THE JANE DIARIES, ENTRY #11

The view at the end of the day.

October 21, 2014

10:09 am: Starting now with the ms at 416 pages long, and I will finish up Dorsal rib D. I left off at the capitulum last Tuesday.

IL showed me where Jane’s gastralia are stored – more to describe! The latest last thing I need to do!

IL and WI brought down the rest of the ribs from the right side, which includes the longest preserved rib and the last rib of the series.

11:28: at the osteological correlates for muscles on rib D; a quick break to head up to the soda machine.

11:32: Back with a Doc 360 in hand to hold me until lunch.

12:04: Done with rib D!

12:09: Whoops - I just found the proximal end of rib D from the right side! It’ll help clear up a few details not seen on the left.

12:13: I just identified one of the new ribs from the right side of the mount as preceding Dorsal ribs C and D, which I have just changed to ribs D and E, respectively.

12:15-1:05: Lunch. Back to rib E.

1:48: What I thought was the right side of Rib E is actually the new rib D! Now E is F!

1:56: MW crashed again, dammit! It happened when I attempted to paste in a few headings that I copied; some moments before I successfully copied and pasted a couple of sentences; luckily, nothing lost. What hurts the most is the time lost – every minute counts since I’m out here only once a week for not many hours.

2:24: a brief break to sort out the sequence of ribs. Back to the ms – the damn MW just crashed again when I copied a few lines of headings. This is no advertisement for the glitchy software; I’m not impressed - more wasted time.

2:39: back up and running; time to make sure the labeling of dorsal ribs in the text matches the labels on the actual bones that I have set out on the table.

2:44: ribs double-checked and corresponding labels now match. Back to dorsal rib E! After that is C, G, and H!

3:33-3:57: Chat with IL.

4:26: completed rib E; now, on to rib G!

4:55: Time to wrap up; I reached the capitulum of rib G! After that, ribs C and H!

THE JANE DIARIES, ENTRY #10

The entire history of published research on tyrannosauroids can fit in seven three-ring binders; up until 2006, that is.

October 20, 2014

11:23 am: a sliver of time in which I can add a few more Holtz (2001) characters. Starting at character 5.

11:45: leave for meeting.

7:58 pm: I have the SVP poster under control; I expect to have it ready to print by Wednesday or Thursday, so I can give more time to Holtz (2001). Headache is a dull, nearly imperceptible pain, but it feels like a gallon of water is sloshing between my head and eyes each time I look down at the pages.

8:11: this horrible watery sensation is utterly distracting and might provoke the headache to get worse; I have to stop.

References cited

Holtz, T.R., Jr.  2001.  The phylogeny and taxonomy of the Tyrannosauridae.

            In Mesozoic Vertebrate Life. Edited by D. H. Tanke and K. Carpenter. Indiana

University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana pp. 64-83.

THE JANE DIARIES, ENTRY #9

October 19, 2014

3:34 pm: Having given the morning to the SVP poster, I want to add the last page of the Currie et al. (2003) characters to the Jane ms. I’m starting this with a worsening headache that feels like a cap of metal spreading under my calvarium; I’m resolved to tough it out.

4:02: I have to rest, I can’t focus on what I’m doing. Defeated by character 61.

6:13: Second try at it; I still feel like I have a new skull growing into my old skull.

6:42: Just got done with Currie et al. (2003)! Now, on to Holtz (2001) – 111 characters before I get to Carr (1999)!

6:57: Time to eat.

8:18: Done with dinner and rested, but I feel too awful to work; I brought MVL up to the bedroom in case I feel better later on.

References cited

Carr, T.D.  1999.  Craniofacial ontogeny in Tyrannosauridae (Dinosauria, Theropoda). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 19: 497-520.

Currie, P.J., J.H. Hurum, and K. Sabath. 2003. Skull structure and evolution in tyrannosaurid dinosaurs. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 48: 227–234.

