Palges Meeting October 2010 in Munich

The 80 th Annual Meeting of the German Paleontological Society took place from the 6th through the 8th October 2010 within the halls of the Bavarian State Collection for Geology and Paleontology in Munich.

Of particular interest for me was the session on Early Mesozoic vertebrates chaired by the Rauhut couple and Richard Butler as it united many interesting characters, such as Silvio Renesto, Martin Ezcurra, Rainer Schoch, and Daniela Schwarz-Wings and covered a variety of Triassic vertebrates including archosaurs, temnospondyls, and bony fish.

With 5 talks and 6 posters our small Freibergian working group had quite a number of contributions this year (my prof Jörg Schneider was talking about Paleozoic cockroaches from China, Olaf Elicki about Cambrian trace fossils from Africa and the Middle East, Frederik Spindler about the evolution of haptodonts and other early synapsids, Jan Fischer about oxygen isotope signals in Permian and Triassic freshwater shark teeth and I had a talk on osteoderm histology and the Chroniosuchia). My colleagues Ilja Kogan and Jan Fischer won the 1st poster prize with their poster entitled "The Madygen lake deposits: A unique multi-taxa kindergarten for Triassic fisches" - which is quite an achievement as normally the winner comes from the host institute of the Palges Meeting.

The image on the right shows me in front of a poster entitled "Paleontology in the German Wikipedia" [pdf].

Even though there are many private collectors and paleontology enthusisasts in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland you won't find much about "regional paleontology" in the German Wikipedia which was the reason for my colleagues and me to introduce some aspects of Wikipedian (Pop-)Sciencewriting.

The poster praised the advantages Wikipedia can have if it is reasonably incorporated in public outreach campaigns and we commented critically on the dinosaur focus which increases the already biased public image of what paleontology is about.

Madygen News 2009

Expedition. This year's two month expedition to Madygen, Kyrgyzstan, ends in about a week. Rather than merely assembling more fossils the task for 2009 was to carry out further observations concerning the facies architecture and fine stratigraphy of the Madygen Formation - in fact to solve the evolution of the Madygen depositional environment throughout the time comprised by the Triassic sequence of the Madygen SW outcrop area.

Since the ways of communication between Germany and the Kyrgyz outback are difficult I didn't get much of an opportunity yet to talk to Madygen project leader Sebastian Voigt (my de facto chief who is still in the field). But from what I've heard the paleoenvironment is now well explained and some furthergoing approaches, e.g. comparing the conditions of Madygen to those of the other (few) terrestrial lagerstätten of the Triassic, are now feasible.

Symposia contributions and papers

- on the flora:

Moisan, P., H. Kerp, S. Voigt, C. Pott & M. Buchwitz (2009): Cycadophyte foliage from the Triassic Madygen Formation, SW Kyrgyzstan Central Asia. Terra Nova 2009/3:81-82. [Abstract Volume of Annual Meeting of the German Paleontological Society in Bonn] ... the respective paper is soon to come.

- on kazacharthran body and trace fossils: ... still in the review process.

- on fish:

Kogan, I., K. Schönberger, J. Fischer, S. Voigt & M. Buchwitz (2009): A nearly complete Saurichthys specimen from the Triassic of Madygen (Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia). Terra Nova 2009/3: 63-64.

A first note on this find will published at the end of 2009 in Freiberger Forschungshefte.

SVP poster on egg capsules and teeth of hybodont sharks, which have been discovered in 2008: Fischer, J., S. Voigt, M. Buchwitz & J.W. Schneider (2009): The selachian fauna from the non-marine Middle to Late Triassic Madygen Formation (Kyrgyzstan, Middle Asia): preliminary results. JVP 29 (3, suppl.): 95A-96A.

- on chroniosuchians:

Buchwitz, M. & S. Voigt (2009): Locomotion aspects of a chroniosuchid carapace. In: D. Schwarz-Wings, O. Wings & F. Sattler (eds.): 7th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Vertebrate Paleontologis - Abstract Volume. Aachen, 2009, p.14.

Buchwitz, M. & S. Voigt (2009): Phylogenetic and functional implications of the chroniosuchian osteoderm morphology. Terra Nova 2009/3: 25.

I'm trying hard to finish these manuscripts just now. The first description of the new chroniosuchid species, focussing on the skull features, is 'in press'.

- about the thing that must not be named:

Buchwitz, M., S. Voigt & J. Fischer (2009): Dorsal appendages of You-know-what reconsidered: aspects of development and the link to the evolution of filamentous integumentary structures. JVP 29 (3, suppl.): 72A.

...there is another longer manuscript putting some effort into the detailed description/documentation and a discussion of some rather modest model (... but I cannot really tell yet whether an 'accept' is feasible in the near future).

