Here I am at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) meeting in Bristol, doing my Nature Editor thing of hanging around in bars. Except that this year, I am co-presenting a poster; the first time I’ve done anything with my PhD work for seventeen sixteen years (Palaeontologists can’t count reliably beyond three – Ed.). It’s a long story.
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iEditor by Henry Gee
This is the Nature Network foothold for Nature Senior Editor Henry Gee. Expect discussion about editorial issues and experiences, papers I've handled, books I'm writing, and pictures of my pets. I also blog at http://cromercrox.blogspot.com/
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Nature Editor in Research Shock Horror Probe. Film at Eleven.
- Date:
- Saturday, 26 Sep tember 2009 - 06:22 UTC
Many years ago when the world was young I did a PhD on how to tell the difference between cows and bison (stop right there, Grant). Sure, everyone knew that their heads are different, but museums are crammed full of postcrania that nobody could tell apart. Learning to do this became my job, and many aggravations and discriminant functions later, I did it. Sort of. The best bones were the metacarpals – the cannon bones of the forelimb, they look like bones eaten by cartoon dogs. These are robust, easy to measure, exist in huge quantities, and – because they don’t have the individual variation seen in skulls and horns, the traditional bases of oversplit fossil bovid taxonomy – are reliable taxonomic indicators.
I discovered this all on my own. It was a lonely, largely solitary life. Even today I envy the hive-like existence of molecular biologists, working in busy labs where people can share data and insights and there is mutual support. But nobody else was working on my problem. I published one (1) paper, in a specialty journal, where it lay, almost unread.
So I got my PhD and, disillusioned, left research for Nature. In 1993 I went to my first SVP meeting, which was in Albuquerque, NM. And, blow me down, there was a platform presentation about how bison metacarpals were the key to fossil identification. The conclusions were the same as mine – exactly – but the material was American, not British.
Man, I saw the light.
I introduced myself to the speaker, and we thought we might collaborate. We met a few times in the 1990s, when I did a sabbatical in LA, and at an SVP meet in NY, but life got in the way. I was working at your favourite journal beginning with N and my colleague was a single mom with a fledgling archaeology consultation business to get off the ground. The project was kicked into touch.
Until a few weeks back, when my coauthor emailed. Her little child had grown up and left home. Her business was established. It was time to pick up the pieces. I dug out my PhD thesis from under a chicken, keyed my data into a spreadsheet and sent it over. My coauthor crunched numbers, and we got a poster slot at SVP. My coauthor did almost all the actual work – all I supplied were some data and a sense of general bemusement. I also have to fin som drawing pins before noon, and attend the poster between 4 and 6. If you’re passing, it’s poster no. 92.
Now we’ll have to write the paper. I wonder where we’ll publish it?
Last updated: Saturday, 26 Sep 2009 - 06:22 UTC
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Comments
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Is Nature so tight that the only way they’ll let you go to a meeting is if you present something?
I hope you’ll live-tweet the poster session.
Ace post. If someone asked me now, let alone geographic
Ianseons from now to resurrect my PhD work I’d be very hard pressed to do so.You might occasionally envy the molBiols but I guess paleo life has an agreeable (?) amount of (to us) stasis to it.
Good luck at your poster!
I hope you’ll live-tweet the poster session
Now that’s what I call
musicmosaicinnovative.Wonderful post, Henry. The next time I encounter any unidentifiable hindquarters, it’s good to know I can come to you.
I think I’ve bought dog treats in the shape of bovid metacarpals, complete with fake marrow. As if the dog cares about the precise shape and anatomical accuracy!
On a dig in downtown Houston (don’t laugh, it was an antebellum plantation site, and part of an undergraduate archaeology field course) I remember being impressed by the ability of an archaeologist to identify various bone fragments that we found. Of course I was also impressed by the ability of another archaeologist to identify pottery fragments.
Have fun at the poster session, Henry!
Hanging around in bars? Hmm. Think I shall start having pangs for not having gotten an editorial job.
The “data gestational timespan” is impressive… but it sort of helps maintain one’s faith in science (as opposed to “the biz” of science) that such things can still be done, and that authors do them. Kudos, Henry and co-author.
My own personal record for publication slowness is 14 years – some work done in ‘83-’34 at the start of my PhD that didn’t make it into a paper until 1998. Though, embarrassingly, I now have stuff from the early 90s (17-18 yrs and counting) sitting around in the files. – sigh -
The next time I encounter any unidentifiable hindquarters
Jenny, metacarpals are from the front legs :) Remind me not to ask you to play any part of a pantomime cow.