Holtz, T.R., Jr.  2001.  The phylogeny and taxonomy of the Tyrannosauridae. In Mesozoic Vertebrate Life. Edited by D. H. Tanke and K. Carpenter. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana pp. 64-83.

THE JANE DIARIES, ENTRY #8

The wall above my workspace, for reference.

October 18, 2014

Start ~6:30 pm. Begin with Currie et al. (2003), character 7.

I have eaten a big meal; I feel lethargic and I want to quit for the day, but I know this will not write itself. I have spent the bulk of my waking hours (9:30 am-~5:00 pm) working on the phylogenetic data matrix that will form the basis of my SVP poster. So Jane has waited until this atypical, late hour.

7:07: the first page of the appendix is done! Now, on to character 18…

I keep my most actively referenced scientific literature in chronologically organized binders, and I am pulling out one page at a time so that Tyrannosauroidea #7 does not take over the limited space on my crowded table.

7:25: passed the jugal!

7:45: I went upstairs to make some tea, where I was taken aback and distressed by how open and extensive the main floor is, even though I have all of the curtains drawn. It reminds me of my most terror stricken nightmares, where the empty space of dark rooms is filled by a horribly malevolent and invisible consciousness. My study is much more suited to a better frame of mind; the ceiling is low and the space is enclosed on all sides by bookshelves and shelves for casts, and it is largely filled by my worktables.

8:12: The tea hasn’t helped much, but I will finish this damn page before I stop! I’m at character 43, the shape of the palatine.

8:23: This page is done! I have to take a break from this. One page to go; in no time I’ll be on to Holtz (2001)!

Oh, right - 412 pages reached.

THE JANE DIARIES, ENTRY #7

The view at the end of last week - dorsal rib #1 in progress!

October 14, 2014

Raw notes.

Start: ~9:50 am. Dorsal rib A, osteological correlates of muscles.

10:32: started on Dorsal rib B.

10:40: MW crashed when I copied and pasted a template of headings for the rib descriptions.

10:47: back on track; just spoke to a museum visitor about the Jane description; i.e., met briefly with IL, the director, and a visitor to the collections who asked if I had a grant to do this project, and if I was on a sabbatical to do it; very funny assumptions!

12:07: break for lunch. Shaft of rib B almost done.

12:58: back from lunch.

1:34: started rib C.

4:03: started rib D.

stopped 4:25 pm. 408 pages reached.

Appendix. Scenes from the road, morning.

~Above the asphalt filter/an iris rip in Jovian belts of slate lavender ~

THE JANE DIARIES, ENTRY #6

October 12, 2014

Today I reached an important milestone, having added into the manuscript the last of the long lists of phylogenetic characters from Brusatte et al. (2010) and Loewen et al., (2013)  - 307 and 501 characters, respectively. That is not to say there are no loose threads: I must check some features in Jane that I missed the first time around, I have to dredge through some spreadsheets for measurements, and there are new measurements that I need to take, among other details and omissions. Regardless, the primary task is done.

I also still have to add the adult condition for a good number of those features, although I’ve made a strong effort to do that along the way. In that endeavor I draw from, in descending order, the type specimen, CM 9380, and the referred specimens AMNH FARB 5027 and FMNH PR2081, which compensate for the type's deficiencies. The reason for the priority of the New York and Chicago specimens is based on the simple fact of the historical sequence of publication; i.e., Osborn preceded Brochu.

I do my best to follow this hierarchy, but at times I find that the adult that I have best documented is ‘Scotty’ (RSM 2523.8), a far-flung specimen collected in Saskatchewan, and so it makes a regular, if unexpected, appearance in the monograph. This distinction is owed to a particularly intense two weeks with the skull and skeleton at the T. rex Discovery Centre in Eastend, SK.

There isn’t much opportunity for reflection during these brief, focused bouts of working on the manuscript, but at times the task of adding the anatomical details from the extensive lists of phylogenetic characters brings with it moments of admiration and humility. This happens when I come across features that others have documented, but I had missed. The fact that every osteological detail is potential data is an easy lesson to learn, but vigilance is a difficult discipline to master. We have to train ourselves to see in each bone the invisible, the unmarked, the latent meaning; the topography of everything.

