Engaging my Disacknowledgement

Tupandactylus imperator, a rat, and the Disacknowledgement. Not in that order. From Witton (2013).

Weirdest thing happened today: I finished two planned bits of work ahead of time (I know. I'm scared too!). That doesn't mean I'm off the hook work-wise. I was away last week (hence the lack of a fresh post) and catching up is making for a very hectic few days, but the fact that two bits of work were finished bang on time for an afternoon tea break means I've got time to slip in a quick bit of blogging without the usual guilt trip. We'll have to keep it brief, though, and discuss the rather straightforward image shown above.

Rather obviously, this image is a play on those most standard of palaeontological artworks, the extinct-creature-human-scale diagram, in this case showing the flamboyantly crested tapejarid pterosaur Tupandactylus imperator and a fully-fleshed Homo sapiens instead of a silhouette. Those who've read my book, Pterosaurs, may recognise this image from page 221. Note that the Tupandactylus soft-tissue crest is convex along its posterior margin instead of concave, as it's often been depicted. New fossils, such as those mentioned in Pinheiro et al. (2011), suggest that this 'fuller' crest is more likely than the concave crest indicated by the T. imperator holotype (Campos and Kellner 1997). The mandible shape also follows the specimen described by Pinheiro et al. (2011) rather than, as in most depictions of this animal, a generalised tapejarid mandible based on closely related species. Believe it or don't, virtually all that's known for certain of T. imperator is skulls, with only two specimens preserving mandible remains. Tapejarid skeletons without skulls are known from the Tupandactylus-bearing Crato Formation, and some of them likely represent bits of T. imperator itself, but we can't be certain of this until skeletons with associated cranial remains are recovered. Until then, we'll have to be satisfied with the revelation that T. imperator has chin big enough to scare even Kurt Russell, and wait for further discoveries. Be sure to check out this image of Tupandactylus navigans, another Crato pterosaur with a penchant for elaborate headgear, for more information on this genus.

But enough about that
What makes this picture more unusual than many like it is that it depicts an actual, real-life person who I happen to know very well, and anyone who's read Pterosaurs will also be familiar with. Here's where she's mentioned at length, from the 'Acknowledgements' page. She got her own section and everything.

Disacknowledgement

Finally, although customary in book acknowledgements to honor those who help steer projects to completion, it seems unfair to not mention the tremendous negative impact on this project made by Georgia Maclean-Henry. As the single most destructive force against this work, she took my attention from this project so frequently that we ended up moving in with each other halfway through the writing process and have ended up making some sort of home together. She continues to distract me from all kinds of work to this very day and, frankly, I could not be happier about it.

So yes, here she is. The Disacknowledgement herself. The 'single most destructive force against this work', and many others. I chose this picture to post now because today is the 2nd anniversary of the aforementioned moving in with my Disacknowledgement. I'm not normally one for noting or making a big deal of such things (as the Disacknowledgement knows all too well), this ties in with a more important recent event: the Disacknowledgement agreed to marry me when I asked her last week, which is all very exciting and I'm rather over the Moon about (before anyone asks, there were no knees involved, but there was a breccia, not to mention a kick-ass grey seal sighting moments before. He was huge!). Seeing as this image puts me in a good (and probably fairly unique) position to broadcast this happy fact while clinging to some sort of palaeontological relevancy, there seemed no better way to spend this brief teabreak. Speaking of which, said break ended quite a few minutes ago: best get on with other things, including hoping that the Disacknowledgement doesn't mind being referred to as 'the Disacknowledgement' all the time. Sorry dear. 

References

• Campos, D. A. and Kellner, A. W. A. 1997. Short note on the first occurrence of Tapejaridae in the Crato Member (Aptian), Santana Formation, Araripe Basin, Northeast Brazil. Anais-Academia Brasileira de Ciencias, 69, 83-88.
• Pinheiro, F. L., Fortier, D. C., Schultz, C. L., De Andrade, J. A. F. and Bantim, R. A. 2011. New information on the pterosaur Tupandactylus imperator, with comments on the relationships of Tapejaridae. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, 56, 567-580.
• Witton, M. P. 2013. Pterosaurs: Natural History, Evolution, Anatomy. Princeton University Press.

Another Pterosaurs preview, and the soft bits of Tupandactylus

Tupandactylus navigans reclining by sunset, pycnofibres a-glowing.

Holy Toledo, the publication date of Pterosaurs: Natural History, Evolution, Anatomy is now only weeks away. In exactly one month, preordered copies of the book will be sent out and actual, physical copies of it will be in homes around the world. Forgive me if this sounds indulgent: it's not meant to. It's simply a little mind boggling to think of people paying hard-earned money for the book that, with help from Princeton University Press, I spent over two years writing and illustrating. (Don't forget to add the celebratory Pterosaurs party at the Natural History Museum, London, on September 10th, 2013, to your diary.)

