Huaxiazhoulong, new ankylosaur from Upper Cretaceous of Jiangxi Province, China

[Ben Creisler]

Ben Creisler

bcre...@gmail.com

A new paper:

Huaxiazhoulong shouwen gen. et sp. nov.

 
Ziheng Zhu, Jie Wu, Yue You, Yingli Jia, Chujiao Chen, Xi Yao, Wenjie Zheng & Xing Xu (2024)
A new ankylosaurid dinosaur from the Upper Cretaceous of Jiangxi Province, southern China
Historical Biology (advance online publication)
doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/08912963.2024.2417208
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08912963.2024.2417208


Huaxiazhoulong shouwen gen. et sp. nov. is a new ankylosaurid recovered from the Upper Cretaceous Tangbian Formation of Jiangxi Province, southern China. Huaxiazhoulong shouwen can be diagnosed on the basis of three autapomorphies (the middle shaft and distal end of the ischium are expanded; the ratio of width of distal end to minimum shaft width is greater than 3 in humerus, the maximum length of femur to humerus length ratio is about 1.45) and a unique combination of characters (the centra of anterior caudal vertebrae in anterior view is heart-shaped; the dorsal surface of scapula is straight; the scapulocoracoid has a large medial brace; the humeral head and deltopectoral crest are separated by a distinct notch anteriorly). The phylogenetic analysis shows that Huaxiazhoulong shouwen is an early member of Ankylosauridae.

[Gregory Paul]

As I try to deal with the national situation, something has occurred to me. Usually science reporters hit the annual SVP convention, and news accounts of some of the presentations ensue. But this year nothing that I saw. What happened? I would have thought that the contrasting conclusions as to the status of the lesser TT-zone tyrannosaurs by Griffen et al. versus Carr would have gotten coverage. And their is the new Spinosaurus, How about the Saurophaganax thing. And no doubt there were nondino items as well. 

Did the journalists read the abstracts and then none attend? Do they think the Tyranno debate is a tad stale?

Nor have I seen any discussion on the presentations. Rather peculiar. 

GSPaul

[Thomas Richard Holtz]

More and more of the presentations at SVP are marked "no social media reports, please" and "still under embargo". So at least some (like the Sereno Spinosaurus presentation or the Saurophaganax paper) are specifically off-limits for reportage (either formal or in groups).

The main story that the press were interested in was Habib's Power of Keratin presentation.

Additionally, I didn't see as many of the usual reporters this year, so I wonder if there was another conference at the same time that the science reporters were at.

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[Gregory Paul]

Interesting. As more abstracts are made off limits the less the news media will be interested in the conference it would seem. 

GSPaul

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[Ralph Molnar]

Dear Greg,
I got back from SVP with Covid-19. When I (finally) get over it, I'll be in touch - there were some seriously interesting issues raised.
Cheers, Ralph

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[Gregory Paul]

I had Covid in August so I would have been immune, although I still had some of the long term cough i always get after a viral respiratory infection.

Looking forward to the news. 

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[Ralph Molnar]

Dear Greg,
Here's what struck me about the presentations (ignoring the 'ethical' incidents). I attended the dinosaur/bird/croc/lepidosaur sessions (the single turtle paper was withdrawn). There were several presentations on variation or plasticity. Chinsamy's work on plasticity in growth strategies in Massospondylus set the tone. She found no consistency in growth strategy; they seem to have used everything, 'everything being the range from continuous growth through intermittent cyclic growth to cyclic growth. Pereyra described the results of work on (captive) Nile croc in South Africa, finding similar (but less marked) results, even on animals raised under the same conditions.
Freimuth argued for high levels of variation in basal theropods, including Coelophysis.
Bamforth's talk on Pachyrhinosaurus lacustai from Pipestone Springs, taken to represent a single population, revealed that no 2 frills (parietals) were alike, some even being asymmetrical. And many workers take the form of the frills to be diagnostic in ceratopsians. This was followed by Brennan's talk on the scan of the skull of Stegoceras (the one originally described by Lambe), showing that there were 2 palpebrals on the right, & 1 on the left. This was followed (in a later session) by Pritchard's talk on asymmetric development of the forelimb in a new drepanosaur, they're not quite fiddler crabs, but they're close, & the degree of disparity is different in different individuals.
My impression is that archosaurs (& drepanosaurs) were quite variable in development, not as canalised as modern, or at least domestic, mammals.
Since I'm still not quite over the Covid (or something like it), I've likely missed some items that got interest you.
Oddly, in one session (Cenozoic herps, I think) 3 of the speakers didn't show but were thought to be there (presumably incorrectly).
Cheers, Ralph

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[Ethan Schoales]

What ethical issues?