The miles yet before I sleep include the phylogenetic characters of Currie et al. (2003) and Holtz (2001), and the ontogenetic characters of Carr (1999). In total, far less than the 808 that I’ve given the last several weeks. As of today, 389 pages written!

Abbreviations used: AMNH FARB, American Museum of Natural History Fossil Amphibians, Reptiles, and Birds, New York; CM, Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh; FMNH, Field Museum, Chicago; RSM, Royal Saskatchewan Museum, Eastend.

References cited

Brusatte, S. L., M. A. Norell, T. D. Carr, G. M. Erickson, J. R. Hutchinson, A. M. Balanoff, G. B. Bever, J. N. Choiniere, P. J. Makovocky, & X. Xu. 2010. Tyrannosaur paleobiology: new research on ancient exemplar organisms. Science 329:1481.

Carr, T.D.  1999.  Craniofacial ontogeny in Tyrannosauridae (Dinosauria, Theropoda). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 19: 497-520.

Currie, P.J., J.H. Hurum, and K. Sabath. 2003. Skull structure and evolution in tyrannosaurid dinosaurs. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 48: 227–234.

 

Holtz, T.R., Jr.  2001.  The phylogeny and taxonomy of the Tyrannosauridae. In Mesozoic Vertebrate Life. Edited by D. H. Tanke and K. Carpenter. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana pp. 64-83.

Loewen, M. A., Irmis, R. B., Sertich, J. J. W., Currie, P. J., and S. D. Sampson. 2013. Tyrant dinosaur evolution tracks the rise and fall of Late Cretaceous oceans. PLoS ONE 8: 1-14.

Appendix: Today’s raw notes.

Start: 9:44 am (Continuing with the last of the femoral characters of Loewen et al. (2013).

Started adding subheadings a couple of weeks ago to make sections easier to find.

DDM specimens included in the tibia section.

Going through these lists of features are a lesson of admiration and humility; the features I’ve missed simply because I took them for granted; everything counts. It’s a more difficult lesson to learn than I’ve realized.

10:32 MW crashes when I attempt to cut and paste a sentence; I cover my eyes so that I can’t see the documents re-open. I then immediately back up the ms.

10:52: the pes, at last!

11:34: Brusatte et al., 2010 done!

12:01pm: Loewen et al., 2013 done!

12:02: starting Currie et al. 2003!

389 pages stop 12:15 pm

THE JANE DIARIES, ENTRY #5

At the top of the stairs the paleontologist set the steel mug of coffee on the ledge, turned, and shut the door. He turned back, stooped to grip the wolf-handle and then descended to his study, past the fevered, glassy skyline of Tourment Verte, Lucid, Suisse Verte, and Grande Absente.

At the bottom of the stairs he turned left and headed between rows of boxes toward his workdesk. On the left, he passed a large Allosaurus skull (a cast), then a stack of papers that includes the complete correspondences between Gilmore and Dunkle, and then a music stand that holds up an original copy of Osborn (1912) for quick reference; on the right three full bookshelves, the last devoted entirely to tyrannosaurids, conceal the wall like an onyx catacomb. The massive surangular of an adult T. rex partly covers the floor below the last cliff like rookery.

His hand reached for the dehumidifier and pressed the button off; the fan stopped and silence lowered the drawbridge for his mind. He turned to the table, littered with casts of Jane’s disarticulated skeleton: skull bones, hemal arches, and other parts of the postcranium – whatever the moments demanded – were at hand, unreturned to the orderly desk and shelves around the corner. To the left, the flatscreen monitor stands above the ivory chaos like a hovering monolith.

