Koch's Yolk-Root
I am very, very tired.
Nice weather today. Sunny. A few clouds. Our high was 88˚F, with a heat index of 89˚F. Currently, it's 81˚F.
I worked on one of the mosasaur papers all morning, then made it to McWane by 1 p.m. I'm supposed to be taking measurements of a skull on loan from the State Museum in Tuscaloosa, but it's hard to be a caliper jokey and juggle numbers when my shut-in's starved senses are overwhelmed by the endless distracting stimuli of the lab. I wound up looking through drawer after drawer of unidentified mosasaur material, and then Drew showed up, and I'd not seen him since March 12th, 2020, at his Ph.D. defense...the day before UAB went into lockdown. So, we talked about our uncertain futures and getting the hell out of Alabama and about mosasaurs and Cretaceous turtles and Star Trek. It was a good afternoon, but it left me exhausted. I think the plan is that I'll be going in to the lab again at least one day a week for the next few months, but my time will be spent on research, not prep.
Oh, and there's a photo below of one of McWane's archeocete whales, a skull of the Late Eocene basilosaurid Zygorhiza kochii, and I'm breaking my ironclad "all blog photos must be vertically oriented, dammit" rule, because these teeth are just too beautiful to turn on end. As it is, the skull in lying upside down, with the teeth of the upper jaws inverted and pointing heavenward. I think I'm too tired to be writing this. Anyway...assuming that made any sort of sense, this specimen was discovered in South Alabama (either Choctaw or Washington counties, I cannot now recall*) by an amateur collector, the late Ronald "Bones" Rhoads. in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Rhoads brought the specimen to the attention of two paleontologists at Auburn University, Dan Womochel and Jim Dobie, who helped him excavate the specimen, and eventually it wound up at the also late Red Mountain Museum, where it was prepared between 1983 and 1985 by zoologist Winston C. Lancaster (now at UAB), to be displayed at the never-to-be-realized new RMM facility. Now, it's part of the McWane collection, where, as it happens, three and a half decades later, Winston is again working on it. But, yeah, I was just out of high school when I first made the acquaintance of this particular whale.
Yeah, that paragraph took my last scarp of energy. Fuck. Okay, well, please check on the current eBay auctions. Spooky's put new books up. Thanks.
Later Tater Beans,
Aunt Beast
2:42 p.m.
* The specimen is MSC RMM 2739 from the Pachuta Marl Member of the Yazoo Clay of Clarke County.
Nice weather today. Sunny. A few clouds. Our high was 88˚F, with a heat index of 89˚F. Currently, it's 81˚F.
I worked on one of the mosasaur papers all morning, then made it to McWane by 1 p.m. I'm supposed to be taking measurements of a skull on loan from the State Museum in Tuscaloosa, but it's hard to be a caliper jokey and juggle numbers when my shut-in's starved senses are overwhelmed by the endless distracting stimuli of the lab. I wound up looking through drawer after drawer of unidentified mosasaur material, and then Drew showed up, and I'd not seen him since March 12th, 2020, at his Ph.D. defense...the day before UAB went into lockdown. So, we talked about our uncertain futures and getting the hell out of Alabama and about mosasaurs and Cretaceous turtles and Star Trek. It was a good afternoon, but it left me exhausted. I think the plan is that I'll be going in to the lab again at least one day a week for the next few months, but my time will be spent on research, not prep.
Oh, and there's a photo below of one of McWane's archeocete whales, a skull of the Late Eocene basilosaurid Zygorhiza kochii, and I'm breaking my ironclad "all blog photos must be vertically oriented, dammit" rule, because these teeth are just too beautiful to turn on end. As it is, the skull in lying upside down, with the teeth of the upper jaws inverted and pointing heavenward. I think I'm too tired to be writing this. Anyway...assuming that made any sort of sense, this specimen was discovered in South Alabama (either Choctaw or Washington counties, I cannot now recall*) by an amateur collector, the late Ronald "Bones" Rhoads. in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Rhoads brought the specimen to the attention of two paleontologists at Auburn University, Dan Womochel and Jim Dobie, who helped him excavate the specimen, and eventually it wound up at the also late Red Mountain Museum, where it was prepared between 1983 and 1985 by zoologist Winston C. Lancaster (now at UAB), to be displayed at the never-to-be-realized new RMM facility. Now, it's part of the McWane collection, where, as it happens, three and a half decades later, Winston is again working on it. But, yeah, I was just out of high school when I first made the acquaintance of this particular whale.
Yeah, that paragraph took my last scarp of energy. Fuck. Okay, well, please check on the current eBay auctions. Spooky's put new books up. Thanks.
Later Tater Beans,
Aunt Beast
2:42 p.m.
* The specimen is MSC RMM 2739 from the Pachuta Marl Member of the Yazoo Clay of Clarke County.