- on the depositional environment of the Lagerstätte Madygen and its tetrapod localities:

Voigt, S., M. Buchwitz, J. Fischer, P. Moisan & I. Kogan (2009): Lagerstätte Madygen - outstanding window to a continental Triassic ecosystem. JVP 29 (3, suppl.): 196A.

Buchwitz, M., S. Voigt, J. Hentschke & P. Moisan (2009): The Triassic Madygen Formation (Kyrgyzstan, Middle Asia) features a new tetrapod locality. Terra Nova 2009/3: 25-26.

...the latter poster introduces some (real) archosaur finds from 2008.

SVP meeting reminiscences

My first SVP meeting was a bit of an eye opener for me:

Microtomography and 3D imaging, molecular paleobiology, advanced phylogenetical and biogeographical approaches, bone and tooth histology and microstructures, morphometrics, biomechanical modelling, any kind of studies on living functional/ ecological/ developmental analogues of fossil beings (actuopaleontology) - that's where the pot of gold is hidden.

... as a former geologist it gives me a certain urge to come to terms with what I should have learned about biology but only got briefly or autodidactically yet.

Apparently world is not as easy and small as it seems when you work as an isolated scholar for too long a time.

Symposia Summer: Are posters for kids? I daresay yes.

My former room mate (a post-doc and Humboldt scholar) once said that poster presentations rapidly lose their appeal once you have reached the age of speaking. And perhaps he was right after all.

Inlcuding this year's SVP meeting contributions I made 10 posters and was co-painterauthor of further 6 during the last three years (about two thirds about paleontology and one third on structural geology). That's enough to paper the walls of my of and my neighbour's lab room, but what did I get apart from that?

Flooding of the publication list? - Yes, but 20 abstracts = 1 peer-reviewed paper. To get something published cheeply should surely not be the point of postermaking - also considering the overall time you are investing for a mere halfpage of printed text.

Becoming a whiz in vector graphics? - Perhaps, but this is also part of normal publishing, lecture-preparation and thesis-writing, so you would have learned that anyway...

Feedback from experts? Negligible. Sometimes you are lucky and the right people are present and really interested in what you have done - but if they are not and yours is one of 50 posters displayed don't be too optimistic. Some people are so frustrated about the (probable) lack of response that they have their posters pinned up by an oral presenter from their own faculty and save the travel costs.

Dialogue with my former supervisor about a poster of mine:
- "Luckily I can give this to Maria. Symposia are such a waste of time!"
- "Obviously, you don't have yet understood what this part of science is about..."
- "Of course, I know about the importance of communicating your science and stuff... I was only teasing." (Afterwards pretending it was only irony, but meaning every word I said at first.)

I forgot something important: the winning of the poster prize! You can try. You need high-resolution colour fotos, high quality drawings, mirror finish paper, a sense for symmetry and for the golden section, and a vanilla ice topic (like dinosaurs, trilobites, Cambrian explosion, human origins).

And afterwards you can fancy yourself as the king of the symposium junior scientists layouters. Three cheers for the PP winner!

Why an oral presentation is better

Preparing an oral presentation is more time-consuming than making a poster: you have not only to put figures on a (rather patient) sheet of paper and do some write-around. Giving a talk you are really forced to make sense of your premisses, methods, data, results, conclusions and arrange everything in a sequence (only one dimension - time; a poster has two dimensions so you can illustrate complex interrelationships more easily and thus be more confuse without notice).

All these aspects help you directly with your scientific work: A well-structured presentation can easily make a well-structured publication and vice versa. And if there is a catch or lapse in reasoning you may become aware of it in the course of trying to explain your model to others.

With an oral presentation you get a real audience: Even if no one is interested in your topic common politeness makes them stay still and gives you the power to waste 15 minutes of the life time of 50 or 100 or 200 listeners. What a feeling of might!

If you are provocative you can even stir up a reaction. Compare posters and talks to potted plants and dogs. A dog/presenter is barking at you if he wants attention and thus you feel pushed to show him his place, the poster/ potted plant is simply hanging/ standing around and withers...

So give a talk if you have the guts!

EAVP Meeting 2009 in Berlin, Germany

This week the European Associatuon of Vertebrate Paleontologists had its 7th annual meeting at the Humboldt University of Berlin Museum of Natural History, organized by Daniela Schwarz-Wings and her team.

Between Tuesday and Thursday about 34 oral presentations were held and 22 posters were displayed. Sorted systematically:

reptiles: 19.5 oral presentations (dinosaurs: 11) + 10.5 (7) posters
synapsids: 8.5 (mammals: 7) + 6.5 (6)
fish/ sharks: 3 + 3.5
anamniote tetrapods: 3 + 1.5

Apparently the EAVP is mostly a paleoherpetological society.