To the right the desk is stacked with papers and books, with casts of a dentary and scapulocoracoid piled on top; binders of scientific articles and photo albums of bones fill the seat next to his. He set the mug between the casts of a quadratojugal and the hemal arches, and put the laptop between the arches and a binder that is open to the appendix of Currie et al. (2003), itself covered by the cast of the opposite dentary. The appendix is the one he’ll next incorporate into his opus. He opened the laptop screen, and plugged in the power cord and the external hard drive.

He resumed work at character 419 of Loewen et al. (2013), which pertains to the relative sizes of the pubic and ischial peduncles of the ilium as seen from the side. From that starting point, he included the rest of the pelvic characters into the manuscript. An hour later he reached the femur; in the meantime, a migraine steadily overshadowed the afternoon course of his work. After another 40 minutes he stopped, leaving the last of the femoral characters from Loewen et al. (2013) for the next day. The manuscript had climbed to 382 pages.

References cited

Loewen, M. A., Irmis, R. B., Sertich, J. J. W., Currie, P. J., and S. D. Sampson. 2013. Tyrant dinosaur evolution tracks the rise and fall of Late Cretaceous oceans. PLoS ONE 8: 1-14.

Osborn, H.F. 1912. Crania of Tyrannosaurus and Allosaurus. Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History 1: 3–30.

Currie, P.J., J.H. Hurum, and K. Sabath. 2003. Skull structure and evolution in tyrannosaurid dinosaurs. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 48: 227–234.

THE JANE DIARIES, ENTRY #4

Science in progress. Burpee Museum (Rockford, IL), October 7, 2014.

October 7, 2014

Left at 8:30-

Scenes from the road:

~A man standing in a grassy median/His jacket is a cocoon of tight green wire/His feet nose the road's last deer/the shadow back bronzes into a secondary sunrise/Pulls a phone from the jacket to his ear/Three russet plumes of leaf bonfires~

-arrived at 9:30

10:45 am: I’ve finished writing up the paired set of cervical ribs. I then spent some time double checking the sequence of the rest of the cervicals and numbered them with a new set of Post It notes. I then resumed writing up the remaining ribs (there are two to go – I am presently writing up Cervical rib E). I covered a lot more ground during the previous visit than I remembered.

11:03 am: IL and CO removed the left dorsal ribs from the mount and brought them down to where I am working in the collections. I expect that I’ll reach the dorsals today.

11:56 am: We leave for lunch; just before that I was siding the last cervical rib, which appears to be from the right side. The capitulum is snapped off and the anterior end of the cranial process is damaged, and the degree of bilateral symmetry is extreme (unlike the preceding ribs), which briefly threw me.

12:54 pm: Back to the ribs!

2:06 pm: I finished writing up the last free cervical rib (Cervical rib G), but there are a few loose ends: I still have to photograph several of them in multiple views, and I have to compare my rib descriptions with those of Brochu (2003) and Brusatte et al. (2012) to fill any holes in the description.

I’ve started writing up the left dorsal rib 1, but it nags at me that its complement is preserved and is attached to the skeleton upstairs. I leave the collections room to check the gallery; indeed, the first dorsal is there on the right side, and it is more complete than the left bone that I have started penning.

3:09 pm: Returned from the gallery with the first right dorsal rib in hand, which IL just removed for me.

4:07 pm: Microsoft Word just crashed when I copied a heading, “Osteological correlates, ligaments”. It takes a few minutes to reopen the program, open the file, and find my place. Luckily, only two subheadings were lost in the crash; I save the document compulsively as I write to minimize the cost of these frequent, frustrating, crashes. Luckily this is only crash today.

4:24 pm: I wrap up, having nearly completed the description of the first dorsal rib, where I stopped after getting several paragraphs into “Osteological correlates, muscles”. The manuscript has reached 377 pages.

Left at 4:35 pm-

Scenes from the road:

~The sky is mitered by long, crushed anvils/The full moon waxes oblate in a silent ascending drill~

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.

Brusatte, S. L., T.D. Carr, andM.A. Norell.  2012. The osteology of Alioramus, a gracile and long-snouted tyrannosaurid (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from the Late Cretaceous of Mongolia. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 366: 1-197.

