Boneyard XII

Welcome to the Twelfth Edition of the Bone Yard Paleontology Carnival! This is the first time that The Dragon's Tales is hosting it, but I have contributed a few times in the past myself. This time around we have quite a mix of the regulars and newbies. I am going to follow the convention here the posts on the different time periods are going to be organized in the way we would dig down: more recent geological periods on top!

Our first stop is John Hawks' quick commentary about a recent find of a cranium in China. this is a poorly represented period and is very excited about what it might mean.

Our next stop is a scathing rebuttal of whether or not a cometary impact or megatsunami was the source of megafauna extinctions at the end of the Pleistocene brought to us by Mike Taylor's Paleoblog and my own The Dragon's Tales.

Back in the Pliocene, Brian famously of Laelaps discusses Buttercup and Wesley's oversized South American Pliocene nightmare of a nemesis: Josephoartigasia monesi. This hippo seized rodent graced South America none too long ago and for any elephant must have been frightening indeed.

Jumping back to the end of the Mesozoic Era, Paleoblog and The Dragon's Tales both blogged about the Chicxulub impact paper that recently came out.

The ever popular Mesozoic had a lot of posts this go around. Scott E of Coherent Lighthouse showcased some of his artwork from Dinosauria exposition.

Real Climate, a climatology blog, has a critique of the recent paper on the evidence for Cretaceous glaciers.

Julia of The Ethical Paleontologist and Darren of Tetrapod Zoology both blogged (here and here respectively) about the teenage pregnancies of T Rex. Each has their own interesting point of view and I recommend reading each with their unique commentary.

Mark Witton talks about the overexaggeration of pterosaur size and posts a gorgeous original picture to go with it.

Zach Miller of When Pigs Fly Returns posts a fascinating discourse on the feeding strategies of the sail-backed theropods we know and love as the spinosaurs.

The ever prolific Mike Taylor gives a wonderful post on the flight model for early theropods and how modern birds and their experiences in learning to fly make for a good guide.

The stunning team that runs the Sauropod Picture of the Week has been a busy set of bees. They have several posts up in the past two weeks: they cover a tutorial on Neurocentral Fusion, Mamenchisaurus, Hudiesaurus, and Futalognkosaurus. Prolific, guys, prolific.

Then back into the Triassic we have a girl after my own heart. Or rather her research is. Sarda Sahney of Fish Feet graces us with a post her own paper about the recovery - or lack there of - from the Permian-Triassic Mass Extinction.

Dealing more with mass extinctions is Carl Zimmer of The Loom with his post on his lecture at the Rome Festival of Science and an interview with one of the "rockstars of mass extinctions" Dr Peter Ward.

Jumping back into the early evolution of insects, Carlos Yu of Halfway Down the Danube makes his polymathic debut on the paleo blog circuit. He gives a fascinating - and new to me - discussion of insects use and possible origination of trehalose.

Diving back further in Deep Time, Chris Taylor of Catalogue of Organisms talks about the armored worms of the Cambrian, Machaeridians, and ludicrous lobopods.

Rounding it all out is Brian of Laelaps giving us a run down of general Paleo news.

Unfortunately, I didn't get my own planned contribution on Permian Terrestrial Ecology done this week. I am on rotation and have an anthropocene T rex of my own to take care of. I hope you enjoyed the Bone Yard XII and in two weeks it will be making an appearance at Greg Laden's place. Until then, fossil on, dude!