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[Ethan Schoales]

What was he arrested for?

On Fri, Nov 15, 2024 at 5:03 PM Jacqueline Silviria <sympan...@gmail.com> wrote:

Andy Huynh’s talk was the big ‘unethical’ incident. I did not attend so I can’t comment on the details, but as one person put it, “It’s good that you weren’t there.” Also, his roommates for the meeting had to be escorted to emergency housing following his arrest.

Jacqueline S. Silviria
The Last King of the Jungle

Department of Earth & Space Science
University of Washington
Seattle, WA, USA
jsi...@uw.edu, sympan...@gmail.com

ResearchGate profile

Sent from my iPhone

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[Thomas Richard Holtz]

Okay, rumor control here:

1) The person in question wasn't arrested, so far as I know. He was escorted from the premises by police and told he could not return to the meeting or the hotel. But I don't know that he was specifically charged with a crime as such, and by later that evening he was posting on IG from a gym about four hours away.

2) His roommates were accompanied by the SVP president to the front desk to resolve the housing situation (I was actually talking to new SVP president Stuart Sumida while this was going on, before they made it to the front desk.) I don't know if the roommates got a new room at that hotel or a different one, and I don't know if there was any special "escorting" for this other than from Sumida (there may have been, but I wasn't there for it.)

In broad strokes about the talk, Huyhn was presenting on the links between illegal fossil trade and international crime syndicates, following on his presentation from a previous meeting specifically on mammoth ivory and the Russian mob. Some of us were looking forward to his presentation of the details of this. Unfortunately, he turned it to a far more accusative presentation, and made potential threats against the membership of the society.

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[Jura]

Huynh's outburst also led to a boosted police presence for the rest of the meeting as the only other alternative was to cancel the rest of SVP. The roommates were moved to a new room from the Air BnB they were sharing with Huynh because they said he brought weapons with him. As far as I know, the evidence for weapons was never confirmed.

I'm all for keeping the rumour mill to a minimum, but I also think it's important to acknowledge when something truly out of line takes place at these meetings or in our profession.

Jason

[mkir...@gmail.com]

Here is a link to an article that appeared in Science about the well-received talk that Mr. Huynh gave at SVP in 2022:  

https://web.archive.org/web/20240115034936/https://www.science.org/content/article/booming-trade-mammoth-ivory-may-be-bad-news-elephants/

[Gregory Paul]

You know, when I asked what happened at this year"s SVP I thought the big contention might have been over the small tyrannosaurs of the Hell Creek etc. This is beyond odd, it being very serious. 

My first SVP was 78 and never heard of anything like this (I have mentioned one paleo nastily verbally threatening me with professional consequences for criticizing his paper in print, something I would report today -- back in the day there was fist-a-cuffs between an advocate of an impact and an explosive eruption having created the K/T debris at a geoconferance). 

I am concerned that there has not been an official statement from the society on this leaving members who did not attend with no clue it even happened much less what happened. Possible weapons at a location being shared by roommates? Extra police security? Why? What happened at the meeting to cause the person's removal? Is there a police investigation underway? Including the weapons. Maybe there being such is a reason why there has not been a statement with details, but that does not stop some form of minimal notice.. 

At some point SVP needs to issue a full report on this. Perhaps to add to meeting rules, and to quash rumors. 

GSPaul 

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.

[Skye McDavid]

SVP did send out an email statement, but if you (Greg) didn't see it, I assume it was only sent to attendees of this year's in person meeting. 

It only described the events as a 'security incident'. 

