57+1
Cloudy much of the day, but the sun's come out. Our high was 85˚F; currently, it's 84˚F, with the heat index at 87˚F.
A lost day, mostly. Fallout from the birthday. I did some reading from Rich and Vickers-Rich's book of polar dinosaurs (2020). I did some work on the cave matrix. Really, not much more than that. My afternoon movie was Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).
Today is also the 107th anniversary of my Grandmother Ramey's birth. She died in 2005.
And two days ago I learned that last January, January 2020, Samuel Wayne Shannon died, he was only 68 years old. Sam Shannon (1951-2020) played an important role early on in my work in paleontology and gave me a lot of encouragement. In 1988, we co-authored the description of a new genus and species of mosasaur from Alabama, Selmasaurus russelli. He'd first recognized that the specimen as a new taxon in his 1977 Master's Thesis, Selected Alabama Mosasurs (University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa), but it remained unpublished until our collaboration a decade later. He also had a brief publication from the Geological Survey of Alabama on plesiosaur fossils from the state. I'd not actually seen or spoken with Sam since the late 1980s, and it was quite by chance I learned of his death. After graduate school, he pursued a career in hydrogeology, not paleontology. Indeed, he once assurred me that if I actually tried to make a living from vertebrate paleontology, I'd starve. And he was probably right. I probably would have.
Anyway, meet Polyphemus, the one-eyed squirrel I spoke of a couple of nights back.
Later,
Aunt Beast
4:48 p.m.
A lost day, mostly. Fallout from the birthday. I did some reading from Rich and Vickers-Rich's book of polar dinosaurs (2020). I did some work on the cave matrix. Really, not much more than that. My afternoon movie was Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).
Today is also the 107th anniversary of my Grandmother Ramey's birth. She died in 2005.
And two days ago I learned that last January, January 2020, Samuel Wayne Shannon died, he was only 68 years old. Sam Shannon (1951-2020) played an important role early on in my work in paleontology and gave me a lot of encouragement. In 1988, we co-authored the description of a new genus and species of mosasaur from Alabama, Selmasaurus russelli. He'd first recognized that the specimen as a new taxon in his 1977 Master's Thesis, Selected Alabama Mosasurs (University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa), but it remained unpublished until our collaboration a decade later. He also had a brief publication from the Geological Survey of Alabama on plesiosaur fossils from the state. I'd not actually seen or spoken with Sam since the late 1980s, and it was quite by chance I learned of his death. After graduate school, he pursued a career in hydrogeology, not paleontology. Indeed, he once assurred me that if I actually tried to make a living from vertebrate paleontology, I'd starve. And he was probably right. I probably would have.
Anyway, meet Polyphemus, the one-eyed squirrel I spoke of a couple of nights back.
Later,
Aunt Beast
4:48 p.m.