A few weeks ago, randomly, I found myself on an adventure down the Saco River. But that's not what I'm here to talk about today so this isn't quite a trip report. No, I'm here to talk animal tracks.
This river turned out to be a fantastic place to see tracks; and if we do this adventure again, I will have to pack along some plaster of Paris (I will worry about the logistics of that later). For now, I did take lots of photographs. Maybe some of you can more accurately guess what animals made these tracks.
Little round perfect prints, each around the size of a silver dollar. They almost look catlike, but this part of the river seemed a bit too remote for that. Then again, I suppose anything is possible with cats.
With the long fingers (most visible in the upper-left) and big feet, these are pretty obviously from a raccoon exploring the shore looking for sweets.
Now these are a mystery. They were roughly the same size as the raccoon prints and all you could see are the palm and imprints of three long claws. I'm going to venture these were left by a porcupine venturing down from the trees to get a drink.
ME: "OMG, dinosaur tracks!" FRIENDS: "Stop being weird, Trish."
Aside from the obvious human footprint, these were probably left by crows.
As were these unusual "jumping" tracks.
The coolest tracks by far were these, very likely left by a Great Blue Heron. You get a better sense of the scale here:
So traveling along the river was great fun. At least until we saw this:
RANDOM WEIRD PEOPLE: "Oh, sure! The end of the river's right over the dam! You can go right over the waterfalls in your tubes! No problem!"
(Don't worry, none of us went over and we all got home in [mostly] one piece.)
I've been doing a bunch of autumn cleaning, so I don't know if any Halloween stuff will show up here outside of this list. Anyway, here for you are links!
* - First off, Dear Mainstream News. Please, for the love of God, do not report on this story. Because holy shit... (Edit: Dammit.)
* - Second off, Dear Mainstream News. Please, DO report on this story! Just don't do it wrong. (Ye Gods, "hair"? "WHALES"?!?)
* - We finally have a Star Trek Cookbook. Easy on that Gagh, it'll give you nightmares.
* - The Chiodo Brothers are one (two, rather) of the great unsung animation/special effects masters. Here's a clip from a recent documentary that shows off some of their surprising credits.
* - Disney was clearly pleased by the response to the recent "Lion King" rerelease (I am sad I didn't get a chance to go) and so they are planning more rereleases. I have no problem whatsoever with this, especially since I want to see more hand-drawn animation in theaters. But Geek Dad has an uncharacteristically hysterical and negative response... (And the comments... Hooray, the comments! No, really!)
Continuing our journey through Peterson First Guide: Dinosaurs, written by John C. Kricher and illustrated by Gordon Morrison, published by Houghton Mifflin in 1990. As I mentioned previously, this slim volume is a treasure trove of paleoart memes from the era, most of which look very strange today and which are handily pointed out by Peterson's trademark "look for this in the field" arrows.
The little drawing on this page point out the distinctive "Field Marks" of large sauropods, circa 1990: one big claw on the elephantine forefoot, high nostrils, and an overall shrink-wrapped face. Ayuh. Far, far more interesting, however, is the big main illustration. It's basically the AMNH Barosaurus with a few dramatic additions to make it more awesome.
By the way, I cannot for the life of me find any information as to when the AMNH Barosaurus display was unveiled and it's not for lack of trying. I'd have loved to find an article recounting some of the uproar over it's unveiling; it's the "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" of dinosaur mounts.
We'll see another illustration based off an exhibit that caused an uproar later...
Ah, Saltasaurus. At the time, this guy was the weirdest sauropod we knew about, so he got showcased in dinosaur books an awful lot. His "niche" has essentially been overtaken by the admittedly more fun for artists to play with Amargasaurus.
More of the dinosaurs drinking from streams mini-meme! I repeat: Tianyulong would have blown peoples' minds back then.
The Iguanodon is known for having a hilariously wrong initial reconstruction that hosted what was undoubtedly an amazing party and for having permanent Hitch-hiker Thumb. That's it.