Ftr, I missed that talk because I was in the Triassic section most of the afternoon, and I'd rather not spread information that I can't be sure is accurate about an event that I didn't witness. 

Funnily enough, there was surprisingly little kerfuffle surrounding the poster presenting hyoid histology of the Nanotyrannus holotype.

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Skye McDavid
(she/her)
https://www.skyemcdavid.com/
This message was sent at a time that is convenient for me. I do not expect you to reply outside of your normal working hours

[Russell Engelman]

@Skye

It must have only been to SVP meeting attendees. I did not recieve an email about this incident and only heard about it from others who had been at the meeting. Honestly there has been little discussion or official statement on this at all; the DMG is the only place it has been publicly mentioned on the Internet.

[Jeff Hecht]

Mary Kirkaldy asked me what I thought about the lack of reporters or much reporting from SVP this year, but I haven't had time to reply earlier.

It's been a dozen years since I covered SVP in person in Rayleigh, but for a while after that I was trying to cover it remotely by scanning through the abstracts. There are multiple dynamics behind that.

One is that magazine travel budgets have been tightened, especially for correspondents like myself. When I couldn't get the editors to pay, I usually don't go. (One rare was the 1996 meeting at the American Museum in New York when Phil Currie unveiled Sinosauropteryx, when I slept on my sister's couch at night.) Some other writers are more willing to pay for their own travel, but only if they have a reasonable chance of getting a story.

As Tom Holtz said earlier, many presenters aren't willing to be interviewed about their abstracts because it might prevent publication or break an embargo. That slowed down my scanning of the abstract book; the last time I tried seriously, I was turned down several times. 

I think another factor is that the big paleontological breakthroughs seem fewer and far between. Reporting was easier in 1996. I came across an intriguing but incoherent news report from China and called the late Larry Martin because I knew he had students from China. Larry told me to call Phil Currie, who gave me enough to break the story in the issue of New Scientist that came out during SVP. Those were the good old days of science writing. Now too much is stage managed by journals and university PR offices. 

An "incident" like at this year's SVP will attract the press, but were any journalists on the scene? Viewing from a distance, that comes from the intensity of the fossil and ivory markets, and is more about money and crime than science. 

I still see read about some neat dinosaur discoveries, often you have to know a fair amount about dinosaurs and fossils to understand their importance, so they don't attract much interest from journalists who don't know much about dinosaurs. 

Is SVP still putting on press conferences in which a few paleontologists talk about their latest work? That used to attract some local reporters or non-specialists, but I don't remember hearing about them lately. 

-- Jeff Hecht

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[Jeff Hecht]

Mary Kirkaldy asked me what I thought about the lack of reporters or much reporting from SVP this year, but I haven't had time to reply earlier.

It's been a dozen years since I covered SVP in person in Rayleigh, but for a while after that I was trying to cover it remotely by scanning through the abstracts. There are multiple dynamics behind that.

One is that magazine travel budgets have been tightened, especially for correspondents like myself. When I couldn't get the editors to pay, I usually don't go. (One rare was the 1996 meeting at the American Museum in New York when Phil Currie unveiled Sinosauropteryx, when I slept on my sister's couch at night.) Some other writers are more willing to pay for their own travel, but only if they have a reasonable chance of getting a story.

As Tom Holtz said earlier, many presenters aren't willing to be interviewed about their abstracts because it might prevent publication or break an embargo. That slowed down my scanning of the abstract book; the last time I tried seriously, I was turned down several times. 

I think another factor is that the big paleontological breakthroughs seem fewer and far between. Reporting was easier in 1996. I came across an intriguing but incoherent news report from China and called the late Larry Martin because I knew he had students from China. Larry told me to call Phil Currie, who gave me enough to break the story in the issue of New Scientist that came out during SVP. Those were the good old days of science writing. Now too much is stage managed by journals and university PR offices. 

An "incident" like at this year's SVP will attract the press, but were any journalists on the scene? Viewing from a distance, that comes from the intensity of the fossil and ivory markets, and is more about money and crime than science. 

