Archaeopteryx http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com Most recent posts at Archaeopteryx posterous.com Sat, 17 Mar 2012 10:00:00 -0700 Moving to new pastures http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/moving-to-new-pastures http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/moving-to-new-pastures

Hi, this blog is moving to a new address at www.sumol.nl. Posts will remain here for the time being, but I invite you to visit the new location.

Posterous has been a great place to host blogs over the past years, but recent changes, and most of all the takeover by Twitter, have convinced me that I should better seek space elsewhere. This location is going to disappear altogether in a month or so.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/815509/iljajj.jpg http://posterous.com/users/10BH6gbfxbH Ilja Nieuwland ilja Ilja Nieuwland Mon, 19 Sep 2011 04:05:00 -0700 Amsterdam's dinosaur population http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/amsterdams-dinosaur-population http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/amsterdams-dinosaur-population
Tiranosaurus_artis

Amsterdam may be known for a lot of things, but dinosaurs aren't usually among them. However, take a walk along the central Plantage Middenlaan in Amsterdam's Plantage ('plantation') district and you will be confronted by two unlikely-looking creatures in the city zoo's gardens: one is instantly recognizable as Stegosaurus, the other is not quite as obviously a theropod of some description.

Stegosaurus_artis

The Amsterdam zoo Artis* is one of the oldest in Europe. Founded in 1838 by the society Artis Natura Magistra (hence its colloquial name), it was originally only open to members. However, following the founding of Amsterdam's university and changing ideas about the role of such societies in educating the masses, the zoo gradually opened its doors to a more diverse audience.

In 1906, the 12-year-old Boudewijn Bollee became a keeper of animals at the zoo. Initially hired for menial work, he quickly showed an aptitude for handling animals, particularly reptiles, and established himself as the overseer of the reptile house. Bollee was also a bit of an artist though, and he set about decorating the zoo grounds with his sculptures, usually of reptiles. Most of these can still be seen, such as this chameleon:

Bollee_chameleon

By the early 1950s, however, Bollee had set out on a more ambitious project: the reconstruction of prehistoric reptiles on a patch of land along the Plantage Middenlaan, where they might be admired both from within the zoo and outside.

The first of these, a Stegosaurus, clearly drew inspiration from the papier maché sculpture that had been on display at the Smithsonian from the 1900s through to the 1960s. Bollee crafted the animal between May 1952 and March 1953; it was constructed by using a chicken wire mesh on a steel frame, which was then covered in concrete. The construction needed to be solid, but also cheap: these were the immediate post-war years, and keeping cost and the use of materials down remained an important priority. For that reason also, the animal's length was limited to six meters instead of nine; but, according to its maker, that had also been done in order to 'not cause a solar eclipse'.

Bollee_statues

After Stegosaurus, Bollee set out on his wildest project: the reconstruction of a 'Tiranosaurus' (as a newspaper of the day called it). Where the Stegosaurus had been pretty much a private initiative, for the second dinosaur Bollee received more assistance. A workshop was put at his disposal, and the zoo gave him time to work on the project, which was unveiled on May 1, 1954. Bollee did not survive his largest creation by much: in 1956 he passed away, months after the anniversary of his 50 years in the zoo's service.

Looking at the animals with modern eyes, we have to say that the Stegosaurus is the most successful of the two, partly because Bollee could work from a good example, but also because in recent times, the general image of stegosaurs has changed far less than that of theropods. The oedemic-looking, martyrial stance of the animal doesn't help of course; nor do some no anatomical inaccuracies, such as the three-fingered hand. In Bollee's defence: this was also a structurally much more challenging sculpture, because of its greater size and less self-evident weight distribution.

For nearly six decades, these animals have now been part of the Amsterdam cityscape. The zoo's initial penny-pinching meant they needed to be restored in the early 1990s, but since they're protected landmarks now, they may astonish future generations. Indeed, walking around near the zoo I observed a metal exhibit that suggests at least some affinity with the nearby sculptures. Dinosaurs apparently continue to proliferate in Amsterdam; I'm sure Bollee would have been delighted.
Metal_rex_branko_collin

Reference:
Kruizinga, J.H.. "Ter Herinnering Aan Oppasser B. Bollee." Ons Amsterdam 9, no. 8 (1957): 249-252.

