A fantastic new series on Dinosaurs of the British Isles airs tonight on ITV! It stars Dean Lomax, a professional palaeontologist based pretty much everywhere in the UK. It seems to be based off a book of his, published via Siri Press. I’ve seen a copy, and it’s pretty much the best illustrated guides to dinosaurs ever. Here’s a preview below, so at 9pm GMT, kick off your shoes, get the snacks ready and crack open a cold one, because it promises to be awesome!
Welcome to guest blogger Dr. Sabine Lengger!
Hi readers of “Green tea and Velociraptors”, my name is Sabine Lengger, I am a scientist, and I am an avid reader of Jon’s blog too. I started out my scientific career as a chemist / biochemist, and became more and more fascinated by the fields of environmental chemistry and molecular palaeontology. Since Jon spends all day [apparently] writing his thesis these days and asked for a guest writer, I thought I could add the occasional thought on fossils from my perspective. Below there’s a little introduction to palaeontology from the organic chemist’s point of view, and the stuff that we get excited about … molecules!
Lizard lizard on the wall
When you think about fossils, lizards might be not be one of the first groups that springs to mind. However, they do have a pretty neat fossil record, stretching back over 150 million years. One group of lizards, iguanians, are still around today and comprises about 1700 different species! One sub-group of these iguanians, acrodonts, are thought to have originated in east Gondwana – part of the ‘old world’ including Africa. Acrodonts are named after weird features in their jaws, with teeth fused to the apex of the jaws, as opposed to the inside.
SVPCA 2015
This year, the 63rd Symposium for Vertebrate Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy is taking place alongside the 24th Symposium of Palaeontological Preparation and Conservation with the Geological Curators’ Group (what a mouth-full..), at the National Oceanographic Centre in Southampton.
I don’t have much to say about this conference, as I’m heading to it’s international cousin, SVP (Society for Vertebrate Paleontology) in Dallas soon, but it’s a pretty cool event. Most importantly, the abstracts are all freely available to read online here in advance. There’s a great range of research, mostly from researchers based in the UK, but a great chance to see some of the fab things that people are working on here in the field. Enjoy!