I'm not a bad person, I swear.

But I still couldn't stop myself from laughing when I saw this. If you're at all familiar with marine reptiles of the Mesozoic, you'll understand why right away.

Sticker from the UHA/Kaiyodoi/Chocola Saurus/Dino Tales series 3 figure # 064 "Tyrosaurus" figure from Japan, made in China.

Since I'm really busy, identify these squamates.

A few weeks back, I did a teaser post on my trip to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and promised some meatier posts and pictures. I should apologize. My life has gotten really busy with work, school, and personal matters to attend to. But I also can't stand to let Superoceras sit for over a week with no activity. So here is another quick post, featuring some of my photos from the "Lizards & Snakes: ALIVE!" exhibition.

New perspectives, here I come!

Yay! After numerous publishing delays, my copy of New Perspectives on Horned Dinosaurs has finally arrived in the mail. I cannot wait to dig into this volume, and am so glad that Indiana University Press had their 60th anniversary sale a few months back, or I never would have been able to afford it.

This collection of papers from The Royal Tyrrell Museum Ceratopsian Symposium has loads of brand new research covering systematics, anatomy, functional biology, paleobiology, taphonomy, paleoecology, behavior, and even describes several new species.

Squamates and hominids and dinosaurs, oh my!

Me and "the family" in the Spitzer Hall of Human Origins.

I am a lucky, lucky boy. For my birthday, I was gifted (thanks Christina!) an admission ticket to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. This is only the third time I've been able to walk the halls of the AMNH, but it was the first time I was granted an entire day to do so at my leisure. My usual trips up are with groups, and we've have to move quickly to get through things and be back on a bus by a given time. Even with an entire day, the museum is much too vast to cover. I probably managed to get through about one fourth of it, and I was rushing a little to cover as much ground as possible. Regardless, it was a great day, and I came back with lots of photos and information that I look forward to sharing with my readers.

Why do you do these things?

I have to start out by saying that I thought long and hard about actually publishing this post. It is, for the most part, an opinion piece, and distracts from the primary focus of my blog. It communicates little science, and is for all intents and purposes, more of a rant than anything. But it does tie into other issues covered here at Superoceras in the past, like the role of the media in communicating scientific knowledge, and protection/conservation of wildlife. For that reason I'll get on with it.

Vanessa over at NatureBreak recently posted a new video titled "Is Wildlife Filming Cruel to Animals?" that has started quite the discussion. I didn't want to distract from the conversation there by getting off topic, or distract here by starting my own on the subject (please follow the link, join NatureBreak, and comment on the video there yourself). But I did want to quickly speak my mind about something that really gets under my skin: Bear Grylls.