Thanks go out to Marieke van der Duin and Peter van Mensch for sharing.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/815509/iljajj.jpg http://posterous.com/users/10BH6gbfxbH Ilja Nieuwland ilja Ilja Nieuwland Thu, 14 Apr 2011 03:38:00 -0700 Taxidermy manuals query http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/taxidermy-manuals-query http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/taxidermy-manuals-query

Vogel
Andreas Weber posts this interesting question on his (and several others') new blog Collect and Connect (devoted to 19th-C natural history):

Historical Taxidermic Manuals

When I visited the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin a couple of weeks ago, I stumbled upon a small exhibition on taxidermy that is the art (or is it a science?) of preparing vertebrata for museum and other purposes. In several showcases, the makers of the exhibition explained different preparation methods. What fascinated me most was the last section where historical preparation methods were discussed. In the explaining notes the makers mentioned the following historical taxidermic manuals titles.

Read further at Collect and Connect

Gripsholmsstuffedlion

This took me back to seeing the strange Gripsholm Lion, the result of throwing a skin and a bag of bones at an 18th-C taxidermist with only a very vague idea of what a lion looked like. The resulting specimen is nothing if not grotesque, but it does have its share of followers, and even its own Facebook group.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/815509/iljajj.jpg http://posterous.com/users/10BH6gbfxbH Ilja Nieuwland ilja Ilja Nieuwland Sun, 05 Dec 2010 11:22:00 -0800 The cutest pelycosaur you'll ever see (1910) http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/the-cutest-pelycosaur-youll-ever-have-seen-19 http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/the-cutest-pelycosaur-youll-ever-have-seen-19

Naosaurus1
In 1878, Edward Cope gave the name Dimetrodon to a particularly nasty-looking, apparently sail-backed Permian mammal-like reptile. In the earliest years of the 20th century, Charles Sternberg discovered something similar, and had it named Naosaurus. Subsequently, the American Museum of Natural History had a reconstruction made, and a painting by Charles Knight (below).

Naoknight

As Brian Switek has shown in an excellent blog post, Naosaurus came to be increasingly identified with Dimetrodon, although there were as many reasons to regard it as more equivalent with Dimetrodon's herbivorous contemporary Edaphosaurus, particularly considering the similarity in spine protrusions between the remains of Edaphosaurus and Naosaurus.

Although Ermine Case made this point in his 1910 paper on Dimetrodon, in the same year German paleontologist Otto Jaekel (of later Tendaguru fame) published a decidedly Dimetrodon-like reconstruction of Naosaurus. In the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Geologischen Gesellschaft he described what he considered as a new species, Naosaurus credneri, based on remains found near Dresden, Germany. You'll find the paper below. As we're mainly concerned with reconstruction, though, what stands out in this respect is Jaeckel's beautiful, almost impressionistic reconstruction of Naosaurus.

Despite its clearly Dimetrodon-like skull (an assumption, given the absence of cranial elements in the find), Jaekel does not automatically assumes anything about Naosaurus' life habits. Also, there is no trace of a sail. Jaeckel assumes quite a different purpose for the elongated spines:

"In the case of a closed skin connection, the enormously enlarged spines would have been totally without purpose. [...] The spines could only serve an organic and genetic purpose, if they protruded freely from the back of the animal and served as a strong defense for their carrier. [...] I assume, that these animals, like almost all other organisms that are strongly defensively oriented, generally moved slowly across the ground; and that in case of danger, they would by curling up their backs and lateral movement of the vertebral column the spines were drawn widely apart, thus drastically improving their defensive merit". (my translation)

Because Jaeckel also sees a strong connection with Dimetrodon (and comments on the Pelycosaur's apparent global success), his arguments against a sail should also be applied to the latter.

It is difficult to gauge the motivation for Jaeckel's apparent opposition to earlier views on Pelycosaurs; interestingly, around the same time the Berlin Museum's Gustav Tornier - a colleague of Jaekel's - locked horns with the American establishment over the posture of the sauropod dinosaur Diplodocus (about which I will say much, much more at a later time); and likewise, this argument was based on a type of animal which, while originally American, had suddenly become German (or at least German East African) as well - and therefore a good source for scientific appropriation.