Man-in-suit Edmontosaurus (and the almost prescient use of Edmontosaurus to represent every large crestless hadrosaur save one lucky lady we'll see very soon) notwithstanding, I love the illustration of Saurolophus' Amazing Inflatable Face, here stated like it's an indisputable given. Have I ever shared my favorite-ever take on this paleoart meme?
Skipping ahead a little, today's kids will probably remember when Anantotitan and company were replaced in all dinosaur books with Edmontosaurus, just like I remember when Ankylosaurus was phased out in favor of Euplocephalus. Except Ankylosaurus was never merged into another genus so...? (I bet it's because Euplocephalus is easier to draw.)
So the only thing differentiating Maiasaura from other hadrosaurs is that she will always always always be shown attending her nest. Note her weird "sad moose" face and that bumpy crest thing between her eyes.
Maiasaura and Protoceratops. Stuck-At-Nest Buddies. And note the weird, almost beakless Psittacosaurus.
Time for my favorite-ever illustration in the book:
Chasmosaurus is chillin' like a villain, maxin' like Michael Jackson, livin' like Thanskgivin', and gellin' like a felon. He's like MA-gellin, he's so gellin'.
There's no real acknowledgement that birds are dinosaurs here. So these Terror Birds are kind of stuck in as an afterthought. Their illustrations are *tiny* (easily covered with an American Quarter) and I don't even know what Phorusrhacos is supposed to be doing.
Heading to a different group of Avemetatarsalians. The illustrator here seems to have been given a small note card describing these three pterosaurs. I love that Mohawk-thing on Quetzalcoatlus. I also seriously like how Pterodaustro here acts more like a Skimmer than a Flamingo, as usually depicted.
Illustrations of Mososaurs were stuck in a kind of time warp for so many years. Most of them looked less like a big ocean-dwelling lizard than a weird dragon-thing with a snazzy back-fin. And speaking of dragony things...
Swan-necked plesiosaurs! It's truly amazing how long this meme has stuck around, isn't it?
I include this illustration of Tuatara for two reasons. First, he is included in the book as a "Living Fossil". (Aren't we technically *all* Living Fossils? And if your physical form hasn't changed in many many millions of years, shouldn't that mean you WIN at natural selection?) Second, I wish I could find it again, but more than one of my childhood books touted this poor unsuspecting creature as "A real living dinosaur!"
Oh, the playground grief that caused me. Bully: "Why do you care about dinosaurs anyway? They're all DEAD! Who gives a crap?"
Trish as a Lass: "But they're NAAAAWWWWT!!! There's this one little cute thing that nobody's ever heard of that lives in New Zealand and and and..."
Lucky kids today, all you have to do is point up.
And while we are on the subject of Things That Make Me Drink, here's the very last page of the book. Brace yourselves.
So... another otherwise serious and straightforward dinosaur field guide (see also this) has a nice long entry on the 80's equivalent of the ArtisticTriassicKraken (especially in that it's initial unveiling caused an uproar, the media went nuts with it, and many paleontologists had to emphasize that this kind of thing is not what most of them do with their time). What a note to end on, right?
My reaction when seeing this page in the guide for the first time was essentially,
"What?
"No, really, What? "WHY?!?
"But if...?
"Then...
"No.
"No, just no."
-----
Art of the Day!
My struggle to capture the colors of autumn on canvas.
(Click for big.) Wow, nature. Now you're just showing off.
It's occurred to me that late October has been an incredibly busy time of year for me, so I can't guarantee you'll be seeing any Halloween content here (I suggest X-Entertainment if you need a fix). I can make a tentative promise however: Christmas content, I will have.
Until then, did anyone else amass an almost-complete collection of Peterson First Guides as a nerdy teen? No? Just me? *sigh*
Well, anyway. the Peterson First Guides series was first published in the mid 1980's and as you can see, I managed to collect almost all of them. (A quick look online reveals that I only missed out on Forests. And a fair number of the guides I do have are long out of print.) I mentioned them very briefly before and I think I noted that I loved some of them to death. No, I didn't yet carry a Sketchbook with me everywhere. I have no idea what any of those margin notes mean either. This was the first color field guide to birds I owned and nobody told me what to do/what NOT to do with it.