I still see read about some neat dinosaur discoveries, often you have to know a fair amount about dinosaurs and fossils to understand their importance, so they don't attract much interest from journalists who don't know much about dinosaurs. 

Is SVP still putting on press conferences in which a few paleontologists talk about their latest work? That used to attract some local reporters or non-specialists, but I don't remember hearing about them lately. 

-- Jeff Hecht

On Nov 13, 2024, at 8:17 AM, 'Gregory Paul' via Dinosaur Mailing Group <DinosaurMa...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

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[Russell Engelman]

On top of that for the last 2-3 years SVP has only released the abstract books within a month of the meeting, sometimes only a week or two. This can make it very difficult for reporters to see if there is anything worth covering. In some cases it keeps scientists from going to a meeting, because travel plans have to be made far in advance (especially given how fast hotel rooms go) and researchers cannot see if there are enough at the meeting to be worth attending before making plans.

But overall, there seem to be a very strong cultural shift in paleontology that researchers do not want their conference abstracts talked about prior to publication. Over the last few years quite a few SVP members have been actively going around advising/telling laypeople on social media to stop talking about the contents of the upcoming SVP and generally shutting down discussion. It's gotten to the point where a lot of people are apprehensive of discussing anything that occurs at SVP outside of private communications.

[Thomas Richard Holtz]

>>But overall, there seem to be a very strong cultural shift in paleontology that researchers do not want their conference abstracts talked about prior to publication. Over the last few years quite a few SVP members have been actively going around advising/telling laypeople on social media to stop talking about the contents of the upcoming SVP and generally shutting down discussion. It's gotten to the point where a lot of people are apprehensive of discussing anything that occurs at SVP outside of private communications.

That is actually the formal policy of the Society now. As per the abstract volume:

"Unless specified otherwise, coverage of abstracts presented orally at the Annual Meeting is strictly prohibited until the start time of the presentation, and coverage of poster presentations is prohibited until the relevant poster session opens for viewing. As defined here, "coverage" includes all types of electronic and print media; this includes blogging, tweeting, advanced online publication, and other intent to communicate or disseminate results or discussions presented at the SVP Annual Meeting."

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[Mike Taylor]

What a very bizarre policy. I wonder when that came in, and why?

It really does amount to "Journalists, ignore all our work! Go and cover the physics conference instead."

-- Mike.

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[Russell Engelman]

It started circa 2016-2017 with the "no tweet"/"no photo" signs on certain posters, presentations. Which was a good idea to help studies avoid having their embargo broken, but it's kind of spun out from there.

But it really started exploding around 2022. I remember there was a minor kerfuffle around my 2022 Dunkleosteus abstract where some student had broken the embargo and posted the abstract online. People started freaking out and making judgements on it before anyone had even seen the presentation, and people started taking the sketch that person had posted alongside the abstract and assumed I had done that. Or they assumed the student was the original author. There were several statements of "why can't anyone just wait for the presentation/paper" by several SVP members. Now I don't think this event had any influence on SVP policy, but it was events like this that led to the policy. There were several other cases somewhat similar to this in 2022-2023 and technically that Saurophaganax study was in the same position this year, despite many people being told to stop talking about it because the study was embargoed.

To be honest, it's gotten to the point where I was suspicious if all the coverage of the "ankylosaur could survive getting run over by a car" study was actually with the blessings of the authors, simply because it's so rare now. Quite a few people are even afraid about talking about the contents of SVP 2024 long after the meeting is over.

[Mickey Mortimer]

"there seem to be a very strong cultural shift in paleontology"

I think it's pretty clearly a shift in culture for SVP, since there's nothing similar to the embargoes at other paleo meetings (just checked the 2024 EAVP, RCAPA, JAPV, etc...).  But I've complained about it before and the SVP higher ups have made it clear they don't want to be the exciting meeting everyone's talking about where we can all learn about the cool new research.  One said years ago that if I wanted that, I should start another DinoFest.  No, instead SVP wants to be the meeting people who can afford to travel every year go to, socialize I guess, then never talk about.  The Fight Club of paleontology one could say.

Mickey Mortimer

[mkir...@gmail.com]

The SVP. press conference and the "Business Meeting and Open Forum" seem to have disappeared in recent years.  