Naosaurus.pdf Download this file

References:

 

  • Case, Ermine Cowles (1910), "Description of a skeleton of Dimetrodon incisivus Cope", Bulletin of the AMNH 28, p. 189-196.
  • Jaeckel, Otto (1910), "Naosaurus Credneri im Rotliegenden von Sachsen", Zeitschrift der Deutschen Geologischen Gesellschaft 62 (1910), p. 526-535.

 

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/815509/iljajj.jpg http://posterous.com/users/10BH6gbfxbH Ilja Nieuwland ilja Ilja Nieuwland Fri, 15 Oct 2010 06:13:00 -0700 Headless chickens http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/headless-chickens http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/headless-chickens

Headlesschicken

Ever wondered about the picture above? It is a lithographical engraving from 1866 depicting Archaeopteryx - without the head. Initially, I thought that I saw a head there, but apparently there isn't. You see, this was drawn only five years after the London Archaeopteryx was discovered - which (at least initially) lacked a skull. The drawing originally appeared in Louis Figuier's The Earth before the Deluge in 1866; this one is from a Dutch translation (thrown together with a work by Oscar Fraas) by E.M. Beima, a curator from the Dutch natural history museum at Leiden. The whole illustration looks like this:

Oolitic

It portrays life in the 'oolithic' or upper Jurassic; there's the standard 'dragon-from-hell' pterodactyl slushing it out in the mud on the foreground, another in the air, some ferns and enough 'primeval ooze'.

Leaving Archaeopteryx' head out is quite an exceptional measure for drawings from around this time, and makes one question whether the artist omitted it because he expected to be able to fill it in later. A clue may be found in Figuier's text (translated into Dutch by Beima, and again into English by me):

"The bird had hardly flown from Germany, or the papers sang this song: the bird from Solnhofen is a work of art, a Rhamphorhynchus skeleton that has been fancifully fashioned with feathers, by a lithographic methods or otherwise – and English science has let itself be deceived by German cunning. That severe accusation has not received an English reply. It is not even certain whether the bird really exists, or that he should be considered a mere fable. In the figure 'Landcap during the Upper Oolithic period', the animal floats high in the air over a jurassic forest containing acacias and ferns [...]".


In 1866, therefore, Figuier couldn't yet be certain; and Beima's translation, one year later, also remained unconvinced. Leaving out details in the image could therefore be seen as a security measure: should the animal prove to be a hoax, it could always be said that the image merely reflected contemporary speculation. Of course, this whole episode reminds one of the Hoyle/Wickramasinghe 'Archaeopteryx hoax' episode of 1984, and the animal's easy confusion with pterosaur remains once more became obvious when John Ostrom discovered an Archaeopteryx in the drawers of Teyler's Museum in Haarlem - which had been identified by Hermann von Meyer as Pterodactylus crassipes.

The remark about the missing head of Figuier's Archaeopteryx was taken from Brian Switek's contribution, "Thomas Henry Huxley and the Reptile to Bird Transition" in the new Geological Society London volume on dinosaur research history (Geological Society London, Special Publications, v. 343, pp. 251-263).

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/815509/iljajj.jpg http://posterous.com/users/10BH6gbfxbH Ilja Nieuwland ilja Ilja Nieuwland Fri, 02 Jul 2010 17:36:00 -0700 Heilmann's Origin online http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/2010/originonline http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/2010/originonline

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Ah, Gerhard Heilmann. One of the most enigmatic contributors to palaeontology in the 20th century, and one of the most influential - despite being a painter rather than a scientist. In honesty, I've said most of what I'm going to say about him; bestides, Christopher Ries has said much more, and did it far better. However, Heilmann's 1926 book The Origin of Birds is still a seminal work in the history of palaeontology for a number of reasons: the defining influence it had in the debate on the origin of birds, the combination of text and illustration, and its strong and consistent argument. It is really a book that anyone interested in bird origins or the history of palaeontology ought to read; I scanned and OCR'ed it so that everyone can. Click here (scroll down to the bottom of the page) to view and/or download the entire book in searchable PDF format (12 MB). For reasons of size I've compressed the whole thing still further, but if you can't do without the whole 54 MB hi-res thing, let me know.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/815509/iljajj.jpg http://posterous.com/users/10BH6gbfxbH Ilja Nieuwland ilja Ilja Nieuwland Mon, 19 Apr 2010 14:02:02 -0700 The Strunz Alternative (1936) http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/2010/the-strunz-alternative http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/2010/the-strunz-alternative
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In 1934, Frankfurt preparator Christian Strunz was commissioned with the task to re-mount the Senckenberg Museum's Diplodocus. Torn between traditional American views and a more idiosyncratic approach, Strunz devised a way which saved him from having to make a choice between the 'German' and 'American' approach – more about which later