THE JANE DIARIES, ENTRY #3

October 5, 2014

Today I completed adding the characters of the pectoral girdle and limb, and now I am working my way through the ilium. Six new pages have been written, which brings the total to 361. The fevered ordeal of measuring the bones that are fixed to the armature has paid off - I’ve been able to provide the measurements that are required to quantify several of the characters that I’ve included today.

It brings me a great deal of satisfaction to find I have the measurements to answer the literature; I’ve spent several afternoons in the gallery measuring the pelvis (fixed to the mount) and crus, at times balanced on a stool, and working against the clock in a sweat. It may not sound believable, but does take a great deal of time, focus, physical exertion, and stamina with two sets of digital calipers to fill about 250 cells in an Excel spreadsheet. Satisfaction also comes from knowing I’ve followed through on the trust and patience of the museum staff who have let me behind the gate, and scuff the platform during those rounds of data collection.

It’ll be another day between nights before I’m back at the museum to wrap up the cervical ribs…

THE JANE DIARIES, ENTRY #2

A view of one of my work tables, where casts of Jane (BMR P2002.4.1) are set out for reference.

 October 4, 2014

I managed to work on the monograph at home this afternoon for a couple of hours. In my final phase of writing the description, I have been expanding it by adding relevant information from the literature.

I am doing this in three waves; in the first, I am adding the phylogenetic characters of Brusatte et al. (2010) and Loewen et al. (2013) to the description, without which the manuscript is static and lacks some depth. In the second wave, I’ll add the characters of Holtz (2001) and Currie et al. (2003); those four cladistic works will adequately capture the specimen’s phylogenetic spectrum for the time being.

This process inevitably adds hundreds of anatomical details; even if some of those characters were already in the description, explicitly stating their phylogenetic nature will most benefit readers, and will shorten their search time when they are skimming for characters to add in their own data matrices. Also, this will assist readers in searching the photographic plates for hard-to-see characters.

In the third wave, I will add the ontogenetic characters of Carr (1999) to give a full profile of the skeleton’s relative maturity. This retrospective approach will also help me to refine the actual attribution of some characters, a detail that at times gets lost from work to work.

Today my writing efforts added five new pages, where I finished adding the vertebral and hemal arch characters to the description, and I started on the pectoral girdle.

Throughout this process I have been color-coding the plesiomorphic (red highlight) and apomorphic (green highlight) states so that later I can easily find them. The result of this chromatic tagging (which will not appear in the final ms, of course) will be summarized in the Discussion, where I will describe the ontogenetic context for the phylogenetic constellation of characters that are seen in Jane. Mundane aspects, such as loose threads (e.g., features I need to double check, ratios to obtain, etc.) are highlighted in yellow; I look forward to the day when the manuscript is back to black and bone.

References Cited

Brusatte, S. L., M. A. Norell, T. D. Carr, G. M. Erickson, J. R. Hutchinson, A. M. Balanoff, G. S. Bever, J. N. Choiniere, P. J. Makovicky, and X. Xu. 2010. Tyrannosaur paleobiology: new research on ancient exemplar organisms. Science 329:1481-1485.

Carr, T. D.  1999.  Craniofacial Ontogeny in Tyrannosauridae (Dinosauria, Coelurosauria). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 19:497-520.

Currie, P. J., J. H. Hurum, and K. Sabath. 2003. Skull structure and evolution in tyrannosaurid dinosaurs. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 48:227-234. 

 

Holtz, T.R. 2001. The phylogeny and taxonomy of the Tyrannosauridae. In D.H. Tanke and K. Carpenter (editors), Mesozoic Vertebrate Life: 64–83. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Loewen, M. A., Irmis, R. B., Sertich, J. J. W., Currie, P. J., and S. D. Sampson. 2013. Tyrant dinosaur evolution tracks the rise and fall of Late Cretaceous oceans. PloS ONE 8:1-14.

