Greetings!

Welcome to Superoceras, a blog about science and natural history, slightly biased towards paleontology and zoology, but inclusive of all sciences. Started in October of 2009, my goal is to communicate scientific knowledge (and the occasional piece of nonsense) in an informative and entertaining manner. Feel free to contact me with questions, comments, concerns, or criticism at superoceras(at)gmail(dot)com, and follow me on Twitter @Superoceras for all that and more in 140 characters or less!

Friday, December 18, 2009

Clash of the Dinosaur Special and Professional Paleontologist


Man, I really wish that I had actually finished my series on science, education, and the media before now. I keep getting interrupted from writing it, and then something like this happens, which perfectly illustrates why I need to talk about it in the first place. This will be another quick, link heavy post, but bear with me until I can flesh out the bones of my larger post over break.

Matt Wedel over at SV-POW was a featured "talking head" in the recent Discovery Channel documentary Clash of the Dinosaurs, and did not have a very good experience. Essentially, the individuals over at Dangerous Ltd., the production company working on the program edited an interview with Dr. Wedel so that it appeared, on television, as if he agreed with an outdated and falsified notion regarding the "second brain" of sauropod dinosaurs. Dr. Wedel was obsiously very upset at this, as his reputation among his peers and collegues could be seriousy tarnished.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Maryland Dinosaurs!

Sorry for the brief hiatus after Darwin/Thanksgiving week. My final weeks of classes and work were starting to catch up with me, but the good news is that it's almost over and winter break is right around the corner. That means I can put a lot more time into some substantial posts. For now, I just wanted to briefly mention some other exciting news from that week.

On November 7, 2009, the Maryland-National Parks and Planting Commission and the Prince George's County Department of Parks and Recreation opened Maryland's first Dinosaur Park just south of Laurel, MD. The park is open to the public every other Saturday from noon to 4:00PM, and in only its second week, a nine-year-old Virgina girl discovered a caudal vertebrae from a theropod dinosaur estimated to be around 100 million years old. I'm sorry, but that's AWESOME.