The two field trips organized for Friday covered the Rüdersdorf Muschelkalk Quarry (which yielded Nothosaurus, Placodus and others critters of the marine Middle Triassic) and the Pleistocene Rixdorf horizon of Niederlehme to the SW of Berlin.

Christian A. Meyer from Basel became new president of the EAVP, he takes the office over from Eric Buffetaut who is new editor-in-chief of the society's online-only journal Oryctos. Next year the meeting will be held in Aix-en-Provence in southern France, Greece is planned for 2011.

PALHERP Bonn 2009

The Meeting of the German Paleoherpetologists was launched in 1997 as an act of rebellion against the old mammal establishment which ruled the regular vertebrate workshops of the German Paleontological Society. A particular aspect of the Palherp is the relaxed atmosphere giving students the chance to present ideas and results without unfair senior criticism.

Last weekend the 13th Palherp meeting was held in Bonn. As the Steinmann Institute of Bonn University houses the German Research Foundation Unit on Sauropod Biology you can call it one of centres of paleoherpetology in Germany. Given the focus of the Bonn working group many of this year's presentations covered dinosaurs and/or bone histology.

Saturday: Martin Sander's keynote lecture on sauropod biology was followed by presentations on sauropodlet longbone histology, on rib histology and sauropod reproduction strategies.

The lower tetrapod session covered chroniosuchians, a pelycosaur jaw fragment as the earliest German amniote find, parareptiles and a basal diapsid.

In the afternoon a presentation on didactyle theropod footprints from the Oberkirchen Sandstone and a discussion of arguments/ phylogenetic analyses in favour of convergent flight origins in the Eumaniraptora followed. Furthermore a talk on finds from the Lower Muschelkalk of Winterwijk. H. Haubold discussed problems related to the continental P/T mass extinction event if it is taken as a dogma.

Sunday talks included the introduction of a new basal sauropod (from Niger), dinosaur palaeopathology, tooth morphology, isotope palaeontology, and 19th century history of dinosaur science.

Madygen: Recent contributions to symposia

12th International Palynological Congress, Bonn 2008:

Philippe Moisan, Hans Kerp, Sebastian Voigt, Benjamin Bomfleur: The fossil flora of the Madygen Formation from the Middle to Upper Triassic, Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia. Terra Nostra 2008/2: 194

Abstract. The Middle to Late Triassic Madygen Formation (Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia) is a unique fossil lagerstaette for Early Mesozoic insect remains and small reptiles with soft-tissue preservation. Plant fossils from these deposits from are known since the 1930s and constitute one of the richest and most diverse Triassic floras of Eurasia. However, they received very little attention to date and their studies have to date been based on macromorphological features only. We present the first record of epidermal features of this diverse Triassic flora based on recently recovered fossil plant material. Many of the Madygen plant fossils show a highly remarkable preservation. Due to its very fine grain-size, the embedding sediment has often formed a natural cast of the epidermal cell pattern. Such epidermal features allow detailed systematic descriptions as well as palaeoecological interpretations. This fossil flora is dominated by pteridosperms, ginkgophytes, and sphenophytes. In addition, algae, mosses, lycophytes and ferns occur and many are new for this fossil flora. The high abundance of fructifications is of particular interest. Another important aspect of the Madygen flora is that many gymnosperm leaves show evidence for plant-insect interactions (e.g. margin feeding, oviposition, mining traces). The supposed Middle to Late Triassic age of the flora coincides with one of the most important herbivore expansions in the fossil record. However, while this phenomenon has been recognised in the Middle and Upper Triassic of the USA, Western Europe, and South Africa, no data are available from coeval Central Asian sequences. The on-going study aims to provide a revised systematic description of the plants, including epidermal features to characterise the palaeoecosystem of the Madygen lagerstaette in more detail, and to contribute to a better understanding of the evolution of plant-animal interactions during the Early Mesozoic.

Ichnia, Cracow 2008:

Voigt, S., Buchwitz, M.: On the Mermia ichnofacies in a Triassic overfilled lake-basin of Southern Fergana (Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia). Ichnia 2008, Cracow (Poland), September 1- 5