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/815509/iljajj.jpg http://posterous.com/users/10BH6gbfxbH Ilja Nieuwland ilja Ilja Nieuwland Fri, 02 Oct 2009 11:21:30 -0700 Mounting Iguanodon, 1882 http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/2009/mounting-iguanodon-1882 http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/2009/mounting-iguanodon-1882
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Workmen mounting the first Iguanodon bernissartensis skeleton in the St. George Chapel in Brussels, 1882. Because Belgium did not really possess a tradition in mounting vertebrate specimens, Dollo's men had to invent their own method. Although they successfully mounted a great number of specimens (who are now on display in the Brussels Museum of Natural History), their solution meant that unmounting the animals was near to impossible without physically damaging them. These days, the Brussels Iguanodons have become museum specimens in more than one way, illustrating the evolution of mounting such animals in museums in the nineteenth century.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/815509/iljajj.jpg http://posterous.com/users/10BH6gbfxbH Ilja Nieuwland ilja Ilja Nieuwland Wed, 19 Aug 2009 10:33:40 -0700 Another Burian Diplodocus - or is it? http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/2009/another-burian-diplodocus-or-is-it http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/2009/another-burian-diplodocus-or-is-it
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From: G.E. Quinet (ca. 1970), Bernissart... il y a 125.000.000 d'années (Brussels: Royal Belgian Institute for Natural Sciences), opp. p. 71. This Diplodocus carnegii is almost an exact mirror image of Zdeněk Burian's famous early 1960s reconstruction. It might be an earlier version of the same reconstruction, and I can't be sure whether it was mirrored by Burian or this particular book's designer (I would think the latter, to be honest). However, it is unsigned, the publication itself gives no clue as to its provenance, and I have seen it nowhere else in listings of Burian's work. So the jury is still out.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/815509/iljajj.jpg http://posterous.com/users/10BH6gbfxbH Ilja Nieuwland ilja Ilja Nieuwland Wed, 19 Aug 2009 08:42:30 -0700 From Diplodocus to dust http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/2009/diplodust http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/2009/diplodust A not altogether reassuring view from the new Lichthof at the Berlin Museum... Mr. Holland would not have let it come to this, surely. To be honest, from the insurer's point of view this seems to be a somewhat disturbing ad, I would think.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/815509/iljajj.jpg http://posterous.com/users/10BH6gbfxbH Ilja Nieuwland ilja Ilja Nieuwland Sun, 02 Aug 2009 06:25:14 -0700 Plateosaurs roaming, 1928 http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/2009/plateosaurs-roaming-1928 http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/2009/plateosaurs-roaming-1928
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G. Biese, illustration accompanying Friedrich von Huene's 1928 description of German saurischians (F. von Huene 1928, »Lebensbild des Saurischier-Vorkommen in Trossingen«, in: Palaeobiologica I, Table XI.)

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/815509/iljajj.jpg http://posterous.com/users/10BH6gbfxbH Ilja Nieuwland ilja Ilja Nieuwland Thu, 16 Jul 2009 10:38:51 -0700 The glorious art of Zdenek Burian - and its not so glorious follow-up http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/2009/the-glorious-art-of-zdenek-burian-and-its-not-so-glorious-follow-up http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/2009/the-glorious-art-of-zdenek-burian-and-its-not-so-glorious-follow-up
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Diplodocus carnegiei by Zdenek Burian (oil on canvas, 1969) In the mid-1970s, when I was five or six years old, my mother bought a remarkably expensive book about past life for me, called Leven in de oertijd (published in English as Life before Man). Text was by Zdenek Spinar, but more importantly the illustrations were by the Czech artist Zdenek Burian (1905-1981) and were my first confrontations with all those wonderful animals of the past. It has to be said that Burian's forte was in depicting Kenozoic animals and early humans, but the dinosaur illustrations and those of other animals of earlier times are very good, too. Burian's inspiration by Charles Knight is obvious from many pictures, and his way of working with antagonists (T-Rex opposing a single Triceratops, that sort of thing) is similar too. But in all I find Burian's paintings, with their hushed tones, more evocative. However, this is a judgment pickled in nostalgia, of course. [spoiler]
Media_httpwwwarchaeop_yjrxp
Burian himself was copied as well, of course. This Diplodocus from a "J. Smit" (the poster of which you may purchase at Allposters.com) seems to owe a great deal to the one above (I can't be certain, since I haven't been able to date this image). However, the graceful ways of Burian's beast have disintegrated into a much 'pudgier' ensemble, which appears to have gorged itself. Moreover, its stance seems to represent some sort of compromise between the elephantine Diplodocus of Holland, and the reptile-like crawl advanced early in the 20th century by Hay and Tornier. But more about that later.[/spoiler]

