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| Mug shot of one of Jane's premaxillary teeth. Imagine that it takes at least an hour to write up the tooth, measure it, count its denticles (if present), and then photograph it from all sides. And after that, the same routine for the other seven premaxillaries, and then for about thirty maxillary teeth, and then thirty more dentary teeth...written in complementary pairs, of course. |
December 9, 2014
9:54: Back at my desk in collections! I see that dorsal and
caudal vertebrae not here – they’ve been put back on the mount in the gallery.
Today’s tasks: (1) measurements of the hemal arches, (2) measurements of the
ribs, (3) description of the gastralia, (4) photographs of arches, ribs, and
gastralia, time permitting.
~12:40-1:40 pm: Lunch.
1:40: Finishing up the hemal arch measurements.
2:32: Finished with measuring the hemal arches! I will move
on to item (3) of the list, since time is running short. I am following
Claessens (2004) as a template for the description.
4:50: After a general description of the medial segments, I
reached the lateral segment a short while ago; stop. 575 pages reached.
References cited
Claessens,
L. P. A. M. 2004. Dinosaur gastralia; origin, morphology, and function. Journal
of Vertebrate Paleontology 24:89-106.
Appendix. A note for nonscientists.
In recent weeks nonscientists have barbed me regarding the
amount time that I have taken with writing this work, showing
they do not realize the amount of labor the process requires, nor the
bloody-minded determination that is needed to see it through to the end. This
note is for them, and for students who want to get a sense of the scope of
commitment it takes to finish a description of detail.
Writing up a skeleton – especially one as complete, well
preserved, and disarticulated as Jane - is a truly huge undertaking that
amounts to the conversion of the continuous form of dozens of bones into the
discontinuous structure of words under the theoretical rubrics of Darwinian Natural
Selection and Hennigian Phylogenetic Systematics.
It’s a task of transliteration and, as my PhD advisor Chris
McGowan once said, it is the bread and butter of our profession - it doesn’t
matter whether we want to do it or not, we must for the integrity of our
Science. As individual scientists, close study of actual specimens – a lot of
them – keeps us intellectually at the top of our game and enriches our publications for the benefit of all.
A descriptive project of this sort takes real time to
complete. I have not yet tallied up the exact hours of this Fall’s collections
visits, but for the past four months I have put in at least one 6-hour day with Jane's bones each week. Adding several multiple weekly visits gives a
minimum of 21 days or 126 hours.
Rolled together, it has taken me a month to summarize
neurocentral suture closure in the vertebral column, measure all of the vertebrae on the mounted skeleton, and describe, photograph, and measure cervical
vertebrae stored in collections, all of the cervical and dorsal ribs, hemal arches, gastralia, tibiotarsus,
and fibula. In addition to the writing and taking hundreds
of measurements and photographs, I have read the relevant literature along
the way – with bones in hand - to ensure completeness and depth.
All of that is excluding
the hours I put in at home over the weekends, when I incorporate the relevant
tyrannosaurid literature into the manuscript. I have not yet
counted up the average number of pages written during each visit.
Keep in mind that I am not counting the time spent on
writing the monograph before this Fall, which included the skull,
dentition, and the bulk of the axial and appendicular skeletons. In the end, all of the time and
effort made is necessary to produce a maximally useful contribution for Science.
Also, my time taken on the monograph is in addition to teaching two sections
of Senior Seminar and a lab section of introductory biology, grading, participating
in the College senate and one of its subcommittees, cataloging with my preparator the
fossils we collected from Montana last summer, and overseeing the activities in
the paleontology lab.
Aside from three nights in a local hotel and several lunches,
which I greatly appreciated, this project has been entirely self-funded. Each day I go to the museum, my primary expense is the
gasoline for the four-hour return drive on a tollway.
The bottom line, nonscientist friends, is that (1) Science takes care and it won’t
be rushed, and (2) I want to see it done as badly as you do.
