Monday, January 26, 2015

THE MOR DIARIES, ENTRY #6


At the end of two weeks of drawing nonstop are 85 line drawings that don't come even close to a complete documentation of the skeleton! Why on earth am I smiling?! Photograph by John Scannella.
 Part A: Progress Report
My trip to the MOR is now over and done with; in the end, I completed 85 line drawings in two weeks and the revisions bumped the ms up to 1,273 pages. Each day was so labor intensive that I was left mentally and physically exhausted to the extreme that I hadn’t the energy or motivation to post updates.
After the first a full week of making illustrations, it was clear to me that I had to narrow my focus on the articulated skull and exclude the disarticulated bones in the cabinets. Despite appearances, the articulated skull is in several sections that can be taken apart and reassembled. I want this trip to be the last (or second last) time that happens in order to minimize handling and stress upon the large, but delicate fossil. My plan was to fully illustrate the skull in its articulated and disarticulated conditions before I left.
As history turned out, I was able to illustrate nearly the entire skull and jaws, with the exception of much of the braincase and parts of the lower jaws. One of the main benefits of this trip was getting a handle on my weekly progress, which is approximately 43 line drawings a week. This will help me plan my next visit, during which I plan to complete the skull and jaws, and get a good start on the postcranium.
I approach each drawing in three steps, where (1) I draw the outline of the bone, or the outline of a set of articulated bones with a heavy line weight, (2) I then draw outlines of all of the damage, plaster, glue, and epoxy with a thin line weight, and finally (3) I draw in the topography of the bone with a light or medium weight line. In a collections room with diffuse light, I wear a small headlamp to illuminate the specimen. To stave off boredom, especially during the midafternoon, I usually have a maximum of three drawings in progress. In most cases I find that drawing the actual anatomical details gets accomplished very quickly, in contrast to drawing in all of the damage. Since there was such a high volume of illustrations to make for this project, I saved time by holding off the final task of varying the line weights for home except for highly damaged bones such as (in this case) the premaxilla.
Part B: Rationale & Justification for a Big Monograph
In this section I will answer the most frequent questions I get regarding this monograph, with the goal to flesh out my aims for embarking on this sizeable work, as well as that on Jane.
Q: Where do you plan on publishing such a large work?
A: There are several online journals (e.g., ZooKeys, Zootaxa) that do publish large works online, which is enabled by the digital format. There are traditional print journals (e.g., Palaeontology, Journal of Paleontology, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology) that publish large memoirs in addition to their regular issues. And there are publishers that that will print specialized works in book form (e.g., Springer). I therefore have several venues to consider once the final manuscript is produced.
Q: Why not just break up your monograph into several smaller articles? That way you can boost your publication record.
A: To my mind, a monograph is a single coherent reference work that saves fellow researchers the inconvenience of tracking down separate articles, and personal experience has shown me that a single work (or set of works between two covers) is simply easier to work with. I think the mode of publication ought to benefit the audience more than the author. Put another way, a monograph is a work that the reader can count on as delivering a maximum amount of information content in a single location. That’s the whole point.
Q: Why such a huge monograph on one species? Aren’t you just repeating previous works, like Brochu (2003)?
Why not a huge monograph on one species? Let’s take an honest look at the current landscape of publications on new dinosaur taxa: most articles in the premier journals are 30 pages long or less, and each bone is usually covered in a paragraph or two. How is that acceptable when we know that bones aren’t that simple and there is a huge volume of literature behind most groups of dinosaurs that needs adequate comparison with new fossils. I think we’re in an unfortunate historical moment where less information is seen as better than more; I suspect that this has more to do with publication costs of printed media than anything else.
With regard to the specific project at hand I am describing a growth series, which significantly bumps up the page length. This also helps make the argument for a large work, not against it; a monograph provides the opportunity to capture the variation of a taxon in detail. Again, my basic argument is the same: maximizing information content is better than minimization. Why leave people guessing?
The question of repetition strikes me as a little bizarre, since the taxon I’m working on isn’t an adult T. rex; the question implies that there’s so little difference between T. rex and its immediate relatives that there’s no reason to treat any of them in detail. But that would be to argue from ignorance of the tyrannosaurid literature, the history of the group, and variation in the clade; we really don’t know that much about tyrannosaurid osteology and variation, and we must take every opportunity we have to enrich our knowledge if we are to have any hope of understanding their biology and their place in Cretaceous ecosystems
I agree that Brochu (2003) is worthy of some discussion here. That is an exemplary work, and I have used it as a template for the Two Med tyrannosaurine monograph and for the Jane monograph. But it has to be kept in mind that more taxa and more information has been published since that time and we’re currently in a phase (perhaps perpetual) of catching up with new knowledge. For example, I’ve drafted below a table contrasting the information content of the maxilla in Brochu (2003) from that in the Two Med tyrannosaurine monograph by comparing the number of subheadings that correspond to primary osteological features. A quick glance shows a huge difference of information content, showing that my effort isn’t redundant by any measure, but rather it is complementary. The difference is primarily one of resolution. Also Brochu (2003) takes care of the maxilla in about three printed pages, whereas in my case, the maxilla is covered in 74 (double spaced) pages.
Brochu (2003)
Two Med tyrannosaurine monograph
General form
General form
Ventral margin of lateral alveolar process
Ventral margin of lateral alveolar process
Alveoli
Alveoli
Teeth, number and shape
Teeth, number and shape
Circumfenestral foramina
Circumfenestral foramina
Alveolar foramina
Alveolar foramina
Maxillary nerve channel
Maxillary nerve channel
Subnarial foramen
Subnarial foramen
Jugal ramus
Jugal ramus
Subcutaneous surface
Subcutaneous surface
Antorbital fossa
Antorbital fossa
Maxillary fenestra, size and shape
Maxillary fenestra, size and shape
Interfenestral strut
Interfenestral strut
Promaxillary recess
Promaxillary recess
Promaxillary fenestra, position and shape
Promaxillary fenestra, position and shape
Vestibular bulla
Vestibular bulla
Caudal antromaxillary fenestra
Caudal antromaxillary fenestra
Antorbital fenestra
Antorbital fenestra
Palatal process
Palatal process
Bony choana
Bony choana
Maxillary antrum
Maxillary antrum
Maxillary antrum, medial wall
Maxillary antrum, medial wall
Sutural contacts
Sutural contacts
-
Condition