The poster session went very well – though I must admit that before we did it, images of the poster session in Jenny’s novel Experimental Heart did flash through my mind. Despite the session being held in a location remote from the action, the joint was jumpin’, and I enjoyed explaining our conclusions to the nice lady from Scientific American; the very helpful young scientist from the Yukon who’s done DNA work on the bison ; and many other scientists prepared to indulge an editor straying, if briefly, onto their side of the fence.
See? This is why we like science. Esoteric things that people can find in common, even years later.
Ok, one of the reasons we like science. Not Science, necessarily (although that DNA paper on the bison you refer to looks rather interesting), but lower-case “science”.
It’s one of the reasons we like anything esoteric, that we find people with whom we can share an interest. It could be trains, stamps with butterflies on them, or, indeed, metacarpal bones of extinct bison.
skulls and horns, the traditional bases of oversplit fossil bovid taxonomy
For British bovids, was this an aurochs vs. wisent distinction? Would be awesome to have aurochs around again, though even modern longhorn cattle can be a bit wild and scary to encounter when riding or hiking. Aurochs would be totally intimidating, to say the least.
The aurochs and the wisent (Bison bonasus) look completely different, though I have an old engraving of a bison labelled ‘auroch’, so they were definitely confused.
The oversplit taxonomy refers to recent and bison in the U. S. and A., which has traditionally been divided into lots of species based on cranial characters that fail to take individual variation into account. There has always been a convention that Late Pleistocene bison from Eurasia through Alaska north of the Laurentide ice sheet is called Bison priscus, whereas the form in the Americas south of the ice sheet is generally called Bison antiquus. My coauthor and I show that they’re basically the same thing.
Not that there aren’t genuine taxonomic splits. The American species Bison latifrons, a truly enormous creature with huge horns – may have been a genuine species, as was Bison schoetensacki, a European species from the Middle Pleiastocene.
Texas longhorns are great. I almost got called in to help with an archaeological excavation of a herd of longhorns that got buried in a blizzard a century ago, the remains exposed by the outwash of some ruptured water tank, I believe. It would be very nice to have a collection of good old-fashioned longhorn skeletons, for reference purposes.
Fallen asleep yet?
Something without relation, the Great Bull Miura ¿this extinct or no?, what is the great (the aggressiveness trait maybe) difference with Bos taurus?
Hi Alejandro – can you give more of a reference to the Miura bull?
@ Henry: I guess I was thinking that since both aurochs and wisent were predominantly woodland animals, their metacarpals might be found in the same locations. I really have no sense about relative size, other than that both were Quite Large.
Wealthy Texans with ranches luhhhvs them some fancy Texas longhorns. Quite the status symbol. Funding a morphometry project on Texas longhorn skeletons might appeal to such individuals. Perhaps we can get you a fieldwork gig at the King Ranch? ;-)
Henry – sorry for responding late. The Miura’s lineage (is a fight bull, physically resemble an Uro). The Miura bull descend of the lineage of Iberian bull.
The Iberian Bull descend of the subspecies Bos ophistonomus, Bos primigenius and Bos Brachycera (I’m no expert). Do not know if that lineage (Miura bull) still exists in Spain.
Please, note the similarities of the horn and skull:
Miura bull
Auroch
Regarding the publication of this work, perhaps there soon will be “Nature Paleontology”, or “Nature Bull” as part of the home journal’s roster?
Hi! Benoit – It invited at you to carry out the DNA analysis of this work, you agree?
Here is an interesting and nice paper on lienages of fighting-bull.
Miura and Auroch Lineage
¡I already have the title of the paper will be written someday!
Origins and phenotypical similarities of lineage of Miura bull(Bos taurus primigenius miurae) and the African Auroch (Bos taurus primigenius)
Here we discuss the origin of lineage of Miura Bull descendent……..
See? This is why we like science. Esoteric things that people can find in common, even years later.
Maybe exist esoteric paleontobirdy esoteric coordenates with a great triangle of Science: North America (EEUU), _South America (Chile), and Europe (England).
Sorry my English is very cool!!
Maybe exist esoteric paleontobirdy coordenates with a great triangle of Science: North America (EEUU), South America (Chile), and Europe (England).
Henry – I finished, do not worry.