To celebrate this navel-gazing milestone, here's another preview image from the book. It shows the Brazilian tapejarid Tupandactylus navigans at sunset, it's fur-like pycnofibres glowing in the diminishing light. This painting is one of the large paintings that accompanies the start of each chapter and, specifically, it opens Chapter 5: "Soft bits". Each of these large paintings was designed to draw focus to the topic of its chapter. Deciding on the basic composition was easy enough for many chapters, but those focussing on soft-tissue anatomy and osteology proved to be a little bit of a head scratcher. How do you draw specific attention to tissues comprising pterosaur bodies rather than the pterosaur itself? The answer for "Soft bits" at leastseemed to lie in back lighting a pterosaur body so that most of the animal was obscured, save for a halo of illuminated fuzz. Tupandactylus navigans was chosen because it's enormous soft-tissue headcrest (below) contributed to the already unusual outline of a pterosaur body to make a more startling image. "Soft bits" takes on a variety of other soft tissues as well - brains, lungs, guts, skin, wing membranes and so forth - but these seemed harder to bring out without cutting a pterosaur open.

Tupandactylus navigans holotype skull SMNK PAL 2344, showing the crazy headgear sported by some tapejarid species.  Remember that this crest is not the largest worn by a tapejarid pterosaur. From Witton (2013).

In other news, today also saw Christopher DiPiazza post an online interview he conducted with me at Jersey Boys Hunt Dinosaurs. The post contains some exclusive artwork, comments on how to get into palaeontology and a frank reply to the question of "should I undertake postgraduate studies in palaeontology?" I'm not the only chap telling people to be cautious about choosing palaeontology as a career at the moment, and seriously recommend that prospective students thinking about joining the palaeo ladder give that choice some serious thought before taking the plunge. Read why here (question 7).

That's all for this week. Next week: pterosaur mummies!

P.S. 'Tupandactylus' navigans? Who he?

Finally, a quick note on the nomenclature used in this post. Readers familiar with tapejarid taxonomy may notice that I'm treating navigans as part of the genus Tupandactylus, whereas it has typically been referred to Tapejara or "Tapejara" by other workers. The nomenclatural history of navigans is a little complicated. It was initially placed in the genus Tapejara (Frey et al. 2003) along with two other species, T. wellnhoferi and imperator. Two teams of authors independently revised the taxonomy of this genus in 2007, with Kellner and Campos (2007) moving imperator to a novel genus, Tupandactylus and Unwin and Martill (2007) creating another new genus, Ingridia, for navigans and imperator, with the latter as the type species. The work of Kellner and Campos was published just before Unwin and Martill and, because they both used imperator as the type taxon of their respective genera, Ingridia must be considered synonymous with Tupandactylus. Kellner and Campos (2007) hinted that navigans was also probably a member of Tupandactylus, but Darren Naish suggested that it may still warrant generic distinction from imperator in a 2008 Tetrapod Zoology article. navigans has been in taxonomic limbo since then, but recent phylogenetic work (e.g. Pinheiro et al. 2011 and my own studies, presented last year at SVPCA 2012 and hopefully being turned into a fully fledged paper when I get the time) has found support for a navigans + imperator clade which bears out earlier suggestions that these species are congeneric. These discussions about generic labels are fairly arbitrary and someone may eventually decide to generically split navigans from tupandactylus but, until then, it seems reasonable to house navigans within the Tupandactylus stable. 

References

• Frey, E., Martill, D. M., and Buchy, C. C. 2003.  A new species of tapejarid pterosaur with soft tissue head crest. In: Buffetaut, E. and Mazin, J. M. (eds.) Evolution and Palaeobiology of Pterosaurs, Geological Society Special Publication, 217, 65-72.
• Kellner, A. W. A. and Campos, D. A. 2007. Short note on the ingroup relationships of the Tapejaridae (Pterosauria, Pterodactyloidea). Boletim do Museu Nacional, Nova Séroe, Rio de Janeiro - Brasil. Geologia, 75, 1-14.
• Unwin, D. M. and Martill, D. M. 2007. Pterosaurs from the Crato Formation. In: Martill, D. M., Bechly, G. and Loveridge, R. F. (eds) Window into an ancient world: the Crato fossil beds of Brazil, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 624 pp.
• Pinheiro, F. L., Fortier, D. C., Schultz, C. L., De Andrade, J. A. F., and Bantim, R. A. 2011. New information on the pterosaur Tupandactylus imperator, with comments on the relationships of Tapejaridae. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, 56(3), 567-580.
• Witton, M. P. 2013. Pterosaurs: Natural History, Evolution, Anatomy. Princeton University Press. [In press]