$
>  
>
> The response has been pretty incredible and extremely positive (just check 
> the thousands of amazing pieces of artwork people have been posting 
> continuously since the paper came out). And I was delighted to see a dinosaur 
> trend on Twitter - as opposed to the usual mix of politicians and celebrities.
>
> It was also a great moment for African paleontology, and I hope that the 
> attention this discovery has generated is going to allow me to fully convince 
> senior officials in Morocco to start building a national museum of natural 
> history. So far, I am cautiously optimistic. Shining light on the continent's 
> incredible ancient heritage, and doing some infrastructure and capacity 
> building there was always a major goal of all my projects in Morocco.
> ----
>
> --
>
> Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
> Email: tholtz@umd.edu         Phone: 301-405-4084
> Principal Lecturer, Vertebrate Paleontology
>
> Office: Geology 4106, 8000 Regents Dr., College Park MD 20742
>
> Dept. of Geology, University of Maryland
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.geol.umd.edu/*tholtz/__;fg!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!_TuazcTW1FNla-j62c7e50DsLSVyhoG-UVPrSpORSMVlcdWptHhjT-LYvKe4-RKR$
>  
>
> Phone: 301-405-6965
> Fax: 301-314-9661
>
> Faculty Director, Science & Global Change Program, College Park Scholars
>
> Office: Centreville 1216, 4243 Valley Dr., College Park MD 20742
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>  
> Fax: 301-314-9843
>
> Mailing Address:        Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
>                         Department of Geology
>                         Building 237, Room 1117
>
>                         8000 Regents Drive
>                         University of Maryland
>                         College Park, MD 20742-4211 USA



-- 
Jaime A. Headden
The Bite Stuff: 
https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://qilong.wordpress.com/__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!_TuazcTW1FNla-j62c7e50DsLSVyhoG-UVPrSpORSMVlcdWptHhjT-LYvHxVVFsy$
 


"Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth" - P. B. Medawar (1969)