The Road from SVP (Wonders of Fall Part 1.5)

Following an afternoon at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History (which I'll have plenty of more posts on and photos from in the future), we began the journey back to Maryland from Pittsburgh. I can't say that the weather was as nice on the way back as it was on the way up, but there were some highlights. Rather than talk about the same things as I did in my first "fall journey" post, I'll just run you through it, in picture form.

SVP 2010: The Final Hours

And just as quickly as it started, SVP was on its way to ending. After the last technical sessions and posters, the "Paleo-Terps" met up for one last supper before heading off to the SVP Awards Ceremony. As always I was both pleased and impressed with the winners of the Lanzendorf PaleoArt Award for two-dimensional art, three-dimensional art, scientific illustration, and computer animation, a new category. I was also glad to see the Romer Prize get awarded to Jennifer Olori of the University of Texas at Austin for her phenomenal talk entitled "Developmental features of microsaurs (Lepospondyli), and consequences for the evolution of development and phylogentic relationships within Tetrapoda". All of the Romer Prize talks were good, but Jen's really stood out. Congratulations to all of the award/grant/prize/medal winners!

SVP 2010 (Day 4): "Terrible Lizards"? I think not.

What can I say? Despite the fact that there was a symposium on the evolution of modern african mammals, and all of the fish talks right across the hall, I spent my morning in Technical Session XIV starting off my last day at SVP the same way I started my first: in dinosaur talks. Don't get me wrong - I'm all for fossil sharks, proboscideans, lungfish, bats, etc. But I guess I have a soft spot for the group of animals that got me interested in paleontology in the first place. You know you do as well. It's ok to admit it.

SVP 2010 (Day 3): Archosaurs All Over

Wow, today was a long one. But certainly a good one. I started out the morning in the vertebrate joint symposium with a squamate mandibular symphysis talk by Dr. Casey Holliday, but with the exception of one hominid hip joint talk, it was all archosaurs of the air after that. I managed to make it to one of the only two pterosaur talks of this years meeting, and spent the rest of the morning in Technical Session X for some bird stuff. I've talked about it before, and read through most of the papers on the subject at this point in time, but hearing the fossil feather color talk blew my mind all over again. It was also interesting to learn that the research that lead to the discovery of fossil melanosomes in dinosaur feathers had started with fossil cephalopod ink. There were several talks on new finds in China, and as always, some talks on WAIR and the origin of flight in dinosaurs.

SVP 2010 (Day 2): Romer, Raffels, Reprints, and Roundtables

The second day of the SVP meeting was even better than the first (and the first was pretty good). The morning consisted of the Romer Prize Session, where predoctoral students present their research and one is selected to receive the Romer Prize for their outstanding contribution in vertebrate paleontology. There were some really great talks this year, covering everything from the phylogenetic relationships of lepospondyls, to cryptocleidoid tail fins, to dinosaur respiratory systems. The competition will be pretty tough this year, and there were a lot of stand out talks, but we'll have to wait until the Awards Ceremony on Wednesday evening to find out who the winner will be.

SVP 2010 (Day 1): A Night at the Museum

And what a night it was! The Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CMNH) played host to the SVP's 70th Annual Meeting Welcome Reception, opening its doors and several of its halls for a fantastic evening. Good food, good friends, good times all around. But despite all of that, the real stars of the show were the fossil vertebrates. This post will talk about a few of the dinosaurs (don't worry non-dinosaur folks, I talk about other vrertebrates in future posts, I swear), in their new exhibit "Dinosaurs in their Time". Here for your viewing pleasure, are a few photos of them (obligatory shot of me with Allosaurus fragilis at left).

SVP 2010 (Day1): From the Sea to the Trees

This afternoon, SVP talks were all over the place. I started out in Technical Session IV, where talks on marine tetrapods abounded. Everything from marine iguanas, to plesiosaurs, to shastasaurids. As someone that started out in undergrad as a marine biology major, and someone that took several classes with Dr. Merck, I've always had a soft spot for the brave tetrapod groups that both left the sea for land, and left the land for the sea once again. My "family" is full of brave pioneers. I couldn't be prouder.

SVP 2010 (Day1): Dinos Galore!

Today, I'm coming to you live from SVP. The 70th Annual Meeting looks like its going to be a good one. Now I'm going to be perfectly honest with you; after reading the SVP embargo policy online, I had thought I'd be able to do some decent write ups of what I was seeing and hearing here during the meeting. But after taking a look at an actual press kit (particularly the line in the policy mentioning pending publications in other journals, and their individual policies), I think I'm going to have to leave you all hanging a little bit . I certainly don't want to step on any toes, and I have the utmost respect for the individuals in this field. All of the talks I've seen have been amazing, and while I'd love to tell you all about them in great detail, perhaps I should let the authors/presenters do that when they actually get published. And rest assured, when these papers hit the press, I will be updating here, and linking to all of them.

The Road to SVP (Wonders of Fall Part 1)

Today, the girlfriend and I set off on the somewhat long journey from Hyattsville to Pittsburgh for SVP. And what a beautiful day for a drive. The temperature was perfect, the sun was shining in the sky, and the view was fantastic. If there is one thing I love about this season (admittedly, there are many), it's driving through the mountains and valleys of the Appalachian region. Nothing but fall foliage, road cuts, and outcrops the entire way. This area of the east coast is beautiful any time of year, but there is something about the splash of color in the trees that makes it particularly noteworthy in the fall. Weaving around (and through) the mountains, you can feel the pressure fluctuating in your inner ear and breathe that crisp air that you just don't find at sea level. It's truly wonderful. Lucky for you all, we managed to snap some photos along the way. Please, allow us to share parts of the journey with you (you'll be spared the part where I sing along to John Denver songs at the top of my lungs).