Anyway, the reason why we are here today is because of one of the most unusual titles in the series: Dinosaurs, written by John C. Kricher and illustrated by Gordon Morrison, published by Houghton Mifflin in 1990. This slim volume was once the best book on dinosaurs I owned. Digging it out of the big bookcase today, it turns out to be an unintentional treasure trove of paleoart memes from the era (see the dubious dinosaur family tree above. Why the "Ostrich Dinosaurs" are singled out, I have no idea.) As usual, most of the illustrations look very strange today. However, this book uses Peterson's trademark "look for this in the field" arrows, just like in any other of his Guides, so those paleoart memes are handily pointed out for us.
Funny Aneurysm Moment: In the introduction to this book, Roger Tory Peterson, the king of birdwatching, sadly notes that, "Of course, you are not going to see a dinosaur in the field". Damn, dude, nobody told him?
Most Peterson First Guides were illustrated with beautiful, almost photo-realistic paintings. Here, as you can see above, the illustrations look comparatively cheap. They also tend to be small and rather smudgy. It feels as though the illustrator thought the idea of a field guide to extinct species was silly and tried to get the assignment overwith as soon as possible.
More classification brain-farts. Here, we've got poor Plateosaurus lumped in with "Dinosaur Ancestors" like Thecodonts. Uh?
A whole pack of strange Coelophysises-sess-esssssththth-(raspberry)... (Sorry.) Is it me or do all the background Coelos have the exact same face?
I love this page so much. So we've got a big, burly Ceratosaurus with just one rhino-style horn and a *really* short tail, a big, burly Dilophosaurus, and the only thing distinguishing Allosaurus is the fact that he's got three fingers. And, of course, bunny-hands for everyone!
In the 1990's, the world learned of the tragedy of eating disorders and obsessive body modification in young Carnotaurii.
The paleoart memes here are subtle, but they show up a couple of times in the book as we shall see. Megalosaurus and Iguanodon are the only animals for whom the original reconstruction is shown. More interestingly, one of the Megs here is shown drinking from a pond. Anyone else reminded of the river raft scene in Jurassic Park?
Incidentally, Jurassic Park had it's first publication in 1990 and haunts this book like crazy. More on that in a bit.
I rather like the color scheme on this Albertosaurus, but I really love the dopy skeletal study. The Scale Guy standing next to it is totally thinking, "whut?"
A man-in-suit Tyrannosaurus. A man-in-suit Tyrannosaurus drawn in 1990. A man-in-suit Tyrannosaurus drawn in 1990 with a relatively more correctly postured Tyrannosaurus as a smudgy little sketch in the background. Early 90's paleoart, ladies and gents.
Hey, did somebody order an 80's Spinosaurus who has just thrown his spine out?
"OW!"
Now at this time, big theropods were Big Theropods and little theropods were Little Theropods, so it's time for Little Theropods. Here we've got an odd reconstruction of Compsognathus, one of whom is naked and one of whom has feathers, as "some scientists believe" according to the text.
An Oviraptor-Skeksis sharing a page with a somewhat awkward-looking Troodon, which naturally brings us to...
Oh, where to begin?
Okay, first off: the Great Dromeosaur Nomenclature Mess-Up of the late-80's-early-90's. Most of you already know about this, but the story's worth repeating, as it has caused more than it's fair share of headaches. Here's what I know:
In the good ol' Harvard Museum of Natural History, there is a very old mount of a maniraptor about the same size as the Jurassic Park (book and film) raptors, and it is labeled "Deinonychus". Now it turns out that the mount has a few significant things wrong with it: it has the wrong head mounted on it and the hands are in the "kangaroo/bunny hand" position instead of the correct "killer buffalo wings" position. Nonetheless, this is what most people imagine when they hear "Deinonychus".
