Bryan Gee, Ph.D.
  • Home
  • About me
  • Research
  • Publications
  • Blog
  • Fieldwork
    • Wildlife photos
  • Contact

Temno Talk: a blog about all things temnospondyl

Easter eggs

4/23/2019

1 Comment

 
With Easter just behind us, eggs (usually the chocolate variety) are surely on most people's minds. So are things that hatch out of eggs, such as chickens. Eggs are a pretty fascinating biological structure if you think about it long enough - they're basically a mini life support system. Eggs have a long fossil record as well; they're known from many dinosaurs for example, as well as other animals that lay hard-shelled eggs. But what about temnospondyl eggs? Well unfortunately, temnospondyl eggs were almost certainly like the eggs of other "lower vertebrates" (fish + amphibians), which today, fall into the category of "soft tissues," which is to say that they don't have any mineralized components like in bones, teeth, or eggshells. Instead, they look more or less like gelatinous blobs with the developing embryo inside. Because most fossilization occurs through permineralization where the original minerals formed by the animal while it was alive are replaced by other minerals that follow the original structure, the absence of mineralized tissues in structures such as hair, feathers, skin, and in this case, some eggs, makes them unlikely to preserve. 
Picture
The shelled egg of a hatching tortoise. Photograph distributed on Wikimedia Commons by Mayer Richard under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Picture
Unlike the eggs of most reptiles and birds, amphibian eggs have no hard shell. Photograph distributed on Wikimedia Commons by Geoff Galice under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Read More
1 Comment

Arguments Against Apachesaurus: the problem of small metoposaurids

4/8/2019

1 Comment

 
Had to skip last week because of a hectic last week of classes schedule, but I'm back this week with a blog post that's near and dear to my heart and that's been on my mind a lot between doing some collections work with Aaron Kufner (PhD student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison) a few weeks back and going out to Madison this week to give a talk on the subject matter at their student symposium. It's almost the two-year anniversary of my first paper too! For a lot of folks, you already know what I'm going to talk about, but for the uninitiated, I'll be talking about my favourite temnospondyls this week - metoposaurids - more specifically all the problems with a particular taxon, Apachesaurus. I've published several papers on this taxon and probably seem like I have a vendetta against it at this point... Because I didn't even have a website when most of these papers were published, let alone blog, this is also a great chance to read up on some of my existing publications outside of my dissertation work!

Read More
1 Comment

    About the blog

    A blog on all things temnospondyl written by someone who spends too much time thinking about them. Covers all aspects of temnospondyl paleobiology and ongoing research (not just mine).

    Categories

    All
    How Do We Know...?
    New Publications
    Temnospondyl Tuesday

    Archives

    February 2022
    November 2021
    October 2021
    May 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • About me
  • Research
  • Publications
  • Blog
  • Fieldwork
    • Wildlife photos
  • Contact