Skeleton of the Dodo

Here's a shot of something in progress: it's a sketch for one of the illustrations in The Vanishing Bestiary (which I mentioned last post, though I may not have called it by its title).

Due to the assortment of reference photos and illustrations I was using, many of the them either very old, or rather low-res, or at a bad angle, there are some details I had to fudge a little and some that aren't as, well, detailed as I'd like. Ultimately, this will be a lino print, which won't hold s much detail as a drawing anyway, so it probably won't matter. On the other hand, I wouldn't mind finishing this as a drawing, too, and maybe even doing a non-fine-print version of The Vanishing Bestiary.

Book Review: How to Build a Dinosaur

How to Build a Dinousaur: Extinction Doesn't Have to Be Forever by Jack Horner and James Gorman. London and New York: Dutton, 2009.

There are a couple of things misleading about the title of this book. First, it's not really about how to build a dinosaur, it's about the science that has lead up to the possibility that we might someday be able to create a living dinosaur out of a bird embryo. And second, it's not really about bringing anything back from extinction, it's about using the way a growing creature's genetic code sends instructions to its cells to learn about how evolution has progressed and in the process change the development of a chicken so that it grows into something more commonly recognizable as a dinosaur (because, or course, birds are already dinosaurs). There's nothing about tinkering with the DNA itself.

That said, this is a great book, and though it's not entirely focused on bones there is more than enough cool bone science for the curious skelephile. If you're into dinosaurs (and if not, what's wrong with you?), or the evolution of birds, or if you're interested in how embryonic development makes a skeleton grow a pygostyle, say, instead of a tail, you should add this volume to your library. Jack Horner is an articulate and enthusiastic dinosaur guy, and with the help of co-author James Gorman he's written a very readable book that intelligent readers of just about any level of dinosaur knowledge can enjoy.

I would have liked to see a few more illustrations or photographs, but the lack of them isn't really a strike against the book. The most important things get visuals--I'd just have liked to have had a few more things to ponder visually.

Though this isn't a book aimed at a scholarly audience, I do think bone scholars would find a lot to like here. Plus, there are references in the back for each chapter, so the interested can pursue the scientific papers and books that inform the discussion.

I based this review on the 2009 hardcover version that I found remaindered at the local book store. I see, though, that a paperback with a different subtitle (The New Science of Reverse Evolution) came out in 2010. I've no idea if anything else changed besides the title, but if you're going to buy it full price, you might want to go for the more recent edition.
 

Bone Art: Kate MacDowell

Thanks to a friend's StumbleUpon bookmarks, I came across the incredible ceramic sculptures of Kate MacDowell a day or two ago.

Notice the human skeleton. She has several more along the same lines, as well as other beautiful, surreal pieces. Songbirds perching inside a pair of human lungs, literal clay pigeons, and other wonderful things. Go look at her portfolio, you will be amazed.

Bone Art: The Evolution of Flight

A few years ago, when I was still in art school, I made a lithograph titled "The Evolution of Flight." It ties in to some stories and comics and books and artefacts I've been working on which will all come together in something bigger once I figure out what shape I want it to take.

But anyway, what's relevant for this blog is that I used bones in it. The print -- as you can see from the image -- is multiple layers of stuff. For those interested, I started with three runs from a litho stone, altering it each time with etching and sanding (that's the wing shape that dominates the image from far away). Then I added two separate runs from aluminum photoplates, made from my own drawings (or handwriting, in the case of the brown layer). One of those plates is a sort of comparative anatomy diagram, which came to mind when I was writing up the book review in my last post.

The image shows four skeletal limbs. The first is a bird:

The next is bat:

Then, of course, human, because this is the evolution of human flight:

And the final one is not from an animal but a flying machine (of my own silly invention) called a pterothopter.

In retrospect, I should also have included a pterosaur wing, though the pterpthopter is acutally named for Pteropus, the genus of bats called "flying foxes" and not for the pterosaurs. Still, it would have been a good thing to have.

The handwriting, incidentally, is bits of a story about a made scientist character who decided to create flying humans. She intended to do so through a combination of selective breeding and prosthetic surgery, but eventually gave up to work on flying machines with human pilots instead (and her neighbours breathed a sigh of relief).

Bird Bones

I don't know if it's just me, but it seems like there are fewer online references for osteology and zoorchaeology than there were back in the 90s when I was an archaeology student. That said, I have found some really great sites for bird osteology.

The first site I found is the Bird Skull Collection. It's maintained by the Experimental Zoology Group of Wageningen University and is, as the title indicates, a collection of bird skulls, all photographed from multiple views. Obviously, not every bird species in the world is included here, but the collection is vast and continually growing, and the images are clear. In addition to the skulls, there are full skeletons for some species, and even a selection of 3D images. There's even a quiz so you can test your knowledge of bird skulls (I'll leave that for when I've brushed up my skills a bit).

The links page on the above site then led me to the Seabird Osteology Pages, another site from the Netherlands. The images are mostly skulls, but the scope has expanded to include other bones, too. It's a less comprehensive page than the Bird Skull Collection--as it must be, focusing only on seabirds--but the quality of the photographs is top-notch. So if you're interested in seabirds, this is an essential site.

As for books, the main reference still seems to be Avian Osteology by B. Miles Gilbert (buy from amazon). A promising-looking book I haven't actually got my hands on yet is Manual for the Identification of Bird Bones from Archaeological Sites by Alan Cohen and Dale Serjeantson (buy from amazon). Another useful reference, especially if you're also interested in tracking and observing living birds, is Bird Tracks and Sign by Mark Elbroch (buy from amazon). It's got a decent section on bird skulls, but is limited to North America.

There are also assorted smaller sources and monographs on specific topics. One such is On the Osteology of the Striges. [Strigidae and Bubonidae] by R.W. Shufeldt (buy from amazon). It's a reprint from the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society from 1900. It's got illustrations of varying utility, but I haven't read it yet, so I can't say how good the text is. I've slowly building an osteology/zooarchaeology library for some time (emphasis on "slowly"), and I'll mention new books as I find them.