In Predatory Dinosaurs of the World, Gregory S. Paul suggested consolidating several genre of closely-related theropods into one genre. In other words, all the very similar looking "Ostrich mimics" like Gallimimus, Struthiomimus, ect. are listed instead as Ornithomimus sp. And almost all then-known dromeosaurs (aside from Dromeosaurus itself) went under the Velociraptor sp. umbrella, probably because it's just the cooler name (or was named first, whatever). Deinonychus is called Velociraptor antirrhopus in the book.
Still with me? Good, cause this is more involved then I expected. Michael Crichton uses Paul's book when researching Jurassic Park and carries the Velociraptor antirrhopus thing along with him. He also makes his raptors somewhat bigger, meaner, and a LOT weirder. (Chameleon abilities! They can gnaw through steel bars! Corrosive saliva! They can *swim*! Man, one of these days, I need to do a "Things in Jurassic Park that are Weird As Hell Today" post.)
Naturally, the Velociraptor antirrhopus thing carries over into the film, though it's raptors are even *bigger*. (I still fail to understand why a turkey-sized animal with large talons ripping your lungs out isn't as scary as a pony-sized animal doing the same things.) By a happy coincidence, Utahraptor was discovered around the same time and the crowd went wild.
Point is, that's why this very typical 80's Deinonychus is identified as Velociraptor.
Bonus: A whole pack of 'raptors attacking a comparatively huge... something. (I assume that's supposed to be a Tenontosaurus, but it looks a whole awful lot like a badly-drawn sauropod.)
Bonus Bonus: Naked Sparkleraptor.
On that note, I think I'm going to pause here because this is running very long. Here we've got a very 80's Archaeopteryx and "Proto-Avis", a "hypothetical animal, one that has not actually been found yet." "Proto-Avis" is what people in the 80's expected a close relative of Archaeopteryx to look like. Note that it looks less like a feathered dinosaur and more like a weird lizard-thing with feathers. Dat tongue...
Next time, childhood trauma, chill Chasmosaurs, and the 80's equivalent of the nautical nonsense that's been making the paleo-blogosphere rounds lately.
It was pouring rain by the time we made it to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. This fact did not dampen my spirits one bit. Still, my visit (we and the other tourists were allowed to explore the walking paths for free due to the weather) felt a tad rushed. Ah well.
I did get a lot of exploring in. I made it to the Gardens' two most famous features: the Garden of the Five Senses and the massive, massive Children's Garden. You know, I think the weather worked out all right. No crowds.
The Children's Garden feature this lovely stone labyrinth with rock sculptures that kind of remind me of tyrannosaurus skulls. No, really! Here's a closer look:
So cute!
The Children's Garden also featured this gorgeous little pond.
With resident Pitcher Plants! I didn't know they could grow this far north!
The Garden of the Five Senses is a riot of amazing scents. They also feature plants with unusual textures and shapes.
Some kind of unusually-petaled annual, I think.
A virtual forest of sweet Bee Balm.
And would you ever guess that these were artichokes left to their own devices instead of being harvested? My gosh, I need to grow these next year. I love plants that freak out the neighbors.
Sadly, I didn't get to see the famous Fairy Houses; they're on the tram tours, which were cancelled for the rest of the day. But they did have a few on display in the visitor's center. Even better, the Children's Garden had a giant walk-through one. (Which I forgot to photograph.)
And now, random photos from the rest of our week with our Florida relatives:
Linda Bean's Freeport restaurant. Oh deary me, I might have to warn people about this place. See, Linda's "secret recipe" for lobster rolls is to just dump Dill over everything. If this is the "authentic New England cuisine" available at EPCOT's food and wine fest, please don't assume this is what our food really tastes like. Thank you.
"Boom-boom baby! / Wanna get in my Mercedes? / Wanna be a little SAIL-fish! / Be a little SAIL-fish!"
Animal skulls on display in Mangy Moose.
I can't tell if this is adorable or terrifying.
This, however, is terrifying. Straight-up terrifying. I went inside and looked at it. It is indeed exactly what it sounds like: vanilla ice cream with chunks of arthropod innards in it. I didn't taste it; they couldn't pay me to do so. This is some "Fear Factor" sh*t right here. A line that I didn't even know existed has been crossed. Twice. With bulldozers.