Abstract. Fluvio-lacustrine deposits of the Madygen Formation on the northern rim of the Turkestan Mountains in southwestern Kyrgyzstan are one of the few occurrences of Triassic continental strata in Central Asia. During the 1960s Russian palaeobiologists successfully explored the stratum typicum area of the Madygen Formation for macrofossils, unearthing a remarkably rich Early Mesozoic flora, thousands of insect remains, and unusual reptiles with soft-tissue preservation (Dobruskina, 1995). Considering the number, diversity and preservation of the finds, the locality represents a lagerstaette. Lacking investigations on the geological and palaeoecological background of the findings, however, its particular importance for the evolution of terrestrial ecosystems has not yet been revealed. Thus, a comprehensive approach on the Madygen ecosystem including a detailed facial analysis of the fossil-bearing strata is currently carried out.
The Madygen Formation is an up to 500 m thick series of predominantly siliciclastic rocks, which formed in an intermontane basin under humid to semi-humid climatic conditions. Sedimentary successions are composed of alluvial fan conglomerates, channel sandstones and overbank fines with intercalated coal seams of a highly-vegetated alluvial plain, as well as deltaic sandstones and laminated lacustrine mudstones of basin centre. Shallowing upward sequences and various other features, e.g. dense vegetation, wet soils, and the lack of desiccation cracks, typify the depositional environment of the Madygen Formation as an overfilled lake-basin sensu Bohacs et al. (2000).
Though they were never mentioned in earlier palaeontological reports, trace fossils of the Mermia ichnofacies belong to the most common phenomena of the Madygen fossil assemblage. Networks of tiny, irregularly branched burrows with high bedding-parallel extension are ubiquitous in the laminated mudstones of the lake deposits. Architecture and size of the burrows indicate deposit-feeding, worm-like trace makers such as the extant oligochaetes and aquatic insect larvae. The bioturbation maximum is recorded in mudstones of the transitional sublittoral to profundal lake zone which probably included a chemocline as in some modern stratified lakes. More shallow but clearly submerged parts of the lake were occupied by benthic ostracods and kazacharthra - triopsid-like branchiopods which are thought to be endemic to the Mesozoic of Central Asia (Chen et al., 1996). Body imprints of the kazacharthra occur spatially close to ribbon- and sickle-shaped trace fossils. We are attributing these traces to different types of kazachartran feeding activity: (1) grazing if the ground water layer is well aerated and (2) short-term mud-diving under oxygen-depleted conditions. All ichnia – the shallow penetrative traces and the presumable kazacharthran traces – were produced in the permanently subaquatic environment of a sizeable lake with a minimum length of 1.7 km. The restriction of trace types to a certain ground level relative to the chemocline may yield a basic approach for the subdivision of the Mermia ichnofacies.

German Paleontological Society Meeting, Erlangen 2008:

Voigt, S., Buchwitz, M., Fischer, J., Krause, D.: Longisquama's dorsal skin appendages: new finds from the type locality. Erlanger Geologische Abhandlungen, Sonderband 6: 117

Abstract. During the 1960s Russian palaeobiologists discovered two incomplete diapsid skeletons with skin impressions in lacustrine shales of the Triassic Madygen Formation, a continental sedimentary succession in southwest Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia. Described by A.G. Sharov in 1970 and 1971 the two finds became known for the uniqueness of the species they represent: While Sharovipteryx mirabilis was an early limb-supported reptilian glider with an exceptionally large uropatagium and probably an archosauromorph, Longisquama insignis, whose systematic position is still controversial, displays a series of elongate hockey-stick-shaped skin projections, rooting along the dorsal midline of the body. The appendages are structurally complex and some morphological features, e.g. the presence of a middle axis and the assumed branching, have motivated their comparison with avian feathers. Apart from four Longisquama paratype specimens with isolated skin appendages no further material belonging to one of the two diapsid species has ever been documented.
Here we report three new finds of the Longisquama appendages which have been recovered from the type locality in the northwestern Madygen outcrop area (Urochishche Dzhaylyau-Cho) during fieldwork in 2007: The single exemplar FG 596/V/1 has a length of 28.9 cm, exceeding all other known specimens by at least 100%. Comparable to the appendages of the holotype it comprises a narrow and relatively long proximal section with a tripartite appearance and a relatively short and wide distal section whose two corrugated longitudinal lobes are separated by a prominent middle axis. The apical end and the basal end are not preserved. FG 596/V/2 and FG 596/V/3 represent 3.6 and 3.7 cm long fragments of the distal section. In FG 596/V/1 and FG 596/V/3 the imprints on the left slab and right slab enclose a thin continuous sedimentary core, a feature which has been regarded as indicative for the overall membranous constitution of the appendages.
Especially the very long specimen FG 596/V/1 has some importance for the developmental and functional interpretation of Longisquama’s skin structures: Exceeding the proximal width of other dorsal appendages by only a small amount its length/ basal width ratio is conspicuously high (>50). This can be interpreted as a consequence of uniaxial growth with the constricted proximal and the extended distal section representing two distinct phases of a developmental cycle. Considering the shape and dimensions of FG 596/V/1 we find no easy explanation how the appendages could have formed a closed and stable airfoil, let alone one which produces enough lift to support gliding flight as assumed by the exponents of the hypothesis of a two-wing airborne Longisquama.

Buchwitz, M., Voigt S.: Dermal plates of a Triassic chroniosuchian with unique articulation mechanism. Erlanger Geologische Abhandlungen, Sonderband 6: 24