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/815509/iljajj.jpg http://posterous.com/users/10BH6gbfxbH Ilja Nieuwland ilja Ilja Nieuwland Tue, 14 Jul 2009 10:35:23 -0700 The ravages of war: the sad end of a Berlin whale, 1945 http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/2009/the-ravages-of-war-the-sad-end-of-a-berlin-whale-1945 http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/2009/the-ravages-of-war-the-sad-end-of-a-berlin-whale-1945
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The remains of a model of a whale in the inner courtyard of the bombed-out Natural History Museum in Berlin, 1945 (Museum für Naturkunde, Historische Bild- und Schriftsammlungen). The museum, which is home to some of the greatest palaeontological specimens in the world (e.g., the most famous Archaeopteryx lithographica specimen and the huge Brachiosaurus brancai from Tendaguru, Tanzania) is still in a state of reconstruction. Recently, it central hall ('Lichthof') was reopened after an extensive overhaul. Repost from my now-defunct Past Worlds blog

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/815509/iljajj.jpg http://posterous.com/users/10BH6gbfxbH Ilja Nieuwland ilja Ilja Nieuwland Sun, 12 Jul 2009 17:32:33 -0700 Iguanodon model in the Berlin museum, 2009 http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/2009/iguanodon-berin-2009 http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/2009/iguanodon-berin-2009
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A model of Iguanodon bernissartensis by Joseph Pallenberg, around 1930. Currently on display in the Berlin Museum of Natural History.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/815509/iljajj.jpg http://posterous.com/users/10BH6gbfxbH Ilja Nieuwland ilja Ilja Nieuwland Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:00:59 -0700 BOO! http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/2009/boo http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/2009/boo
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Poster for Camille Flammarion's Le monde avant la création de l'homme ('The world before man's creation'), 1856 Flammarion's book was a work of popular science, and sought to awe its readers as much as inform them. Although the rather overweight dinosaur here borrows heavily from the reconstructions made about fifteen years earlier by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins' for the Crystal Palace exhibition, the image of a dinosaur standing next a high building looking into its top floors would prove compelling enough to last. A pivotal element in the portrayal of dinosaurs has always been their size - and, often, little else. The (literal) otherworldiness of these animals came to light even more when they were placed in surroundings that were familiar to us. The contrast between such huge, unwieldy and chaotic animals, and our own comfortable and controlled surroundings would increase our awe of them (and, of course, our fear). In fact, the very first 'real' dinosaur movie was based on this theme. In Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) Winsor McKay shows us an animal who drinks lakes and eats trees, but is not unfriendly or agressive. That would change rapidly. Harry Hoyt's The Lost World (1925) already features dinosaurs that seem set on making poor humans' lives as miserable as possible. Likewise the Japanese Godzilla series had a dinosaur of sorts (enhanced with fire-breathing and nuclear abilities) wreak havoc to entire cities from the early 1950s onwards. And more recently the Jurassic Park series of films adopted (one might say: copied) the same approach.But what makes all of these portrayals so compelling is still, as with Flammarion, the confrontation between the 'other' and our own, daily experience. Godzilla's tail destroys our comfortable surroundings, in Jurassic Park Tyrannosaurus rex chases a vehicle no modern animal would be able to chase. It's the juxtaposition of scale and unpredictability of the animals, and our estrangement with what we hold as obvious. As we have seen, the habit of emphasising a dinosaur's size by having it peep into a high-rise building therefore dates back to at least 1856. However, the picture from 1898 below (like Gertie would later be, a product of the Hearst press) probably portrays its most famous application, also because it sparked off Andrew Carnegie's interest in (and subsequent sponsoring of) the excavation of dinosaurs in the American West.
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The New York Journal and Advertiser, front page, 11 December 1898.
When it ate, it filled a stomach large enough to hold three elephants