[Thomas Richard Holtz]

The business meeting has moved out of the meeting proper and is now a Zoom event a few weeks after the meeting itself.

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[Gregory Paul]

Just a tidbit of SVP history many probably do not know about. Sometime back in the 90s I attended the business meeting for some reason, I otherwise never did so. Am sitting there and was shocked to hear the announcement that the former long term financial SVP officer had been convicted of massive embezzlement over those many years. I had no clue. This is a reason organizations should have a credible financial services company handle the money. 

GSPaul

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[mkir...@gmail.com]

Would that have been in 1991?  "Report of the Secretary-Treasurer: Theft of Funds from SVP Operating Accounts, 1991"  It's in the Smithsonian Archives.  

[Gregory Paul]

Probably. 

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.

[Gregory Paul]

The SVP business meeting I was at probably would have been a few years later when she was sentenced, but I am not sure about that. 

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[Russell Engelman]

@Mickey

I have heard a number of remarkably similar sentiments to yours from researchers and/or people involved in paleontology regarding how the SVP treats itself, and how the behavior of the society and/or its annual meeting comes off as very unusual in comparison to other societies or research meetings like the Paleontological Society or GSA. I think Roy Plotnick mentions this explicitly in his recent book Explorers of Deep Time.

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[Heinrich Mallison]

Í feel that the strongest symptom of this culture shift in SVP is the increasingly blatant hypocrisy of, on the one hand, yelling "commercial collectors are the devil incarnate" (contra a lot of evidence especially in other countries), and, on the other hand, raking in lots of money from exhibition stalls of companies that commercially collect or primarily serve commerical collectors.

And any more nuanced viewpoint than "devil incarnate" seems to be very much frowned upon.

Heinrich

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[Russell Engelman]

I have also heard a lot of this too. And seen and experienced it.

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[Russell Engelman]

I actually pointed out to a friend in conversation once that Mary Anning wouldn't be treated that much differently at SVP today for being what we in modern terms would have called a commercial collector than she was in the 19th century for being a woman of lower economic class.

Not to mention her overall life arc would probably be remarkably similar. It's not talked about much but there's a distinct "middle-to-upper class suburbanite/city dweller to paleontologist" pipeline that means a lot of people without money or who live in rural areas have effectively few ways of breaking into the field academically. So Mary Anning, assuming she's still from a low-income U.K. family who makes money on the side by selling ammonites, is unlikely to get into a good college or find a good mentor unless she's lucky enough to recieve a scholarship. Which is far from guaranteed. Because her interest would be piqued by the fossils her family commercially collected, she would go to SVP...only to be systematically ostracized and have the door slammed in her face and her research findings systematically dismissed because is a commercial/amateur paleontologist trying to break into research academia. So not much difference from her IRL life. Even researchers today who work regularly with amateurs often get the side eye from their colleagues, as if they are one step away from falling into corruption.

Similarly, someone like Charles Sternberg, who is regularly heralded as one of the champions of vertebrate paleontology, would be considered completely verboten if he was alive today because a lot of his fossil work he did as commercial commissions for a number of museums. I mean yes times are different but it's still funny to watch people fail to notice the discrepancy.

I've never felt comfortable or welcome at SVP due to all the bashing of amateur/commercial paleontologists, especially by the young crowd, due to having originally been an amateur paleontologist before transitioning into research academia in undergraduate. At one point I told a friend about this when he said some typical SVP amateur-bashing things, asking if he could knock off all the amateur bashing because it made me uncomfortable. His response was "[d]on't worry, you're not one of """them""" anymore." Which didn't exactly help the sentiments.

[Russell Engelman]

P.S., I should also say this attitude was completely absent when I attended NAPC this summer. It was utterly alien to me to attend a conference where amateur paleontologists were encouraged to contribute to the field (i.e., citizen science, locating new localities, assisting in field collection, bringing fossils to an institutional repository) and their actions were seen as valued, even by the vertebrate workers there.

[Tyrannosaur TJ]

As someone that has an active interest in paleontology and living off disability having any kind of accessibility for being involved acad