THE JANE DIARIES, ENTRY #47

After four straight hours of assembly, Steve Clawson and I take a moment to appreciate the task we've accomplished - an assembled rapid prototype of the skull of Hell's Belle (a.k.a. 'Jane'). Photograph by Lisa Matel-Crumble. 

Yesterday I had a fantastic time with Mr. Steven R. Clawson (Master’s candidate, California State University, Fullerton) assembling a rapid prototype of Jane’s skull with clipping shears, a glue gun, and stirring straws! We started our task at 10:45 am and steamrolled through until 3:00 pm! Our greatest challenge was in the distortion inherent in the bones – assembling a skull in this way is an excellent test of the level of distortion that a fossil really has.

One aspect that we could not control was the dorsoventral crushing to the left maxilla, which artificially lowered the height of the ascending ramus of the maxilla and the lacrimal; this is evident where the caudal end of the nasals overrides the lacrimals, not the other way around. We also found that this distortion was carried over and enhanced in the orbitotemporal region.

The purpose of our hours of effort was to produce for the monograph a series of multiple view plates based on a striking approximation of the assembled fossil skull, and to feature it on the jacket design.

How did this collaboration come about? Back in February I attended the Burpee Museum’s annual PaleoFest, where Steven had a live, public demo of laser scanning and rapid prototyping; the prints he had on display included a full print of Jane’s skull that stopped me in my tracks: it was printed in a white plastic with a matte finish, so it looked like actual, bleached bone; the skull looked light, streamlined, beautiful, and epic! I was amazed to learn that Steven had assembled it the previous day; I immediately knew that I had found the cover image for the monograph!

Although the assembled print looked outstanding, there were a few issues with the orientation of some bones and the completeness of others. I asked Steven if he’d consider printing out a second skull for the two of us to assemble together for the monograph. I am very happy that he agreed!

One of the primary benefits of this technology is that missing bones can simply be printed from the complete opposite side. Therefore, we assembled the most complete version of Jane's skull that was possible, based on the bones that were preserved.

Toward the end of the assembly, when we had the skull inverted and while we were placing in the ectopterygoids, I had a moment of epiphany upon seeing the entire skull together (sans braincase and pterygoids). I have been so focused on each bone as separate entities for years that seeing them together as a coherent and integrated whole came as a sharp and welcome jolt. That moment has opened up for me an entirely new perspective on the specimen that I will use to truss the narrative thread in the monograph.

A huge amount of effort goes into producing a rapid prototype. For the print that Steven and I assembled, Dr. Joseph Peterson (UW-OshKosh) and his student, Kelsey Rients, had first scanned casts of each bone, a process that took 40 hours over several months. Steven then printed the digital files, a process that took 200 hours, it then took him an additional 40 hours to prepare the prints for assembly. Finally, it took the better part of the day for the two of us to assemble, trim, and glue the prints together into a coherent whole.

*          *          *          *          *

Over the past few weeks I’ve returned to the revising the Jane monograph for publication, but that effort has been in earnest since last week. I am making a next-to-final pass through the manuscript patching up holes in the description, adding comparisons, and making minor, but necessary fixes to typos and the like. When my mind to too exhausted to continue, I then switch gears to drafting the index. Presently I’m in the midst of the description of the jugal, with the rest of the skull, jaws, and postcranial skeleton to go! Also on the slate is to double the number of photographic plates so that each bone is covered. All in all, it’s an Everest and Niagara of tasks.

BASICRANIAL PNEUMATICITY

The external basicranial air sacs of Tyrannosaurus rex (A) and the internal air sacs of Albertosaurus libratus (B), both in left lateral view. The black oval in A represents the caudal tympanic recess, the point of entry from the middle ear cavity into the basicranium; in B I neglected to include a corresponding ellipse for the large paramedian pneumatic foramen, where the basisphenoid recess air sac enters the bony ceiling of the basisphenoid recess. The outline in A is modified after Osborn (1912), and that of B is modified after Russell (1970) and I included information from the A. libratus specimen ROM 1247.

This is another set of images that harken back my Master's degree days. I can't recall if these were done for the same project on paranasal diverticulae that I did for my Comparative Anatomy term paper; given that they did not appear in my thesis, they were either in the course essay or excluded altogether.

As with the antorbital air sacs, I wanted to gain an understanding of the form and function of this air sac system through visualizing it in the round. Published figures of the empty spaces only provided a hole's eye view of the donut, and my goal was to rectify the perspective by showing the balloons that actually dissolved the spaces out of bone. It is notable that in this region of the skull there is more air space than bone. The external and internal air sacs were separated by sheets of bone only millimeters thick.