A 'Brontosaurus giganteus' is seen peeping into the 11th floor (sorry, that's the 10th floor) of the New York Life building. The article is accompanied by typically hysterical Hearstianisms and a level of factual inaccuracy that would become typical for press attempts to cover scientific subjects. The skull, for instance, although portrayed as the plant-eating Brontosaurus, is in fact Ceratosaurus nasicornis, a very nasty-looking thing indeed that doubtless was deemed more impressive than the rather undaunting Brontosaurus skull (which in fact was Camarasaurus, but let's not confuse the issue even further). For good measure, click here in order to see the entire page*. The way in which the cover artist for Flammarion's book was copied (this is not the only instance) by Hearst's artist is something we see happening over and over with reconstructions of extinct life. Below is another example, this time (from left to right) an amalgam of a scale comparison from The Century (USA; 1904), a cover which Charles Knight created for Scientific American in 1907**, and what The Mentor World Traveller (UK) made of both in 1922. Knight's adaptation of the stance of Diplodocus suggested in the Century reconstruction seems quite clear, and with the Mentor re-inserting the human figure Knight took out, the reconstruction seems to have come full circle again.***
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*Source: Tom Rea (2001), Bone Wars. The Excavation and Celebrity of Andrew Carnegie's Dinosaur (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press), page 31. ** Much of this issue was devoted to the donation by the American Museum of Natural History to the Frankfurt Senckenberg museum of a partial skeleton of Diplodocus longus. *** I haven't been able to ascertain whether Knight originally painted this as a size comparison as well, and if the Mentor used an original painting or added the human figure themselves (which, considering the difference in style, seems obvious). I'd be grateful for further information on this point.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/815509/iljajj.jpg http://posterous.com/users/10BH6gbfxbH Ilja Nieuwland ilja Ilja Nieuwland Sat, 04 Jul 2009 09:00:31 -0700 Newman's flying bats, 1843 http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/2009/newmans-flying-bats-1843 http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/2009/newmans-flying-bats-1843
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From: Edward Newman (1843), "Note on the Pterodactyle Tribe considered as Marsupial Bats". The Zoologist 1, p. 129. Comment: "The upper figure represents Pterodactylus crassirostris, the lower, Pter. brevirostris". Edward Newman (1801-1876) was interesting figure, beginning as a naturalist (particularly in entomology) early in life and later manifesting himself as a publisher of, among others, The Zoologist. Although not a specialist in pterosaurs (it needs to be said, however, that at the time no-one could rightly be called so) he published an article in that journal's first year, 1843. In it, he took the observation of tufts of hair in pterosaurs to the logical conclusion that the animals could not possibly have been 'naked' reptiles. The similarities between bats and pterosaurs had already been noted by the German Samuel Thomas von Soemmering*, but the leading authority on vertebrate anatomy, Georges Cuvier, had discredited that interpretation. Interestingly, Newman sounds somewhat exasperated when he decides to counter Cuvier's views, and the article gives us some insight into the power of authority in 19th-century science:
"I have often spoken of these same pterodactyles with men of good repute as comparative anatomists, but I never could get them beyond the words, – "Cuvier has said it; Buckland has declared it; " – and thus the question of the highest interest depends not on fact, but on the infallibility of Cuvier and Buckland. Now I believe it within the range of possibility that Cuvier and Buckland should be in error. I confess that this is highly improbable, but I contend that it is possible. Regard them as we may, there is still that evidence of humanity about them that induces us to suppose them capable of error."
(Newman's italics). The entire article, kindly scanned by Google Books** can be read by clicking on this link (PDF alert). * It is quite easy to be derogatory about these early attempts at identifying pterosaurs, but one should remember that at this time there was virtually no point of reference for their study. Some scholars (e.g. David Unwin 2006, The Pterosaurs from Deep Time (New York: Pi Books)) withouth much a sense of historicity all too easily put Soemmering (and others!) into the 'wrong' category without apparently realising that there wasn't a 'right'. Also, it would be interesting to see in, ow, ten year's time, where on the 'wrong/right' balance they will stand. ** I have taken the four relevant pages out of the 410-page first volume.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/815509/iljajj.jpg http://posterous.com/users/10BH6gbfxbH Ilja Nieuwland ilja Ilja Nieuwland Fri, 03 Jul 2009 09:00:42 -0700 Drawing of Pterodactylus kochi fossil by T.C. Winkler, 1874 http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/2009/290 http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/2009/290
