The discovery of a new ceratopsian, Regaliceratops, has been published, and because it is a triceratops, I must say three things about it.
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First, something the media isn’t reporting on…strangely, because it’s the most interesting thing that is strongly emphasized in the paper itself. This is a chasmosaurine ceratopsian, distinct from the other major division of that group, the centrosaurines. Yet the frill display exhibits evolutionary convergences on centrosaurine frills.
Isn’t that one of the coolest things about ceratopsians? That they have these enormous, easily fossilized structures that are clearly specialized within each species for some kind of display? Sexual selection at work, people!
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It was discovered in Alberta. This fits with my creationary dowsing hypothesis that reactionary creationists are strongly attracted to fossils, and that paleontologists could productively follow conservative preachers around with a pickaxe and discover new species under their feet. In fact, I think that if you dynamited churches you’d find awesome new lagerstätten directly under their floorboards.
I keep applying to NSF for funding to do that experiment, and they keep turning me down.
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Imbedded in the acknowledgments section of the paper is this line:
C.M.B. would specifically like to highlight the ongoing and unwavering support of Lorna O’Brien. Lorna, will you marry me?
Good news: apparently Lorna said yes. Even gooder news: C.M.B. did not just publicly pressure Lorna to accept (always a concern with these sorts of efforts), since she saw it while reading a draft of the paper, before it was published.
Just do it anyway. For science!
Kickstarter? I’d kick in.
So, you’re going to destroy churches, and likely find fossils in the bargain? That seems like a classic win-win situation to me.
AIG headline: “Myers wants to destroy your church!”
Yeah, but he just wants to discover more of those dinosaurs destroyed in the Flood. To prove that Noah rode on them!
They’ve nicknamed this one ‘Hellboy’. I may have to approve.
Also, philipelliott, you misspelled ‘Myers’. If AIG is writing the headlines, it’s got to be ‘Meyers’.
There’s a 700+ year old, gothic cathedral a few hundred metres from my house, just imagine what amazing shit must be hiding below. Although actually i quite like that one, it’s pretty, maybe we can just excavate all the other churches, there are A LOT of them…
I may have mentioned this before here, but it’s a good and similar story. My wife’s cousin-once-removed was the first woman to earn a PhD in physics in Sweden. The Swedish system includes a public viva, in which the candidate is questioned by an “opponent” (I once performed this role, but can’t recall the Swedish term). Traditionally, the opponent’s last question is a jokey or irrelevant one. In her case, it was “Will you marry me?”. As in the case in the OP, she said yes, but I don’t know if she was forewarned.
And the horns, as the picture says!
An epic battle is currently going on about whether it’s mutual sexual selection or species recognition for asexual purposes. Just saying, before you get hate mail. :-)
Dreaming of an Atheistic Newtopia@7,
Excavate anyway: the Power of the Lord will bear up the cathedral however much is removed from underneath it!
I know it’s a royal horned-face … but I just can’t help wanting it to be made of liquorice.
Sure, we have some awful creationists here in Alberta (hoo boy do we ever), but we also have the Royal Tyrell Museum of Paleontology! It’s an incredibly productive research museum, and handles a lot of the output of the Burgess Shale, amongst all of its other work! Excellent laboratory, and a magnificent public experience.
Alberta has a lot to answer for when it comes to terrible religious dogmatists. I think you may have finally explained why!
Your creationary dowsing hypothesis reminds me of the trailer/tornado dowsing hypothesis: that tornadoes are attracted to trailer parks. A simple approach to protecting communities from tornadoes would be to surround them with decoy trailer parks.
It’s not clear if the faux trailers would need to be made from the same materials as real trailers (sheet metal, fiberglass). More study is needed on whether the attraction is based on visual/compositional elements or the material/chemical makeup of the trailer park.
Dinosaur feuds are always epic battles, much like efforts are ‘last ditch’ values are always ‘family’ and dead is always ‘as a dodo.’
Seriously though, I wonder whether frill function might differ between the two lineages, i.e. more sexual selection in the Chasmosaurinae and more species recognition in the Centrosaurinae. Idle speculation from a certopsian lover although I haven’t read any book more recent than Peter Dodson’s “Horned Dinosaurs.’
I’ve never seen the word “lagerstätten” before, but from context it must mean a beer cellar, right?
;-)
moarscienceplz @15
All the more reason to raze all them churches.
@10 Nick Gotts
Somehow, i’m skeptical of that….
Ah, when I was young and foolish… my plastic Triceratops was my favorite, he ran around goring everything until all the other dinos just ran away. Including T. rex. And I mean HE. The girl Triceratops just watched in awe.
The tornado knows which ones are real. After all, have you ever hears of one hitting a fake trailer park??
@moarscienceplz, #15:
I was going to say that getting a beer is at least a better reason to blow up a church than white supremacy. Then I decided that 60 years is a little too soon.
Fuck white supremacy, your joke was much better.
Several of them even. The -n is the plural ending. :-)
(…OK, OK. Literally Lagerstätte is “storage site”; Lagerbier can be stored for a long time. Among Fossillagerstätten, there are Konzentrat-Lagerstätten where there are many fossils because e.g. lots of shells have been swept together by currents, and Konservat-Lagerstätten, where there are many fossils because preservation is exceptionally good.)
PZed may be on to something. The Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre is smack dab in the middle of Manitoba’s Bible Belt. Two complete Mosasaurs, a short necked Plesiosaur, Xiphactinus fossils and loads of other marine fossils from the Cretaceous, all locally found. It’s really quite impressive. From their website:
They used to prominently display the Genesis version of creation alongside Darwin and the Theory of Evolution. They’ve since painted over Genesis.
David Marjanović @9
Out of interest, how would you go about finding out? Short of using a time machine, I mean.
Well, you can make a lot of noise over whether mutual sexual selection even exists (outside of humans maybe), and over whether species recognition really exists.
And you can make noise over the question of whether “mutual sexual selection” should be called sexual selection.
The trick is that there’s little to no evidence for sexual dimorphism in any nonavian dinosaur to date. Things would be easy otherwise…