http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/arti...EWS01/605220411

They finally published on it! Victor Porter came by the museum a month or so ago with a cast of the skull. Really a cool animal.

On our Pachy body, with a forlorn pachy skull on the ground.


Two boneheads:

The Black Hills Institute was responsible for the preparation / casting of the skull last summer. I was able to snap a couple of photos during the tyrannosaur symposium held last June and thought you might all be interested to see them. The hand of Thomas Carr also makes a cameo appearence as our scale reference...

Neat animal. Has anyone gotten their hands on the paper yet? :o

Not yet. I'll have to ask Victor next time I see him. It was supposedly massive last I heard, but that was 2 months ago when they were still editing.

Does anyone know why the specific honour went to a Rowling creation? In particular, what contributions to palaeontology have been performed for the authors of the paper to bestow the honor on Hogwarts?

I think you're missing the basic point here: it's the Children's Museum of Indianapolis. Name was chosen by popular vote amongst the patrons/members.

I mean, if naming dinosaurs was based upon some sort of merit, I may have one named after me by now, and that's only after 9 short years in the biz! I'd settle for the Megalocoelocanthis out of the Niobrara though.... That was fun to prep.

Only a hard copy. Email the authors for a PDF.

What were the alternatives?

You'd have to email Victor Porter about that. When I saw him last, the manuscript had just been finished, and they were keeping the species name hush-hush. They offered no clues.

The paper is available now on Sullivan's personal Website ( http://www.robertmsullivanphd.com/ ), however, after reading it, I wouldn't consider it particularly massive. It's just a satisfactory description, and that's all really. Has nice figures, but could have *always* used more (true of most papers, though).

True, not massive. However when I last saw him, he mentioned something like 60 pages of manuscript before going to the editors. Maybe Bakker just likes everything in 32 point font?