QDIS Blog

I have a passing interest in paleontology and had the opportunity several years ago to attend a class taught by Edwin “Ned” Colbert, the famous paleontologist who actually discovered the dinosaur known as Coelophysis. He was Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City for many years. Here is a picture of him with a Coelophysis skeleton.

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The best part was the class was taught in New Mexico at Ghost Ranch where the quarry was discovered (you can see photos of the are here).

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The above photo is by UGAclint from his flickr account. This photo shows that at Ghost Ranch you can view a very large portion of the earth’s history as seen through the rock layers.

So I was very interested to read this recent article concerning some new developments with this very old dinosaur.

Myth Busted: Dinosaur Not a Cannibal - Yahoo! News

One of the famous fossils from there was one that distinctly looks like there are bones of a small dinosuar which looks like Coelophysis inside the abdomen of another large adult dinosaur. This is currently at the American Museum of Natural History and here is a photo of it. I have seen this one as well as another in the Ruth Hall Museum of Paleontology at Ghost Ranch.

Click here for a larger image.

Seems the bones inside the adult Coelophysis are NOT a infant Coelophysis but another small crocodilian species that lived during the same time period (early Triassic). So Coelophysis was NOT a cannibal! It’s too ad this happenedafter Ned Colbert passed away.

Here is a link to the abstract of the article from Biology Letters.

Prey choice and cannibalistic behaviour in the theropod Coelophysis

Here is the Edwin Colbert biography from Wikipedia.

Other Resources

“The Little Dinosaurs of Ghost Ranch” (Edwin Harris Colbert)

“Digging into the Past” (Edwin Harris Colbert): great autobiography of Ned’s early life.
“Great Dinosaur Hunters and Their Discoveries” (Edwin H. Colbert)
Coelophysis- Enchanted Learning Software

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Email Ed Vawter

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With the coming of the fall TV season I’ve noticed something I’ll call the “Tivo Tide”. I joined the lucky ranks of timeshifters for TV about a year ago and have rarely watched live TV since. When I purchased my Tivo (it is indeed a true Tivo unit) I got the largest hard drive available and so have quite a few season passes.

I have several shows on the major networks that I watch regularly and I have these set to only record first run episodes. Then lower in my season pass list are some other shows that I like to watch but they aren’t priorities. I have these set for first run and repeats. What this allows is that I see the shows I want and after the regular season I get to catch up on the lower priority shows. This is particularly true when two shows are on at the same time.

This lets me see two shows that may be on the same time without having to either have two units or a unit capable of recording two shows at the same time.

I call it Tivo Tide because the shows on my Tivo seem to go through a series of undulations and now shows that I haven’t thought about or seen an episode of in a long time are appearing. Then as the TV season slows and comes to an end, those fade and I get to see a whole new crop of shows and catch up on them.

Technorati Tags: television, Tivo, Tivo Tide, TV

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