THE JANE DIARIES, ENTRY #1

Several years ago, I was fortunate to be asked to helm the scientific description of Jane, a very complete skull and skeleton of a subadult tyrannosaurid found in the Hell Creek Formation of Montana by the Burpee Natural History Museum (Rockford, IL). That project is presently winding down, where I have only the ribs, gastralia, and hemal arches to write up, in addition to other loose threads.

Following the model of H. R. Giger’s posthumously published Alien Diaries, I will document the closing stages of the Jane monograph in the style of a summative journal on the days I push that work forward. State abbreviations (e.g, AK, NY, WY) are used instead of people’s names to preserve their anonymity. Since this diary pertains to a research project that is in progress, new data and anatomical description are excluded from the narrative. It is my hope that some of you will take an interest in reading about how such a project is undertaken, and that this inside account will satisfy your curiosity.

Today’s view of the Jane monograph upon wrapping up for the day: a pair of cervical ribs that will be in a holding pattern for a week.

 

Tuesday September 30, 2014

A two-hour drive from Kenosha to the Burpee Museum; arrived shortly after 10 am. Once in collections, I first measured the height of the spinous process of each cervical vertebra from the dorsum of the laminae so that I can compare this specimen with the ratio of character 212 in Brusatte et al. (2010). I only measured the height from the ceiling of the vertebral canal during a previous visit; I take up to 41 measurements for each vertebra, but that doesn’t always capture everything. WI and I went to the gallery to remove the cervical ribs from the mounted skeleton; I photographed the ribs in position before WI removed them; I left with one in hand while WI removed the rest.

Back in collections I worked on describing the new rib – I wrote up three last Tuesday – until WI brought down the rest; I then put the nine ribs in their correct sequence. All of the cervical ribs were found associated with the skeleton, but detached from the vertebrae, so I do not know which vertebrae they belong to. However, working out the correct sequence was straightforward. Several ribs are still upstairs because they are fixed to the mount, so I will have to write those up while standing in the display!

IL stopped by briefly and I raised the possibility that our respective institutions might get some publicity out of this formative stage of the monograph, instead of waiting for its publication to take action. We discussed the possibility of a documentary to follow up on the one about the discovery and collection of the skeleton – Jane the Mystery Dinosaur - that was done in 2006. It is just an idea at this stage and a tangible plan is required for it to get anywhere.

After that, I labeled each rib with post it notes, marked with their relative sequence; there is only one set of duplicates (i.e., a matching left and right bone of the same anteroposterior sequence). I found that the posteriormost cervical rib on the right side was on the mount inside out and upside down; it will be an easy fix for WI when it goes back on display. After establishing the sequence I finished writing up the anteriormost rib in time for lunch.

Following lunch, a meeting with OH and IL regarding next summer’s field season ate up of much of the afternoon, but it was worth the investment of time for solving many of our field logistics this far in advance. I was left with a relatively short amount of time to start on the description of the paired ribs before I had to leave, but I managed to give the general description, the primary dimensions, the lateral surface of the expanded anterior region, and a good start on the tuberculum.

This skeleton sometimes seems endless, even this close to the end, but there’s always aspects of its morphology – even in cervical ribs – that are new and exciting that give me the incentivizing thrill to keep going forward. I get to see the transformation of serially homologous features from one rib to the next; this opportunity gives me a better understanding of the nature of some features, such as the various forms taken by the cranial process along the cervical series. After I notice such things, the following week seems to be a long, long way off and snapping off the twig of the day’s task takes great strength.

Oh yes – as of today, the manuscript is 350 pages long and there are 173 pages of tables of measurements.

References cited

Brusatte, S. L., M. A. Norell, T. D. Carr, G. M. Erickson, J. R. Hutchinson, A. M. Balanoff, G. B. Bever, J. N. Choiniere, P. J. Makovocky, & X. Xu. 2010. Tyrannosaur paleobiology: new research on ancient exemplar organisms. Science 329:1481.

Giger, H. R. 2014. The Alien Diaries. Section 9 Entertainment: 660 pp.