"Take the poison of your age..."
Mostly sunny today, which seemed oddly inappropriate for the beginning of this particular year. Our high was 47F.
I hardly slept. Maybe three hours.
I was up at oh-my-god thirty, about 3:30 a.m., and I wrote the first 1,040 words for the new piece for Sirenia Digest, which I am calling "A First Sequence of Scenes." And I did a lot of work of the Bashi Marl invertebrates, mostly on gastropods. I found a few ray teeth hiding inside them. And I had a long talk with Mike Polcyn, which was likely the best part of the day, just talking mosasaurs, future projects, recent revelations. Spooky cooked a huge dinner of blackeyed peas, turnip greens, and cornbread, which we had with some very good chow-chow. Not as good as Grandma Ramey used to make, but good all the same.
Oh, last night we finally finished the rewatch of Fringe. And, honestly, it should have ended with Season Four. At best, Season Five is a weird epilogue, though at times it feels a bit like fanfic. If you delete Episode 19, "Letters of Transit," from Season Four - which is a set up for Season Five, but serves no other purpose, then the end of Season Four nicely wraps up all the major, and minor, themes of the series, all the alternate universe stuff, everything. Season Five, on the other hand, set in 2036, is an entirely new story which has to be rushed through in only 13 episodes, not even half a normal season. My biggest complaint is that the Observers are forced to go from mysterious unknowns to malevolent invaders, with only a cursory, belated explanation. Still, all in all, Fringe is a wonder and a wonderful series. Nothing like it has happened since, and likely it never shall. Like The X-Files, Millennium, Twin Peaks, and Farscape before it, it's special.
It occurred to me a couple of weeks back that a truly astounding number of new mosasaur taxa have were described in 2023, including (in alphabetical order):
1. *Bentiabasaurus jacobsi (Polcyn et al; Angola)
2. Ectenosaurus tlemonectes (Kiernan and Ebersole; USA)
3. Ectenosaurus shannoni (Kiernan and Ebersole; USA)
4. Halisaurus hebae (Shaker et al.; Egypt)
5. *Jormungander walhallaensis (Zietlow et al; USA)
6. *Megapterygius wakayamaensis (Konishi et al; Japan)
7. *Sarabosaurus dahli (Polcyn et al.; USA)
8. *Stelladens mysteriosus (Longrich et al.; Morocco)
9. Yaguarasaurus regiomontanus (Rivera-Sylva et al.; Mexico)
* Denotes new genera.
And all appear to be valid taxa. I am uncertain this has happened before, this many taxa named in one year, unless it was during the late 19th Century, when far too many species were named, often inadequately described from nondiagnostic material. But to show how these things nornally proceed, in 1967, in his landmark revision of the Mosasauridae, the late Dale Russell named three new taxa. In 1970, Russell described Tylosaurus zangerli (now considered invalid) Then in 1975 he named Globidens dakotensis. In 1980, the late Joan Wiffen named Moanasaurus mangahouangae, and in 1988 I named Selmasaurs russelli, and that same year Tylosaurus pembinensis was named by the late Betsy Nicholls. Another new taxon was not named until...well, I'm not sure, a few years later**. But that's seven taxa, still seen as valid, in twenty-one years. And that's how things were when I was a kid and in college. The pace of discoveries has picked up since the 1990s, and especially in the last two decades, but nothing to match nine new taxa in one year.
Oh, and tonight Kathryn and I watched the first of the three Doctor Who holiday specials. She was disappointed. I was infuriated. I thought this crap was supposed to end with Russell T. Davies' return to the show (admittedly he did not direct, but wrote, the episode, from someone else's story). Yes, I hated it. Sure, David Tenant (Doctor 10) was in fine form, but, oh...whatever. It's Doctor Who. I was not a fan of the series until Davies and Christopher Eccleston (Doctor 9) showed up in 2005 with a much more mature series, one that Stephen Moffat began killing off only five years or so later. Under Moffat, the show got dumber and dumber and dumber, and Davies is on record as hating what was done to it, but now here's more of the same. Maybe he'll find his footing, but I am skeptical, and I am very disappointed. There's a decent review here, though I suspect this reviewer liked it a little better than did I.
I think that's enough for one night. Please visit the Dreaming Squid Sundries Shop. Thanks.
