No. 4 - - Astrodon of Maryland

[4] Astrodon – Maryland (1998)
 

Named after its star-shaped teeth, you probably wouldn’t even see those chompers when you came across an astrodon because they’d be 9 metres up in the frickin’ air! This behemoth brachiosaurid is presumed to have rocked upwards of 20 tons, though considered medium-sized in terms of sauropods.

The specimens were discovered in the Arundel Formation in Maryland back in the 1859 making it one of the earliest discovered dinosaurs in North America ever and the first discovered in Maryland.

That’s pretty cool – plus, Maryland sort of “snagged” the state fossil away from Texas, in a round-about unintentionally sort of way.
 
References:
http://cooldinofacts.wikia.com/wiki/Astrodon

No. 5 - - Pleurocoelus of Texas ... or is it Paluxysaurus?

[5]Pleurocoelus – Texas (1997)/maybe Paluxysaurus?

So … this is an awkward situation. It sounds like Texas adopted the Pleurocoelus (a brachiosaurid) back in ’97, but paleontologists “screwed up Texas’s plans” by suggesting that Pleurocoelus is actually an already identified species called Astrodon, which Maryland adopted as their own state fossil in ’98.

This means, for a few years, Texans were happy to have the 15-ton obscurity representing their state, until they learned that they’d adopted a species that might actually be a different species that someone else had already staked a claim to.

“Well, shit,” thought Texas. *
 
 *I’m speculating and paraphrasing

So since 2009 Texas has been mulling over the idea of replacing Pleurocoelus/Astrodon with Paluxysaurus, which is kind of neat, in terms of its placement in sauropod evolution (if Texans believe in that sort of thing).

Paluxysaurus is believed to represent the evolutionary turning point between brachiosaurids and titanosaurs, which were the lineage of sauropods that would survive until the extinction event that ceased the existence of all dinosaurs shortly thereafter.


References:
http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/herbivorousdinosaurs/p/Paluxysaurus.htm 

http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/herbivorousdinosaurs/p/pleurocoelus.htm

West Maui Day: 01

So here are some of the first pictures from our first day of travels on our honeymoon. Now, some of you may not know (or yet realize) that Hawaii is far from Toronto. Travel is like kryptonite to me and it basically will kill me if I spend too long exposed to it. Yesterday, I was almost dead after 20 hours. So it feels good to be alive.

Our first stop in the trip was in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas, where I left a small blog post from a terminal in the airport while we had a 3-hour layover. It was an alright spot, and we even had a chance to have some breakfast.

On the right here, you can see my Texas breakfast. My new wife also had the largest Chicken Tenders I'd seen ever. They weren't that good, but it was lucky that there was so much left over, because we were in the 36th row of the airplane, and they'd run out of dinner's to serve by the time it was our chance to eat. We weren't happy with that. We were starving. It made the eight hour flight feel even worse.

So we had the left-over chicken tenders to satisfy us later on.

Flights also seem longer when the in-flight movie is Paul Blart Mall Cop. We mistakenly rented this a few months ago - and it's no better the second time around. Again, travelling slowly kills me, and so do inescapable bad movies. Grooaan.

But when it was all said and done, finding where to go next was no trouble. We were found by someone holding a sign with my name on it who then dowsed us both in flowered necklaces. These are heavier than you'd imagine they are, believe it or not.

Then we easily took a shuttle to where we rented a car from Dollar, and they gave us fine directions to our hotel.

To help you get the feel for where we are, this is a map of Maui, and you can see the airport we flew in to is on the North side of the middle of the island in Kahului. We drove south west from there to arrive on the West Side of Maui at our resort in Ka'anapali where we're staying at the Westin Resort and Spa [2365 Kaanapali Pkwy, Lahaina, HI 96761, (888) 625-4949 room 1053 if you'd like to come visit us. We're here all week!]

Ka'anapali is on the west side of Maui, near the "T" in "West" on the above map. On the drive up to the hotel we took these shots. We have a few photos of the water, but they were taken from a moving car (while I was almost dead from travelling, remember) so they are so great. Then we got our hotel room and slept for 12 hours straight - someone even showed up to deliver champagne - because we're on our honeymoon - and I can hardly remember it. The bucket of champagne on ice is now filled with only water, the bottle completely uncorked (for now).

More updates will follow during my wife's naptime. I'll keep you in the loop. See you all in a few weeks.