#pistosaur

[he-who-needs-to-be-silenced]

Yunguisaurus

Did this a week ago after a paleostream

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

I’m currently recovering for a bought of heatstroke and need something to keep me awake and cognizant (the hazards of fieldwork during the summer). Do you have any interesting facts about early Triassic weirdos? Admittedly that’s my least known era of prehistory, though not from a lack of trying on my part.

Lystrosaurus may not be technically just Triassic, but it gets lumped with the Triassic weirdos because the weirdest thing about it happened in the Triassic - it was most tetrapods for a decent chunk of time. They were everywhere. They did amazingly. And they went extinct the second other stuff started showing up again. It's wild.

The Early Triassic was also just the time when marine reptiles exploded. That's when we get a lot of the weirdest marine reps. Hupehsuchians? The first Nothosaurs? Pachypleurosaurs? Heck, this is even when we see the first Pistosaurs

The problem with the Early Triassic is that it's not proportional. It only lasts for a little less than five million years. That's just way too short of a time for a geological slice to show major changes, especially when it's that old.

But! There are more! Erythrosuchus first shows up in the Early Triassic, and the first Dinosauromorphs definitely appeared as showed by footprints. And, of course, there were tons of Ichthyosaurs, exacerbated by the fact that they may have originally evolved in the Permian after all

I'm hoping the more we study the Earliest Triassic, the more weirdos we will find. But yeah, you gotta go to the Middle to see the weirdness *really* take off

[demi-shoggoth]

2021 Reading Log, pt 32

156. PNSO Encyclopedia for Children: The Secrets of Ancient Sea Monsters by Zhao Chuang and Yang Yang. This is probably the least of the three PNSO Secrets of books. The text comes off as awfully judgmental about the swimming capabilities of a number of the marine reptiles covered within, and the inconsistencies in the art are noticeable (a Tylosaurus depicted with clawed flippers on one page, without on another, that sort of thing). A number of the anecdotes in the book were already inaccurate when it was written in 2015 (Elasmosaurus with swan-like necks attacking fish from above, plesiosaurs in general beaching themselves to lay eggs). I do commend the coverage, however. About five placodontids appear in the book, as well as several choristoderes and pistosaurs. And most books aimed at this age set view marine reptiles as a sideshow for the dinosaurs, instead of devoting an entire volume to them.

157. Bleeding Skull! A 1990s Trash Horror Odyssey by Joseph A. Ziemba, Annie Choi and Zack Carlson. This book is a collection of reviews about direct-to-video horror movies of the 1990s, almost all of them independently produced and shot on video. There’s a genuine affection for the movies involved—Ziemba is the director of the American Genre Film Archive, and you don’t have that kind of position if you don’t love schlock. It’s basically the book I wanted Analog Nightmares from last year to be: it’s not uncritical of the Z-grade movies on display, but instead can tell the difference between a good viewing experience and a bad one. And I may have developed a parasocial crush on Annie Choi based on her writings found here.

(note: this is not the cover of the edition I read, but that’s a library-bound copy that’s more than a century old. Unsurprisingly, no images of that exact version exist online, and it’s a pretty boring cover besides)

158. Curious Myths of the Middle Ages by Sabine Baring-Gould. The oldest book I’ve read this year, published originally in 1866, in an American edition from 1894. Baring-Gould was a pioneer of folklore studies, and is writing primarily about European myths—Prester John, Pope Joan, William Tell and the like. Baring-Gould has a passion for the idea of the Ur-Myth later espoused by authors like James Frazer in The Golden Bough, and like in that book is a little too eager to assume that the Indian version of all of these Indo-European stories is the “original”. He’s also definitely blinded by his role as an Anglican minister. He accuses basically everyone except Catholics and Anglicans of being idolaters and heretics (in later chapters he is especially huffy about Methodists secretly being holdovers of Druidism), is wildly antisemetic at times, and occasionally views stories as corrupted versions of the Biblical truth. A valuable resource for people interested in European myth and folklore, but not one to be taken uncritically.

159. Around the World in 80 Plants by Jonathan Drori, illustrated by Lucille Clerc. This book is as much about the social history of plants as it is about their biology. The countries the plants are attributed to are ones where the plant has cultural importance rather than necessarily being its origin. For example, castor beans are discussed in Italy in the context of Fascist torture methods, and opium poppies are covered under Australia because Tasmania is a major global supplier. The tone is droll, slightly moralizing, and very British. The illustrations, which to my untrained eye appear to be in pastels and colored pencil, are lovely. The book is worth checking out on their merit alone.

160. Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid by Thor Hanson. The subject of the book is how the behavior and evolution of life is changing in response to climate change. Range shifts, behavioral and phenotypic plasticity, and evolutionary adaptations are all covered here. The tone is conversational, and the topics covered flow well together. I like the focus on individual scientists, their research, and the recurring theme of all of these specialists pivoting to climate change studies as the 20th century ended and the 21st century began. What I didn’t like was how the last chapter doubled down on personal responsibility being the primary way to solve the climate crisis. The average person supports green policies! It’s the fossil fuel companies and their inroads into government that are preventing it from happening! Turning off the lights when we leave the room isn’t going to fucking cut it, Thor!