Monthly Archives: March 2010

Paring Down the Data

Posted on March 19, 2010 by Andy Farke

Awhile back, I brought up the issue of how to handle specimens with multiple individuals, as well as juvenile individuals, and a lively discussion ensued. The general conclusions were: Any ratios must be calculated for individual specimens, not from Frankensteinian … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 15 Comments

Sauropelta Solved!

Posted on March 19, 2010 by Andy Farke

A nagging problem in our dataset has been the issue of the Sauropelta edwardsi specimen AMNH 3032. Its tibia seems way, way too short (even for ankylosaurs), and it’s thus a bizarro outlier. So, I finally got my behind into … Continue reading →

Posted in Miscellaneous | 2 Comments

Analytical Software

Posted on March 10, 2010 by Andy Farke

As the past two posts have attested, we are on the cusp of doing some actual, real-life analysis. If at all possible, I want to run the analyses using freely available, open source software. Fortunately, all of the major software … Continue reading →

Posted in Basics, Miscellaneous | 10 Comments

By Popular Demand. . .

Posted on March 10, 2010 by Andy Farke

As a follow-up to our last post on thyreophorans, here are marginocephalians (ceratopsians and pachycephalosaurs) with some of their outgroups. Moving or removing the uncertainly-placed Stenopelix has little effect on character reconstruction.

Posted in Data Exploration | 11 Comments

Data Are Pretty

Posted on March 9, 2010 by Andy Farke

Now that we’ve gotten a reasonable phylogeny hammered out, it’s time to start putting it to use! Just for fun, I used the (open source and free to download) program Mesquite to plot the femur:tibia ratio (as John Dziak had … Continue reading →

Posted in Data Exploration | 18 Comments

Cladogram(s), Part III

Posted on March 8, 2010 by Andy Farke

I think we’re now converging on a cladogram that reasonably captures the current state-of-the-art. Thank you to everyone who has contributed so far. The topology has incorporated most of the suggestions, and I think the nomenclature is finally up-to-date. As … Continue reading →

Posted in Progress Reports | 6 Comments

Meet the Project Participants: David Dreisigmeyer

Posted on March 7, 2010 by Andy Farke

It’s been a long time since we’ve featured one of our project participants. . .so, here’s a chat with a relative newcomer to the ODP, David Dreisigmeyer. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from? What do … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The Cladogram, Version 2

Posted on March 7, 2010 by Andy Farke

Thank you to everyone who commented on the first draft of the phylogeny. Based on all of this, I’ve updated the tree, incorporating most of what was recommended. As before, the rationale behind the topology is included at the end … Continue reading →

Posted in Progress Reports | 11 Comments

Behold, The Mighty Cladogram

Posted on March 5, 2010 by Andy Farke

It’s taken awhile, but I finally put together a basic phylogeny to provide the evolutionary backbone for our phylogenetically-informed analyses. References (in very abbreviated format – we’ll have to flesh it out more for the paper) are given at the … Continue reading →

Posted in Progress Reports, To-Do List | 23 Comments

Almost Done Aging Our Dinosaurs!

Posted on March 5, 2010 by Andy Farke

Thank you to Rob Taylor, David Button, Christian Foth, ReBecca Hunt, Chris Noto, and Jordan Mallon for their work filling in the ages/dates for our dinosaur spreadsheet, as well as helping to update some of the taxonomy. We have just … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments