So as a paleontologist, there are certain types of media that the layman expects to be appealing. The most basic is probably the dinosaur movie, like the latest Jurassic World, and we can all insert our own criticisms there that need no elaboration. A bit more sophisticated are dinosaur documentaries, but as cool as it is to see a hyper-accurate CG portrayal of Shuvuuia or something, it's at its core eye candy that doesn't really engage the mind. But what about dinosaur books?
I own a ton of them, as I'm sure most readers do. As a kid, I grew up reading Sattler's 1983 "The Illustrated Dinosaur Dictionary", Glut's 1972-1992 "The ( /New/Complete) Dinosaur Dictionary", Paul's 1988 "Predatory Dinosaurs of the World' and Lambert's 1990 "The Dinosaur Data Book", the latter being the source of my website's name. But you grow up, gain access to the primary literature, and suddenly even something as detailed as Glut's (1997-2008) "Dinosaurs the Encyclopedia" series is sorta useless since you have all that info already.
Now note I'm not including collections of technical papers like "The Dinosauria", symposium compilations, or the Princeton series. Ditto monographs like Hou on Mesozoic birds, Powell on South American titanosaurs or Madsen on Allosaurus. Those are great, but really more of a journal volume than a single-authored book. Among the latter you do have "field guides" like Martyniuk's or Paul's which are both mostly eye candy, with some new taxonomy to address. And of course you have foreign books like Dong's (1992) "Dinosaurian Faunas of China" or Dong et al.'s (1991) "The Age of Dinosaurs in Japan and China" that contain obscure information and figures, but they're not exactly detailed or entertaining to read.
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| Prodeinodon mongoliensis in mesial view (Mortimer, 2009; courtesy of the AMNH). |
So as I was researching some obscure taxon, I came across a page selling "Imaginary Dinosaurs" "from Aachenosaurus to Zatomus", self published by Michael Maisch, with its topic being taxa that were once thought to be dinosaurs but aren't anymore. I've never seen a book or study on that subject before, and indeed that's why I made a series on it for this blog in 2010- the relevant information's usually spread around old journals and once a taxon is transferred from Dinosauria, the details aren't generally repeated. I ordered it and it arrived yesterday. I've only read through the A entries so far (Aachenosaurus, Actiosaurus, Aggiosaurus, Albisaurus, Anthodon, Asiamericana (ended up being a dinosaur after all, but he justifies it), Avipes, Azendohsaurus), but that's 70 pages and I feel it gives a substantial example of the book's content and quality.
So the basic format is closest to Glut's "Dinosaurs the Encyclopedia" series in that you get multiple pages of information on each taxon with figures reprinted from the literature in black and white. Right away I was struck by the informal tone, using correct technical terminology but also not something you would see in a technical journal. For example, regarding Fritsch deciding Iguanodon? albinus was indeterminate but not Iguanodon and renaming it Albisaurus scutifer, Maisch writes-
"Let's take this slowly, so that we can all fully marvel at the flawless logic of Professor FRITSCH. His material is so lousy, he assures us, that it is impossible to be determined with certainty. And it is not an Iguanodon. So the only logical consequence is... no, not to regard it as Reptilia incertae sedis, or to be at least content with calling it an indeterminate dinosaur, but to put the stuff, which he himself calls "indeterminable" into a new genus. Now that's a way to tackle taxonomy."
Or when dealing with the Wikipedia page for Aachenosaurus-
"As a sıde note, the always well-informed and trustworthy Wikipedia tells us (as of September 2018) that SMETS discovered and published Aachenosaurus at the 31st of October 1888. Wow, that was a pretty fast publication! May actually explain why he blundered so much. Producing a 23 pages paper in a single day - after dinosaur-digging fieldwork! - is quite an achievement. And SMETS must really have been a true prophet, publishing a note on his 1888 discovery already in 1887 (SMETS 1887a). And most importantly, he was only born the day he discovered Aachenosaurus, as his birth-and-death dates are given as 31st of October 1888 to 1890. Maybe that's true. 1 haven't come up with much better dates (but he was born in 1857), so I can't falsify it. I hope someone will write his biography. I'd sure read it.
But as I personally consıder Wikipedia just as another means of dumbing down the masses and keep people away from reading books and the primary literature, I will not correct that hilarious bullshit. Maybe someone else feels inclined to (the 31st of October 1888, by the way, was actually the day Louis DOLLO delivered his destructive talk on Aachenosaurus, see below. So someone was obviously a bit drunk, but at least retained a half-functional brain, when writing about Aachenosaurus on Wikipedia)."
LOL That's exactly how I would write on this blog. Though I must note three pages later, Maisch cites a figure to Wikimedia commons, so maybe it's a little more useful than he lets on. ;)
One of the most interesting aspects of the book is the level of biographical detail Maisch goes into about each author. The Aachenosaurus entry is as much about Smets as it is about the fossils, and again that's not something you can usually find in a convenient and entertaining form. He doesn't shy away from the personal and messy issues that result when scientists are human, which I appreciate. At times this approaches hot goss, or spilling the tea, or whatever the kids are saying now- "One has to remember that DOLLO had his share of bullying himself. And he just went through one of these phases when the affair took place. His Belgian colleagues watched the scientific success of the French-born "immigrant" with envy, and they tried to hamper his studies in every possible way for many years. This reached up to a point where his beloved Iguanodons were once taken away from him by the museum's director Edouard DUPONT, and he was relegated to work in the cellars, on fish (if you don't believe it, read Othenio ABEL's, one of DOLLO's closest personal friends, interesting biographical sketch from 1928. In today's literature and biographies, all sugar-coated, these facts, deeply embarrassing for Belgian paleontology, are usually completely swept under the carpet), a fate he shares with the great 20th century reptile paleontologist Olivier RIEPPEL, who was forced to do the same at the Zurich Museum under the directorship of Prof. Emil KUHN-SCHNYDER Both DOLLO and RIEPPEL made the best of their situation and produced some beautiful paleoichthyological work". I mean, OOF, sorry to hear that Olivier...
A nice thing that wasn't a guarantee given the book's format is that the entries seem written in order, so you won't get repeats of details, and you build up a knowledge of paleontology bios as you read. Instead, Maisch will be like "X person, who you recall from that ex-dinosaur" and "but he'll make that mistake again, as we'll see with future ex-dinos Y and Z." So reading it through is more valuable than treating it as an encyclopedia.
I mentioned I had a similar project in mind for this blog in 2010, so do Maisch and I cross paths? Yes, for Actiosaurus at least, so far. A supposed dinosaur that was then weirdly assigned to Ichthyosauria by Huene, I looked at the figure and thought it most closely resembled a Pachystropheus humerus (see https://theropoddatabase.blogspot.com/2010/06/actiosaurus-is-choristodere-not.html ). Maisch writes "Credit for being the first one to suggest this should go to dinosaur enthusiast Mickey MORTIMER, however, who already pointed this possible identification out in a blog post in 2010 (https://theropoddatabase.blogspot.com/2010/06/actiosaurus-is-choristodere-not.html). Unfortunately, for whatever reasons, Mr. MORTIMER almost never publishes his results in the form of scientific papers. A blog-post does not count as a paper in scientific literature. Nonetheless, it was his idea, and may be the correct one."
Misgendering aside, that's great! Credit is all that I've ever asked for. So extra kudos to Maisch. "Whatever reasons" this time include- I didn't have the fossils, I'm not an expert on all the various Triassic tetrapods that might be implicated, and Fischer had texted me afterward and said they were working on it and I probably got it right.
As a final positive, the end of the Azendohsaurus entry notes "What is totally superfluous, though, is their new taxon "Allokotosauria". It is nothing else but Alfred Sherwood Romer's Trilophosauria, erected in 1956, in new clothes. There is no need to coin a new fashionable clade name just to replace a well-established pre-cladistic one. Trilophosauria has priority, period. Azendohsaurus is not an "allokotosaur" but simply a trilophosaur. And we old-school paleontologists know bloody well what a trilophosaur is." Segnosauria remembers, Maisch. And in Mammalia, Lipotyphla, Archonta, Ungulates, Artiodactylia, etc.. You don't need a new term every time a clade slightly changes content. Does that make me old-school?! No, wait fellow kids, I like K-Pop Demon Hunters too!...
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| Prodeinodon mongoliensis in distal view (Mortimer, 2009; courtesy of the AMNH). |
So that all looks good, but what about my usual scathing commentary? As might be expected of a self-published work, there are some grammatical issues. Maisch uses "1890ies" instead of 1890s or eighteen-nineties, "TV-series" instead of TV series, and the occasional typo as you may have noticed in my quotes.
There's also the occasional factual inaccuracy, like when Maisch calls Thecodontosaurus a prosauropod. That would mean it's closer to Plateosaurus than to sauropods, and it's near certainly not. Maybe this is old-fashioned Maisch fighting against the new-fangled orthodoxy, but at least point that out like he does for Trilophosauria and Laelaps.
More objectively, regarding Azendohsaurus Maisch says "DUTUIT further announces that a full description of all the material of his new form will follow. It has not appeared to the present date, not by him or anyone else." And this is in 1972, long before Jalil and Knoll's 2002 SVP abstract on new postcrania. BUT Maisch himself cites "GAUFFRE (1993) [who] provided a detailed redescription" of the initial material.
OR on pages 30-31 involving Actiosaurus, he says "I am not fully convinced of the Pachystropheus interpretation. The morphological differences between the two taxa as the considerable size difference makes me suspicious (Pachystropheus is much, much smaller)." Morphological variation, whatever, but back in that 2010 post I wrote "It is also within the size range of Pachystropheus specimens (greatest transverse width 25 mm compared to 13-35 mm)." Was I wrong? You didn't say I was....
My biggest disappointment is that so far Maisch usually doesn't use new data to better understand these ex-dinosaurs. Like on my blog I looked into what Actiosaurus was, what kind of hybodont Priscavolucris was, what kind of ichthyosaur Rachitrema was, where Bathygnathus fell out among sphenacodonts, etc.. And so far, Maisch is usually content to give the most recent opinion and just go with that. But take Aachenosaurus for example, that was found to be two different plant taxa by Hovelacque (1890) - Aachenoxylon multidens and Nicolia moresneti. Now I'm no paleobotanist, but I'd be very surprised if these taxa named from wood pieces in 1890 are still considered valid. And just what kind of plant are they from? Surely the field's expanded hugely in the last 120 years?
The one exception is that Maisch tries for Avipes (which I didn't realize was destroyed). So he correctly says it seems unique, so shouldn't be a nomen dubium. But then he says "It also invalidates RAUHUT & HUNGERBUHLER's (1998) argument that the taxon does not show any theropod features. Proximal fusion of the metatarsals 2-4 is a theropod feature. A very derived one, actually."
But that's like saying inventing computers is a primate feature. I'm not going to check the condition in all coelophysoids now, but the fusion in most seems to be confined to the most proximal area by the distal tarsals. Is an elmisaur plus avialan character really a theropod character? And sure maybe you're generalizing and saying only neotheropods have ANY kind of metatarsal fusion. But then WHY would you say "I agree with the conclusion that the taxon must nonetheless be considered Archosauria incertae sedis."?! Is it just the lowest common denominator of all the taxa mentioned by Norman as having digitigrade pedes in 1990? I stand by my statement on the Database- "non-ornithodiran digitigrade taxa like basal crocodylomorphs, shuvosaurids, proterochampsians and Langobardisaurus have metatarsals which lay diagonally over each other proximally, whereas Lagerpeton, Lagosuchus, Silesaurus and coelophysids lack much overlap as in Avipes. Pending further comparison it is here placed as Ornithodira incertae sedis."
But in general, I'm loving this book. Can't wait to get through all the entries and learn more. You can order it here for only $13.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1726812189
Second best dinosaur book (given my earlier restrictions) as an adult is Paul's Dinosaurs of the Air, btw.
Reference- Maisch, 2018. Imaginary Dinosaurs from Aachenosaurus to Zatomus. The Astounding History of the Dinosaurs that Never Were. 293 pp.