These images are minimalist, in that they do not show the relationships between the air sacs with the tympanic cavity, the median pharyngeal air sac system, or the cervical air sac system. In fact, the external view may actually correspond mostly to the tympanic cavity. The continuity between the tympanic air sac and the subcondylar air sacs are not shown in B, which is something that I should have included. Also, I did not show the air sacs within the paroccipital process; my primary focus was the basicranium so I excluded what I considered to be extraneous information.

These drawings were based on observation of actual tyrannosaurid braincases, primarily that of ROM 1247. Without the real structure in hand, I am certain that I would not have shown continuity between the subsellar and basisphenoid air sacs; nor would have I been so exact as to show the ventral split in the tympanic air sac and its course around the paroccipital process.

It is worth noting that the tympanic air sac in life would have been bounded above and laterally by the powerful jaw closing muscles and it was crossed by the stapes (ear ossicle), and the subsellar air sac extended into the ventromedial part of the orbital cavity, the space that contained the eye, its extrinsic muscles, and associated glands, vasculature and nerves. The tympanic air sac and the subsellar air sac occupied anatomically sharply separated anatomical domains that housed primary sense organs, the middle ear cavity and the orbital cavity, respectively. Regardless, the air sac system did provide a connection between those regions if the reconstruction shown here is at all accurate.

References Cited

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

Russell, D. A.  1970.  Tyrannosaurs from the Late Cretaceous of western Canada. National Museum of Natural Science Publications in Palaeontology 1: 1-34.

PARANASAL PNEUMATICITY, LATERAL VIEW

The paranasal sinuses of Tyrannosaurus rex in lateral view; same empirical sources as for the medial view. Outline of skull after Osborn (1912); the jugal sinuses are almost certainly after Molnar (1991).  The duct that connects the ventral lacrimal sinus with the orbitonasal diverticulum is blocked from view by the ventral lacrimal sinus. In a similar fashion, the air sac of the maxillary antrum is blocked from view by the lateral diverticulum of the antorbital sinus.

Paranasal Sinuses, Lateral View

Above is the complementary illustration to the medial view of the paranasal air sacs. The general mediolateral position of the component air sacs is shown, as well as their presumed continuity, and the creases produced by ridges in surrounding bones and by abrupt constrictions at pneumatic foramina. Below is a pairwise comparison of the lateral and medial views for ease of identifying gross differences between sides. The presence of the lacrimonasomaxillary suture in the lateral view only is intentional, to show the position of the sinuses relative to the nasal bone; whereas in the medial view the intent is to emphasize position and form over detailed structural context.

In terms of quality of illustration, these are amateurish and clearly precede the time before I began collaborating (in 1993) with my friend and illustrator, Dino Pulera. For example, there is no definite light source, which should be from the upper left. As such, the contours of the sinuses are washed out and flattened; the images lack the depth that such structures would have actually had. A different medium, such as pencil, carbon dust, wash, or digital paint would have been more effective in capturing form, depth, detail, and a continuous surface. Stipple has the illusion of being content rich, where in reality the white space is an information deficit and the black dots are incapable of rendering at a high resolution; it is actually worse than the highly pixellated photographs seen in newpapers because the artist lacks any control over the stipple shape. Also, the black fenestrae and teeth outcompete the actual subject of the illustration and rob it of its focus. Finally, the skull outlines should have been a light and continuous gray to emphasize the highlights on the air sacs.

The antorbital sinus system of Tyrannosaurus rex compared in lateral and medial views.

References cited

Molnar, R.E. 1991. The cranial morphology of Tyrannosaurus rex. Palaeontographica Abteilung A 217: 137–176.

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

PARANASAL PNEUMATICITY, MEDIAL VIEW

The paranasal sinus and its diverticula of Tyrannosaurus rex, medial view. This reconstruction is based on casts of AMNH FARB 5027, MOR 555, UCMP 118742, and a cf. Albertosaurus libratus specimen, ROM 1422.

Introduction

Today I resumed an unsuccessful search for a line drawing that I drew of a bird basicranium during my PhD candidate years; instead I came across a file containing illustrations from my Master's degree days. The file contained many line drawings that I did for a 60+ page term paper for my Comparative Anatomy of the Vertebrates course - the assignment was for a 10-page paper; when I beamingly gave my work to the prof, he looked pained and asked "What am I supposed to do with this - read it?!" After working as a prof for a decade, I don't blame him for that reaction at all.