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From: T.C. Winkler (1874), "Le Pterodactylus kochi du Musée Teyler". Extract from Archives du Musée Teyler, Vol. III, Fasc. 4 (Haarlem: De Erven Loosjes). Tiberius Cornelis Winkler (1822-1897) was one of the illustrious curators of geology and minerology at the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, the Netherlands (his successor was Eugène dubois, of Pithecanthropus repute). He became mainly identified with popularising Darwinism after having translated Darwin's Origin into Dutch, but he spent most of his work cataloguing the Teyler collections. This illustration is from one of these descriptions.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/815509/iljajj.jpg http://posterous.com/users/10BH6gbfxbH Ilja Nieuwland ilja Ilja Nieuwland Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:11:07 -0700 Nearly Tyrannosaurus, 1906 http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/2009/nearly-tyrannosaurus http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/2009/nearly-tyrannosaurus
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«Fighting Dryptosaurs. Though much smaller in size, these creatures doubtless closely resembled Tyrannosaurus rex in appearance and habits» Frontispiece, Scientific American, February 3, 1906. This picture accompanied an article on «carnivorous dinosaurs of the age of reptiles» inside, and was originally painted by Charles Knight (I will post much more on this image in a few days). The reason was the recent discovery of the über-carnivore Tyrannosaurus rex in Montana, one year before, but illustrations or photographs of the new find obviously hadn't reached the world yet, so the magazine had to make to with a re-cycled painting. This is a re-post from my Past Worlds Blog. Soon more about Knight's Dryptosaurus.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/815509/iljajj.jpg http://posterous.com/users/10BH6gbfxbH Ilja Nieuwland ilja Ilja Nieuwland Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:57:11 -0700 Diplodocus in Paris - the moving image http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/2009/diplodocus-in-paris-the-moving-image http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/2009/diplodocus-in-paris-the-moving-image Some time ago I wrote about the Paris copy of Diplodocus carnegii. In this video you see the entire animal taken from tail end to nose tip, and get some idea of its size and shape. 26,5 meters of dinosaur from Valium Chat on Vimeo.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/815509/iljajj.jpg http://posterous.com/users/10BH6gbfxbH Ilja Nieuwland ilja Ilja Nieuwland Wed, 17 Jun 2009 15:48:02 -0700 Berlin before Brachiosaurus, 1930 http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/2009/berlin-before-brachiosaurus-1930 http://archaeopteryx.posterous.com/2009/berlin-before-brachiosaurus-1930
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In 1937, the specimen of the giant sauropod Brachiosaurus brancai that Werner Janensch et al. dug up in the Tendaguru beds of Tanzania (or »Tanganyika« as contemporaries would have dubbed it) was mounted in the central hall, the Lichthof, of the Berlin Museum für Naturkunde. Before that time, the hall was mainly taken up with whales. None of these are on display today, but before the advent of Brachiosaurus and his ilk the Museum für Naturkunde was more occupied with living nature than with extinct animals. In this photograph, the Lichthof is still dominated by the massive remains of four whales in the middle: two grey whales, one sperm whale and a reconstructed tail end. To the left is Dicraeosaurus hansemanni, like Brachiosaurus harvested from Tendaguru; to the right is Diplodocus carnegii, donated to the museum by Andrew Carnegie in 1908 and at the time its only dinosaur. In 1937 all that would change, and the hall took on the shape that is essentially unaltered until today, dominated by Brachiosaurus, the largest mounted specimen of a dinosaur in the world (as a proud plaque at its foot will tell you). These pictures show the work in progress, and the eventual result. That image did not really change until late 2008, when a new display of the three large dinosaurs in the Lichthof was opened. However, it remains centered around Brachiosaurus.
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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/815509/iljajj.jpg http://posterous.com/users/10BH6gbfxbH Ilja Nieuwland ilja Ilja Nieuwland