Later Tater Beans,
Aunt Beast
12:07 a.m.
** 1990, actually.
I hardly slept. Maybe three hours.
I was up at oh-my-god thirty, about 3:30 a.m., and I wrote the first 1,040 words for the new piece for Sirenia Digest, which I am calling "A First Sequence of Scenes." And I did a lot of work of the Bashi Marl invertebrates, mostly on gastropods. I found a few ray teeth hiding inside them. And I had a long talk with Mike Polcyn, which was likely the best part of the day, just talking mosasaurs, future projects, recent revelations. Spooky cooked a huge dinner of blackeyed peas, turnip greens, and cornbread, which we had with some very good chow-chow. Not as good as Grandma Ramey used to make, but good all the same.
Oh, last night we finally finished the rewatch of Fringe. And, honestly, it should have ended with Season Four. At best, Season Five is a weird epilogue, though at times it feels a bit like fanfic. If you delete Episode 19, "Letters of Transit," from Season Four - which is a set up for Season Five, but serves no other purpose, then the end of Season Four nicely wraps up all the major, and minor, themes of the series, all the alternate universe stuff, everything. Season Five, on the other hand, set in 2036, is an entirely new story which has to be rushed through in only 13 episodes, not even half a normal season. My biggest complaint is that the Observers are forced to go from mysterious unknowns to malevolent invaders, with only a cursory, belated explanation. Still, all in all, Fringe is a wonder and a wonderful series. Nothing like it has happened since, and likely it never shall. Like The X-Files, Millennium, Twin Peaks, and Farscape before it, it's special.
It occurred to me a couple of weeks back that a truly astounding number of new mosasaur taxa have were described in 2023, including (in alphabetical order):
1. *Bentiabasaurus jacobsi (Polcyn et al; Angola)
2. Ectenosaurus tlemonectes (Kiernan and Ebersole; USA)
3. Ectenosaurus shannoni (Kiernan and Ebersole; USA)
4. Halisaurus hebae (Shaker et al.; Egypt)
5. *Jormungander walhallaensis (Zietlow et al; USA)
6. *Megapterygius wakayamaensis (Konishi et al; Japan)
7. *Sarabosaurus dahli (Polcyn et al.; USA)
8. *Stelladens mysteriosus (Longrich et al.; Morocco)
9. Yaguarasaurus regiomontanus (Rivera-Sylva et al.; Mexico)
* Denotes new genera.
And all appear to be valid taxa. I am uncertain this has happened before, this many taxa named in one year, unless it was during the late 19th Century, when far too many species were named, often inadequately described from nondiagnostic material. But to show how these things nornally proceed, in 1967, in his landmark revision of the Mosasauridae, the late Dale Russell named three new taxa. In 1970, Russell described Tylosaurus zangerli (now considered invalid) Then in 1975 he named Globidens dakotensis. In 1980, the late Joan Wiffen named Moanasaurus mangahouangae, and in 1988 I named Selmasaurs russelli, and that same year Tylosaurus pembinensis was named by the late Betsy Nicholls. Another new taxon was not named until...well, I'm not sure, a few years later**. But that's seven taxa, still seen as valid, in twenty-one years. And that's how things were when I was a kid and in college. The pace of discoveries has picked up since the 1990s, and especially in the last two decades, but nothing to match nine new taxa in one year.
Oh, and tonight Kathryn and I watched the first of the three Doctor Who holiday specials. She was disappointed. I was infuriated. I thought this crap was supposed to end with Russell T. Davies' return to the show (admittedly he did not direct, but wrote, the episode, from someone else's story). Yes, I hated it. Sure, David Tenant (Doctor 10) was in fine form, but, oh...whatever. It's Doctor Who. I was not a fan of the series until Davies and Christopher Eccleston (Doctor 9) showed up in 2005 with a much more mature series, one that Stephen Moffat began killing off only five years or so later. Under Moffat, the show got dumber and dumber and dumber, and Davies is on record as hating what was done to it, but now here's more of the same. Maybe he'll find his footing, but I am skeptical, and I am very disappointed. There's a decent review here, though I suspect this reviewer liked it a little better than did I.
I think that's enough for one night. Please visit the Dreaming Squid Sundries Shop. Thanks.
Later Tater Beans,
Aunt Beast
12:07 a.m.
** 1990, actually.