tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-221088272011-12-23T15:11:45.257-08:00A blog about paleontology, paleoecology, and the problems involved therein. You will see me discuss the issues of diet, teeth, taxonomy, and the reconstruction of biomes and dietary conditions in a host of extinct organisms, and even those animals that have no teeth.Jaime A. Headdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031322506467360716noreply@blogger.comBlogger71100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22108827.post-1159351392764031412006-09-27T02:29:00.000-07:002006-09-27T03:04:25.776-07:00

This post originally appeared on a mailing list discussion by yours truly back in 2000, here. I am posting it here in order to reintroduce the topic and begin elaborating on it, as I have a few/many comments on the topic of troodontids, deinonychosaur phylogeny, bullatosaurian phylogeny, their teeth, the nature of carnivore "guilds," and the general topic of teeth and tooth-based taxa and what to

Jaime A. Headdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031322506467360716noreply@blogger.com109tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22108827.post-1144795401491818842006-04-11T15:39:00.000-07:002006-04-11T15:43:21.503-07:00

I first started this blog to post my long and sometimes convoluted ideas about the relationship of teeth to evolution, biology, and ecology. Since then, I have been posting commentaries and one single discussion that might have anything to do with teeth (on the despots). This should be changing shortly, as I delve into the past to bring up some old Mailing List posts of mine on the subject as I

Jaime A. Headdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031322506467360716noreply@blogger.com31tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22108827.post-1144494604341379162006-04-08T04:04:00.000-07:002006-04-08T04:10:25.250-07:00

Prof. P.Z. Myers has a post over at Pharyngula from last March (over a week ago!), discussing a parable on the choice of two doors. There are some obvious symbolic inferences, but I was not satisfied by the given scenarios, which only seem to attest to a particular bias on the part of the author on how to choose between two apparent positive options (though the description quickly diverged into

Jaime A. Headdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031322506467360716noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22108827.post-1141258821690015652006-03-01T15:24:00.000-08:002006-03-01T16:20:21.710-08:00

Well, apologists as far as creationism, anyway. A group called Creation Expeditions (link) seek to recover fossils to "prove" creation and disprove evolution. However, the group is peppered with some of the more egregious and most easily falsifiable (as well as down-right ridiculous) statements that show how little some of these investigators are really willing to go to study the fossils they

Jaime A. Headdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031322506467360716noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22108827.post-1140411070047783582006-02-19T20:49:00.000-08:002006-02-19T20:51:10.056-08:00

I prepared an illustration of the skulls of these "despots" for the sake of comparison, which can be viewed here. The caption is in the figure itself, and the description below is the same as the post I originally mentioned these animals in.

Jaime A. Headdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031322506467360716noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22108827.post-1140408805812225732006-02-19T19:49:00.000-08:002006-02-19T20:16:33.543-08:00

From Michael Ryan's (CMN) blog, Palaeoblog, Larry Witmer (University of Ohio's Associate Professor of Anatomy) and Jack Horner (Montana State University's Museum of the Rockies' Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology) have a series of presentations at this year's American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in St. Louis, Missouri (always in the USA):Larry Witmer's talk:T. rex appears

Jaime A. Headdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031322506467360716noreply@blogger.com31tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22108827.post-1139889219459009852006-02-13T19:23:00.001-08:002006-02-16T03:30:06.660-08:00

We all know and love our tyrannosaurs, and anyone who's seen Jurassic Pork -- I mean, Park -- knows these things. Indeed, Tyrannosaurus rex is the #1 ranking most favorite dinosaur in the world, and in history. Save before the 1900's, there was no other truly popular dinosaur, and before it, only scientists really cared about dinosaurs. It wasn't until the popularization in the early 1900's that

Jaime A. Headdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14031322506467360716noreply@blogger.com55