Horizontal ramus (excluding antorbital fossa)

Horizontal ramus (including antorbital fossa)

Interdental septa

Sulci of the alveolar row of foramina

Subnarial region

Joint surface for the premaxilla

Premaxillary buttress

Narial fossa

Circumfossa ridge

Teeth, position

Dorsal jugal process

Ventral jugal process

Caudal alveolar foramen

Joint surface for the jugal

Nasomaxillary suture

Ascending ramus, lateral view

Maxillolacrimal suture

Ascending ramus, medial view

Antorbital fossa, subordinate fossae and foramina

Maxillary fenestra, position

Maxillary position, form of edges

Maxilla, medial surface

Interdental plates, form

Interdental plates, position and texture

Medial alveolar process

Dental pits

Joint surface for the palatine

Palatal process, form

Palatal process, medial wall

Palatal process, dorsal surface

Maxillary sinus system

Maxillary antrum, caudal region

Maxillary antrum, epiantral recess

Intermaxillary process

Intermaxillary joint surface

Intermaxillary process, foramina

Medial surface above maxillary sinus system

It also has to be kept in mind how much our knowledge of tyrannosaurid osteology has come since 2003. Since then, different authors will describe features not mentioned by others, which has expanded the amount of anatomy to write up. The number of phylogenetic characters published for the clade is now well into the hundreds, which is additional incentive to expand the osteological descriptions and to describe how each feature varies. Therefore, a monograph that aims to capture all of that information will have a huge payoff for other researchers in that the full range and hierarchy of variaton is captured, including phylogenetic, ontogenetic, and individual.
References cited
Brochu, C. A. 2003. Osteology of Tyrannosaurus rex: insights from a nearly complete skeleton and high-resolution computed tomographic analysis of the skull. Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Memoir 7: 1-138.

2 comments:

  1. Tom,

    Just want to say I think it's magnificent that you are giving a saurischian the level of detailed description that it merits. (Shame it's from the less interesting half of Saurischia, but you can't have everything.)

    You're dead on target when you say "we’re in an unfortunate historical moment where less information is seen as better than more". The extreme example of that idiot attitude is the Sereno et al. (1999) paper in Science, in which five pages are considered sufficient to describe not one but two new sauropods, both known from essentially complete skeletons, and to advance a novel (and subsequently discredited) stratigraphic hypothesis. Needless to say, the authors got far for Scholarly Credit Beans for this wiper than they would have got for doing actual scientific work, since it appeared in an IMG IMG HIGH IMPACT FACTOR OMG journal. Why would they, then, fritter away their time doing careful, competent, detailed descriptive work of actual scientific value? The result is that, 16 years on, all the world knows about spectacularly complete sauropod Jobaria is "there's a thing called Jobaria, it was in Science".

    All that is backdrop to say a big thank you for taking the time to do the job properly on your tyrannosaurs. In a century, the work you're producing will still be informing palaeontologists who are born long after we both die; whereas those "descriptions" in Science and Nature will be seen as what they are -- lightly illustrated abstracts.

    Keep up the good work!

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    Replies
    1. Hi Mike,
      Thank you for your positive comments, which are a welcome change from being asked pointedly about where I expect to publish such lengthy works (which I hope have been laid to rest by this post). We can pick many examples from recent decades on brief works that await full treatment, and I agree that is frustrating and unfortunate. In the long run, we can change the culture by example and action.

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