The paper described in loving, subinfinite detail the internal structures - the bony cavities and the soft tissue air sacs that filled them - of the bony paranasal and basisphenoid sinuses of tyrannosaurids. The work culminated in a reconstruction of the air sacs that filled the bony spaces as they would have appeared in Tyrannosaurus rex. One of those illustrations is reproduced here; the labels did not appear in the original work. The names of the structures have not been formalized; I included them here to help place the balloon like structures in the skull with ease.

Overall Goal

The main goal of my term paper was to show the antorbital air sac and its subordinate system of interconnected diverticulae. Therefore, the primary nasal airway (that extends from the external naris to the choana) is not shown; that is why an ostium (connecting hole) is shown at the position of the epiantral recess, as if the airway has been cut away from the system of paranasal air sacs that extend from it laterally. The placement of the ostium is nearly arbitrary; it is one discrete location where the nasal airway directly enters the facial skeleton without the intermediary of the antorbital sinus, which is limited caudal to that opening in the medial wall of the bony maxillary sinus.

This exercise in reconstruction was done purely based on the topography of the bony signatures left by the diverticulae, assuming that the antorbital sinus had a balloon like form, lodged on the lateral and medial sides of the internal antorbital fenestra. That assumption was intended to be a heuristic starting point for the reconstruction.

My secondary goal was to show the impressions left on the air sac system by the bony enclosure, which consists of deep pockets, bulges, constrictions, and bladelike ridges. I imagined that the air sac system, shown whole and freed of the bones, would resemble corrosion casts of bird lungs that are deeply dissected by the buttresses of the lungs and vertebrae into surrealistic pulmonary baskets. This was a short time before endocasts of dinosaur fossils became fashionable in the scientific literature.

TYRANNOETHICS 4: THE NATURALIS T. REX & THE T. REX LIST OF SHAME, UPDATED

Like smoke, does the price tag hang around after real museums purchase dinosaurs? With apologies to the late Amy Winehouse.

Naturalis T. rex

Although the SVP ethics does condone the purchase of fossils into the public trust, it is still most dispiriting for me to know colleagues who are engaged in that activity. Nothing dampens my morale more that to hear them blithely discuss the “going market rate” for, say, a T. rex or a Triceratops. How should museums treat that "market", I wonder?

The same people tell me that I represent the “hard line” on the sale of dinosaur fossils. Although we both lament the sale of fossils to private individuals, we in academe find ourselves on opposite sides of the principle of protecting fossils for Science and education.

My fossil purchasing colleagues rationalize their actions by saying that it is better than a given dinosaur fossil landing in private hands; in the end, they say, the fossil is where it belongs despite how it got there. That's just the way it is. The alternative is the oblivion of private ownership where data is lost to science indefinitely, so purchases made by legitimate museums is the lesser of two evils.

Not so fast.

It is with ambivalence I receive the news about the recent purchase of an adult T. rex by the Naturalis Museum (Netherlands) for $5 million euros: I’m glad the specimen is headed for a real museum, but the price tag sticks like a thorn through the eye. Should I be concerned? The concern my fossil-buying colleagues have is that T. rex fossils are “overpriced” and drive up the “market value” of dinosaur fossils in general. Good grief.

The information on the exchange for the specimen is pretty slim, and one source (CIHAN, 2014), provides the backbone of the story:

a) The specimen was found on private land in Montana in May 2013.

b) The specimen includes skull and skeleton of an adult, which is approximately 12 meters long. It is missing the feet, left leg, and arms; it was found in sandstone and the bones are not distorted.

c) Preparation of the specimen, and mounting on a metal armature for display is being done by the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research (BHIGR) Inc.

d) The Naturalis Museum collected the specimen, almost certainly with assistance from BHIGR Inc.

e) “As its excavator Naturalis had the first right for purchase” (emphasis added).

d) The Naturalis had to pay $5 million euros, or $6.1 million USD for the specimen, presumably to the landowner.

e) A crowd funding campaign brought in $230,000.00 euros, and the rest “came from companies, individuals, funds, the municipality of Leiden and Naturalis”. A large part of the funds were raised through kickstarter.

f) The specimen will go on display in mid 2016.

g) The Naturalis Museum says it will publish a bunch of research on the specimen.

Should I be concerned? Regardless of the negotiations between landowner and museum, Naturalis has sent the message to everyone with a dinosaur skeleton on their land that museums will pay just about anything for the fossil and will go to extraordinary lengths to raise the money to buy it. With behavior like that I’m not convinced that legitimate natural history museums aren’t less of a problem as the private hoarders; together they keep the “market” alive and kicking because they’ll pay top dollar. For some perspective, a million dollars could easily fund a decade of a large museum's field program.

