"Ptero-dactyle" - The turbulent discovery of the first pterosaur

In the spring of 1800, General Moreau crossed the Rhine river, with his French army invading Germany, Naploeon was beginning his campaign for world domination, and Professor Jean Hermann of Stragsbourg was preparing a memoir on a strange skeleton of a flying animal. In March, he sent his unfinished manuscript to Prof. Cuvier in Paris, including two drawings of what he thought it would look like in life. He saddly wrote "Aujourd'hui que notre paternal gouvernement me degoute de plus en plus de toute entreprise, j'en abandonne le projet." The unfinished manuscript, illustrating the first Pterosaur ever found, sat in the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, until Drs. Philippe Taquet and Kevin Padian published the illustrations in the most recent edition of the Journal Comptes Rendus Paleovol. Histoire des sciences.

Utah Friends of Paleontology Annual Meeting

Dates have been announced for the Utah Friends of Paleontology's annual meeting to take place in Vernal, Utah, on June 18th to the 20th, 2004. The event will coincide with the opening of the Utah Field House of Natural History's new museum facility! Some exciting pre-meeting field trips are planned by the Friends of the Morrison starting on the 14th. The field trips follow the Dinosaur Diamond National Scenic Byway tour, into Colorado, Wyoming and Utah. Here is all the details.

John Maynard Smith Dies at 84

Any college text book on evolutionary theory cites more papers by Dr. John Maynard Smith, then just about anybody else. Mentored by Dr. J.B.S. Haldane, one of the founders of the modern synthesis, John Maynard Smith invented mathmatical models in which evolution could be played out. He published a large number of books, covering topics, as diverse as evolutionary rates, sexual selection and evolutionary genetics. His obiturary can be read here. I was happy to see that in an interview in 2000, he stated "Possibly most influential in making me interested in genetics and in evolution was a strange book by a man called Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men." If you have not read Olaf Stapledon's classic 1930's science fiction novel, you should.