My fossil-buying friends would say that it isn’t their fault – the precedent was set by the auction of Sue to the Field Museum for about $8 million USD. Ergo, we’re stuck. From my point of view, it is our responsibility as scientists to treat the price tag of Sue as an anomalously high outlier that no one (in academe at least) has since taken seriously, and no Science respecting museum will ever pay that much again.

Wouldn’t Science be better served if the scientist holding the check book just said “no” to an marked up price tag?! Instead, a museum could, say, offer landowners a percentage of the admission tickets and the merchandizing that stems from the fossil. Certainly there must be alternatives to just paying out astronomical amounts of money that gives the extortion-level “going rate” for dinosaurs, and the “market” itself, no end in sight.

So what happens when a museum doesn’t cave in and a sale flops?  Then the fossils are gone and Science keeps the high road, which of course has a steep cost in terms of the indefinite loss of the specimen. Over time, people with fossils for sale will find that dinosaurs aren't the winning lottery tickets they had thought them to be (assuming that private hoarders wise up to this as well). There is the remote hope that at some point in the future the dinosaur will change hands, or the private hoarder will change heart, and the fossil will be positioned for donation to a museum.

The alternative is for museums to follow the Naturalis example and pay the exorbitant cost and give a clear message to all that the value of the "market" stands head and shoulders above the value of Science.

T. rex list of shame, expanded and updated.

I have added six additional T. rex specimens (in red text) to the T. rex List of Shame that are documented in Larson (2008); that list was up to date as of August 2006. For the present time, I have not included specimens that are housed in what are essentially nonaccredited private collections and privately owned, but nonprofit museums. In their relatively high public profile such places occupy a gray area (perhaps dark gray) between outright private collections on the one hand, and legitimate (i.e., accredited) and long established museums on the other.

Regardless, the 14 specimens in this list represent a substantial and devastating loss to science in that it includes a growth series, from juvenile to adult. Were these specimens in real museums, the sample size of each primary growth stage (juvenile, subadult, young adult, senescent adult) would be increased significantly and we’d have a better sense of the range of variation in each stage.

Unfortunately, I expect this list to increase in number as the years progress unless the culture tips away from commerce and toward Science and education.
 

1. Barnum: partial skull and postcranial skeleton; found in 1996; collected from Wyoming; sold at auction for over $90,000.00 USD to investors from South Dakota in May 2004.

2. Ollie: incomplete skull and skeleton; found in 1998; collected from Montana; owned by Great Plains Paleontology (Madison, WI).

3. Rex-C: partial skull and skeleton; found in 1999; collected from South Dakota.

4. Monty: partial skull and skeleton; found in 2000; collected from Wyoming; owned by Babiarz Institute of Paleontological Studies, Mesa (AZ).

5. Otto: partial postcranial skeleton; found in 2001; collected from Montana; owned by Great Plains Paleontology (Madison, WI).

6. Wayne: partial postcranial skeleton; found in 2004; collected from North Dakota; privately owned.

7. Cupcake: subadult skull and jaws; almost certainly collected from Montana; owned by The Amazing Traveling Dinosaur Show, British Columbia; on display in Victoria, BC in December, 2014.

8. King Kong: adult skull and skeleton; collected from Montana; privately owned by an individual person; a project of The Amazing Traveling Dinosaur Show; was on public display at the Mineralientage Munchen, at Munich Trade Fair Center Oct 24-25 2014.

9. Tinker: subadult skull and skeleton; collected in South Dakota in 1998; privately owned; presently on display in an art gallery in Dubai; for sale for $10 million; found associated with the adult specimen Regina.

10. Regina: adult; found associated with Tinker; the pair is for sale between $12 and $14 million.

11 & 12. Russell: composite skeleton of two adults; offered for sale at the Bonham’s auction in November, 2013; on display at a 2013 Gem and Mineral show (Denver or Tucson).

13. Dueling tyrannosaur: subadult skull and skeleton; offered for sale at the Bonham’s auction in November, 2013; associated with a ceratopsian; owned by CK Productions.

References cited

CIHAN. Dec. 30, 2014. Feature: Night watch, tulips and T. rex in the Netherlands.

Larson, N. 2008. One hundred years of Tyrannosaurus rex: the skeletons; pp. 1-55 in

P. Larson, and K. Carpenter (eds.) Tyrannosaurus rex, the Tyrant King. Indiana University Press, Bloomington.